Forgive student loans

There are a lot better ways to stimulate the economy than forgiving the student loan debt of college graduates. We can start with the truly poor and disadvantaged, the homeless, etc and work our way up. I bet we run out of money to stimulate with long before we get to many of the college grads with loan debt.

 

No one has yet explained why I should pay for her or anyone else's mistake. I ran my life without debt. Therefore, I should be punished because someone else could not pay their debt? Please explain. Would appreciate some sense of reality, please.

 

Have you missed all the outrage surrounding student loan debt? Have you missed all the horror stories? You've spent the last couple of years here claiming this sort of thing is a figment of my imagination. You've called my posts "straw man" arguments & "anectdotal". "Resentful" probably isn't the word I would have used. Maybe "leery"? "Well, what do you say now?

 

Student loan debt is no different than any other debt. The loan was just a way to pay for a product (in this case a degree) that she really couldn't afford. If the product didn't produce the expected results, go after the seller of the product (the school) for not delivering. I think it should be between the student & the school if the school doesn't deliver what the student believes they have paid for.
If you finance a car & the car has problems how do you go back on? The seller or the lender?

 

You don't have to take a student loan out. That's what I say. It's just like your opinion on sales taxes. People don't have to pay them if they don't buy things. Right?

 

But this doesn't change your extreme support for student loans & the student loan industry it only makes you a hypocrite for avoiding what you advocate others do.

 

Intriguing question. Where did you get the idea you would be paying for it? It's NOT REAL DEBT. Collection agencies fabricated the bulk of it out of thin air. It's like how credit companies and banks think that real debt is inclusive of "late fees, interest and finance charges." No. You don't get to say "And I stopped at Dairy Queen without your knowledge or permission, here's a Blizzard, you owe me another $5", except we don't get anything good out of it. There are bad words for what these people are doing to the students. It's not okay. She would HAPPILY pay the actual amount owed.

 

Despite your beliefs, money does not appear out of thin air. Since most of it is government backed, I pay what ever the others don't.

As for your fee problems, try asking Dodd-Frank.

 

Yes, actually. It does. We don't have a gold standard anymore, so ... look, chances are excellent you know more about this than I do. Additionally, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But as I understand it, since we went off the gold standard, money has been printed at will by the Fed.

 

Uhmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!?!?! You said it, not I.

 

Instead of our money being based upon gold, it is based upon the faith that the government can and will honor it as money - the whole "Full Faith and Credit of the US Government" thing. If we or the government were truly to treat it as if it had no value, it would not. You would just have monopoly money.

So yes, we could just say that things are Not Real Debt, or treat it like it's not 'real money', or print off more than what people would have faith in, etc but the consequences would be catastrophic. Odds are, the way things are going, we - and the rest of the world - may find out how catastrophic it would be at some point unless our politicians quit treating it like it is not real.

 

One of the reasons Cambodia imploded in the 1960s and 1970s is because it had too many unemployed, college-educated people sitting around and doing nothing, and then sitting around and doing plotting. Food for thought.

Of course, another major reason was because the United States completely destabilized all of southeast Asia.

 

I agree with you that this is an excellent idea, for a lot of reasons. First, as you point out, the trillion dollars in cumulative student loan debt is a huge drag on our consumer-based economy. It makes no sense at all to have credit card debt, unsecured, as dischargeable in bankruptcies, but not student loan debt, equally unsecured.

Second, the debt is now a bubble that's just waiting to burst and infect another huge section of the population who can ill afford it. The fact is, given the outsourcing of jobs,the trampling down of average hourly wages, and the sneaky inflationary pressures of rising food and energy costs, that the value of a college education is now far less than its cost. That's very bad. I seem to recall another economic collapse that impoverished people who owed more on something (their homes) than that something was worth in the marketplace. Very bad place to be.

Hope there's someone in government listening!

 

I wonder how many of you remember this little piece of legislation? Just so that we are clear what is actually involved in student loans.

WASHINGTON — Finalizing two major pieces of his agenda, President Barack Obama on Tuesday sealed his health care overhaul and made the government the primary lender to students by cutting banks out of the process.

Both domestic priorities came in one bill, pushed through by Democrats in the House and Senate and signed into law by a beaming president.

The new law makes a series of changes to the massive health insurance reform bill that he signed into law with even greater fanfare last week. Those fixes included removing some specials deals that had angered the public and providing more money for poorer and middle-income individuals and families to help them buy health insurance.

But during an appearance at a community college in suburban Virginia, he emphasized the overshadowed part of the bill: education.

In this final piece of health reform, Democrats added in a restructuring of the way the government handles loans affecting millions of students.

The law strips banks of their role as middlemen in federal student loans and puts the government in charge. The president said that change would save more than $60 billion over the next 10 years, which in turn would be used to boost Pell Grants for students and reinvest in community colleges.

"I didn't stand with the banks and the financial industries in this fight – that's not why I came to Washington – and neither did any of the members of Congress who are here today," Obama said to a supportive crowd at Northern Virginia Community College. "We stood with you. We stood with America's students."

Private lenders still will make student loans that are not backed by the government, and they still will have contracts to service some federal loans. But the change reflected in the new law represents a significant loss in what has been a $70 billion business for the banking industry.

Among many other features, the new law is expected to make it easier for some college graduates to repay loans.

The government will essentially guarantee that workers in low-paying jobs will be able to reduce their payments. Current law caps monthly payments at 15 percent of these workers' incomes; the new law will lower the cap to 10 percent.

About half of undergraduates receive federal student aid and about 8.5 million students are going to college with the help of Pell Grants.

Obama was effusive in his praise for the lawmakers who stood by him on the health care and education legislation. Many of them face tough sells in their home districts over the massive health care legislation, a complex mix of crackdowns on the insurance industry, coverage expansions and insurance mandates.

He was introduced by Dr. Jill Biden, the vice president's wife, who teaches English there.

 

I am stunned at how many people in the USA feel that the Government should step in and bail them out? Student loans should not be forgiven while so many other people have had to find their way to pay them back. How much can those who have not yet matured be left with to pay an insurmountable debt that they did not create? Someone has to pay therefore, why should it be the people who did not get the advantage of the education?

 

Well, In a way yes and no at the same time. Who is this debt owed to? The banks. Who did the tax payers just bailout? The banks. Who has taken all this tax payer money and instead of loaning it out to shore up the economy they have just sat on it? The banks. Who is making record profits, charging absurd fees and paying out huge bonuses to their top execs? The banks. So if you look at it that way, you can kind of see why some people wouldn't mind shafting the banks for a few student loans. I mean my wife and I both spent 10 years paying back our loans. We then put away 3 college tuition funds for our three kids. I certainly understand what it means to sacrifice but I also understand that being under the thumb of these corrupt institutions isn't what is going to make this a better country either. I have compared the banks to drug dealers and I can't even suggest the those that take out student loans are anything like drug addicts because they are only trying to improve themselves and make us a better society not become a burden to society. Frankly, the banks have too much money and power right now just like they've had in the past and they need to be broken up.

 

Oh, they don't write it off and make it disappear. If you default they will take any income tax refund you ever get in addition to putting a wage garnishment on your job and apply it to the bill until it is paid off. You can't escape from the debt by filling for bankruptcy. Make no mistake they will get their money one way or another. It is the one debt that won't disappear in seven years either.

 

Why is there even discussion on this topic? If you took out a loan, pay your bill.

 

Notice the only player in this whole deal who comes away unscathed is the school?

 

Define "unscathed". Because I can go on Ad nauseam about the problems schools are facing. Try reading the online publication "The Chronicles of Higher Education".