Putting aside inflation/stimulus concerns, I'm still very conflicted about student loan forgiveness in general. I appreciate the racial/income disparity, but no one forced anyone to go to college. In many cases, they got what they paid for (such as it is - usually not a very good cost/benefit outcome, even in a good economy, IMO). The truth is, not everyone needs to go to college, just like not everyone should go in debt for a car or home. People need transportation and housing - what about cancelling those debts?

To me, this is just throwing money at a larger problem and essentially acknowledging that a college degree isn't worth but a fraction of what it costs. Seems like there are other things that could be done to get to the root of the problem, or better ways to help the less fortunate with targeted programs rather than just cancel contractual obligations.

$125K seems like a high ceiling as well.

I would think the inflation impact would be pretty muted. That whole 230B isn’t hitting the economy all at once, it’s the individual’s payments that are being relieved that are going to affect spending behavior.

As a policy matter, forgiving debt without any plan to fix the issue going forward is a really bad idea.

I am super duper sympathetic to people drowning in it. And I am fine with them getting help. But it should be part of a holistic plan that tries to grapple with the moral hazard.

I'm okay with $10K (not the higher bar of $40-$50K) amount. It is what it is regardless of how we got there, it is a problem. My biggest beef is they should have to do some community service for the benefit (e.g. Habitat for Humanity, food banks, etc.).

You do bring up a good point about $125K, that's upper middle class in non HCOL areas.

Also agree, this does not address root cause(s) and that needs to be worked on.

I'm just thinking back to my own experience. I graduated law school in 1996 with $50K in debt. My first job was $24,999. That's equivalent in today's dollars to just under $50K. I got a couple of small raises before going into private practice at the end of 2000. My salary in 2001 was $60K. That's equivalent to $100K today.

By the time I was making money that would eclipse today's equivalent of $125K, I had paid off most of my debt. I think I paid it off in 10 years. And that included a small downturn in the economy in the early 2000s as I recall, although fortunately I wasn't as adversely affected around 2008-2010 like a lot of people.

I'm guessing its because you went into a profession where you could make decent money.

The targeted demographics today are (probably) folks that went into majors with less opportunities, or never graduated at all.

It would be interesting to do a survey of what (1) schools (2) majors and (3) what current profession who have debt after graduation + 5 years.

FWIW, parents paid for college. For grad school, I paid with paycheck & credit card. I think I paid off credit card in about 2 years.

I think this is a reasonable request. I like some context to these top secret documents that Trump kept.

We don't need detailed information, maybe a sign-off from the Gang of 8 to a list of documents & short description. Otherwise, will we have to wait for a 6-12-18 month investigation to conclude before we get more details.

Gang of 8 wants to see Trump Mar-a-Lago search docs - POLITICO

I don't know why the general public needs any information. All this crap is doing is undermining a process that should be given the benefit of the doubt as an above-board investigation. Instead, we need more and more information and other people involved because first, it was the AG, then it was the FBI, now its the judge. At some point, the process is the process and there's been absolutely nothing alleged, other than the general circumstances, that casts any doubt on what's occurred so far.

And I expect after viewing the documents, someone like McCarthy would make indirect comments to the press about how immaterial these documents are in the big picture in order to further escalate supporters' beliefs that this is politically motivated. "I've seen them, trust me, this didn't warrant a raid on a former president's house."

No amount of assurances is going to make anyone inclined to believe the worst suddenly agree to wait and see what happens.

The Biden Presidency - 2020
 

Ksyrup

When you say fear what do you mean? Can you define fear? I mean with interpretations of opaque legislation I don’t know what there is to fear. She can always sue the system for her career back some day. Just tell her don’t ruffle too many feathers because she’s likely being watched and you know the MAGA adherents are really good at not crossing lines that might result in hurting or killing someone.

And regarding the gang and research that has always been a theme of the extremists/conspiracy mongers… they need more information and to do their own research to get to the bottom of it. Of course after they get home from working at Darleys plumbing all day. That will be the first time they can get into doing the hard research to find out where Biden is hiding the kids he’s abusing.


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When the interest on student loans outstrips the payments, I'm frankly all for student loan forgiveness. And I only had two small loans that I paid back relatively quickly despite being essentially poor most of my adult life

Exactly.

