>What kinds of improvements might act as guardrails at the edge of this default cliff?
>Three letters: IDR. Income-driven repayment plans allow for borrowers' monthly payments to shrink or grow depending on what they can afford.
None of the IDR plans available (at least to me) reflect the massive CoL increase that has happened since COVID though. Rent/housing has basically doubled, utilities have almost doubled, food costs have exploded, etc. IDR plans seem to be based around the CoL of like 2015.
Sorry, but $20/month is not really "reasonable" in any way, unless your debt is like $1000 total.
To simply provide initial money for the student loan, the government itself borrows it at a rate of currently 4.8% (20-year treasury yield, same as the average repayment period). That's just the cost of existence of that money. If your payments don't cover even 1/10th of that, it's not even remotely close to "paying the debt".
How much would you say is fair? That is a pretty big gap. If you feel compelled to pay off the debt, you can just opt for the standard repayment and don't have to worry about the number changing. Otherwise, you are kinda stuck with how much of a break the government is willing to give you at the time.
Most of the people those IDR plans are for select them because standard is unaffordable, and because they CAN’T pay extra to just “pay off their loans”. For example, my IBR payment is $375, which I can do but barely. My standard is well over $1500, which I could in no way afford.
That's understandable. I just threw that in there since IDR payments will likely change ever year while the standard payment does not, and there are people who might be better off just paying the standard if its not substantially higher than the IDR. They didn't give numbers, so it wasn't possible to know.
The crux of the comment was trying to understand what was considered fair. If their current monthly IDR payment is $447, they would be paying almost twice as much in one month now compared to what they would have paid annually under Biden. That's a huge gap. What is a fair amount to pay under IDR? Should borrowers be expected to at least pay off their principal like it probably will be under RAP or should it be more heavily subsidized like it would have been under SAVE?
IDR payments go up each year, too, as your income increases and you file to recertify it. The idea being that you don't start out making much at the start of your career, so you can't put much away towards your loans when you're also trying to do things like build an emergency fund. So yes, the balance increases, but as you start earning more you'll start paying towards the principal. An issue there is obviously that employers are NOT paying more and there's a shortage of advancement opportunities for millenials and zoomers due to boomers and gen x not retiring.
Unless you start out in a high earning field, you are almost never better off starting on standard, because the money would be better spent paying off private loans and "bad debt", maxing out retirement/HSA, building an emergency fund, and saving for a house.
Many folks DO switch to standard after being on IDR while they were building up their incomes. Many other people pay their original balance plus much more in that case.
Then, ofc, you have your PSLF folks who HAVE to be on an IDR plan for their payments to qualify - standard only counts when there's a ton of asterisks associated with it.
If someone is paying $447/mo on an IDR, they're likely earning over 80k/year. I earn 72k/year, no dependents, and my monthly payment is $375. 80k can be considered a "great" income in some areas, and is almost low enough in other areas to qualify you for state based poverty resources. However, your federal loan rate doesn't factor ANY of that into account. Hence why folks are like "my payment is too high".
The Biden SAVE plan guidance were what I'd consider to be quite reasonable. RAP, honestly, for anyone earning under about 70k, is pretty reasonable too. The reason people's payments are jumping isn't because anything changed; Biden made the payments more affordable under SAVE and that went away because of the SAVE litigation. The payments they're seeing now is what it would have been this whole time without SAVE.
The issue with saying things like "it should have to be x percentage of your original loan balance" is it fails to take into account a lot of variables. your monthly payment being tied to, say, 10% take home pay via your tax forms filed for 20 years and whatever is left is discharged seems pretty reasonable to me. I don't know how the feds even begin to factor in COL; changing things to take home pay would be VERY helpful tho IMO.
The other issue I have is I shouldn't have to micromanage my servicer and know this much about loan repayment. Any bank would be sued to oblivion if they pulled half the stunts servicers pull. Mohela has been sued a bunch of times and yet still is allowed to operate.
So many of the issues really just boil down to:
employers don't pay employees enough, student loan servicers are predatory and scummy organizations, and it's unfair to borrowers they're caught up in that and told it's their fault.
I could do $200 per month. I cannot afford standard repayment. I graduated in 2017, and I'm in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. I would never have gone back to school without PSLF and reasonable IDR. As you might be aware, borrowers have been jerked around like crazy. That's not right.
