What would it take to convince you otherwise? I mean this honestly, because I hear the above statement a lot and it’s very foreign to me. If anything it’s a long shot, sure, but the forgiveness is a great forcing function. We can tackle this from multiple angles. Nationalize state schools, write off current predatory loans, etc. There are very few downsides that are actually backed up by data that I can find. A lot of the arguments presented here (not you, others) are philosophical
> Disagree, this is a lot of word salad to justify not helping people.
Come on. It's not no "unintelligible, extremely disorganized speech or writing manifested as a symptom of a mental disorder" to disagree with you.
Furthermore, framing this as just about "not helping people" is simple-minded. There are almost always trade-offs between different goods, and maintaining separation of powers is an important good as well. There are serious, serious problems with allowing small provisions of law meant to solve small problems to be re-interpreted to allow the executive to unilaterally make massive policy changes.
You’re the one approaching this like it’s some incredibly complex issue, it’s really not. But okay, let’s play your game. Describe the real material harm caused by this forgiveness. Is it inflation? There’s a lot of research saying that’s bogus. Is it an overstretching of powers? Seems pretty minimal compared to existing powers, and it seems like this is right up the executive and DOE alley… what exactly are you upset with in the real tangible sense? What concrete harms are happening that are backed by data and not just a myopic world view? Please, really, enlighten me
>> Loan forgiveness is not an investment in education
> Yes, yes it is
No. It most definitely is not.
It's paying off a bunch of loans that people freely agreed to accept in exchange for their chosen degree. It's the abdication of all responsibility. It's the creation of a society where commitments mean nothing. It is also rewarding behavior that isn't constructive and, devoid of consequences, is caustic.
Plenty of us have taken-on these commitments and worked hard for decades making good on our agreement and paying off the loans. What entitles this generation to behave as children when they should behave as adults?
How about we pay off half of everyone's mortgages then and call it an investment? I guarantee that would have far greater impact than the student loan bailout?
And, BTW, after you pay off my mortgage, I get to keep living in my house forever. Because, well, if we pay off someone's student loan/s, they get to keep the degree and use it to make money.
The whole thing is laughable.
Want to fix student loans? Get government out of that business ASAP. The minute loans don't have that guarantee, the cost of education will drop precipitously.
The other thing that is important is to remove non-degree coursework as graduation requirements. Someone going for an engineering degree has to spend about one full year on coursework having nothing to do with engineering. One way to look at this is that, in the US, 25% of your student loan is for shit that is not going to help get you hired. Or that 25% of your loan isn't for engineering coursework.
Being that this is a requirement for graduation, this means that this unnecessary 25% of the cost of the degree is being imposed on every single student. That's wrong.
Nothing prevents you from setting the example, using some criteria to find a target for your charity and paying off some or all of their student loan. Maybe you can take over the payments?
In fact, you could start a foundation of like-minded people and help hundreds, or thousands, of people.
Here's the difference: You get to do whatever you want with your money. Including finding people who think like you and want to join you.
The other approach is forcing everyone to jump on your bandwagon. And that is wrong.
I paid every dime back. So did my wife. We did without lots of things for a very long time while meeting the obligations we entered into to go to school. We both worked full time jobs while we were in school. We didn't take vacations for a long time while we evolved financially and in our respective careers.
That's what commitment and honoring responsibilities looks like.
People with student loans whining about not being bailed out is the pinnacle of adults behaving as petulant children. Grow the fuck up! They bought something that will benefit them for the rest of their lives. The government facilitated that by guaranteeing that loan. No sane lender would have ever provided these loans without this guarantee. Time to behave as an adult and pay for it.
Bullshit degree?
Too bad. Not my problem. I am not responsible for someone paying $150K for a Masters in Underwater Basket Weaving. Tough shit. You fucked up.
Want to blame someone for that expensive Ms in Basket Weaving that can only make you $35K/year? Blame yourself. Stop voting for snake oil salesmen who promise the world and end-up damaging everyone who voted for them. If government was out of the student loan business that degree would not be worth more than $15K to $30K, if that. Your voting decisions have consequences. You have to pay for those just as well.
How about paying off everyone's cars? And then, we don't take them away. They keep using their car for free, just like a student loan bailout would allow someone to use their degree for profit forever.
