Bernie Tweeting #CancelStudentDebt

Since colleges are essentially liberal indoctrination camps, Bernie's plan makes perfect sense for the Democrats.

Ciro wrote:

So you’re fundamentally opposed to Presidential candidate who bankrupt businesses?

Yes. I voted for Evan McMullin.

rib nerd wrote:

Most of the student debt crisis is because people that had no business going to college went and then dropped out after 2-3 years with no degree. I read something the other day that basically said of the students with debts over 75K that 75% had not graduated.

People live beyond their means. No one wants to live in an apartment and drive a crappy car. Young people today think they should stay in the same lifestyle they had with their parents. It should take you 20 years to get back to the lifestyle and no one wants to wait. This is also why they move back in with their parents.

You didn't read that somewhere. You made it up.

HOOWIE wrote:

BUMP to lure in all the letsrun conservatives. We are taking all of your money.

lol

This legislation is inspirational, and yes, I support it but hopefully it'll spur something to change. Higher ed is criminal. I'm sick of the conservative talking points about knowing the choices we made/being entitled/getting handouts. The reality is that college did not cost anything close to what we're paying proportionally to what you paid. You can't look at this situation from either side of the aisle and see no problem with schools charging more & more, paying out huge admin salaries, and hiring more & more adjunct faculty. when you were in school adjuncts were 25% of college faculty, now they're 75%. also if we can give tax breaks to the super wealthy, not take nearly enough money from corporations through taxation, and can bail out banks, surely we can do something for students. imagine not having a giant loan payment each month? then maybe we can have a savings account. buy & not rent. spend money locally. etc. I'm in.

School is more expensive now in part because Republican led tax cuts at the state and federal level have starved the University system of funds. The difference is being made up by the student. Whether you think that is fair or not depends. For a small government conservative, it makes perfect sense. For a Bernie Bot, probably not - apparently we should either socialize the cost by taxing everyone, or remove your debt by taxing everyone.

I'm another old dude who paid his loans off. Took 10 years. Back then the interest was over 7%. No idea what it is now. I lived cheap in dumpy apartments and worked two jobs to get those loans paid off. I'm not convinced today's young people are willing to sacrifice to pay down debt. I work with a lot of people in the 25-35 range, and frankly, they live a helluva lot better than I did at their age. They all seem to have the newest phones, plenty of money for travel and vacations, and live in apartments that I'd have considered "luxury", but for them are entry level.

I can't support the government forgiving student loan debt. At least not the principal. I could get behind a re-structuring plan that helps eliminate some of the interest. Those who are in debt need to pay something.

Here's the world we live in.

Fund wars: Fine

Bail out banks: Fine

Bail out farmers: Fine

Bail out car companies: Fine

Bail out students: NO WAY

Sure, as long as it's with other people's money. Please don't be liberal with my money. Thanks.

I'm glad at least we agree higher education is criminal. Now which part of his plan punishes higher education for their crimes?

I graduated from law school in 2003. It was a state school and I paid out of state tuition having moved into the state to attend law school I borrowed the max amount of Fed loans at that time, which was $18,500 a year. I also took out a bar loan and two supplemental loans to cover some living expenses. I paid all my living expenses out of loans and part time clerking and summer clerking. My total debt burden was about $75k. My payments were about $400 a month.

Today, it would cost $144k in tuition alone for three years. Add books, bar classes, living expenses and you would be lucky to get out with under $200k even if you were working through law school (cost of living has gone way up since the aughts). This is largely because the state has slashed spending on higher education and tuition has had to go up every year. And that was in order to give out lots of tax breaks to industry and property owners. So, most people with massive college debt burden are really just paying more as the result of shifting the cost from the state to individuals. It only makes sense to reverse that by forgiving student debt.

Two observations:

1. Universities today have many more departments and professors than necessary.

2. There is a lot of hostility in this thread. Is it possible to have civil discourse on such important topics without resorting to personal attacks?

Precious Roy wrote:

It only makes sense to reverse that by forgiving student debt.

umm no sweetie. it only makes sense not to get yourself in that situation in the first place. no one is forcing you to go to an out of state school, no one is forcing you to be a lawyer, no one is forcing you to borrow money that you may not be able to pay back.

B-dubs 2.0 wrote:

Bernie wants to forgive student loan debt, some other guy wants to give everyone a basic income..

Maybe someone should just run on platform: "I'll give every citizen 18 and over $25,000. You can spend it or save it or pay off your loans or do whatever you want with it."

That person would probably win.

“President A” handed out two “stimulus checks” totaling about $1200 to lower income & middle class.

“President B” bailed Out the banks & big money.

Pick the Democrat & Republican...

It seems crazy that Bernie would want to supplement people to go on to be rich later in life. Why supplement people who are smarter than people who don't the credentials to go to college. This is the largest supplementation of the wealthy ever.

precious dummy wrote:

Precious Roy wrote:

It only makes sense to reverse that by forgiving student debt.

umm no sweetie. it only makes sense not to get yourself in that situation in the first place. no one is forcing you to go to an out of state school, no one is forcing you to be a lawyer, no one is forcing you to borrow money that you may not be able to pay back.

This is the exact rhetoric that makes zero sense to me. It's not like we can just start a really good reasonably priced and budgeted school on our own to solve the problem. Institutions have us hook, line, and sinker. Do you really think they should get away with what they charge? What is your solution to fixing this problem? To fixing how the number of admin & their pay has gone up, how they've hired more adjuncts, how austerity cuts have impacted budgets, how those costs are now passed onto students in a way that many on this thread did not have to confront when they went to school maybe debt free or close to it.

Sure, fair, but I'm still in favor of helping out students with debt that they don't need to have if schools didn't just see them as a price tag. It would be good to see some bipartisan legislation targeting admin ratios, capping tuition, ration of full-time to adjunct faculty. I don't know the legality on stuff like this but I assume it's difficult to regulate. If we're just gonna rely on schools to charge less, we're gonna be waiting a while. I agree tho that bailing students out now in meaningless to some extent if we're just gonna have to do this every couple decades.

I’ve got close to 100k in student loan debt after going through law school. I do not support bailing out students.

Not everyone against this is some old timer unaware of the cost of school. Some are just principled.

Seriously, I can think of so many more deserving causes then giving me 100k.

Makes loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. Don’t forgive them.

I'll vote for whoever starts #CancelMyMortgage and #CancelMyCarPayments. Since I have no student debt I'll settle for those..

they don't have you hook line and sinker. if you realize they charge too much, why did you go to college? i'm all for reducing costs of college, but debt forgiveness at the expense of the US taxpayer is on another level and i oppose that. before you call me a republican mouthpiece I also opposed the other corporate bailouts.

the solution to this mess is for people to wake the eff up and realize that university in its current state is not a financially viable option. college isn't a God given right, why would you go to school if you know you will make more money (even in the long run) by going to community college or a technical school? besides the title of bachelors/masters, a university you pay to go to hardly gets you more than what you can do these days with an education of youtube videos. If people who can't afford to go to college start acting like responsible members of society and stop going, then we can start to make some progress

So, the solution is to not solve the cost problems, but just force the taxpayers to cover them up? Brilliant plan.