I almost feel like Biden would need the Gang of Eight, especially any who are still election deniers to agree that any possession of classified documents is a serious crime and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law before he agreed to this-get them all on record from both parties so that it can't be used for political reasons,at least to a large extent. I think McCarthy would do what you said in a second if given the chance to see the documents. A "Let's Grow Up and put America first moment" Yeah I know I still want to believe they can do this.

It's weird how no one cared about inflation when it came to bailing out the banks or giving businesses billions in PPP loans.

Many did with the PPP "loans".

No one forced banks to loan out money. No one forced people to open businesses before the pandemic.

Not really. The economists crying about inflation due to student loan forgiveness were awfully quiet during PPP.

We just gave Ukraine another $3 billion today by the way. Brings us up to around $60 billion over the past 6 months for the inflation hawks.

No one was forced to take a student loan either

But those are job creators! They're the heroes of the economy! Students are just useless people that we need to create jobs for

SI

This isn't a pandemic issue. It's made worse by the pandemic, but it's a much larger issue.

Also, banks made loans available, people took them, and the banks are now entitled to collect according to the terms of those loans. If one cannot pay, they can attempt to get that debt discharged through bankruptcy. That's a gamble any bank makes when providing loans.

I'm not opposed to assistance and I understand how this adversely affects certain segments of the population. But it's a really slippery slope to go down, at a time when some people are arguing more and more for a "right" to what boils down to a certain standard of living.

Regarding the current college system, I found this thread to be interesting:

Given today's student loan news, here's one reminder (��) of the system we're once again not fixing: https://t.co/DTdoUER8Px

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) August 23, 2022

It's not a gamble for the banks since taxpayers have to bail them out when they fail. Student loans can't be discharged through bankruptcy (thanks Biden!).

My argument doesn't have anything to do with the pandemic. Just that there is no outrage over inflationary spending when it benefits banks or wealthy business owners.


The school requires you to pay to attend. I'm guessing people wouldn't take out loans if they didn't have to.

But the school doesn't require you to attend.

Most jobs that you can support a family on do.

Then make it legal to discharge student loans in bankruptcy.

Pentagon just got $850 billion for next year. $50 billion more than they asked for just because. Again, inflation hawks real quiet on that one too.

Just like with bank bailouts, PPP, pandemic slush fund, airline bailouts, auto bailouts, quantitative easing, farm subsidies, oil subsidies, tax loopholes, etc.

It's just weird that trillions can go to wealthy people in the country and no real worries about inflation till there is talk about helping poorer and middle-class people. Kind of like the people who thought $600 a week in unemployment was unconscionable, but giving millions in handouts to their old boss was no big deal.

You're right RainMaker, there has never been any criticisms about those programs you listed. Not a single one.

It is. Most types of loans have heightened standards and we could lessen those if we wanted, but they are dischargeable.

For me, it's not an inflation thing. See my post at the top of this page.

Private loans can be dis-chargeable (and the forgiveness being discussed doesn't affect private loans). Federal loans are nearly impossible to get discharged through bankruptcy. As a matter of fact you can often end up paying more interest on a federal student loan in Chapter 13.

I'd argue that with the way our service society has developed, not to mention more traditional non-college paths, that there are plenty of opportunities to make a living right now, plus an easier path with Internet/social media to get your service or product out there than there ever has been.

No one's saying it's easy, but college isn't always the answer.

This shit is always funny. Airlines got $54 billion in bailouts during the pandemic and ended up buying back stock with the money. No one asked their CEOs to pick up trash on the side of the road.

Can't tell if it's a disdain people have for middle-to-lower class people or a deification of wealthy people. Maybe a bit of both.

Such a clever analogy. Somewhat of a reach but we live in different worlds and see things differently.

As lessons learn from past discussions, if you want to discuss a topic, lay it all out. What exactly is your position on this? Something I can come back to and say this is what we are talking about, not this other tangent that was veered off to.

Suggest we create a new thread also. But your call.

I do agree that government student loans should be dischargeable like anything else in a bankruptcy. It should be treated similar to other defaulted loans.

What about the IDR program? I don't know anything but the highlights, but does anyone know why it's not more popular? High-level, my understanding is it bases what you can pay back on your income and can forgive the rest of your loan after 20 years. I assume there's some catch or limit on who can apply or what loans it applies to?

