Bernie Tweeting #CancelStudentDebt

Way to make it about you, an egotistical navel-gazing Boomer. You don't get it.

Paying taxes so everyone can go to college is fine. Also paying taxes so everyone can have health care is fine. Basically allows you to worry about nothing, because you have a safety net in case anything bad happens.

Here's my proposal:

Cut the Department of Defense budget by 50% for only 4 years and pay the $1.5 trillion back.......

Teacher has students who are all on board with Bernie Sanders "Socialism" Tells them it really doesn't work, but they insist they like it and they planned to vote for Bernie.

The next day, the teacher says he will be handing out a short exam next week and explains what the test will be on. and, if the students are so convinced that socialism works, the teacher promised to apply the socialism principles in scoring the tests.

The test day comes, and as usual, some students do better than others.

when the teacher hands back the tests, each tests had a big red "B", and the student's score

So, the student that got a 97, got a B. The student that got a 67 got a B. And, so on.

The students with high scores began to complain. The teacher stood there and smiled.

"Well, well well" said the teacher, "looks like some of you don't like socialism."

The teacher is wise.

Agree wrote:

I'm 29 (so in the general age range ranting about student loan debt) and I agree with you. Don't take out the loan if you can't pay it back. Not everyone needs to go to college. Why did I bother to work hard and get scholarships (academic I was a fat math league kid in high school so no athletics for me)/major in a STEM field when I could have just done whatever I wanted and gotten it paid for?

It's a bunch of crap. College is overpriced, yes. But no one is forcing you to go AND there are a bunch of scholarships out there, you just have to work for it.

I mostly agree with this but think the loan system does need to be reformed because its unreasonable to expect every 18 or 19 year old to make a sound financial decision. The student loan industry is predatory and needs to be reformed. No lender or standard credit would give these kids $100k plus in loans, but with the lenders who do student loans it's a whole different world. There's obviously some disconnect there.

Also you can make the argument they are adults which is true. But I know my 18 year old self and that of a lot of my friends who are very fiscally responsible people. We would have been much easier to sell on unreasonable loan amounts and the value of a certain degree at that age than we would be a decade or so down the road.

Two words: personal responsibility.

Take the loans, pay the money back. Eighteen year olds make life changing decisions. They work toward becoming firemen, join the Marine Corps, move to a different city, go to college, whatever.

Do we condemn the Marine Corps for accepting 18 year old recruits who will go on to die in Afghanistan a year later?

Do we condemn the coastal city that provides a brutally difficult quality of life for the young people who move there?

Do we blame the fire or police department when their young service members die on duty?

Is the trade school to blame when the bright welder realizes in his thirties that he could have been a doctor instead?

Life is hard. It starts being hard the day you draw breath. Choice and responsibility are always there, like it or not. You can snivel and point your finger or you can live with courage and forward movement.

You took the goddamned loans. So did I. Shut the phukk up and pay them back and live your life.

The student loan program is a scam and colleges are in on it. Nobody would give unsecured loans to 18 year olds under normal circumstances. But here they give them out like candy with a simple signature, and college tuition costs rise and rise and rise some more, never endingly. It is absolute madness, and to pretend it is anything but a scam is just disingenuous.

Student loans are undischargable in bankruptcy - yet another part of the scam - no fresh starts allowed unlike practically every other kind of debt. Why? Because - again - nobody in their right mind would give out unsecured loans like this to 18 year olds without such a protection. The bankers have rigged the system totally in their favor and the colleges, with their ever expanding budgets funded by tuition hike after tuition hike, are complicit.

Here's one possible solution - have a loan forgiveness plan in which a person agrees to forfeit their college degree in exchange for 75% of their loans being forgiven, and make the colleges subsidize the 50% of it. That way everybody has skin in the game including the grifting colleges. Of course nobody would take up this offer because these degrees are so "valuable", right?

Scenario man wrote:

Picture this. Your parents are poor so you go to community college for two years and then pay your own way at a state school and get your degree. It took you 6 years. You get a desk jockey job and you hate your boss. He’s an entitled prick who went to law school but ended up working at a bank just like you because he’s really too dumb and that’s the best he could do.

Bernie then forgives your bosses loans and he runs out and buys a Tesla. Poor people end up paying off their bosses loans. Fairness.

I haven't read the details of this or any other student debt forgiveness plan, but I always assumed it would be quite easy to deal with this:

In addition to cancelling existing debt, they can could provide rebates to those who have been making repayments.

Of course, that would increase the cost of forgiveness. Perhaps consequently policymakers would opt for less than 100% forgiveness.

