What if we just like... paid for school with taxes like literally every other country? (Trust me, it shouldn’t cost as much as it does to get a degree. I promise it can be and, in fact, used to be affordable.)
We need a mechanism to control costs. The loans are just one side of the story. The majority of public universities are rapidly increasing their cost structures.
In many ways taxes do pay for it. For example around 50% of state school tuition is paid for by taxes. Yet sky-high, emphatically unpayable debt persists and is getting worse.
Somebody getting a break doesn’t bring you down, it just brings them up. I’m sorry you had to pay off your loans. I’m paying about $100,000 myself. But even if I didn’t get amnesty, I’d rather not have one more graduate who, like me, has sincerely considered whether simply being dead would be easier to deal with. And there are a lot of people like that. I’d rather be in debt forever if it means that subsequent multitudes can be free of the burden I carry. At least someone gets some relief.
Own your choices. You decided to go to college as opposed to not going. You decided to go to the college that you did in favors of others. You knew the cost of tuition and room and board. You knew how much you would have to borrow to afford the college you chose. You voluntarily borrowed the money that you did. You knew the amount of $ that you would owe. You knew the payment schedule. You had a reasonable idea of how much you wold earn given the degree and college that you chose. I feel a little sorry that you now have to make sacrifices to pay back the money you chose to borrow. Maybe you have to do without for some period of time while others you know don't.
My loans were based on the LIBOR rate. That rate was shown to be manipulated by many banks[1]. Did I chose to do this going into the agreement for the loan? Did I get the chance to leave the agreement after the rate was manipulated, or to not pay back interest for the portion of time it was manipulated?
Personally, my loans are almost all paid off and any wiping of student loan debt would barely affect me. I can still see how letting the system continue as it is does nothing but funnel money from the public, and students in particular, into the banks pockets. I don't see why we need to protect the banks from any negative results when they have actively subverted the rules
> Somebody getting a break doesn’t bring you down, it just brings them up.
Well, the assumption here is that the money to "bring them up" can just be materialized out of thin air and doesn't have to be taken from other people, in turn.
The converse of this being the assumption that having a huge number of people stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt is not itself a drag on society that eventually comes out of other people's pockets one way or another anyways.
"I survived a bad system" is not justification for the perpetuation of that system.
Absolutely, but if we have to deal with the burden while ensuring future students don’t have to suffer (because let’s face it: short of Jesus Christ coming back and demanding it, I don’t see private loan forgiveness in our future), I’d rather do that. I just want SOMEONE to have a break. It doesn’t have to be me.
In order to invoke the "not a zero sum" defense you have to also give a rational argument as to who specifically should hand over their money to pay for this and why their interests have less societal benefit, so that the sum of the transaction does indeed end up positive. Additionally, you have to explain why debt forgiveness does not lead to a "negative sum" scenario due to moral hazard.
You're begging the question. I don't follow the assumption that anyone's interests have less societal benefit. Let's go with one example, taxpayers bail out student debt in tandem with some legislation that prevents moral hazard from being an issue. If that bailout prevents value destruction through economic collapse, or frees graduates to pursue vocations appropriate for their degree that could generate larger economic returns in the long run, there you have a rising tide lifting all boats. That scenario is loaded with assumptions, but my only aim is to open your mind to the possibility of a net win, not to describe an implementation.
And for the record, I get the feeling you've assumed that I support debt forgiveness. I don't, and the moral hazard involved does bother me. But I won't let that stop me from considering strong arguments in favor of it.
It was the state tax payers (they were funding universities more aggressively), but we also didn’t have many fancy perks on campus back then (so kind of students also).
But who was really losing 20 years ago were underemployed administrators. There were much fewer of those cushy non-teaching non-research admin jobs.
Shared profit can negate shared costs, particularly those brought on by systemic issues that need solving or individuals that didn't do so well in the health/job/birth/intelligence/etc lottery.
Or would you rather a non-society where everyone fends for themselves?
Most consumer debt is not in the form of a hard money loan (actual dollars) but rather by the money creation mechanisms (money multiplier) of our fractional reserve system. The money created by the loan was effectively "materialized out of thin air" although the debtor does enjoy enrichment from the receipt of the money.
Banks, on the other hand, won't be suffering if reforms are made; they will simply not be able to realize as much interest from the loans they issued.
Taxation has been around forever. Society gets to vote and decide how to divide up shared resources. I’m perfectly fine with tax dollars going to education (coupled with drastically-reduced tuition, like it used to be a short couple decades ago). I’m curious why everyone thinks it’s so impossible to have affordable education, when not even a generation ago we actually had it in the US.
It is still possible today. There are schools that are an extremely good value. I've even seen some state schools where you can graduate pretty much debt free working a part time minimum wage job during the school year and full time during the summer. If people were acting rationally they would be flocking to these schools. Instead they are taking on massive debt to go to expensive schools. So basically to answer your question, the reason education is so expensive is largely because of the way we loan money to people to go to school.
Yes but if one school starts upgrading their dorms, student center, etc. kids starting spending their loan money there which makes the other schools try to do something a bit better. When there is almost unlimited money there is a race to be the top in spending on creating a cool college environment to attract more kids and their loan money.
So if person A got a degree that they can use to get a job with $40k of debt and has worked hard to pay it off, but person B has incurred $40k to get a degree that isn't going to lead to a job, you seem to think we can just forgive the debt of B without having any impact on A. Where do you think the money to pay for that debt will come from....well people who have jobs and are working. So basically person A has to pay for their degree in something that led to employment as well as the degree person B got that didn't lead to employment.