It's a nice game if you're running a business and can convince people you're too big too fail or an industry in trouble. Never mind that, so often, those industries are failing because of monumentally stupid management decisions or suffering from their own largess. But they are basically holding the employees and their jobs hostage. So billions of dollars get dished out and, at most, there's some griping about how rich guys have the system gamed but there's acceptance that it's just the way it is.

However, the minute regular citizens get given a fraction of that money, the average people can relate to that situation. Suddenly, we're all looking at poor people's carts or life choices and telling them how they're making bad decisions.

I love loan forgiveness with social work attached as I feel we need to do more of that in this country. However, if we're going to means test it (yes, $125K is a high means test but it is a means test) then there are going to be a lot of people who need $10K in student loan forgiveness that have multiple jobs and/or don't have time to go work for Habitat or similar. It'd be nice if we did something like that for larger student loans but a number of those programs seem to be underfunded and subject to (GOP) fuckery where the program gets cancelled or altered when administrations change so people in underserved areas or whatever end up throwing away years of their life for no loan forgiveness.

And, no, it doesn't fix the actual problem - the cost of attending college. But no action was going to get done on that. However, this can make a huge difference for a lot of people. And, yes, you can still make a living not attending college, but let's not pretend that's not a harder and less secure route. Are there ways to make a good living not attending college? Absolutely. Are you, on average, going to make more if you go to college? Pretty much every survey and study says so and that's why most of us went and, if we have kids, we're directing most of our kids that way.

And, as we seem to keep saying over the past month, it's less than ideal politically. It's something that's been a Dem goal for a long time now will be attacked for raising inflation and will be tainted for future generations because of the timing. But at least something is getting done about it. And whenever we give some sort of tax break or money to people under $100K, it almost always give some real bang to the economy since it turns around and gets spent almost immediately. It would have been nice for this to have been done to help recover from a recession but this is such a weird economic environment right now. I can't wait for the GOP ads about how forgiving student loan debt is contributing to why people don't want to work for horrible wages.

SI

The numbers don't lie in terms of income with and without a college degree. Even low-paying entry level jobs require it these days.

And I think you know that. You could have gone to one of the states that don't require law school and saved yourself the $50k. But you didn't, which tells me you understood the degree's value in the field you wanted to work in.

But the other question is why was having a $50k debt hanging over your head at 25 a good thing? Sure, you paid it back, but it also put you in a hole.

Imagine if you were able to get your retirement started with that $50k. That'd be a cool million by the time you retired. Maybe you could have bought a house sooner instead of renting, started a side business, had a family sooner, or just enjoyed life a little more. That $50k can buy some nice vacations and opens up the entertainment options a bit.

And that's the other part of it. How much does student loans hold people back? And how much does that hurt us to remain competitive with the rest of the world?

I'm asking why paying off student loans is bad but giving free money to big businesses is good. There seems to be a lot of inflation talk around one of those but not the other.

Also, if you believe the person who gets $10k wiped out of their student loans should have to do some community service, why wouldn't the CEO of Delta who took $5.4 billion have to do the same?

Or maybe you're not classed out of low paying entry level jobs at larger firms that pay next-to-nothing (that's a separate problem) but get your foot in the door and set you up for greater long term success. So it's not like you can even apply for those because you have to start spending big chunks of your paycheck on paying back student loans. And you're never getting that opportunity once you're 40 and have your loans paid off.

SI

If that's the test, then we should all put everything on credit cards and have the government pay it for us. I paid back what I owed because it was my obligation in exchange for a degree that helped me make money and that I calculated, along with my hard work, smarts, etc., would pay off later in life. But it wasn't a foregone conclusion that it would be a financially smart decision because the degree doesn't provide anything other than avoiding a barrier to doing a certain type of job.

This is getting perilously close to feeding right into the GOP talking points. I'm all for helping less fortunate people help themselves. I'm not for setting a standard of living that the government is going to pay for because life is hard.

This may help some people, but it's not going to help the people who need it most because those people didn't go to college. This is going to help people making more money (up to the $125K cap) then it's going to help some of the poorest people in the country. For that as well as a ton of other reasons, I just see this as a bad precedent to set.