Yea, the back and forth sucks. Fortunately, they didn't throw out PSLF. I wish Democrats and Republicans would get together and figure out the rules, so there is not need to constantly change them. I can see a world where Democrats reverse a bunch of things Republicans just did over the summer. Then Republicans come back in and change it back. There is just no consensus and the whole thing is pretty much broken anyway.
To make that happen they need to allow student loans forgiven in the event of bankruptcy. That will make the banks actually calculate risk, instead of agreeing to any number for any student, which also leads to inflation of tuition fees.
I like the idea of schools having more accountability for the success of their students, but I think this idea could end up with universities selling loans to other schools, or even fudging numbers for state programs that have a gpa requirement for students to retain eligibility, e.g, here's a semester's worth of tuition as long as your student maintains a 2.5.
In order for this to happen, then you’d introduce loan covenants, collateral, and other incentives. Aka banks are only going to provide loans to majors with clear ROI, only give loans to students who can clearly prove their acumen, only give loans to the best schools, say students are in breach of covenants if they change their majors, etc.
I don’t disagree that we need to allow the debt to be dischargeable in bankruptcy, but then the banks will need collateral that they can go take from students/parents if a student goes into bankruptcy. I assume you’d be okay with all this?
Seeing as most people’s only asset is their home, the implication is that banks would go take parents homes when their child defaults on their student loans…
Banks generally do take risk into account when extending student loans. The government does not take repayment risk into account when they lend to students, and the vast majority of these loans are held by the government.
I can't speak for everyone, but I can give my own anecdotal example. It's not that I didn't understand what I was getting into at age 18. It's that the kinds of salaries and stable jobs I was promised never really materialized.
Now, if I had landed an entry level job right after graduation with the kinds of starting salaries my advisors specifically cited, those salaries grew at about the rate of inflation and I wasn't disrupted by endless cycles of layoffs, then sure, I would have been able to pay my loans off forever ago.
But what actually happened far exceeded the worst-case scenarios I ran when trying to calculate the risk of taking out undergrad loans and then taking out more loans to go to grad school to level up and weather a recession.
I’ve been saying this for a while but the way we fund higher ed is upside down. All risk is on the borrower, banks and institutions have no skin in the game.
Make the default loan to be 10% of earnings for 10 years or some shit like that and watch higher ed totally transform.
Really need to send these kids to community college if they’re going to need massive loans.
My state recently passed a law allowing community colleges to offer 4 year degrees. It’s $100 a credit for 100-200 level and they’re planning on $150 a credit for upper division. This includes a free electronic copy of the book.
The local state public university costs $1000 a credit not including the book and program fees. I understand colleges have a lot of buildings maintenance, research, high paying faculty.
State and federal funding for colleges has decreased while prison funding has increased. That almost certainly increases the cost of college and makes you wonder what the hell our "representatives" are doing.
Employers are so out of touch with reality. They use 6 figure college degrees as a vetting system when the reality is that most jobs out there don't require that kind of training. A mid level marketing position for example requires probably requires 3 weeks to get into the groove and an online course on InDesign.
The basic concept is that if you have the ability to make it through 4 years of college you're probably not a total piece of shit which is obviously not true and not worth sinking the US economy over.
Most jobs don't need a college degree, but they do need people who can read and do basic math.
A high school diploma doesn't mean anything anymore, and we regularly give diplomas to people who have an elementary-school level reading ability. So college degrees are the new proof of literacy.
Surprise surprise. Lift up the rock and you find roaches. Just like so many other things in America for the last 50 years. The problem begins to feel so monumental that we just throw are hands up and hope that we die before it becomes truly unbearable.
Yes, you're not wrong. US education is fucked from day one and now we need to spend 100k to prove we can form a sentence. Some real late stage capitalism type stuff.
I agree most jobs don't need college, but employers can pretty easily find people with degrees, so from their point of view they will hire people with degrees over those without.
They can easily find those people because way too many people have unnecessary college degrees that they have to go into debt for.
I'm not trying to gatekeep or anything. I honestly regret going to college. I had a great time. Made great friends and memories. Learned a lot. But I hindsight I wish I just got a 4 year head start on my life because I've learned infinitely more in the time since college.
The system is self selecting. The kind of person with the drive and resources to go likely would've done fine anyway. That will skew the numbers on incomes for those with college degrees.
