I would rather burn my money than pay for your student loan

How many of the non-college educated actually pay enough in taxes to be concerned about the government forgiving student loan debt? I would guess that the tax take from them is less than 10% of all income taxes paid (since we know the top 50% of earners pay about 97% of the taxes, and most of the top 50% are college educated). It's easy to say "I would rather burn my money" when the amount of money at stake is trivial.

I’m paying the absolute minimum on my loans—if I’m not granted additional deferments, it will take 50 years to pay them off. I can’t wait until Elizabeth Warren is President.

Smoove wrote:

The student loan crisis is largely a function of bad decision making by borrowers.

The borrowers are 18 year old kids with no idea how to manage money. Of course they make bad decisions. Taking advantage of that is usury.

You have to look at the whole system - STEM education is a long, difficult, expensive process that weeds out most of those who start it. Industry can pay decent salaries to those who get through it because they don't have to pay a dime for all the washouts. If they had to assume that risk, as they should if you take a true-cost view of their function in the economy, they'd go broke. Honest professions don't operate like this.

Regarding your taxes, you'll pay and like it. Without the government you would have no property at all - someone tougher than you would simply take it. Despite your freedoms, the state is your protector and thus your lord.

Farmer in Chehalis, Washington wrote:

I'd rather see the government waste my tax dollars on something useless than use it to pay off your student loan. That's how much I hate student loan forgiveness.

"Go F*ck Yourself" should be on the Presidential seal.

Farmer in Chehalis, Washington wrote:

Portland Hobby Jogger wrote:

Kind of how a lot people feel about farm subsidies, especially those doled out because Hair Fuhrer's trade wars have effectively closed the lucrative Chinese market for U.S. agricultural goods. Gotta' prop up failing farms to make sure that those rural voters stay in line and the big ag corporations hit their margins, right?

Your Uncle Sam billboard along I-5 is always good for a laugh on the drive to and from Seattle.

Farm subsidies are given on the premise that I actually provide food for all you spoiled kids. I don't just get rewarded for stupid actions which is what student loan forgiveness is.

Glad you like the sign, I got plenty more material.

You don’t provide food. You grow it and sell it, and do so at a market price...except for the times when government socialism pays you to not produce it, a handout you bravely accept in the face of your free market principles.

Socialism for me but not thee....

Farmer in Chehalis, Washington wrote:

I'd rather see the government waste my tax dollars on something useless than use it to pay off your student loan. That's how much I hate student loan forgiveness.

A farmer who does not want her/his tax dollars to help anyone. Farmers in wealthy industrialized/high tech nations are the biggest welfare kings. You guys are able to lobby your state and federal congresspersons to get your way. U.S. presidential candidates often camp out in Iowa for six to ten months before Iowa Caucus. U.S. presidential candidates make promise after promise to Iowa farmers. Welfare gains made by Iowa farmers are gains made by all farmers. Commodity markets are rigged in wealthy nations to maintain price floors. Price floors are there to make sure farmers from wealthy nations are not price undercut by farmers in Underdeveloped Countries.

I grew up most of my life in Midwest. My family on one side used to be dairly farmers. A relative of mine in San Bernadino County, CA bragged to me ten years ago that said county once had one of the largest dairy industries in U.S. Yeah. I told him of the Eau Claire, WI policy. The further a state is from Eau Claire, WI, the greater the federal dairy subsidy. Before modern refrigeration, necessary. With modern refrigeration and if we had high speed rail in U.S,, subsidizing farmers would be 100% unnecessary.

Farmers and their opinions are overly represented in U.S. Look how few people live in Dakotas. Why do we need two Dakotas? That is simply to double their representation in U.S. Senate and U.S. Congress. That said, Idaho, Wyoming and Dakotas should be one state.

Look kid, I didn't vote for all these subsidies. I also didn't vote for the government paying me pennies on the dollar to plop a 4-lane highway through my farmland. What's your point.

If you slightly altered your argument, you may have had more fans.

Private schools and private school graduates are why we have the current student loan system.

It would be far easier for all community college to be tuition free and all four year colleges and universities to be tuition free as opposed to subsidizing private school education. This would definitely work out for state and federal budgets if we only made community college and undergraduate education tuition free. We actually need as a society more young adults willing to work with just undergraduate education. I know too many people with grad school education that was not worth it for anything more than the ego of the student. Many with a PhD do not make s h i t. It is not cost effective for society to subsidize one to pursue a PhD.

A farmer is just the wrong one to complain. Just take your govt. subsidize and stay out of it.

Farmer in Chehalis, Washington wrote:

Look kid, I didn't vote for all these subsidies. I also didn't vote for the government paying me pennies on the dollar to plop a 4-lane highway through my farmland. What's your point.

Then why don't you hightail it out of here to Russia, Ukraine or Belarus - I hear they could use some farmers.

