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The fraud on PPP and the amounts spent on Ukraine are getting close to exceeding the bottom estimate of the costs of student loan forgiveness.
Which is interesting, because I was assured that such forgiveness would devastate the economy.
But, hey, you LIKED these lies.
i want one of those money trees they keep using...panzer guy
ReplyDeleteThe way I see loan forgiveness, it hurts the current group of people seeking a student loan because the prior students are not paying it forward for the funds to help them. Paying back a loan of $50,000 so that you could earn $200,000 seems fair to me - you are ahead $150,000 and the current gets the same opportunity extended to you. But you say 'Nah' - that is some BS right there.
ReplyDeletejrg
You have fallen for the same fallacy that made it impossible to discharge student loan debt via bankruptcy. That most debtors have sufficient income to repay the loans and are boycotting the payments.
DeleteThe actual problem is colleges selling the idea that their degrees lead to those jobs and the government cheerfully handing out the loans to people who will never be able to repay them with the degree they got.
Combine that with a K-12 schooling system that actively suppresses the knowledge a student needs to identify the scam and it makes everyone with a student loan a victim.
Now add in two presidents doing their damnedest to crater the economy...
For a decent sized chunk of debtors, getting the loan removed means getting them back into the economy in a significant manner and gets them buying shit and paying taxes instead of just paying on the loan. Others are never paying that loan back. Ever. Even if they are making the payments. Look that last one up. The minimum payment on lots of these loans is smaller than the interest. That was illegal in 1990. I checked.
I remind everyone, AGAIN, that it is NOT 1990 any more. Or even 2000. Boomers and most of Gen X remember things about degrees and loans that no longer exist.
The problem with most of the student loans is not only were students fooled into taking out loans for education that doesn't result in nearly as high paying jobs as they were told... it is more like $200k in loans to get a $50k a year job in a lot of cases. But worse a lot of the loans have terms that would make a loan shark blush. Not just what McThag mentions, but prepayment penalties, usurious interest rates, etc. They're far worse than credit card debt, more akin to "payday loans" or car title loans.
DeleteMy personal opinion is that the right way to "fix" the student loan debt crisis is maybe not just to outright "forgive" the loans but to re-write them all to terms that are reasonable. Student loans shouldn't have terms that wouldn't be allowed for mortgages or car loans.
If the loans were fair, I don't think we'd see nearly the level of defaults we do now.
And we also need to tell kids that a degree in some libtard major just isn't a guarantee it qualifies someone for more than bussing tables at Denny's. Even a degree in a supposedly highly desireable major like "STEM" isn't a guarantee of a stable career anymore. I'm not saying there's no value in education, but that kids need to be told the facts, not the rosy colored glasses BS that the pinkos that run the educational system want them to hear. That's way too self serving.
-swj
Anon 7:29 here:
DeleteWhat you say above is true about young not being able to contribute to economy with loan over their head. But the same could be said for people owning mortgages on their homes too. Think of all an already employed person could buy if they didn't have to pay their mortgage. They were promised buying would have an asset accrue value where in the future, it could sold for a fortune. Now - not so much. Many are upside down on their home. Should their debts be forgiven too ?
Where does it end?
jrg
The difference is that if you find yourself fucked by your mortgage vs your home's value you can declare bankruptcy.
DeleteThis is true of all other forms of debt, but not student loans.
Why is that considered fair?
The home-education loan analogy is more along the lines of being sold a mansion on an acreage and discovering you have a lean-to in an alleyway. There is recourse for fraud committed by a real estate agent, but not a student loan officer.
And the fraud is why these loans are unfair.
Filed under the proverb of the straw that broke the camel's back, a thing so light, so immaterial but yet was the critical event that started the cascading failure.
ReplyDeleteLike the final bit of snow fall on the avalanche trigger.
Creator: Ernest Hemingway, U.S. author, winner of Nobel Prize in Literature
Context: The character Mike Campbell in the 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises” was asked about his money troubles and responded with a vivid description embracing self-contradiction:[1]
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
“What brought it on?”
“Friends,” said Mike. “I had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors, too. Probably had more creditors than anybody in England.”
So, a thought project. It's Thursday evening and the news announced a Banking Holiday for a few days to stabilize the Countries money situation. Nothing to worry about friend's report.
Being the distrustful grumpy old man, we are you head over to the ATM and the lines are long with people cursing that it's only giving out 20.00.
So you head over to Walmart for a top off of groceries, again mob scene (remember the COVID TP situation) and people are fuming that their credit cards are not working. Same with gasoline station, CASH only.
Now what? How well can you do over the next week assuming nothing happens to the grid power?
Got a money tree?
I do not. But it'd be a lot easier if $750 a month was going to something I got some use out of. There's retailers who'd be better off if I could spend that money with them instead of GiantPredatoryBank LLC.
DeletePersonally, I'd like to make the colleges eat those loans. I've never cared for the power imbalance inherent in selling some naive 18- or 19-year-old kid on an unsalable major. I was lucky enough to have parents who could finance my education, but not everybody is. College is a racket, far worse than anything Smedley Butler ever thought of.
ReplyDeleteI think the colleges should bear part of the responsilbility. I personally believe that the reason that educational costs, tuition, fees, books, room & board, etc... all went up way faster than just about everything else at least partially due to the fact that schools raised prices as much as they could get away with based on virtually all students getting loans. If that money hadn't been available I don't think schools would have been able to raise prices so much so quickly. And when you look at a lot of campuses and the buildings built and the grounds and landscaping since the easy government loan money came about and see how grand and lavish they are... Not to mention the salaries for a lot of processors which pale in comparison to what administrators have seen... Massive gravy train. And it's pretty obvious that a lot of that doesn't even very far towards improving the quality of education offered.
DeleteI had parents that probably could have at least helped finance my education, but didn't believe in it. In fact they refused to sign the FAFSA paperwork so I wasn't able to get student loans. At the time it was a big inconvenience which resulted in me having to quit before getting a degree. However, in the end maybe being left high and dry but without any student loan debt wasn't the worst thing that happened to me.
What does make me angry is that my ne'er do well brother got everything paid for because my parents felt sorry for him... and then he never even really made an effort to use his (in today's world) nearly useless Journalism degree. That's a degree that at least used to be marketable, albeit not really super lucrative, but now is virtually useless because that career has disintegrated due to the rise of the internet and death of print. That was partially bad timing on his part, but even at that, it's mostly him not trying.
Damn... forgot to sign again... -swj
DeleteAnd another college program that could take a major haircut - sports. The cost of stadiums, the mass parking and the facilities to train students who are supposed to be focused on academics and are splitting their time with whatever sport they choose to participate in. Public schools do it too, but many colleges have their enrollment determined by how well the they place in basketball tournaments or football bowl participation. Unless the student plans to go on to professional sports - why are taxes used to buy the sports programs too ?
ReplyDeletejrg
This also goes back to what I said about a power imbalance. The big sports schools recruit their "student-athletes" from the ghettos and barrios, and all too often, either they get injured and have to drop out without a degree, or get a useless degree and don't make it into "da proze." While the colleges and universities rake in money from their performances, they get passed through the easiest "gut" classes, often with others doing whatever actual schoolwork they turn in, and are often also shielded by the school from the consequences of bad behavior. That's how you get professional athletes who get into serious trouble...think Rae Carruth or O.J. Simpson.
Delete