Private practice medical has now largely become big corporate medical. Doctors, denist and optometrist coming out of school no longer can afford to go to work for a small office, or work to take over for another doctor at the end of his/her career. They have such huge debt to pay, they have to work for large companies for the salary. Retiring doctors end up selling out to the big corporations because young doctors don't have the loan power to buy them out like they used to. Medicine just continues to become more and more corporate and profit driven.

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This free money. Is it specific to PPP or something else. If something else, lay out the programs.


I'll google on this.

I think college education is worth putting on the nation's credit card if it came to it. But that's not necessary. There are numerous areas the country can cut spending to (like bailing out airlines and banks). We can also *gasp* tax wealthy people. Or not give the Pentagon an additional $50 billion they didn't even ask for.

The standard was set decades ago when the previous generations didn't have to pay for college. They were able to get their degrees and enter the workforce with no debt lingering over them. They got to open businesses, buy homes, start families, etc. What we have now is fairly new and brought on by a FYGM attitude of people who were fine with taxpayer-funded higher education, just not for those coming after them.

In today's 538 poll aggregate, Biden approval is at 40.7%, up from 37.9% in July 22. So he's gained +2.8% in a month which is pretty good.

I swear if anyone honestly looks at Hershel Walker and thinks "this is the guy who will be the very best to represent my interest and his constituency'," then I never, ever want to spend any time with them, because they must be so fucking dim, and have such low standards for people that they cannot possibly be worth my time.

Biden set to cancel $10K of student debt for millions, $20K for Pell grant recipients

If nothing else, I think the income limits are way too high. And while I'll keep my personal experiences out of this discussion, but I do know a lot of people perfectly capable of paying their loans that have just been piling up money in hopes this was coming. Nice bonus for them I guess.

Plus it doesn't solve anything. Sucks to be starting school next year.

The middle of the link has a breakdown of who benefits most.


https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/24/polit...use/index.html

Happy for those who will benefit from the relief.

Agree that there needs to be a real solution going forward to manage costs, affordability, etc.

I love the doubling based on Pell Grants. That's a great way to do a simple bonus for likely lower income.

SI

I agree with all of this.

There just wasn't going to be some comprehensive college reform bill right now. There just wasn't - there's no votes or political movement for it. So the option was either forgive some student loan debt or... not forgive some student loan debt. So it feels like unless you add the "also" (or implied "also" like above), any arguments that are like "we shouldn't be doing this unless we can fix it all at once" are basically "don't do anything".

Also, as I said above
Maybe this is the type of thing that can (finally) kindof put some upward pressure on wages. When you have $10K or $20K less in debt, you can be a bit more choosy about your job choices and make better long term decisions rather than making desperation ones for today's emergencies.

SI

Proposes a new income-based repayment plan which caps payments at 5% of discretionary income (down from the current 10%).

New IBR plan covers monthly interest so long as payments are made on time, meaning the loan would not grow due to interest even if the payment is $0.

New IBR plan forgives loan balances of $12,000 or less after 10 years instead of 20.



Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but if this goes into place, why would anyone ever pay for college without loans?

IBR appears to be capped at 225% of poverty level, so basically $30K per year income to qualify.

SI

Ah, that's what I was missing. Thanks.

That, and $12k would barely cover one year in college. You still need to pay down the cost to keep your debt that low.

To offer an alternative from the far off realm of socialist ... Germany: Interestingly, in the mid 00s there was a push to inact admission fees and a few states did it. Only to then undo this a few years later as a failed experiment. Anyway, as i started after that i only had to pay my university 700 a year as an administrative fee and that not only, on top of paying for the administrative services, contributed to subsidizing meals on campus but also a public transport card for the whole state. So the school itself (as are 95% of universities) is almost entirely state funded or from grant money.

After an initial phase of paying from my previous savings (i first did an 'apprenticeship'/dual traineeship and worked fulltime for a few years after high school) i got about 700 a month in support from the state for rent and living expenses (and worked jobs for a about 350-450 a month), half as a loan without interest and half free.
The debt from the no interest loan is capped at 10k as well and then can be further reduced (from that 10k) for 1) finishing the degree(s) on time, 2) finishing in the Top x% of your class and 3) and further decreased if paid in full after roughly 2 years following the degree.