Of course, some will have bought sensibly-priced cars, while others will have spent $150K for a car to drive the kids to school.
Lets force everyone in the nation who paid-off their vehicles through hard work and responsible behavior to pay for the cars bought by others who are now whining about their loans. Brilliant.
If you want to pay-off people's cars, be my guest. Again, private money and private decisions, you are free to do this...and more.
Let us know if you pay off someone's loan or start a private foundation to do just that. I'm sure many on HN who share your way of thinking will gladly donate tens of thousands of dollars (or more) to demonstrate these are not just empty words and the truly get behind what they say with non-trivial financial commitments for the benefit of others.
Also, and I mean this sincerely… are you okay? You sound angry, resentful even. Please go talk to someone, this seems much bigger than student loan forgiveness.
Taxes and wealth transfers are something that a reasonable person can be angry or even resentful of.
If someone went into your house and robbed you, you might be angry. You have bills, dreams, and children to care for. A lot of people would even want to kill the thief.
These policies have the same effect, but you are powerless to defend yourself.
Yeah, sure, people can write papers to justify anything.
Like I said, let's cancel everyone's auto loans and mortgages. I'll be we could write a compelling paper in support of that.
> are you okay?
Very funny. Insult shrouded behind fake sincerity.
I am fine, than you. Are you? You don't seem to understand reality at all. Please go talk to someone.
> You sound angry
Everyone who isn't a under heavy sedation should be angry at the stupid nonsense our society today seems to insist on passing for virtues. It is destroying our society to the bone. Splitting us up into more and more subsets brought into resonance by expert manipulators.
Don't believe me? Give it ten years, come back and compare notes. If we remain on this path nothing good will come from it. Sadly, we might have already passed a point of no return years ago.
The issue here is that it is far easier for political actors to work on the basis of creating resonance in subsets of the population than to actually do the difficult work of governing and solving real problems --which isn't easy at all.
Far easier to portray daily life as an ideological civil war with many "us vs. them" slices of society than to actually solve real problems over time.
One approach leads to easy votes and easy paths to stay in power. The other requires hard work and the risk of not delivering results, which could end political careers. The internet and social media gave politicians the tools necessary to focus on nothing except divide-resonate-and-conquer.
It's a game. The masses play. Politicians win. Society gets screwed.
For the unthinking among us, if they can reduce life to a set of mono-variable issues and clear good-vs-evil players, maybe feed them a few great looking graphs, PDF's and websites in the process, maybe even an idiot well-known actor who is stupid enough (most of them are) to get behind the cause, well, politicians and the money brokers that surround them do just fine.
Of course, the population doesn't do fine. They do worse and worse with the passage of time. Pick a time line, say, 50 years:
- The healthcare system is a horrible train-wreck
- Our system of education K-12 is worse than in some third world countries
- Our university system sells, for hundreds of thousands of dollars,
a product that, at most, should cost tens of thousands, or
be free (as it is in countless nations)
- Our systems of mass transportation are a mess
The California high speed train project is an example of just
how incompetent we have become
- Our actions on business, nationally and internationally, have
driven entire industries out of the country --forever
- Air travel lately? OMG!
- We can't build anything at scale any more
Remember "shovel ready projects"? Yeah, good luck
Just one drive up and down Interstate 5 in CA summarizes where
we are well: We can't build anything, and, when we do,
it's third world
- We have degrades so far that we can't even manufacture masks
and medical equipment during a pandemic
- And, yes, we have layers of society who would rather whine
and be taken care of by government than engage in the difficult
work that elevates societies and people at all levels
These are things everyone should be angered by. And this list isn't even exhaustive. Take travelling around the nation. It's a disaster. I have been to airports and have travelled through immigration systems in very small nations that put major US airports to absolute shame. One that comes to mind is Singapore. Comparing just that experience to entering the US through LAX, Dallas, JFK or any other airport is nothing less than shameful. It should embarrass and, yes, anger everyone.
One way or another, we have managed to allow our politicians (note I have not pointed at a single unique party) to devolve our nation and society into something that is simply not headed in the right direction at all. The things these people have done and are doing continue to guarantee the irrelevance of the US (and Europe) on the world stage and 100 to 200 years (if not more) of Chinese domination at nearly all levels.
