An alternate headline for this story might be 'Students temporarily relieved of crushing lifelong debt slavery actually able to get mortgages and achieve a basic level of human dignity that would have been commonplace 50 years ago'.<p>The education system needs a stupendous amount of reform, not the least of which is the ridiculous debt load we put on young adults in what should be the years they're laying the foundation for a productive, happy life.
I don't know how anyone can support student loan forgiveness. it's simply a fact that college graduates and people who even <i>partially</i> completed college make more money than those who never attended. there's really no argument that would justify forgiving peoples' loans vs giving the same amount of money to the poorest people in reverse order (poorest getting richer). if for some odd reason the poorest people also happened to be college participants (though to be clear, this is not true) then fine; still no broad student loan forgiveness required. I've asked people who support student loan forgiveness for their response and I get blank stares.<p>and yes, we shouldn't give the rich tax breaks either.
Loan forgiveness is a temporary solution to appease voters with debt. It doesn't solve the root cause because in 10 years, the number of people with crushing student debt will be back to up to the same levels.<p>You solve the problem by re-allowing student debt to be dischargeable through bankruptcy again. This is the root cause of the problem. The fact Clinton and Bush allowed this to happen is disgusting. All it did was allow banks to give loans to EVERYONE without any fears. Then schools could raise rates knowing kids would still pay the predatory prices, and that's how we get into the mess we are in now.<p>By allowing student debt to be dischargeable, banks are now taking a risk of losing their money, which means that they won't give loans to people who frankly are wasting their money. A parent at my workplace was asking how she could afford to pay her daughter's $80k/yr tuition for a sociology degree. The fact that this completely stupid idea was even being considered shows the depths to which society is fucked up.
Loan forgiveness is not a workable solution, it rewards one generation of students at the expense of the older folk who have paid and the younger folk who are not in college yet.
Where is there a source - is there a source - for less aggregated student loan data?<p>For example, not everyone gets the same amount loaned. What does that distribution look like? Map it to higher edu schools? Map it to tuition? Map it to high schools? Etc.<p>The point is, there are a lot of students and therefore a lot of debt. Naturally, such a big pool is going to have outliers. When the media parades a student loan "victim" is that (e.g.) $100k of debt typical or atypical?
As someone who has is currently enjoying the pause (on PLUS loans for my daughters' college- on a side note whatever happened to college being the parents' responsibility) the ideal solution to me is to resume payments with either no interest or relatively low interest (the rate was 7-8% even when credit was cheap). That way the loans are being paid back, but the students are not immediately burdened with crushing debt payments (basically the equivalent of a pretty low car payment).<p>This seems so blindingly obvious to me that I'm really worried I've become totally disconnected from reality that no one else has floated the idea.
loan forgiveness is tantamount to asking me to participate in buying out someone else's loan<p>a loan used to buy a degree<p>a degree which isn't generating enough income to pay off the loan<p>if you buy out other underperforming assets like foreclosed homes, there is a discount...where is the discount on these underperforming degrees?<p>why do I want your underperforming asset? I already have a degree, but thanks!