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Right, like the student debt forgiveness. We hate the ones we disagree with and we love the ones we agree with.

by mc32 19d ago

watwut 19d ago
I dont know what you mean there. There is literally no symmetry between the two. Not in the case of how Biden administration reacted to cases they lost. And also not in the supreme court treatment - it ideological and political goals are pretty clear at this point, although not always pro-Trump.
kevin_thibedeau 19d ago
Debt forgiveness was dumb too. It normalized capricious government handouts for volitional actions. After the Corinthian shutdown there was little excuse for taking on massive debt for BS degrees.
- lenerdenator 19d ago
  How was it dumb? You have a generation of Americans who were told repeatedly and often in their teenage years that if they wanted to be able to compete in the global job marketplace, they'd need, at the very least, a bachelor's degree. As it turns out, employers were going to offshore those jobs and cut those wages regardless of your education. The value of degrees was wildly over-inflated compared to the economic reality, particularly after the Great Recession and COVID. The result has been an entire generation of people who aren't able to attain the same life milestones as their parents' generation, which is inherently destabilizing to a society. Corinthian Colleges wasn't the main perpetrator of this; the entire system was. By their shutdown in 2015, most people born between 1980 and 1995 were out of college and were paying massive loans to legitimate schools. When you have a party (in this case, the federal government) obtaining something of value (student loan interest payments) via statements that are materially not true, there's a word for that: fraud. Student loan forgiveness was a targeted effort on the behalf of a lending institution's head officer - in this case, the President of the United States - to try and renegotiate the terms of the loan serviced by that institution as to give some remedy to the problem. This would have required a write-down of the foregone payments that would be approximately equal to what the US government spends on providing OASDI checks to retirees for one year, and most retirees do not rely on OASDI checks to avoid homelessness, starvation, or other destitution. It's basically a bonus that you get for living over the age of 65, at this point being paid in part by loans taken out by the US government that will have to be paid off long after the recipients of that money are dead.
  - mc32 19d ago
    We should allow students to discharge their loans if they cannot repay them. This means risk will be assigned to borrowers and that would squeeze the ability for kids to take out loans on stupid majors that have absolutely no hope of ROI, as currently priced.
    - lenerdenator 19d ago
      I think there were some reforms to the process not too long ago that may have done something like you describe. The problem comes from the fact that a lot of Millennials were told by their parents that having a degree was what mattered, not what the degree was for. That was probably true in their day; it wasn't true in the 00s. Kids were told to follow their dreams. Now those same parents scoff at the idea of meeting their now-adult children halfway in order to let them gainfully participate in the economy. It's insane.
    - triceratops 19d ago
      It's a great plan. Why didn't Congress pass that?
- dahart 19d ago
  Why do you assume there’s debt involved? Whether BS or not, people with degrees have higher earnings (~2x on average according to the FED) and pay higher taxes (more than 2x on average); it’s very much in the government’s financial interest for more people to have degrees.
  - mc32 19d ago
    That suffers from the stereotype fallacy. Some majors have huge ROI while others leave graduates very frustrated with their prospects. Not everyone will benefit from a degree. Not all degrees are financially sound. If people think that all majors tend near the average, they are mistaken. Some do very well, others are of dubious value to a career. Averages hide ugly realities.
    - dahart 19d ago
      Oh no! You’ve misunderstood. I wasn’t really talking about the benefits of degrees to individuals, I was talking about the benefits to the federal budget (in response to the claim that we’re taking on debt). And there, the average income of graduates is actually the only thing that matters, not individuals’ performance, because that average turns into a sum total in income tax revenue for the federal government, a total that factors in the benefits of all degrees and all incomes, good or bad. There is a healthy positive ROI today for the government on education, even after student debt forgiveness. We’re making a tidy profit on degrees, not taking on debt. We’re making such a good profit, in fact, that we’d still be in the black making money if we covered all 4 year degrees for everyone who’s already choosing to go to college now. It looks like just the additional income tax revenue the country makes off degree earners compared to high school grads is on the order of 2-3x the sum total money paid in tuition and fees to all post-secondary schools in the US. If everyone in the country decided to get free degrees, all else being equal, it might get closer to break even or dipping into the budget… maybe. But there are multiple other countries that cover college for everyone who wants it, and they’re doing fine financially and not taking on education debt, some even rank better than the US on several economic measures.