So simple! So, are you little kiddies who take free money going to give some of that back to those of us who kept our word and repaid our student loans in full? Policy wonkishness doesn't trump common sense or common decency.

Glad someone else has a realistic look at Lending. When I went to get a loan for my house the lender did a detailed search into my finances, my ability to pay monthly payments, an appraisal to the value of the house, and they have the collateral of my house. So if I fail to repay them they don't get bailed out by the government, I agreed they can foreclose on me and they could sell the house for well more than the loan amount in no time at all. This is how loans work, the lendor either requires collateral so they don't get burned. Or in the case of things like credit cards they extend a limited line of credit at a ridiculous rate so for every default they make way more off the suckers who pay the balance they carry.

You can blame the college kids taking out huge loans for crap degrees, and you should, and also their parents who should be giving better advice. But you should also blame the government who has allowed a system where hundreds of thousands of dollars are lent to kids with no responsibility to on the part of the lender to ensure they some financial liability to make a responsible decision.

I just listened to an episode of Michael Lewis podcast that details how Navient who services student loans completely misled thousands of people. Amazing how the government lets these companies in the financial market pull down their pants again and again.

That is a criticism of equality. But a common criticism of socialism is that in practice it's still very unequal. The difference is that under socialism success depends more on proximity to power.

I don't think Sanders or similar politicians (e.g. Warren or AOC) advocate any policy which would result in equality.

For example, on estate taxes, Sanders:

"Our bill only applies to the richest 0.2% of Americans. It would establish a:

-45% tax on estate values $3.5M to $10M

-50% tax on estate values $10M to $50M

-55% tax on estate values over $50M

-77% tax on estate values over $1 billion"

The tax would not equalise estates.

On income tax, AOC proposed 70% tax on incomes over $10m per year. Even if there was a 100% tax above $10m, there would still be an unequal distribution of income due to the lower taxes on income up to $10m.

This tax would not equalise incomes.

Similarly, Warren's plan for a wealth tax (I think something like 1% per annum on wealth over $100m and 2% on wealth above $1bn) wouldn't eliminate unequal wealth.

Sanders isn't a socialist. He just wants a more European style social democracy. America is already a social democracy: it has free education from the age of 5-18. It has free healthcare for some individuals (Medicaid and Medicare). It has some welfare provisions for poor people.

Racket wrote:

There’s a reason, of course wrote:

Charge-off rates for student loans are over 40%. Those are amounts owed that are never collected. If bankruptcy discharge was an option then that percentage would be even higher, in which case the interest rate charged on these loans would be even higher (making responsible borrowers foot the bill) or no lender would be willing to make loans

85% of the loans are serviced by the government and people with the most amount of debt are actually paying it off (probably because they're doctors/lawyers/etc).

The danger in making them discharged in bankruptcy is that you could see massive waves of defaults and bankruptcy filings which could create a significant consumer credit crunch

It sounds likely that as you say, those with more debt are repaying it. But the doctors and lawyers you mention are probably a small proportion of those who have student debt and the total amount of student debt. Consider the bottom half of students. Many of them dropped out (perhaps after several years in some cases, so enough time to build up a lot of debt). Others went to low-tier universities, or studied frivolous subjects, with poor attainment and therefore are not well-positioned to earn a lot.

So is it the government's role to protect the lender from themself then? If so, don't be surprised when the government decides what's best for you in all manner of life's aspects? You're 18? Congratulations! You join the military and get shot, that's the breaks kid. You take the loan, you pay it back. Life is tough. Don't be stupid and don't expect relief when you're stupid.

Irvine wrote:

Racket wrote:

85% of the loans are serviced by the government and people with the most amount of debt are actually paying it off (probably because they're doctors/lawyers/etc).

The danger in making them discharged in bankruptcy is that you could see massive waves of defaults and bankruptcy filings which could create a significant consumer credit crunch

It sounds likely that as you say, those with more debt are repaying it. But the doctors and lawyers you mention are probably a small proportion of those who have student debt and the total amount of student debt. Consider the bottom half of students. Many of them dropped out (perhaps after several years in some cases, so enough time to build up a lot of debt). Others went to low-tier universities, or studied frivolous subjects, with poor attainment and therefore are not well-positioned to earn a lot.

GuvRole? wrote:So is it the government's role to protect the lender from themself then? If so, don't be surprised when the government decides what's best for you in all manner of life's aspects?

It's a slippery slope. If the government protects 18 year olds from debt today, maybe tomorrow they will outlaw drugs (even alcohol!) and prostitution.

Currently the government doesn't decide what's best for us under any circumstances. Let's hope it stays that way.