We're half a century past a bachelors degree being anything resembling a guaranteed pathway to prosperity. There's just so many resources out there. If you cared that much you'd get an associates degree in your free time for a fraction of the cost. But you haven't done that. So the self selecting system worked.
I also think it’s interesting that so many jobs require “a degree” that clearly don’t require specific degrees, or they would state exactly what they were. While 4 years of college indicates something about a candidate, the traditional college time frame is a point in your life when there’s some structure and guidelines placed in front of you. Typically you’re fresh out of high school, where there’s some sense of structure and what’s expected of you. Many people have guidance councilors or parents keeping up with them. At the very least there are much more clear expectations. Adult life is not like that at all. If you were to judge a candidate on their actual performance in adult life (not what they may have done many years ago in a structured environment) fewer people would be portrayed in as good a light. Adult life is not easy and it’s easy to miss the mark on a lot of it.
I think that middle period when you're becoming an adult is certainly important and it was nice to have somebody to hold your hand through it but yeah if you really wanna separate the cattle and chaff gimme the person who hustled on their own and is still motivated.
The other side of this is the sheer number of people employed by colleges and universities, even the diploma mills. Everyone looks at professors and administrators but there’s other headcount that rely on these institutions to survive out in the real world.
I want to note that this is a consortium of lenders publishing that analysis and it uses total earnings to calculate ROI instead of the increase in earnings vs not having a degree.
it also doesn't account for the opportunity cost of lost wages while in school for 4 years.
Abel and Dietz did this research a decade ago and found it's still worth it even with four years of lost earnings, but good research like that won't come out every year.
You said college was worth it. This argues the degree is worth it which conveniently excludes anyone who doesn't get a degree (even though they still have to pay the debt)
If what you're claiming is broadly true, why the high default rates?
I would say it depends. I believe a union welder will earn more than a holder of B.A in liberal arts. If however, the college grad earns his/her degree in STEM, health care or finance, that grad will eventually overtake the union welder, despite college loans.
So you need very tight control over admissions. Individuals aren’t the best judges of their own ability, especially when claims like “continues to result in dramatically better lifetime outcomes” are being made.
Struggling to find a first job is not indicative of lifetime earnings not increasing as a result of college. After 2008 the market was brutal for years. Yet those people still on track to make more over their lifetimes.
> Or stop extending gigantic loans to 18 year olds who don't understand what they are getting into.
That doesn't happen. Undergrad fed direct loans are capped at about 30k for dependent students in most cases.
It is parents who took out parent plus loans or grad students that have the massive balances. Both parent plus and grad plus loans had to caps before OBBB
An 18 year old could take on massive amounts of private student loans but to do so they would almost certainly require a cosigner
Yep, we need to stop parasitic behavior like these companies ignoring their fiduciary duty by lending to kids with no assets because the government made it impossible to discharge these loans in bankruptcy. Lenders own students for life. That's the point.
OR you know tax billionaires and corporations ....or instead of 1.5 trillion of discretionary spending on the war machine. we fund higher/continuing education
OR you know regulate the fuck out of student loan companies. HOW ABOUT ALLOW STUDENT DEBT TO BE DISCHARGED IN BANKRUPCY or a max threshold of income based repayment of 7 yrs (like in the bible) or even just cap interest to max 1/2 the loan amt. ---so a student loan is less a loan and more like a mortgage. where there's a fixed end point/balance expressed via the payment, and additional payments/faster payments means savings for the borrower. OR fixed/low interest rates based on income.
You could probably even regulate/tax large university endowments, or have checks against universities becoming hedgefunds. requiring certain high percentages of endowed scholarship for low salary degree programs or graduate studies to maintain tax exempt status. ie... the world needs social workers. any institution with over 50mil endowment should have to scholarship those students at rates of like 80-90%
How about we hold the schools accountable as well. If their students aren’t getting jobs that pay well enough to repay then the schools should bear some responsibility and help repay as well
> If their students aren’t getting jobs that pay well enough to repay then the schools should bear some responsibility
this would probably entail that every school becomes a vocational school, and virtually nobody knows anything about history, philosophy, political theory, the arts, etc. more people might be able to get jobs but no one would be able to carry out civic responsibilities of any kind.
> stop extending gigantic loans to 18 year olds who don't understand what they are getting into
by definition, you can never expect not-yet-educated people whose brains are literally still undergoing the maturation process to be able to predict their own future, or the future of the job market in a decade or two.
