Forgive student loans

What you are saying is that today's society wants everything now and someone else to pay for it. Now let's see. We are $14T in debt and 16% with employment problems. Just how well is that working for you? Not only that, but you missed the most important part of my post. I guess that means you agree that you should be able to sign anything and just say you are going to take a mulligan. You are going to get some interesting results that way and I can think of nothing pleasant.

 

RLM - No, I didn't miss the most important part of your post. In other parts of this list, I have strongly advocated against forgiving all of the debt because it would cause problems in the long-term, the problems you are alluding to. I thought that had been made clear, but evidently it hadn't. I was merely pointing out in my last post that some things had changed since you went to school. It is not as black and white as you make it. And while I am all about self-determination and personal responsibility, its a tad cold to pass out boot straps to people in trouble and telling them to pull real hard. Especially when that trouble is due to people doing what society has been telling them to do since birth. And no, I am not saying that today's society wants everything now and wants someone else to pay for it, nor am I advocating that view. But considering that if you went to school a coupled decades ago, that means that this is the world that your generation built, with principles that your generation championed. The $14 Trillion debt was on your watch. So if anybody knows about "wanting something now and paying for it later" it would be your generation. My generation was in elementary school being taught that education was the silver bullet, and that we should sacrifice and risk to get the best one we could. Part of that risk was debt.

My generation is going to spend the majority of its time cleaning up your generation's mess. So how about a little less condescension and fewer lectures about "personal responsibility and how it affects society."

And in answer to your question, no its not working out real well for me. But hey, I got a paycheck and part of that goes to paying your generation's social security's benefits. A social security benefit that I am probably never going to see. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

 

Don't blame me for your problems. Fully 1/2 of that debt came in the last 6 years. Sorry, but I am out of that loop. And it was not my generation who "wanting something now and paying for it later". My generation had to put 20% down on a house and did not have credit cards to speak of. You might try assigning those problems to the 80's and later. It isn't that "black and white"? Just where do you think that money is going to come from? It only exists in China ad I don't want to become Chinese.

But you still have not caught the important part of my post and if that does not sink in, we, as a country, are dead. Think about that.

 

Why weren't the banks allowed to fail then? They signed the same contracts. They got an epic mulligan. Now they get to keep all of our money, delivered on a silver platter, along with all of the student loan money they lent. How about this: instead of forgiving student loans, we subtract the amount of tax dollars given to the banks over the last six years from the total amount of student loan payments they're owed? A dollar-for-dollar trade? Since they've decided to hoard stimulus money that came from taxpayers, they can consider that a lump-sum payment against student debt and all student loan payments will be reduced accordingly. Nobody gets a handout, and nobody gets a mulligan.

 

Why weren't they allowed to fail - don't ask me. Actually, if you look it up, I believe you will find in spite of everything, you will find that the banks themselves have actually turned a profit for the government. It was Fanny and Freddie (the government run "businesses") who have lost the money.

Yet you still think I should be punished because you screwed up? Just why? If the government spends anything to help you, it comes from my pocket. Even if you mistakenly believe that the government has the money (joke), if they don't spend it on your loan, they can spend it on something else so they don't have to raise my taxes.

 

RLM - Lets get something straight. I know exactly what situation we are in. I know exactly how the debt ramped up. I know who holds it. Your point is obvious and banal. And I personally have no credit card. I have no debt period. I am saving up for a house and other stuff. I live within my means. I am pretty sure that I get your point. But just passing out bootstraps isn't going to help either. Saying "thats how it was when I was a lad, so that is how it can be now" is not going to cut it. Its great you went to school when you could pay for it by working minimum wage for 10 hours a week. That not an option for most people now.

Time to stop thinking like its the 70s and 80s. We don't live in the same world where the old tropes worked. As productivity increases, the number of jobs needed to maintain production will decrease. This increases natural unemployment. What it means to work in the United States will shift. The number of skilled jobs are already decreasing because of tech force multipliers. That is not going to stop. The decrease in jobs will continue, which means people will be unable to pay off their debt in the traditional means. I am not advocating that anyone is released from their burden, as YOU seem to keep ignoring. But it is foolhardy to point of dangerous on a national level to think the same common wisdom will work. I just don't think we can just go with cliches.

My generation will figure a way out of this. Whether it was your fault or not, your generation is still around and they didn't clean up the mess. And I don't blame you. Your generation probably couldn't have fixed it anyway. But my generation can. And will.

 

How, exactly, did I screw up? I got a great education and I'm now working and contributing to the tax base. Maybe you should actually read what people are saying before posting a response.

 

Look I am a conservative. Straight up fiscal conservative. But even I see that there might be an issue when a significant portion of your tax base declares bankruptcy due to debt. I am not suggesting amnesty on the debt. But for the love of all that is good, you don't just look at a seemingly insurmountable obstacle that half of your team can overcome, look at them, and say "good luck with that."

