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Agree with one of the above posters. Any debt relief needs to come with changes for the future.
1. Limit guarantee on future loans. Part of the reason tuition is so expensive is because of blank checks being written by the government. If loans are guaranteed, why not ask for more? I propose limiting loan guaranteed to the rate of in-state tuition of the public colleges in the state in which one is attending. So if you want to go study liberal arts at NYU, great, buy you'll need to come up with the difference between their tuition and SUNY for the same degree.
2. With lower guarantees for random majors, the government could also encourage pursuit of certain occupations through additional grants for education in specific topics. Think Healthcare, STEM, skilled trades (and go back to encouraging skilled trades as career paths).
3. Why not look at taking existing programs and just expanding them? There is already a forgiveness program for those working in government or non-profit agencies. That program could be expanded for those working in essential positions in the private sector (again, think healthcare). The program requires 10 years of on-time payments before forgiveness, so it's not a completely free ride. There can be limits put in place dependent on private sector salary.
4. Other option: expanded income tax credits for people actually paying the loans. Again, forces payment to achieve the benefit. People could take advantage of the savings to dump more into the loans for faster payoff, or inject more money directly into the economy.
Agree with one of the above posters. Any debt relief needs to come with changes for the future.
1. Limit guarantee on future loans. Part of the reason tuition is so expensive is because of blank checks being written by the government. If loans are guaranteed, why not ask for more? I propose limiting loan guaranteed to the rate of in-state tuition of the public colleges in the state in which one is attending. So if you want to go study liberal arts at NYU, great, buy you'll need to come up with the difference between their tuition and SUNY for the same degree.
2. With lower guarantees for random majors, the government could also encourage pursuit of certain occupations through additional grants for education in specific topics. Think Healthcare, STEM, skilled trades (and go back to encouraging skilled trades as career paths).
3. Why not look at taking existing programs and just expanding them? There is already a forgiveness program for those working in government or non-profit agencies. That program could be expanded for those working in essential positions in the private sector (again, think healthcare). The program requires 10 years of on-time payments before forgiveness, so it's not a completely free ride. There can be limits put in place dependent on private sector salary.
4. Other option: expanded income tax credits for people actually paying the loans. Again, forces payment to achieve the benefit. People could take advantage of the savings to dump more into the loans for faster payoff, or inject more money directly into the economy.
I agree with these proposals in concept. I hadn't thought of the fourth option, but permitting a tax credit (second best, tax deduction) for at least the interest paid on student loans--with provisions for points 1 and 2 already in place--certainly makes as much sense as tax deductions for mortgage interest.
What about those of us who actually, you know, PAID our student loans? Were we just idiots for paying back loans that we promised to?
What about all those people who are on disability? They get money I don't!
What about the (very, very few) people who get hundreds of thousands in student loan debt discharged by working for a non-profit?
It's part of living in society.
Typically it's not free money either. Typically discharged student debt is counted as income on federal taxes.
These loans weren't issued to the schools to pay for tuition, they were issued to the student and could be used to pay for vacations, rent, cars, whatever. So no, I'm against relieving these students from debt.
I have a friend who's 68. When he began receiving SS it was reduced 15% a month so the government can recoup the money he borrowed back in the 90's and never paid back.
Also, look at delinquency rates. Somewhere around 10% are delinquent. Why should 100% get a break? Meanwhile the guy in the original story gets squat because he was smart.
Look at the idiots in the second article, especially Sandy Nurse. 2 degrees from expensive private colleges and ends up being a community activist. No wonder she can’t pay her loans.
Last edited by markjames68; 12-22-2020 at 07:48 AM..
When I was in the military, we had the concept of "one-time good deal." Sometimes a window of opportunity opens; some people are in the right time and place to take advantage of it, some aren't. Oh, well. Take the educational benefits of the GI Bill for instance. Those have changed from "war to war," better for the veterans of some wars, not as good for the veterans of others. But you won't usually hear, for instance, a Vietnam war veteran protesting a bill to provide an Afghanistan veteran a better deal that he got. We accepted it philosophically.