What's up with this cat? wrote:

Farmer in Chehalis, Washington wrote:

Look kid, I didn't vote for all these subsidies. I also didn't vote for the government paying me pennies on the dollar to plop a 4-lane highway through my farmland. What's your point.

Then why don't you hightail it out of here to Russia, Ukraine or Belarus - I hear they could use some farmers.

Zimbabwe??

So let me get this right. Based on what I read among LRCers, prestigious university education is the most important thing, ever. You same LRCers are all making $250K in prestigious work. Still, you feel entitled to take taxpayer handouts to fix loans that you voluntarily took because StateU wasn't good enough for you?

Oh, and you likely live in a very expensive coastal city and complain that it's so expensive 'because of the boomers' right?

No way, no way in hell. Pay your debts, deadbeats.

Last year I attended an out of state event at College of Wooster in Ohio. Tiny, pretty little campus, lots of yuppy-looking kids walking around the campus. Someone told me the annual tuition was $70K. My jaw hit the floor. $300K to attend a pretty but nothing-special little school, the likes of which litter the landscape across the country. What an incredible racket, and the students and their families who go into hock for that silliness, pay your debt. I'm never going to help you with it. Never.

Thread proves americans are idiots. Civilized countries have free public universities open to those good enough to get in.

One of my uncles went to Cal Berkeley tuition free before Reagan as CA Governor stopped that program. I graduated from a public university. I took out a total of $2000 in student loan debt. I paid that off within five months after I graduated. If states and federal government planned it out well, sans tuition for community college. No tuition for undergraduate work at all public universities. Feds would have to have a strong back bone. There are many graduates out there from private colleges/universities. They want federal grants for their favorite college/university. Student loans are a racket for the benefit of private colleges/universities.

Can I use my reparations check to pay off my student loans? I'd rather have both a reparations check and the government paying my loans. So I could keep my reparations check for something else.

Hah! Easy to pick out the whiny overprivileged entitled millennials in this thread.

Not to worry, Mr. Farmer. It’s not gonna happen. Besides, even if it did, I’m retired and have no income. Nothing for the Dems to tax here.

States have been slashing funding for higher education for years, forcing universities to raise tuition and force about half of the cost of maintaining public universities on students. At the same time, employers are expecting more and more from graduates in terms of what sort of experience they will get in college and are providing less on the job training. Colleges are spending more than ever on expensive research programs. For example, it costs about $250k a year for a computer science major to have time on supercomputers. And colleges pay a lot for faculty to come from high paying industry jobs. Government support for these programs has also dried up. Back when my dad went to MIT in the 60s, the DoD was funding all the expensive research programs. My dad worked on developing radar at a research program at MIT and walked out of college and right into radar R&D at Raytheon (and with no student loans as DoD and industry funded scholarships paid for 100% of his tuition). And then there was the Great Recession. An entire generation was effectively shut out of gainful employment for several years and saw their credit ruined and incurred all kinds of extra fees and expenses from defaulting on student loans. And unlike the banks and auto manufacturers, no one bailed out people defaulting on student loan debt. All they got was a loan workout program that is extremely difficult to apply for and provides minimal benefits.

Student loan forgiveness recognizes that cost of higher education has wrongly been forced upon students and that the debt burden in not sustainable. Unlike tax cuts for the rich, student loan forgiveness will result it a massive economic boom as millions are freed from crushing debt and will be able to buy cars, homes, get married, have kids, start businesses, and so on.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/most-americans-dont-realize-state-funding-for-higher-ed-fell-by-billions

Smoove wrote:

hardsell wrote:

Why should people who figured the cost wasn't worth it for them to go to college pay for those who went and experienced college?

Well, those folks aren’t the folks most likely to pay. The point of the program is to buy the votes of the masses by foisting the expense onto a very small cross section of the tax paying base (and thus alienating only a small number of voters in exchange for buying the big block of votes of student loan borrowers).

somebody gets it

OK, let's think about an earlier generation that dealt with economic collapse. The generations who lived during the depression not only saw the complete collapse of the national economy, they had no safety net. Their reward for enduring the depression? Most of the fighting-age men in the country departed to fight WWII.

The recession of 2008 was also endured by more than your precious college-aged kids. My 401K, which was already not huge, was sliced in half over the course of two weeks. It took almost 12 years for that value to come back. The nature of recession is that almost everyone takes a hit, so to single out the entitled college kids for some sort of economic benefit is grossly unfair.

The recession of 2008 was also one of many in the last hundred years. Many of us entered the job market during recession, but none of us before thought it OK to rack up massive debt during that down turn and then beg poor because of the money we voluntarily took.

Live your life and stop bitching about more handouts.

[quote]Precious Roy wrote:

An entire generation was effectively shut out of gainful employment for several years and saw their credit ruined and incurred all kinds of extra fees and expenses from defaulting on student loans.