In the end had to pay back about 6.700 Euros of the roughly 30k i received (again, almost all rent and living expenses) which included support for a semester in New Zealand (though i also had to loan money from my sister as it was quite a bit over the cap of what is supported). If you could not pay it back in full you would pay back roughly 130 a month, which can be paused if earning less than amount X a month.

Btw, anyone who has paid off a loan since March 2020 can get the money they paid (up to the 10k cap) refunded.

My Dad told me how college was affordable enough that you could pay for it with just what you made in a Summer job (he was sorting mail/packages for the post office I believe).

What bothers me is that student loans are treated as some special entity by some where help should not apply. Watching people from some non-profit think tank (taxpayer subsidized) who took a PPP loan (taxpayer subsidized) and own a house (price propped up by taxpayers) complain about this is just eye-rolling. If college kids have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, so should everyone else.

I still think it's ridiculous to award a married couple making just under $250K, who can now write off a decent amount of law/business school debt (my understanding is this isn't just undergraduate debt).

Now really, how is that tailored enough to only help those who REALLY need it? It's not.

It feels like this could backfire. I'm curious the ages of the people this would most benefit, but I assume they are among the youngest, right? Those are the groups who vote the least. I guess the calculus is that between a cash incentive and things like abortion rights, this is going to impactfully increase the percentage of younger voters?

You are right. I'm sure everyone with a student loan today would not complain one bit if they came out and said going forward, college was free, but everyone with loans still had to pay them.

You know, just because they suffer doesn't mean everyone else should going forward.

lol @ Boomer Trolley Problem

SI

Politicians should do what they think is right and what helps the public. College students (and young adults) have been shit on for decades because they are the smallest voting bloc.

Regardless, it polls well.

A majority of Americans put affordable college before loan forgiveness : NPR

Push came to shove i could have propably paid it just by working as well, as said there are hardly any costs to pay the University and i also had very few expenses for books et al as 95% of what you need was provided (digital, library, in my case a 'film library').
But doing that on top of 25 hours of courses, not including prep work, as well as either exams or (in my case mostly) 2-4 papers over the break periods (2 semesters here, so 2 break periods) would then absolutely 1) be a disadvantage to students with rich parents and/or 2) result in needing longer to graduate. And no way in hell could one do a semester abroad or take (largely unpaid) internships to get practical experience at the same rate.

I don't really have much to say regarding the current question. I actually would agree that this is just as much nothing more than an inadequate bandaid as others would say it is "unfair" (or from the crazy parade going as far as somehow dangerous for, i guess, western civilization). But it also seems like there are a few other changes benefitting future students (well, unless MAGA nukes it eventually):

Obviously the topline $10k-$20k forgiveness is going to get the headlines, but this income-based repayment plan rule will have a big impact for low and middle-income borrowers (especially straight out of college) pic.twitter.com/fYDH1ICTgj

— Justin Sink (@justinsink) August 24, 2022

I don't see how "affordable college" is even possible with how reliant colleges have become on the high payment spiral but this seems an honest attempt to at least somewhat curb potential harm. In a somewhat roundabout way but still.

When you keep giving cheap loans or forgiving them the long term result isn't more affordable college it's more expensive college/a bigger transfer of government money to the schools and loan companies.

I'm not opposed to loan forgiveness, but I'd rather see the money spent on subsidizing public higher education. The free market can do what it will for private higher education, but there should be a legitimate alternative, and IMO that's the best way to keep costs down long term.

This isn't either/or. You can do both. First, you are going to have to elect more reasonable people to office that don't demonize higher education. Or all education really.

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I’m just sitting here laughing at all the GOP lines about “this is going to pay off all the Harvard Law school loans, rich people are getting a free handout, etc”

First of all. Sit down. You passed a trillion dollar tax break for the wealthiest of the wealthy. Second of all, did they not see the fine print on what income this is capped at. Pretty sure all those rich lawyers and Harvard school grads are making more than the max required to even qualify.

So tired of these fucking windbags.

They have class war. It's their plan A attack, even if it doesn't really fit.

There are some Twitter accounts that just respond to a lot of these talking heads with a link to the PPP loan they took out. All these right-wing podcasts took them. Their issue isn't with the government giving out money, it's with the government giving out money to anyone but them.