People who work to prevent others from getting in on a one-time good deal doom themselves to a mean life.
It wouldn't bother me if current student loans were forgiven up to $50,000 because I see the government as being in cahoots with the banking industry and the education industry in luring kids into them with "get a college degree by any means possible or your life will be *****" indoctrination from K-12, then locking them into practically Mafia-style loans with interest continually rising and fees added to the balances seemingly at random. They offer "grant" programs that have such arcane and complex rules that most people, sooner or later, make a mistake and suddenly the "grant" turns into a loan with years of unpaid interest tacked on. The Mafia wishes they had that racket.
But I think any bill to forgive college loans must also come with some very significant simultaneous changes in the loan process. First, the government has to break away from the banking and education industries.
First, the loans should be disposable in bankruptcy like any other debt. That will force banks to approve or disapprove them according to the creditworthiness of the borrower like any other debt.
Second, the government acknowledge the fact that a bachelor's degree is not for most people. Most people should be in advanced technical training, which the government ought to promote and support as vigorously as it has been supporting bachelor's degrees.
Third, we ought to look seriously into the government simply financing college for many students in public colleges. That doesn't even need new money--the federal government already spends more money handing out grants than public colleges collect in tuition. But that should also come with some requirements for which degrees get such funding...degrees in proportion to the public need to students who seem best able to achieve them. In other words, government scholarships to government schools done more broadly. Actually, that's rather a return to what many states used to do.
Fourth, the government needs to look seriously into the reasons higher education costs are zooming higher and faster than any other cost besides medicine (and I suspect the reason is the same). When I was in college in 1972, my tuition was $25 per credit hour. Minimum wage was $1.25 per hour. I had a part-time job making $2.50 an hour. I could pay off my tuition by the middle of the semester. Today at that same university, tuition is $400 per credit hour. A student would have to make $40 an hour part time to do as well as I did in 1972.
This was a very thoughtful post. The thing is, we're overthinking this. Your last post says it all.
When I graduated from college in 1977 I was paying (not kidding) $ 17.50/credit hour at our 2nd largest state college. Minimum wage was just over $ 2.00 an hour. Fed. student loan int. rate of 6%, state student loan of 4% during the time in this country that interest rates were never higher.
All that has to be done is lower the interest rates on new loans AND retroactively to all outstanding loans in line with other interest rates to something like 2% and be done with it. After all, the banks can't lose as they're guaranteed.
Here we start to see that the people making these proposals don't give a hang about the "common people" they claim to be so supportive of.
Basically, what this does is to transfer tax money from people who never went to college, to those who did and didn't want to pay for it - and from those who did and paid for it.
Location: Formerly Pleasanton Ca, now in Marietta Ga
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Quote:
Originally Posted by scorpio516
What about all those people who are on disability? They get money I don't!
What about the (very, very few) people who get hundreds of thousands in student loan debt discharged by working for a non-profit?
It's part of living in society.
Typically it's not free money either. Typically discharged student debt is counted as income on federal taxes.
How about many people didn’t ask to be disabled. People voluntarily took on student debt
So are we expecting the tax payer via the Federal Government to pay this debt?
The US is currently at $27.5T in debt. That's a $22T increase this century. If Trump signs the stimulus bill, we will be at $30 trillion dollars in DEBT. We pay more in interest than in tax revenue. Our total GDP is only $21.3T, so we make far less than we owe.
Student debt currently is around $1.6 trillion.
After we pay it off then what? Does the tax payer fund free college for everyone for the rest of time?
So how about those people who decided to pay for college by joining ROTC and the military, ended up in combat, possibly maimed or otherwise damaged? It's fair to take their tax money and give it to their fellow students who chose to take low interest student loans and not pay them?
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