I guess the unthinking among us need to find themselves in that reality before they understand just how stupid they have been to not laugh these politicians off the stage and replace them with people who will deliver results and not focus on dividing the population into subsets that are easy to manipulate for votes.
I have worked in manufacturing, technology, electronics, software, commercial, industrial and aerospace domains for four decades. We have been moving backwards, for decades. We have eroded our ability to sustain and grow our economy to a point that likely has no return.
Just try to manufacture any non-trivial product in the US and Europe and the realization of how bad things are will feel like a bucket of ice water. In fact, try to manufacture most trivial products (masks, gowns, syringes, disinfectant wipes) in the US and Europe and the results will likely be the same.
This is the result of decades of incompetence and politicians focusing on their political objectives rather than going to work for us doing the difficult job of managing the affairs of a nation.
Yes, everyone should be angry, because, without a massive unifying force and a clear vision of common goals --without everyone pushing in the same direction-- this is going in a direction most are not going to like. It's like the proverbial crab being slow-boiled. Ignorance, as it turns out, isn't, in the end, bliss.
We want the same things, but please try to at least engage with me on the data and research. I don’t want the powers that be to crush us any more than you do. I care about people, and from what you’ve written I know you do too, so let’s tackle this the best we can with the information we have. I’m not trying to trick you, really
Look, I know bullshit when I see it. I've been around that long. Sorry, and I do not mean this as a personal attack, the study you posted is complete horseshit. And so is every single study that claims that forcing the entire population to pay for some X a subset of the population chose to buy on their own accord is not a way to build a society based on personal responsibility and the idea that your rights must end where mine begin.
I'll give you one example of this in healthcare. Our family was nicely covered and happy with an insurance plan that cost us $650 per month and had a low thousands deductible way back when. Then President Obama comes along and publicly promises everyone: "If you like your doctors, you'll keep them. If you like your healthcare plan, you'll keep it." He is on video multiple times making this assertion.
What happened? We were forced into Obamacare. Why? The terms of the bill forced companies to cancel all prior plans. And then, our plan went from $650 per month to over $1,800 per month. The deductible went from somewhere around $4,000 per year to over $9,000 per year. We could no longer go the the doctors we had been going to for years.
I did the math. My family would have to be run over by a truck before our insurance would pay real benefits. And yet we have been spending over $22K per year on premiums for over twelve years now. That's over TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS so far since being forced into this fucking abomination. Over $270K. For what?
And I voted for that fucker too. Biggest mistake of my life. Incompetent to the core. Well spoken like few before and after him. And, of course, he used that to divide this nation in ways most have yet to recognize. And costs will go up. At this rate I would not be surprised if it costs my family over a million dollars in my lifetime.
Perfect example of a politician promising to help people, yet causing great harm instead. One can find examples of this kind of thing across the isle as well. Not claiming Democrats are the only culpable here.
Politicians in this nation, by law, can lie to all of us and suffer no consequences for it. That's wrong and should change. They are causing way too much damage using that superpower.
The political "species" --because they are not human beings, they are parasites-- in the US has done more damage to this country in the last 50 years than any of our enemies could have hoped to inflict on us through any means available to them. They have destroyed this nation from the inside by only caring about themselves while pretending to care for those who's votes they want and need.
Why people do not wake up to this and revolt is something I might never understand. The fact that, in 2016, our only two choices for "leadership" were Trump and Clinton says a lot about just how stupid we all are and how putrid our political system has become. Out of all the brilliant and capable people in this nation, those two rose to the top? Amazing.
> let’s tackle this the best we can with the information we have
We have to be very careful. This "information we have" is deeply polluted by political forces and financial interests. I would advise anyone to almost, by default, discard anything that comes out of our universities one a range of topics. They have become paid political actors. The forces that be know how to manipulate this through grants and programs that only favor certain perspectives.
For example, go search for the body of articles challenging some of the narratives surrounding what we can and cannot do about atmospheric CO2 concentration and climate change. The number of studies --if you can find any-- is absolutely dwarfed by those showing we are Zeus and can lick this thing within a few years or even decades (which, of course, is complete and utter horseshit).
And so, if we were to tackle this with the information we have, the only conclusion they want us to reach is that we have to destroy entire economies to "save the planet" --which, again, is complete horseshit.