Is that worth doing? Maybe, but don't pretend it has no impact on the people who did pay off their loans.
So I dated a 41-year-old. He went to school about 15 years before I did. Know how much student loan debt he has? Zero. Zilch. Nada. In the amount of time it takes to reach the age necessary to acquire a learner’s permit, we inflated the cost of education into the stratosphere.
Education used to be affordable. It is absolutely not impossible to go back. I’m curious to know how long you think education has been this unaffordable, because it’s a pretty new phenomenon. I’m therefore confused why it’s so hard to imagine a world where education is reasonably-priced.
There are still schools out there that are very reasonably priced. However, lots of students go to more expensive schools that cost more BECAUSE they can get loans to do so. The best way to bring the cost down would be to stop using taxes to subsidize loans.
well, the relative distance is usually more important than the absolute value
your are rich, compared to other, not in the absolute, if you have 1 million dollars, and everyone else have one million dollars, you are not rich
one way not to punish those who acted responsibility, is by bumping up their credit score, this way, they can get deals on mortgages etc ..., and those who were bailed out, should get their credit score neither penalized or bumped
We did this in Michigan. It doesn’t work. It’s an attractive platform item, but what ends up happening is lots of turnover means it’s easier for lobbyists to sway candidates. You also just lose institutional knowledge. And guess what? We have term limits and an entirely new governor still poisoned an entire town full of kids.
The electorate will do what it wants. If people keep electing terrible reps, term limits don’t stop that, it just stops that one particular bad rep and replaces them with another. Similarly, we have some awesome Michigan House members who would be fantastic again, but they’re term-limited and have to run for something else to continue to serve. It’s sad.
I think there's a strong argument that many representatives don't necessarily start awful, but are driven to awfulness in the pursuit of keeping themselves in office. Like you allude to, most voters are grossly misinformed or vote irrationally. And this irrationality and misinformation is very effectively exploited by special interests and monied groups. Consequently the desires of these special interests and monied groups start to become more important than the interests of society when a politician is primarily concerned about staying in office.
People are afraid of rightwing ideologues on the Supreme Court because it means that certain cases might be reasoned from a point of view that is based less on sound legal philosophy and more on personal beliefs from the 1800s.
Not even just the Supreme Court. Federal judgeships are being handed out left and right to (often unqualified but ideological) members of the Federalist Society. It's probably the biggest thing that Trump will have done that'll affect us our entire lifetimes.
There is a proper mechanism for revising the constitution: constitutional amendment. If you want to be angry at someone for what the constitution says, then be angry at the legislators who have neglected their duty to update it.
I live in Michigan, where PFAS are being found in water supplies all over the state. Companies did and still do dump poisonous chemicals into the environment, and day by day certain alphabet soup agencies give them more and more license to do so. We can talk about some garbage along a river bank after we prosecute large companies for knowingly poisoning entire swaths of land and bodies of water for decades, considering the scale on which they can harm people and the resources they have to avoid doing so.
But its only poor peoples' communities that get the brunt of the pollution. That's because their local governments can't fight against it, whereas richer communities can delay, fight, and stop.
Missing the point? My point is that a little trash on a riverbank pales in comparison to the large-scale environment destruction being committed every day by giant companies. Provide the homeless with food and shelter instead of worrying about some minimal pollution.
It’s not, but this argument comes up for absolutely everything Scandinavian countries do: universal healthcare? America’s too big. Prison reform? America’s too big. Not treating poor people like garbage? America’s too big. Oftentimes there isn’t even any reasoning behind why America’s size would be a problem, which is a good clue that the argument is bunkum.
I’m totally fine eating meat, but readily admit that I could never actually butcher an animal (and I don’t think that’s inconsistent). Anyway, how long do hens live? Could you let them wander around as pets?
I have a hen that has lived at least 6 years. At least where I live, the issue is them being killed off, not dying naturally. Also, if you have a large enough yard, they can walk around freely, just remember that they will take a dump anywhere they like, and I don't believe there is any way to stop that.
Only when the outrage gets loud enough to affect their chances for reelection (which happens with a lot of issues, just not this one).
Unfortunately, Hackernews seems to be the only place where security is taken seriously. Probably because we understand the severe collective risks involved to everything from banking to healthcare whereas most people as individuals don't care if say, their credit card number is stolen, since they aren't liable for fraud. It's hard to see the bigger picture if you aren't technical.
I don't think it's fair to say only this website takes it seriously, though perhaps this website is a good cross-section of people that do seem to take it seriously. You can also find those people on reddit, twitter, lesswrong, IRC, etc.
The question is, who's failing to make the whole WORLD care about it? Or at the very least, the politicians? I can count on shitty lobbyists at least ensuring that, like, the economy doesn't fucking burn us alive, because they lose money when that happens. Why aren't the fatcats also getting that about netsec? If the NYSE gets hacked, they stand to lose a lot of money. If someone opens the hoover dam gates through a hack, that's a lot of money lost. We can ignore the morality and privacy issues, and just speak their $$$language$$$ here, and it still doesn't make a lick of sense that politicians aren't eviscerating Equifax right now.
So, are we supposed to like, lobby sense into their heads? I mean, why? Because we're patriots? I guess?
Then again I've got motorcycle riding friends in Houston that don't wear their helmets, and I still have to force people in my backseat to buckle up sometimes, so I don't even know. Why don't people take any kind of safety seriously?