Right, like the student debt forgiveness. We hate the ones we disagree with and we love the ones we agree with.

by mc32 19d ago

Right, like the student debt forgiveness. We hate the ones we disagree with and we love the ones we agree with.

I dont know what you mean there. There is literally no symmetry between the two. Not in the case of how Biden administration reacted to cases they lost. And also not in the supreme court treatment - it ideological and political goals are pretty clear at this point, although not always pro-Trump.

kevin_thibedeau 19d ago

Debt forgiveness was dumb too. It normalized capricious government handouts for volitional actions. After the Corinthian shutdown there was little excuse for taking on massive debt for BS degrees.

lenerdenator 19d ago
How was it dumb? You have a generation of Americans who were told repeatedly and often in their teenage years that if they wanted to be able to compete in the global job marketplace, they'd need, at the very least, a bachelor's degree. As it turns out, employers were going to offshore those jobs and cut those wages regardless of your education. The value of degrees was wildly over-inflated compared to the economic reality, particularly after the Great Recession and COVID. The result has been an entire generation of people who aren't able to attain the same life milestones as their parents' generation, which is inherently destabilizing to a society. Corinthian Colleges wasn't the main perpetrator of this; the entire system was. By their shutdown in 2015, most people born between 1980 and 1995 were out of college and were paying massive loans to legitimate schools. When you have a party (in this case, the federal government) obtaining something of value (student loan interest payments) via statements that are materially not true, there's a word for that: fraud. Student loan forgiveness was a targeted effort on the behalf of a lending institution's head officer - in this case, the President of the United States - to try and renegotiate the terms of the loan serviced by that institution as to give some remedy to the problem. This would have required a write-down of the foregone payments that would be approximately equal to what the US government spends on providing OASDI checks to retirees for one year, and most retirees do not rely on OASDI checks to avoid homelessness, starvation, or other destitution. It's basically a bonus that you get for living over the age of 65, at this point being paid in part by loans taken out by the US government that will have to be paid off long after the recipients of that money are dead.
- mc32 19d ago
  We should allow students to discharge their loans if they cannot repay them. This means risk will be assigned to borrowers and that would squeeze the ability for kids to take out loans on stupid majors that have absolutely no hope of ROI, as currently priced.
  - lenerdenator 19d ago
    I think there were some reforms to the process not too long ago that may have done something like you describe. The problem comes from the fact that a lot of Millennials were told by their parents that having a degree was what mattered, not what the degree was for. That was probably true in their day; it wasn't true in the 00s. Kids were told to follow their dreams. Now those same parents scoff at the idea of meeting their now-adult children halfway in order to let them gainfully participate in the economy. It's insane.
  - triceratops 19d ago
    It's a great plan. Why didn't Congress pass that?
dahart 19d ago
Why do you assume there’s debt involved? Whether BS or not, people with degrees have higher earnings (~2x on average according to the FED) and pay higher taxes (more than 2x on average); it’s very much in the government’s financial interest for more people to have degrees.
- mc32 19d ago
  That suffers from the stereotype fallacy. Some majors have huge ROI while others leave graduates very frustrated with their prospects. Not everyone will benefit from a degree. Not all degrees are financially sound. If people think that all majors tend near the average, they are mistaken. Some do very well, others are of dubious value to a career. Averages hide ugly realities.
  - dahart 19d ago
    Oh no! You’ve misunderstood. I wasn’t really talking about the benefits of degrees to individuals, I was talking about the benefits to the federal budget (in response to the claim that we’re taking on debt). And there, the average income of graduates is actually the only thing that matters, not individuals’ performance, because that average turns into a sum total in income tax revenue for the federal government, a total that factors in the benefits of all degrees and all incomes, good or bad. There is a healthy positive ROI today for the government on education, even after student debt forgiveness. We’re making a tidy profit on degrees, not taking on debt. We’re making such a good profit, in fact, that we’d still be in the black making money if we covered all 4 year degrees for everyone who’s already choosing to go to college now. It looks like just the additional income tax revenue the country makes off degree earners compared to high school grads is on the order of 2-3x the sum total money paid in tuition and fees to all post-secondary schools in the US. If everyone in the country decided to get free degrees, all else being equal, it might get closer to break even or dipping into the budget… maybe. But there are multiple other countries that cover college for everyone who wants it, and they’re doing fine financially and not taking on education debt, some even rank better than the US on several economic measures.