There are thing in life that don't require layers of research studies to understand or debunk. For example, any engineer with a reasonable amount of experience knows that building a submarine using a carbon fiber pressure hull is fucking stupid.
Bailing everyone out of X (which can be anything) isn't a way to build a strong, resilient, responsible society with self determination and ability to make good decisions and honor them despite outcomes. It's a way to build a loser society that will surely buckle at the first sign of trouble. Even worse, it's a way to build a society perennially dependent on government handouts, with all the downsides history has shown this brings.
I think there's reason to be angry. Some of us have been working hard for decades, only to see the people we hired to look after our nation destroy it from the inside and divide us to use us like pawns for their own benefit. That's not cool. That's something to be angry about. And rightly so.
Lol! You are up and down this thread personally attacking people who don't share your misunderstandings and then mic dropping the same link to a 60 page Economics report which famously enables the poor policy decisions you refuse to engage on in any other conversation. If you ever grow up I'm sure you'll come back to this thread and laugh at what a knobhead you were. Telling anyone who 1) disagrees with you and 2) is expressing any emotion, to "get help" is remarkably childish.
The courses were taken, the education was received. This would just transfer the cost of already provided services to the general taxpayer. It would make nobody more educated as a result.
This is a common attitude, and an understandable one, but it’s very much at odds with the research. There are more studies and discussions, but this is one of them highlighting how this is a nothing burger
How would it cost the taxpayer more? Can you explain? The money has already been spent, and it’s already being collected in the form of taxes on those individuals whom are now earning more thanks to education. Why would we need more taxes?
That's why I said "general taxpayer". It would be paid by people other than the ones receiving the education. You might argue this is how things should be, but it's still not an "investment in education".
If you are trying to argue that the increased tax levied on the particular indebted people with a better education adds up to the exact amount they owed, someone would have to prove that. Additionally, this additional tax from better education was never intended by Congress, when the tax rate was calculated, to go to paying anyone's previous education debt. So other services (arguably benefitting the entire population) would have to be preempted to pay for it. Either way, you'd have someone else paying for the debt.
Reposting so others don’t feed into this propaganda. The talking point that loan forgiveness would “raise taxes” is at best dubious. Here is one, of many studies that dispute it
> One time loan forgiving of people who already gotten education is not.
The one time forgiveness was adopted roughly simultaneously with reforms to lending and, particularly, repayment programs designed to ameliorate the creation of the same debt problem, it wasn’t a policy adopted by itself in a vacuum.
I am not fully aware of the context and I couldn't even find it. Could you send some links for "reforms to lending and, particularly, repayment programs designed to ameliorate the creation of the same debt problem"?
I dont even know where to start with this. How many times do we all have to have this same conversation. “Student loans being forgiven does not increase inflation, as no new money is being injected into the economy”. It’s either spent before being collected, or spent after being collected by the gov”.
Guys, seriously, we’re not talking about people taking loans out to do blow and hookers, they’re trying to get an education. You’re all acting like we’re just going to give out forgiveness and then throw our hands up and doing nothing after that.
I'm not sure you responded to the right comment here? I didn't say any of the stuff you seem to be responding to.
Maybe you're responding to what I said about unaccountable government cash? But you seem to be thinking I'm saying it's the students who lack accountability and whose incentives are screwed up by the government cash?
That's not it at all, it's not the students' incentives that are a mess under the current system and an even worse mess under the perpetual forgiveness system. It is schools whose incentives are messed up. They have no reason to keep from raising tuition and fees indefinitely because they are guaranteed to be paid. It's that problem that setting a precedent for forgiveness makes worse.
It has nothing to do with what people with student debt spend their money on.
That's one potential solution, I'm not against it a priori, but would be interested in the exact details of it.
But it is not the only potential solution.
But the availability of other actual potential solutions does not make the non-solution of one-time blanket forgiveness that we're discussing here any more appealing to me.
Supports what? That paper seems to be narrowly about the economic impact of loan forgiveness, not about nationalizing higher education or about other potential solutions to the causes of student debt.
Pardon, this was deeper linked, but your previous comments describe the overall forgiveness as a bandaid, or generally not helpful. That is not supported by the research.
I do think it is a bandaid and generally not helpful, even if it is not economically damaging. Economic benefit or damage is only one aspect of the question.