Also $10k doesn't come close to paying off Harvard Law and rich people don't take out student loans (they don't even qualify for federal ones). They're rich!

This


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I underestimated the administration. I thought that the means-tested $10k would be a political disaster. The left wing would consider it too low, and the right would consider it a handout.

But by combining it with enhanced protections for low-income people, the administration managed (from what I can tell) to get the left/youth on board with it.

And the right wing criticisms seem . . . tired? The fact that every right wing pundit in the country apparently got a $100k+ PPP loan certainly helps with that.

And the real valid policy criticism of the proposal--that it doesn't solve the underlying problem and actually creates a moral hazard by setting the precedent that college loans will be forgiven--isn't going to cost the Dems a lot of votes. If you are the kind of right-leaning person who thinks of things analytically and not emotionally and talks about moral hazard, then you are probably not going to vote for the GOP until they purge the fascists from leadership.

Well, close.

https://mobile.twitter.com/MattGertz...694727/photo/2

I posted below link in previous page. If you look at the graphic in the middle, it shows 42% of beneficiaries are in the ($82-$141 and $141+) range. I think the discrepancy is probably because CNN chart is based on household (e.g. dual income household) whereas your quote is per person.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/24/polit...use/index.html

My favorite part about when Gertz tweets is how many people think its Gaetz.

I don't think the standard is Harvard or "pay off." Anyone with a post-graduate degree from anywhere should not be getting $10K relief, even if that's 5% of what they still owe.

Mid term polling is not trending in their direction and it should be based on the fundamentals. They're desperately trying to find something to energize the base and offset dem gains in polling.

Really? If you owe graduate degree money, you are probably paying many times more than 19k in interest on that loan. So, this is more a interest rebate than actually getting any of the loan forgiven.

I do wonder if poltically this is a gain or a loss for Dems. I think this is great for the base, and very important to young voters. The problem is young voters are very hard to count on, and are never anywhere near the numbers of older voters this might turn off. I sort of think it would have hurt more to break this promise, though. I think it is probably a wash more than a detriment.

Disagree. Take a loot at the number of young people registering to vote. Lots of them because of Dobbs but they aren't going anywhere, at least as long as the current iteration of the republican party is around. They are going to love this. The people who are yelling about being screwed, like that guy in Iowa with Warren making the rounds, were never voting Dem anyway.

Yes, really. We certainly moved at light speed from "government should provide basic education" to "government should subsidize post-graduate degrees" haven't we?

I keep seeing this idea that colleges should be responsible for the outcomes of their students. I get the appeal, but are people going to college for education or job training? Because if we are now deciding that its job training, we can 1) eliminate a lot of unnecessary general education classes and 2) probably greatly reduce the number of majors out there.

The government used to subsidize post-graduate degrees. The change has been to stop doing that. I think people would just like it to go back to how it was for previous generations who were able to get a subsidized education.

I'd also add that the people upset about this are also some of the same people who complain we don't have enough skilled labor and must open up more H1-B visas.

Yeah, I'm not really seeing a problem with producing more post-grad workers. Which would better benefit our country: more doctors and engineers, or more missile systems and no bid military contracts? Hmmmmmm....

White House Twitter putting out the PPP loan forgiveness amounts of all the Republicans critizing Student Loans forgiveness. *chef's kiss*

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The thread for reference.

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven.https://t.co/4FoCymt8TB

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 25, 2022

Dems would be smart to pass a bill that would audit the PPP loans of any member of Congress that received one. Lets make sure there was no inappropriate use of those taxpayer funds they are so very concerned about.

So let me get this straight. A day or two ago in this thread, I was lectured at for pointing out that I paid off my entire law school debt by myself because it earned me a good enough job with upward mobility that it was much easier for me to pay off those debts. But out of this side of your mouth today, we should be subsidizing "me," 25 years later.

Got it.

If that's a policy decision our country wants to make, let Congress take it up. But for right now, to tailor relief to the people in this country who most need it in August of 2022, I'm going to stand by my position that there are better donees of our tax dollars than couples making $200K+ with post-graduate degree debt.

I paid off my student loan debts too. In my opinion, we should not have had to do that. I think education should be free and is a good use of taxpayer funds when you factor in all the societal benefits. We would both be in considerably better positions in life if we did not have to do that.