If you want a diverse educated workforce, you got to make education affordable. I can tell you nine different reasons education is so expensive. And I can propose 14 different fixes. And I can point out all the inherent issues with debt and propose non-amnesty fixes that could at least alleviate the issue. But you can't get to that point without admitting that there is something wrong and fixing the loan process in this country. You can't get to that point without addressing both problems with the bank and the students. This is where that conversation starts. And you can't just say, "its their fault...screw them." If all these guys default, it will screw all of us. And their default will hurt more than your tax bill.

 

Something to think about. The biggest productivity increase came during the industrial revolution. The net result was that jobs were created. The conclusion of your hypothesis is that everyone has everything but no one makes anything. Jut how is that going to work?

 

Again, yeah, know about the Industrial Revolution. I am not saying there will be NO jobs, I am saying there will be a lot fewer in places you would not expect. For example, lawyers. As increased technology decreases the amount of time necessary to prepare a case, billable hours go down so the need for lawyers decrease. Same with accountants. Same with a lot of services. And the US is primarily a service industry country. Also whereas the industrial revolution required people to work the machinery, most of that stuff is automated now because of computers. Thats just off the top of my head.

 

They're called horses and most farm families would have had more than one.

Society in the past was also built around transportation by walking and draft animals. It's not anymore. If you live in a small town, like the town of 6000 where I grew up, you can still walk just about anywhere, and if you live in a large city with good public transportation, like New York or Seattle, you can get just about anywhere with a combination of walking and public transportation. But a mid-sized city like mine with no public transportation is no longer designed for life without cars. The residential areas and the commercial areas are kept separate, so you can't hop down the block to the neighborhood grocer - the neighborhood grocer is two miles away on the other side of a busy road with no sidewalks and no crosswalks. Most office buildings (and thus most white collar jobs) are downtown, anywhere from 40 to 140 blocks east of where people actually live. Again, minimal sidewalks and crosswalks along the main thoroughfares into the business district. There are a few older neighborhoods where it is still possible to get places you need to get without a car, but in the majority of the city if you don't have one you're essentially trapped at home.

Yes, this.

 

Yes, but didn't you promise to pay the money back if the lender agreed to fund your educatrion? That was the deal, wasn't it? This is as much an ethical issue as a legal issue.

 

Yes, I did. Just like all of those banks promised to assume the debt for the loans they made. They got a bailout when the water got too deep. But, like most people I've met on the right, you seem to believe that only the rich deserve help. Working-class people should just suck it up, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, keep a stiff upper lip, keep their shoulder to the grindstone, and whatever other nonsensical phrase the republicans use to describe things they've never done themselves.

I'm perfectly fine paying my own bills. I'm not even asking for student loan forgiveness. I'm saying it would do far more to fix this broken economy than handing billions to billionaires who have already squandered our money. But, it's not in the interest of republicans to fix the economy. Their only chance at the White House is if things stay the same or get worse. So, guess who is going to scuttle the American dream for a few extra votes?

 

That's exactly how it should be. If you incur the debt you should man up & pay the debt without looking to the citizenry or the gov't to pay it for you.

 

OK...enough.

Conservative line: People should repay their debts. I don't want to pay for your crap, you should take personal responsibility, and if you don't there are negative long-term effects to that on a societal scale. Fair enough,and not untrue.

Liberal line: Look...education is WAY more expensive now than it was. We were told when we were young that it was our duty to get the best education we could. We were told that by getting a good education we would get a good job. We were told to do whatever it took to get that education. The federal government liberalized the process of getting debt for education. Now that we did what society has been demanding of us, since pretty much birth, society did not fulfill its end of the bargain. I am underwater for doing something society wanted me to do. I don't want to abandon my personal responsibilities but you also can't get blood from a stone: no job, no money, no repayment of the debt and then the government would have to repay the debt anyway because it was federally guaranteed. So its either help us now, or pay for everything later. Also reasonable, and also not untrue.

Now that we have clearly established the two not incompatible points of view, what can we do to ease the burden while not alleviating their responsibility?

 

Don't be "that guy".

See, giving credence to those who would make these arguments (in this case, the forgiveness of their student loans) does as much damage as those who really believe student laon debt should be foregiven.

 

Literally, its been about two pages of repeating the same arguments. Someone had to be that guy.

 

Let's start it of with not everyone should get a 4 year degree in engineering, psychology, English, or whatever. I do not remember the company (in Wisconsin) who announced that they would hire any any qualified tool and die maker any time, opening or not, just so they would have them on the job. They were beating the crap out of their Chinese competitors, but cannot find any more qualified people.

 

OK, fine. But thats less of a governmetal or university thing as much as it is a cultural thing. Culturally people look down on tool and die makers and value accreditation. So you need to target the attitude first.