Why? Because a lot of people don't support counter-productive band-aids and would rather advocate for policies that solve actual problems? That doesn't seem like our issue to me...
Our public colleges are essentially privately funded at this point. The amount of public funding in most states (with a small number of notable exceptions) is very small.
The interest rate pause and the loan forgiveness are different policies - one can exist without the other.
The interest rate pause was not declared unconstitutional today - and it will continue until the loans are scheduled to be started again in the next couple months.
Technically, but one does not exist without the other in its current implementation. Hence the continuation shortly as this forgiveness was struck down.
I don’t understand. The two policies were begun by different administrations. The pause did exist without the forgiveness policy; it was done first.
The pause will continue until September (it was not effected at all by this ruling) so it once again exists without the forgiveness policy.
Why do you think one cannot exist without the other? The pause is fine with or without the forgiveness, and the pause existing didn’t save the forgiveness.
The pause can also no longer be extended due to Congressional action:
> Congress recently passed a law preventing further extensions of the payment pause. Student loan interest will resume starting on Sept. 1, 2023, and payments will be due starting in October. We will notify borrowers well before payments restart.
Sure, but I know that YOU know that people talk about these items together. The general tone of this convo has been that nothing helpful has come from these actions, and that’s not true. It’s been stated it was all politics, and we know that’s not fair, as some good has happened as a result.
Now, if we’re going to argue about the very specific loan forgiveness being effective, then sure, it has been currently struck down. But I have trouble believing that nothing good has come from it, if only by forcing this convo, and convos like these taking place.
Sometimes you have to do something loud to get people’s attention; it certainly got yours.
> Sure, but I know that YOU know that people talk about these items together.
If I know anything, it's that "people" are often simply wrong about stuff. If a bunch of people wrongly thing two different things are the same, that doesn't make it so.
> The general tone of this convo has been that nothing helpful has come from these actions, and that’s not true.
I don't care about the general tone, I was only responding to the statement that A "did" good because different-thing B "did good."
My understanding is this thread is specifically about the student loan forgiveness plan that was just ruled unconstitutional, not some amorphous larger thing (which may be how you personally think about it).
You've written at least half a dozen comments linking to this study and claiming that it disputes everyone's opposition to the student loan cancellation plan. I'm skeptical that you've even read it. I just did. It says that the cancelation will not raise the deficit as much as naively would be expected (but will raise it some) because of the general economic benefits that will come from the people spending money on things other than student loan payments.
It doesn't say anything about the moral hazard of paying off student loans for those who haven't paid them, while ignoring those who have. Or about the likelihood that a student loan cancelation will need to happen again. Or that those two things together will encourage people not to pay their student loans in the future, hoping for another cancelation. Or that universities will be able to raise prices even more because they expect further cancellations.
Sure, the deficit may not go up as much as naively you'd expect it to. And we won't have to pay it off with taxes immediately. (we'll just have more debt instead). But you seem to not care about all of the reasons that people oppose this, and just throw a pdf in their face, hoping it'll shut them up even when it doesn't argue what you want it to argue. Please stop.
You realize we can do both right? Forgive the loans AND tackle the rising cost of tuition by nationalizing? I swear it’s this same myopic response everyone, no one can ever imagine there’s a step two.
"Forgive the loans AND tackle the rising cost of tuition by nationalizing? "
Have you seen any efforts for tackling the rising cost? I haven't. They have spent a ton of energy on a one-off stunt and have done absolutely nothing to tackle real issue.
Forgiving the loans makes any other legislative solution vanishingly unlikely. Politicians love to just kick cans down the road. Forgiving student loans at the beginning of every new administration would be much easier than pursuing an actual policy to attack the problem legislatively.
I honestly don’t know what to say to this. If the meat of your argument is “they’ll never do the right thing, they’ll just keep stalling “, it kinda feels like you just don’t have faith in our government at all. In which case there’s nothing I can do to convince you otherwise.
That isn't the meat of my argument. I think it is much more likely that they'll come up with new legislation that is actually targeted at the problem, if they don't just forgive the debt. I think people are more likely to do the democracy stuff - voting for and influencing representatives who have plans to fix this - if they still see it as a problem to be solved, rather than something that doesn't affect them due to their debt having been forgiven already.
