People are ok with corporate debt forgiveness, but not student loans

That there is such a thing as student loans is criminal. College should be free. We pay for it by slashing the military budget, taxing the wealthy and taxing corporations who BTW use public wealth to create their profits for their super-wealthy shareholders.

Once Wall St. got it's filthy hands on the education system the decline was rapid and the costs skyrocketed- as it is with everything else. Most Wall St. types are institutionalized sociopaths. The entire student loan pipeline—now the largest source of “aid”—is fueled, serviced, and collected by Wall Street.

There are several major ways that corporations avoid paying taxes, or manage to earn tax subsidies. One way is through finding ways to shift U.S. profits to foreign subsidiaries in countries with lower tax rates, a practice known as offshore tax sheltering. Another way is through the use of accelerated depreciation.

“The specter of big corporations avoiding all income taxes on billions in profits sends a strong and corrosive signal to Americans: that the tax system is stacked against them, in favor of corporations and the wealthiest Americans.”

- Matthew Gardner, ITEP senior fellow, from the D.C.-based think tank, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-wall-street-profits-from-student-debt-225700/

I paid off my student loans because I studied to be in a career that paid enough for me to afford the loans.

I’m not feeling sorrow for fools that majored in Women’s Social Justice Welfare having trouble paying off their undergraduate and post graduate degrees.

dfa wrote:

Yeah but answer the question.

Why are you ok with corporate debt forgiveness which is pretty much what backstop is.

I don't love it but I love the alternatives less: millions of jobless (therefore, more desparation and crime), empty businesses, lack of airlines/transportation options, etc. If an investment now can stave off years of desperation, then I understand it. I too am cynical to the degree that corporations have been or will be the best stewards towards employees and society at large, but the alternative right now seems worse.

I'm not convinced as to what level reasonable student loans are drastically holding back productive society. Gritty people who worked, went to great public universities, chose practical majors, etc. won't be set back into a life of crime.

Yes, sadly it comes down to "too big to fail." This is why we need at least some reasonable degree of oversight.

You liberals are losing your minds. Calm down. I'm NOT talking about serious Covid19 crisis either. Sad

Student loans were illegal in the sense that they refused bankruptcy action. Lenders lent far too much money to innocent minors who borrowed tens of thousands more than they would have been allowed for a car or home. In effect, government let paupers buy yachts. Dirty.

People take on tremendous amounts of student loans because the government has slashed spending on higher education in order to maintain low taxes on the rich and corporations. College education has also become much more expensive because corporations have forced higher education to take on the roll of job training and advanced research and development that used to be part of a company's business expense. So, individuals have been forced to bear a tremendous amount of education expense just so they can then go out and make corporations oodles of profits. The corporations suck up all those profits and use them for stock buybacks and executive compensation instead of raising wages so their workers can pay off their debt. Then, when there are serious problems in the economy, the corporations who basically spent all their profits on baseball cards and bubble gum demand massive bailouts to save their investors and executives while wagging their fingers at people getting hammered by student debt for not saving their pennies to be able to withstand a crisis.

Well meaning students are treated worse than reckless adults who run up SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY ON A CREDIT CARD. Why?

It's so embarrassing whenever someone on here starts crying about student loan debt. You really can't just move on and get over it?

I took out big loans, stayed focused and got a great engineering degree and am debt free after lots of hard work at a few companies.

When you come on here crying you might as well be saying " I'm not good enough to deal with my poor choice....it's not fair... someone should give me more money....I really want it!"

It's cringe worthy.

I haven't seen a nonsense OP torn apart so completely and truthfully since Sally's thread on the DJIA bouncing back. Well done, all, for schooling dfa.

Because they are typically not well-meaning.

Stop by a school like Arizona State, UC Santa Barbara, NYU, etc.

Only a relatively small fraction of students are actually making any use of the educational opportunities there. A massive portion of them were educationally stupid going in, pick a major that is worthless in nearly all ways, waste 4 years being unproductive, and are pretty much just as ignorant coming out.

This is not an attack against ethnic studies, sociology, etc. majors. There are actually individuals in those majors who make a genuine effort to learn in their courses and do something productive with that knowledge. It just so happens that the nature of the courses sometimes allow for minimal work, which is what lazy people flock to.

The vast majority of “students” are just wallets for local alcohol and food suppliers. If they could actually get a job after school, they’d be able to live frugally for some time, then pay off the loans within a decade. But they can’t. Because they graduate with no usable skills. Not because of the school, but because they had 4 years and wasted it.

People who take out over $150K in loans for a school are a different matter entirely. It makes absolutely NO SENSE to do that for an undergraduate education unless the school is exceptional (I.e. schools with names that will get you employed regardless, like Harvard, Stanford, etc.), which the vast majority aren’t.