But college is still a great investment, the increase in salary on average is far above the cost of the loans. If you stop offering loans fewer people can get ahead.
First two years after high school should be free, pick a trade or get an associates degree that will get your foot in the door somewhere that generates value for the economy. If you want a bachelor’s degree you can pay for that yourself, and the repayment terms should be fair.
I mean we can do that, but then we’re going to have every business screaming about not having employees. That was a major factor in the politics of 2020-2022, and we’re still dealing with it to this day.
It’s not hard for those employers to get educated staff from overseas. So we’ll just have to vastly expand our skilled immigrant visas at the expense of Americans.
They don’t factor COL in at all in any repayment plan. It’s a set percentage calculation of your AGI, or gross if you upload paystubs. Meaning that your payment is only based on income, regardless of where you live or how much necessities like housing cost.
This is incorrect. IDR payments scale with income and the federal poverty level, which is set based on the cost of living. They are not set at a particular dollar amount.
Am I missing something I thought the federal poverty level was set to a particular dollar amount. According to census.gov based on the family size of 4 with 2 kids poverty threshold is 32,762. Also stated is “The same thresholds are used throughout the United States (they do not vary geographically).” https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidance/poverty-measures.html
I think the numbers used by the Fed here are wholly detached from reality. For example, what u/BlueberryFunk said about what the Fed considers to be the poverty level.
Thats really it now a days. Sure the numbers are there, and "real", but they don't reflect the actual experienced situations.
Your post history is a lot of you trolling posts about student debt and just being wrong about nearly everything, which is weird.
Aside from that no, wages for most workers have not doubled to keep up with everything else nearly doubling in the last few years. Rent and housing seeing a nearly 100% increase in 6 years has not led to wages also having a 100% increase in those 6 years.
The argument isn't "wages have not gone up" it's "wages have not gone up enough to keep up with costs" which has been the issue for all of this decade. I get that people in the top 3rd have seen great wage increases which is what's led to the US having a K economy, but everyone else has been left behind.
My post history is a lot of correcting false claims, like you made. I don't focus on student loans whatsoever. And I correct myself whenever proven wrong, unlike you.
The data I showed is ADJUSTED FOR COST OF LIVING. I literally said that in my comment.
People care about what they see their own finances doing. You aren't going to convince people that wages are keeping up or surpassing the cost of living when their wages aren't going up, but their cost of living is.
Whatever facts you're presenting do not reflect the reality that people are living.
What a silly and insensitive thing to say. Kinda seems like you just hate people who are struggling and hoping for life to get better and are angry that they're being left behind.
Data is irrelevant if it doesn't serve the needs of human beings. You care more about being technically correct than actually creating a better world for people who are struggling.
Well, that's a strawman. I'm not saying the fact isn't real, I'm saying that it isn't a useful fact when we're dealing with a highly segregated economy and that the fact doesn't accurately reflect reality for large sections of the population.
Statistics can be twisted to say whatever you want them to say, depending on how you present them. This is a fundamental aspect of political science.
No, it isn't a strawman. I'm merely pointing out how you sound like a Trump supporter. That isn't an argument.
> 'm saying that it isn't a useful fact when we're dealing with a highly segregated economy and that the fact doesn't accurately reflect reality for large sections of the population.
Post-COVID the poor were the one seeing the biggest gains in inflation-adjusted income. Every single income decile saw inflation-adjusted income growth. Which section isn't seeing reality reflected for them?
> Statistics can be twisted to say whatever you want them to say, depending on how you present them. This is a fundamental aspect of political science.
Great! Find me ANY source that indicates inflation adjusted income is currently falling. You can't, because you can't actually twist statistics to say what you want them to say.
Real, inflation-adjusted wages for the typical U.S. worker have largely stagnated or grown very slowly since the early 1970s, failing to keep pace with the dramatic rise in costs for housing, healthcare, and education. While nominal wages have risen significantly, their purchasing power has barely budged for over 40 years, with substantial gains often skewed towards higher earners.
Economic Policy Institute +3
Stagnant Real Wages: When adjusted for inflation, the average hourly earnings for non-supervisory workers have remained largely flat since roughly 1973.
Purchasing Power Disparity: While nominal median income has increased, it has not consistently outpaced the cost of living, leading to a loss of purchasing power for many, especially in sectors like education.
Huh, a quick Google search shows the real information. It's almost like you're picking a very specific metric to try and push your false world view.