I'm not sure how one thinks "actually targeting the problem" will be easier than forgiving loans. What do you think would actually fix the problem? Because, I think it would require a large subsidized, if not nationalized, public university system with free tuition or near-free tuition. And that's a much bigger task than forgiving loans.
I don't think it will be easier! But I don't think forgiving the loans is harmless, I think it makes the problem worse. So I don't support doing an easier thing that makes the problem both worse and also even harder politically to solve than it already was.
I think there are a number of policies to consider, all the way from beefing up the current programs - like income based repayment, public service forgiveness, and grants - to regulatory price controls, to your idea of nationalizing essentially the current system, to rethinking the whole concept of what college is for and who should go.
There are a bunch of different things I might support depending on the details, but just "I dunno, do a one time blanket forgiveness and nothing else I guess?" really ain't it.
(Aside: You've started every reply you've written to me with some sort of "I don't even know what to say" or "I'm flabbergasted". I'm not sure if this is just a rhetorical tick you have, or if it means that maybe you should sit with what you've read for a bit and think it over until you know what to say or are no longer flabbergasted by it. I don't find what you're saying flabbergasting, I just disagree. I think you could perhaps reach a similar place with what I'm saying if you take some time to think about it.)
People don't need "breathing room" to care about a political issue. People care about issues that are affecting them. You clearly care about this issue because (from your comments today) it is clearly affecting you. You aren't going to suddenly care more about whether college administrators are or aren't incentivized to raise the costs of college after you've been freed from the clutches of your student debt and have more room to breathe. You'll move on to caring about the next thing that is affecting your life directly. That's not a criticism of you or anybody, it's just the natural reaction.
I’m done. You’re not engaging with what I was saying, and instead are talking down to me and others like we only care about ourselves. Please, please try to listen to the points people are making. Your entire first paragraph is literally gaslighting and talking down to me and others.
I have engaged you at every single point, and will continue to if you choose to continue making arguments. I have been listening to your points, but frankly so far they haven't been very good ones. I think what you're doing here is just throwing your hands up in frustration that not everyone just immediately agrees with what you believe to be the obvious conclusions here, rather than making convincing arguments for what you believe.
By my first paragraph, I assume you mean the parenthetical at the beginning? If so, that isn't what "gaslighting" means, and while I can see how you read it as talking down to you, it can't be talking down to anyone else, because it is solely responding to a particular style in a few comments you specifically have written.
You haven’t engaged me with research or data once, you just keep concern trolling. Please try to at least use something quantitative to backup your arguments
My argument isn't quantitative, it's predicting how the policy will impact incentives and thus peoples' future behavior. Incentives matter in policy construction, but not everything that matters can be put on a chart or in a table of numbers.
You post one article and claim it’s it’s “THE” study or data for hours and hours and post and reply constantly. Log off for a bit, take a break, it might do you some good.
This is something I wonder about often as well. Why are all these coastal cities constantly being pumped full of money in the form of new building and real estate ventures when the forecasts show how risky of a long term investment it is? Sure, you can gain some short term profits, but these investments are being made by large banks with access to data on what these investments will look like _over decades_.
Are people just planning on sea walls, dikes, and other mega projects to deal with shifting coastlines? I can understand it for certain financially entrenched areas like New York City, but still... we're talking 10s - 100's of Billions in infrastructure to preserve these cities.
The cities themselves have an existential threat, one which they _have_ to throw money at to solve. It's the outside investors who _also_ throw money at these areas with the knowledge that _their_ investment requires these mega projects to pan out when there are other less risky investments that I find so mind boggling.
because if you are developer corporation you don't care. You build where people and money currently are. Once you build it and sell it it's somebody else problem.
Counterpoint: If you're a developer and your projects are uninsurable, that is your problem. You're not going to be a developer for very long if that's the case.
sure, my point is, developers build where money and people are now. They don't care, like most corporations don't care what will happen in 50 years time.
Probably the same reason so many politicians and wealthy tech entrepreneurs (e.g. Zuckerberg) are buying waterfront property. Sea level rise is a lot of hype and not a lot of substance. If it were such a big deal all the coastal cities in the US would have already been wiped out every time there was a windy day and 1-3ft sea swells.