If you have student loans, it means you didnt run fast enough.

Allen53 wrote:

That there is such a thing as student loans is criminal. College should be free. We pay for it by slashing the military budget, taxing the wealthy and taxing corporations who BTW use public wealth to create their profits for their super-wealthy shareholders.

Once Wall St. got it's filthy hands on the education system the decline was rapid and the costs skyrocketed- as it is with everything else. Most Wall St. types are institutionalized sociopaths. The entire student loan pipeline—now the largest source of “aid”—is fueled, serviced, and collected by Wall Street.

The problem with the current student loan system is that it allows college to be overpriced relative to what it is worth, because student loans are excluded from bankruptcy. Thus students who have a high risk of not being able to pay back their loans are given loans anyway. Because we give loans to anyone and everyone no matter what the risk is of them not paying them back, there is no incentive for colleges to control costs. Making college "free"--paid for by "the government", ultimately tax payers--won't fix this fundamental problem. Simply changing who pays doesn't fix the problem. You need some way to control costs and make the cost of education proportional to the value it provides. If you're going to offer free education to everyone, then you need to dramatically reduce the cost. If you're going to allow the cost to remain high, then you need to dramatically reduce enrollment--stricter admissions, many fewer students in less economically valuable majors etc.

You can't just find a new way to pay for the current system. You have to fix what's broken in the system. Either we need fewer people going to college and especially fewer people in less economically valuable majors, or else we need to dramatically reduce the cost. Maybe make less economically valuable majors cost less than more economically valuable majors or something. People have to give up on the insane fantasy that everyone should be able to go to college and study whatever suits their fancy no matter what it costs.

Americans and their students loans. Here in my country it's free to study. you can get student loans anyway and only have to pay back 40%. Student loans are the best loans so we don't pay it back before we have to. Why don't you just import a similar system?

Corporations are people too, my friend!

And yet your brightest come to the US to attend college.

Here's a radical idea: NO ONE SHOULD GET ANY FINANCIAL RELIEF OR BAILOUT FROM THE GOVERNMENT.

math wizner wrote:

Forgiving your student loan debt only helps you. Forgiving corporate debt helps every owner of the company which is you and me and every American with a 401k.

You do not own companies listed in mutual funds and companies listed in 401-K. Business writers/tv journalists who either do not know or are stating/saying what their bosses tell them to state/say.

Equity ownership in U.S. is very limited. There is broad participation in U.S. equity markets. That is not the same thing. When one owns a stock, one votes for board directors, c.f.o. and c.e.o. One is mailed a voting ballot about four weeks before shareholder meeting. When one is a shareholder, one receives quarterly reports in the mail. One is invited to shareholder meeting. [Your brokerage firm may attempt to block you from obtaining said info.] If you own shares of 3M or GE and the shares are not in your margin account, you have a right to said info. Mutual fund managers are invited to shareholder meetings. Billionaires and 1/2 billionaires who buy shares of equities are invited to shareholder meetings. When you participate in mutual funds or 401-K, you can never voice your opinion at shareholder meeting. This is why the 650 billionaires and several thousand 1/2 billionaires run U.S. corporations and run U.S.

By purchasing units of mutual funds and by participating in 401-K, you are diversifying the risk of whales. When everything is really falling apart, mutual fund participants and 401-K/403-B participants are never able to get out in a timely manner. The whales say to you: thank you for believing you own shares.

Potentially because society would be better off.

It sounds like you are fiscally responsible and focused. If so, I would argue that you should generally support things that are in your financial interest, even if they make you uneasy.

Potentially, having our nation’s most educated people hamstrung by debt, could be holding us back. If a brilliant person can’t pursue their best because they can’t afford to move, or they have no personal wealth to invest in something great, that is a reason “you” should pay off someone else’s loan.

Let’s split the difference. Student loans are forgiven, but if the student ever makes over 300k in a year, a chunk of that goes back to the student loan coffers.

Nonsense- quit apologizing for parasites. Get rid of the Wall St. bloodsuckers- problem solved.

And buckle up we're about to get another lesson in how there is in fact plenty of money for things like free education as another couple trillion is about to magically float over to the Wall St. parasites.

"Non-economically" valuable majors like what? I'm guessing you don't understand economics and are speaking about "non-lucrative pre-professional careerist" training.

The origin of the word economics comes from the Greek 'oikonomikos' which pertains to household management.

It's been purposefully perverted to mean only financial arrangements so some parasite who trades in chocolate futures which destroy ancient Andean villages is to use your terms deemed "economically valuable" when in actual practice that individual is an institutional sociopath- truly.