Student Loan Cancellation is really UBI for parts of the population

a reply to: JAGStorm

I'm all for making state funded schools offer more reasonable tuition or go private...

But if someone took out a loan, they knew the prices and the rates.

It isn't the cost that is at issue really. It's the type of degrees offered vs. the salaries these degrees command.

Good luck with commanding much more than minimum wage for that degree you got mainlining Ibram X. Kendi's Critical Race Theory outside of the lucrative race-hustler industry. Pretty much any degree that ends is "Studies" falls into the BS category and no, that does not stand for Bachelor of Science.

Most corporations have closets to stuff low skill and low intelligence people that fill some kind of useful niche role until it is eliminated by technology.

Soon, millions and millions of people are going to need to find those closets as they will one day realize that "internet influencer" and Onlyfans accounts dry up by 30. When you've had a hard run in your 20s stuffing your student loan money in your nose or your ass only goes so far before reality starts demanding payment.

College has made everyone useless.

Edit:

I'm good with a UBI. I am NOT good with absolving these people of their responsibility. We've had enough of that and now the country has a school system and higher education system run by ChiCom indoctrination experts...and they have tenure.

Maybe instead, we should stop letting companies use interest as a weapon.

When it gets to the point where the minimum is just paying the monthly interest added, its dishonest.

People think they're paying it back, but just paying for the shielding to the actual debt. It's not explained in clear writing, it's not honest and they know it.

a reply to: Bluntone22

To some degree yes. Yes in that to many parents do not teach their children fiscal responsibility because they themselves have been smothered by the ''credit'' industry that blankets our entire economy. ''Put it on the card''. Pay it off in the future. ''Have it now'' pay for it when you can in so many ''easy payments''.

To my perspective this fits hand in glove with the '' college/banker'' industry. I wonder though how many of these students that attend these ''private institutions'' that I mentioned are not fresh out of their parents homes. Chances are many of them moved out already and had been living their lives only to find that the fun times they wanted were getting to expensive so they figure ''I gotta get a better education or training in some field that will pay me better. So they go online and look and find big promises from these schools and the next thing they know is heavy debt while working back at the jobs they held before.

a reply to: Edumakated

The kicker is you can take FREE classes online from MIT, and most other schools, they just won’t give you credit for it, nor anyone else. But you will learn something for practically free!
That piece of Sheepskin is a joke today.

originally posted by: Nivhk
Maybe instead, we should stop letting companies use interest as a weapon.

When it gets to the point where the minimum is just paying the monthly interest added, its dishonest.

People think they're paying it back, but just paying for the shielding to the actual debt. It's not explained in clear writing, it's not honest and they know it.

People should not borrow money they can't pay back. Interest is necessary or else financing would not be made available. Interest reflects the risk associated with the loan.

It is easy... don't buy sh*t you can't afford.

What we need is better financial education so people aren't making stupid decisions.

a reply to: Edumakated

I hear what you are saying here and don't disagree, though I"m not sure that it would work that way. I keep thinking of the savings and loan debacle of the early aughts. So many loans were made to buy homes, loans that were advertised to be easy to get so that almost anyone could ''borrow'' enough to purchase a home for themselves on the prospect that those homes would continue to appreciate so that they could be sold a couple of years in the future for a profit by the borrowers. Problem there was that homes at that time were already overinflated and the market dumped leaving those borrowers with loan payments that were not fixed but rather inflating payments that cause the ''sucker'' borrowers to default.

But now that I think a little longer on it, one of the reasons that happened was that the government insured those savings and loan companies against defaults. This was to encourage more growth and development but it ended up being just a huge bubble. So, you are right. It is government attempting to regulate the economy rather than leaving it up to the invisible hand of the market.

originally posted by: TerryMcGuire
a reply to: Edumakated

But now that I think a little longer on it, one of the reasons that happened was that the government insured those savings and loan companies against defaults. This was to encourage more growth and development but it ended up being just a huge bubble. So, you are right. It is government attempting to regulate the economy rather than leaving it up to the invisible hand of the market.

And we have a winner!

The more government subsidizes something, the more of it you are going to get...

One of the fallacies of government and society is that we need to encourage or engineer outcomes. We don't. Not everyone needs to be a homeowner and not everyone is responsible enough or capable of owning a home.

Not everyone needs to or should go to college. The only reason so many want to go to college is because society has decided that we are going to look down on blue-collar work or trades.

If you don't have the chops to major in business, engineering or science.... college is really a crap shoot and it may not payoff especially if you don't attend a top tier school.

Too many majors are just "hobbies". One can study critical race theory in their spare time. Download an audio book if LBGT intersectionality theory interest you. Absolutely no reason to spend four years studying this crap unless you really want to be a professor.

Perhaps there should be a cap on how much student loan debt a person can hold at any one time.