There is no way to correct that now, though. We can't go back in time 30 years to stop politicians from their FYGM attitudes toward those with little to no voting power. This is not a fix by any means, but it was something the President was legally obliged to do and will help countless people get out of debt.

You are overexaggerating the amount of wealthy people who are getting relief here. People who are as wealthy as you insinuate do not have student loans. They either didn't need them or paid them off quickly. And the silence toward those wealthy people receiving countless handouts over the years says a lot about people's true intentions.

I think this somes up some people's thinking.

There’s a Libyan parable about a petty man who was offered a wish under the condition that his neighbor would get double so he asked to be blind in one eye. https://t.co/kIMc5PCxGM

— Hend Amry (@LibyaLiberty) August 24, 2022

A quick google search pulls up an article from 2018 about first-year lawyer salaries in 2016. Six years ago, the median salary was $68K, and if you look at private sector only, it was $135K. I also saw an article from 2021 about first years making upwards of $200K. Those who went to the best law schools, who get those high-paying jobs off the bat, take on a shitload of debt. The degree is worth it, in most cases.

So, a married couple filing jointly where the husband is, say, 2 years out of law school making $150K while his wife is a stay-at-home mom, is eligible for $10K in relief. That's bullshit.

Also, let's talk about in general, what's the "middle class." Not $125K/$250K.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/24/stud...alculator.html


Let me be clear - I'm not arguing against this relief, I'm arguing it's going to too many people who don't need it. Or, perhaps, it is being targeted at too narrow a group (college/post-grad borrowers).

Too many Dems would be on that list.

I still think you're talking about a really small percentage of borrowers who fall in that category.

The tax cuts from a few years ago are probably going to save that couple you're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetime. I'd be far more upset with that than a one time $10k discharge of a federal loan (of which a good percent is just interest).

It just seems petty when the government is constantly forking over trillions for wealthy people and creating new ways for them to not have to pay taxes. I wish there was a fraction of the anger over this toward the hedge fund loophole that still exists because of 51 Senators.

No doubt. Still would like to see someone propose it and find out which people start having panic attacks on the House floor.

I thought the tax cuts were stupid and didn't want them. So I agree with that 100%.

Having some student loan forgiveness on top of the salary for public service would seem to be a great solution to the law school conundrum. I like it better than the government should pay for 100% of my school until I'm in my mid to late twenties then I should be free to go to the higher paying private sector with no trade off.

The tradeoff is that you'll be paying more in taxes in the higher paying private sector for the rest of your life.

I would be for subsidizing post graduate education for degrees that would be helpful to society. So, law school wouldn't qualify.

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As a lawyer licensed in 3 states, I agree. Too much competition already!

One thing is certain, we are all idiots for not getting some of that sweet PPP money.

In a different universe, Rs would respond to Biden's debt relief by saying "This is poorly targeted and doesn't address the deeper issues. Here's our better plan." But the GOP no longer does policy — and their actual response was awesomely tone-deaf 1/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) August 26, 2022

This is an aspect I hadn't thought of.

Hell, us here on a football video game message board have managed to have a semi-nuanced discussion of the pros and cons of the policy proposals regarding educational costs. Certainly more of one than has happened in DC.

It should not be hard at all for the GOP to say "Hey, college affordability is a real problem. Here's our proposed solution and why it is better than Biden's." I mean, that's how politics worked for a long time. Each side had policy proposals. Vibes, etc. mattered a lot. But there was some substance under all that.

Here, you just have nothing. The party is so all-in on culture war screaming and Hunter Biden's Laptop that's there no one even pretending to propose plans to fix things.

And we just expect that at this point.

What a shame for the party of Lincoln and Reagan.

Why do you think there was never a Republican health plan? Other than "bill the wall" and punish illegals, no comprehensive immigration policy? Policy can be debated. It can be weighed on its merits. It also can be exposed as a sham. Much easier just to demonize the other side. That way you don't have to do the hard thing, actually govern.

Scammers certainly benefitted. It is estimated that 1.8 millions loan were fraudulent. I'm guessing that's a low number.

But don't worry, we have 50 people working on getting those scammers prosecuted.

Thanks Democrats and Republicans. This is why I'm voting 3rd party this fall.