My wife and I paid off all of our student loans. My wife has an additional master’s degree and a number of credentials related to her field of work, and we paid for those out of pocket rather than taking a loan, delaying our purchase of a home and having less left over resulting in a smaller down payment when we did buy one. We are exactly the people who would be most screwed over by student loan forgiveness. And yet we both support what is a good idea that will improve our nation and our economy despite it providing no benefit to us.
Please, don’t oppose student loan forgiveness on MY account. I’m all for it.
I think everyone should pay back their student loans.
But without interest.
Those who have paid interest since, let’s say, 1985, in excess of what their original loan amount was, should get tax credit or, if their income is below a certain threshold, actual cash reimbursal.
I am with you and I would LOVE to if @dolphinboy and myself get reimbursed for paying our loans.
I just do not see a fiscal reality that gets us there. Loan forgiveness is very expensive as is today. Add in paying me back too and everyone else going back decades?
I just don’t see how that is feasible. I’d love to find a way though. I wouldn’t mind that money back but I won’t oppose kids today with this debt having it lessened just because I paid for my loans (which frankly were a lot less when I went to school…the skyrocketing costs had only just begun back then).
A college degree is supposed to give you the capability to earn enough to pay off your student loans.
If that’s not the case, then the school misrepresented the value of the degree.
If the schools genuinely believe that their degrees are valuable, then the schools should guarantee the loans.
My view is that the fairest thing to do would be allow someone to have their student loans paid off for them, but then they pay a tax bracket higher on their income for the next 10 years.
When you do this ONLY kids with financial means can access higher education.
So, the government says we need to guarantee loans so anyone can afford to go to school.
Sounds good.
But what happens is now there is no brake on costs. The people giving the loans have no risk. The government will take care of any defaults. Banks want to make money and they make more money on bigger loans. Universities all of a sudden find they can raise salaries and build new athletic centers and so on.
Universities today look more like resorts than universities. The dorms and amenities are far, far beyond what was there 30-40 years ago. But that is what they need to do to attract the kids and they pay for it with the loans the kids are keep taking out.
Why do the kids do that? Because it is the ONLY path to prosperity in this country. Blue collar jobs that pay well are diminishing at an alarming rate. What other choice do they have?
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. May as well take your shot.
You need to look at the jobs available to those people. You are talking about the definition of blue collar jobs.
Well paying blue collar jobs of the sort that you could raise a family in a nice, middle-class existence in the 1950s are diminishing rapidly. There are still some to be had but nowhere near enough to meet demand. And that demand depresses the wages for the remaining good blue collar jobs.
The route to a decent (read middle class) life in the US has narrowed. Higher education is one of the few avenues left.
I’m in the weird position of thinking student loan forgiveness is a bad idea but also sort of hoping it happens for personal reasons.
I think it’s a bad idea because it doesn’t address the problem, which is the affordability of education. I’ve said this before but there are a lot of people out there who are on a REPAYE or related program that make so little income they are paying nothing on their loans in perpetuity. To forgive student loan debt will not affect their cash flow in any way. It would affect my cash flow, but I’m not the one most in need right now.
Good point which may suggest all the interest has to go but you still have to pay the principle.
But then we come back to the insane inflation in college tuition.
We (as in everyone in the country “we”) will never solve this to the satisfaction of everyone. Some group will always feel jilted or ripped-off. I can see no way around that.
So, my $0.02 is stop being pissed that someone got something you (general “you”) didn’t and let’s make a better tomorrow.
It could work if, in addition to forgiving all current existing loans, the Biden administration also offered a compensatory sum to people who have already paid off their loans. That way nobody regrets having done the right thing.
We hear over and over how expensive college is and so many graduate owing 100,000 with no good job prospects. But then there are those who managed to get a college degree and owe a repayable amount, or nothing, because they worked and scrimped and took 6 years, etc. It would be interesting to see how many fall into each category because it raises the question of how much of those loans went to college costs and how much went to lifestyle. Or attendance at a very expensive college vs a more affordable state school. And why some people borrowed money they had to know would be difficult to repay – $100,000 is a LOT of money & I wonder who thought that was a reasonable debt to take on while getting a degree in history.
The “screwed you over” part is where you used to be able to get a college education in the US for free (really) and now they make you pay $88,000 for it (more or less depending where you go).
Unfortunately most 401Ks are funded by the company you work for and they funnel that money into their own stocks which boost the value of the company stock. Knowing you cannot sell it for a long time further props up their stock price.
If all of their employees cashed in their 401Ks to pay college debt their share value would plummet. Which means they will be phoning their congresscritters to stop that.