That would do a few things - it would perhaps incentivize schools to make degree programs more affordable, it would keep debt at manageable rates for kids coming out of school possibly routing some into areas better suited to them than college (trades, etc.), possibly prevent professional students who build up too much debt before completing just an undegrad.

Some of you probably hate this chick, but this is a pretty good breakdown of all of the problems that student loan forgiveness would create.

Maybe I should have gone the trade route instead of getting a Master STEM degree. STEMS don't pay what they used to a few decades ago.

a reply to: ketsuko

Perhaps there should be a cap on how much student loan debt a person can hold at any one time.

Totally agree.
I also think tuition should be separate from room/board.
They should not be financed in the same manner.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: ketsuko

Perhaps there should be a cap on how much student loan debt a person can hold at any one time.

Totally agree.
I also think tuition should be separate from room/board.
They should not be financed in the same manner.

It was astute to point out living expenses as a big component of student loans. My MBA loans were entirely living expenses. I lived off basically $50k for two years, so budgeted to live on $25k/yr while in school.

I was fortunate that my employer at the time picked up tuition cost of about $70k.

When I mention making decisions based on being able to pay loans back, the above was a prime example. I knew I wanted to go grad school. So when I took my first job out of college, I chose that company because I knew they paid for grad school for a select number of employees... I basically gave then 5 years and 70-80 hour work weeks so I didn't have to pay tuition.

originally posted by: eManym
Maybe I should have gone the trade route instead of getting a Master STEM degree. STEMS don't pay what they used to a few decades ago.

That's the other part of the equation. The gamble that education will lead to a decent paying job.
A lot of it is luck. Some of it is being in the right place.
Being open to moving can do wonders for a persons career, but a lot of people refuse to move.

Degree programs should be streamlined too. There are a lot of credits that should be covered in secondary ed and a lot of credits that are added to justify the junk degree lines for academics.

They're going about this entirely wrong (unsuprisingly). The answer is and always has been to turn the clock back and correct what was an idiotic decision by a government that received some healthy payoffs by the banks to sign it into law:
25 years ago people who were really being crushed under unpayable debt, including student loan debt, could go through the federal court bankruptcy process and have all of those debts removed from their backs... this stayed with their record for 7 years, meaning that it wasn't a "zero consequences" action to file bankruptcy, BUT it also didn't leave the person still sitting with a mountain of interest collecting, growing debt they'd no way in hell to ever pay off.

Enter philandering jackass William Jefferson Clinton. With a wallet well lubricated from us education lenders, Clinton pushed to dramatically increase the federal student loan subsidization ponzi scheme while also signing off on a law that essentially makes it impossible to discharge student loans through bankruptcy... Right that wrong, make lenders have to consider "Can the degree this student is persuing actually give them a salary that will pay it off down the road?" before they approve any student loan AND give We the People the ability to discharge the debt same as any other debt via bankruptcy and this problem is resolved for most of the country and future-proofed.

Colleges set their tuition based on a combination of demand and how much they can get away with charging. The expanded and subsidized student loan program increases demand AND dramatically increases the ceiling colleges can charge. So a direct added benefit to returning the student loan qualifications to being purely merit and risk adverse based would be an immediate decline in demand for colleges which would lead, over time, to drops in tuition rates.

Grade schools should teach kids a trade once again. I had wood-shop, Mechanical Drafting, and auto-shop. I ended up in a trade I’d never dream of being in, completely outside of the box, and then owned my own successful businesses and sold them. A 100k sheepskin would never have done that. The GI bill paid for college but that’s besides the point, college was a bore.

a reply to: ketsuko

Everything I learned in college could have been done in less than two years imho. With that said, there was a bit of maturing that took place too though over that 4 years.

I think one of the disconnects it that college used to be more of a finishing school for the elite whereas now it is more about starting a career. College is still structured around where the educated elite went to school to mature and find themselves... but the reality is now most of the students are middle class strivers trying to get better employment opportunities.

Lotta parents at fault, I wanted to do the big fancy school...my parents laughed in my face and said you couldnt focus in school no way your ready for that and they were right.

All told for a bachelors and mastersI spent a shade under 40k 100% paid for by my gi bill as I went online in accelerated classes (5 weeks long 3 days off 5 more weeks for 41 months).

To many adult children rush off to college thinking no big deal get a degree get a high paying job super model girlfriend and a great car life will be great, with no thought to what they will do post college.

Sucks to be them, I think if they go through with executive action on student debt the mid terms will be a blood bath, not to mention gutting available loans for students that need them in the future.

Heck I knew guys that took out a loan to eat and drink on and that was it, with zero intention of paying the loan back.

Law of unintended consequences will be brutal on this one.

The college loan forgiveness does not work financially. It’s cost vs payback does not work.
You take the loan, you pay it back.
If you can’t get a job in your field, rethink your goals.
Life does not give you what you want.