Student Loan forgiveness idea

Exactly. No more bankruptcies. Just debtor prison.

First perp walk: Donal J. Trump, for solidarity.

 

Why not allow wages / pre-tax dollars to be used to offset debt? Tax relief that even republicans can get behind.

Added to CARES Act Sec 2206, the $5,250 with pre-tax dollars could be a better option.

 

Lenders already produce a year-end statement of qualified interest payments. The same could be done for student loan payments in general. I’m 15 years out and only this year would my yearly payments fall below $11,000.

I’m continuing to pay at the same level and should have five of my ten loans paid off by year’s end but it hasn’t been fun being charged interest by the federal government then paying taxes on dollars allocated toward paying off debt that made it possible to earn the money in the first place. Our system is broken.

 

we do know who the first group of colonists in georgia where, right?

 

I do. Oglethorpe established it as a refuge for debtors. As bad as modern Georgia is, not enough for new graduates. Straight to Sing Sing. Added benefit of being near NYC.

 

To me, this is more of a personal responsibility choice. You also have to keep in mind that a lot of people struggling with student loan debt are those who failed to earn a degree, dropped out, etc. So they have all the debt, with no extra earning benefit of having a college degree.

FWIW, my wife holds a degree in Anthropology from UF. Her income for last year puts her in the top 2% of individuals in the US. Not bad for a dead end degree. Yes, she's an outlier. But she grew up poor and never would have gone to college without student loans.

 

Would that also apply to incompetent real estate developers that habitually overextend their businesses?
How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions (Published 2016)
Everything you want to know about Donald Trump's bankruptcies
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No, it's not off-topic since it was a direct response to a post that went far beyond the original topic of student loan debt.

 

Matt Yglesias reminds us that the student debt crisis arose from the financial crisis and the decade long depressed employment market, which of course impacted the amounts of stimulus we issued in the last 2 years, which is part of the inflation discussion

Fundamentally, though, I do feel bad for the large cohort of college graduates who are a bit younger than I am. I was born in 1981 at the very beginning of the “millennial” wave. I graduated college in 2003 and settled into a career quickly, so by the time the economy collapsed in the winter of 2008-2009, I was on the ladder. But if you look at the cohort just behind me, the demographic bulge is larger and people had their early career years either derailed by the Great Recession or else they graduated into a crappy labor market. That’s an awful, scarring experience. It was awful for the people in those cohorts who didn’t go to college, and it was awful for the college graduates. And it created this “student loan” discourse that I think on some level is really about the horrible macroeconomic management that allowed a weak labor market to persist for nearly a decade. The actual higher education issue looks pretty different in today’s stronger labor market

 

I have no idea what you wife does but to be in the top 2% I the U.S. it sure as heck hasn’t got anything to do with anthropology. They make almost as much as a school teacher.

 

Liberal arts degrees, aka “follow your heart” degrees, are so 1960’s and are worthless unless you plan on going on to advanced degrees in a field people will pay for. Even then you may not make it. A degree in political science might get you ready to go to law school, but unless you graduate at or near the top of your class there’s no way you’re to be hired by a good law firm.

 

How would that be a greater risk when the bank can repossess the house and place it back on the market vs a total loss with a student loan?

 

So you want to have central planning from the government on which degrees are "legitimate"? And you don't see how something like that could go wrong or be abused? Do you want Ron DeSantis deciding what "legitimate" degrees are? (It also misunderstands the standalone societal value of education.)

 

An education loan is an investment in that person’s earning potential, and like any other business loan if it looks like it’s not going to be a good investment then the loaning authority should have the ability to deny the loan.

As for who decides which degrees goes remember I’m talking about federal loans and the government already decides who gets the loans, private loans are another animal. The problem I see is it’s relatively easy to get a student loan as long as you’re an American citizen, you’re making adequate academic gains, you haven’t defaulted on previous loans, and you’re not in jail. The student fails or drops out, or can’t land a job with their gender studies degree, and ends up with the same job they would have had with just a high school degree. So then you have an individual with a low paying job with a high degree of debt they can’t afford. This could all be avoided with stricter guidelines.

 

Because the lender can lose the entire house in the deal. Thats why insurance is required while the loan is open. The federally backed student loan is insured by the gov. There is little to no risk to the lender, yet the interest rate is higher. That is crony capitalism.

 

I know plenty of people who are killing it now with liberals arts degrees. Anyone that says they are worthless just has no clue what they are talking about. FYI at the UF College of liberal arts and sciences they offer degrees in psychology, geology, biology, chemistry, statistics, etc. I'm pretty sure those are all important. And why call out anthropology? What about Physical anthropology and archaeology? Both are offered through anthropology departments. Do those not count as important?

I hate when people talk about higher ed when they don't know anything about higher ed.

The interest rates on federal loans are criminal at this point. And given that graduate degrees are extremely beneficial to innovation and the economy, there is no reason the federal government should be charging 6.54% for graduate direct loans and 7.54% for Grad plus loans. That is insane. And these are HUGE hikes compared to 2021-2022.

 

Obama tried to do that. "Higher" ed had a chit fit and launched a massive lobbying campaign and both parties crushed it. Higher ed is a massive business that employs, directly or indirectly, appx 15% of the workforce that preys upon the hope of America youth and taxpayers. It totals around 2.5% of the total GDP. Rest of the world is around 1.7% of GDP.

 

What frost’s me are the people who choose to leverage themselves for the next decade+ of their life to go to a private school, as opposed to a far more affordable state school.

I have no sympathy for those that knowingly take on such astronomical debt when there are far more affordable quality alternatives.

My kids both attended UF for undergrad over brand-named schools, because we just couldn’t justify the exorbitant added costs fixed to those other schools.

 

Agreed. I’m having real trouble understanding how it’s a question.

 

It's become a question because as a nation, our most educated are often struggling under a mountain of debt. Who wants to spend 200k become a doctor, when half the income you make as a MD will have to go towards paying a massive student debt pile that you may never even be able to pay off? Especially if you go work in low income areas. Same with DVMs, a really overlooked and important profession in this country.

That's just a small part of it, but still an important part that makes this worthy of conversation.

 

I didn’t know the student loans are insured by the government. Thanks

As to home loans most get repossessed and placed back on the market. However I didn’t think about Fire or any other type of damage.

Thanks for the info.