Real means adjusted for cost of living. If real wages are higher than the past, as my data showed, by definition they outpaced the basket of goods and services.
In 2013, I was look for an apt for college in Sunnyvale, CA. $1500 for a flat with AC. That unit is now 3k a month. Wages have not doubled or quadrupled with housing.
The aggregate doesn't reflect the reality of the individual. It isn't a relevant statistic to individuals, so I don't understand why you think individuals are going to be comforted by it.
I'm not doing this to comfort or coddle anyone, I'm doing it to show wages have kept up with cost of living in aggregate, contrary to the false claim that they didn't.
No, you're here to tell people that because things are getting better for some people, they shouldn't be angry about being left behind. You aren't helping anybody. You're just using a statistic to push a pacifying narrative.
For a lot of people, it isn't a false claim. You're using the aggregate to blanket over what reality is for a lot of people. For a lot of people, the cost of living is outpacing their wages, but you're saying it isn't true because that isn't happening for this other group of people. You're using data like a hammer to tell people their reality isn't relevant.
Idk how you think yourself a serious person. If the wage starts below snuff, it rising with inflation doesn't mean it matches conditions. My parents didnt even recover from 2008/9 until after 2019.
What kind of data is it? It is the kind of data that uses math and economic figure gerrymandering to claim "well actually poor people have on average invested an extra 5 dollars into their savings every month this year"
Not mentioning the fact that said 5 dollars are withdrawn near immediately upon deposit.
I just struggle to consider that concrete. There are so many factors that make a single metric like that non viable to me. What is included in "cost of living". Is healthcare included? assumed savings for a house purchase? emergency funds? child care?
what it their apartment gets sold to a new property manager and rent goes up 200 a month? there is too much flux in the system
Surely someone as learned as yourself would understand the nuance behind cpi and how different demographic groups have experienced different rates of inflation based on their unique expenses?
Real, inflation-adjusted wages for the typical U.S. worker have largely stagnated or grown very slowly since the early 1970s, failing to keep pace with the dramatic rise in costs for housing, healthcare, and education. While nominal wages have risen significantly, their purchasing power has barely budged for over 40 years, with substantial gains often skewed towards higher earners.
Economic Policy Institute
Economic Policy Institute
+3
Stagnant Real Wages: When adjusted for inflation, the average hourly earnings for non-supervisory workers have remained largely flat since roughly 1973.
Purchasing Power Disparity: While nominal median income has increased, it has not consistently outpaced the cost of living, leading to a loss of purchasing power for many, especially in sectors like education.
Here you go, hope this changes your views now that you've been presented with contradicting evidence.
Real means adjusted for cost of living. If real wages are higher than the past, as my data showed, by definition they outpaced the basket of goods and services.
You never showed any data?? Please at least link the source you pulled your numbers from.
Are you forgetting to count for inflation?
Economic institute can show you how wages and purchasing power has stagnated since 1979, and it incorporates all the different data points you might have forgotten or left out of your "data".
Real median wages often fail to account for soaring costs of specific necessities not fully reflected in inflation indices, such as housing, groceries, and education. It's an easy number to point to but no single number is going to tell the whole story.
Real, inflation-adjusted wages for the typical U.S. worker have largely stagnated or grown very slowly since the early 1970s, failing to keep pace with the dramatic rise in costs for housing, healthcare, and education. While nominal wages have risen significantly, their purchasing power has barely budged for over 40 years, with substantial gains often skewed towards higher earners.
Economic Policy Institute +3
Stagnant Real Wages: When adjusted for inflation, the average hourly earnings for non-supervisory workers have remained largely flat since roughly 1973.
Purchasing Power Disparity: While nominal median income has increased, it has not consistently outpaced the cost of living, leading to a loss of purchasing power for many, especially in sectors like education.
Real means adjusted for cost of living. If real wages are higher than the past, as my data showed, by definition they outpaced the basket of goods and services.
Please try and listen so I don't need to go over this again.
I am not disagreeing with their findings. Their findings shows flat real wages since the 70s to 2018. That means wages kept up with the cost of living since the 70s to 2018.
Wages adjusted for cost of living have risen fairly dramatically since 2018, as the data shows. The same data they used for their research.
I am not arguing against them, and their findings are not contradictory to my claims.
I am absolutely baffled that people are as dense as you in this world...
There's so research and data and multiple multiple multiple articles that literally show and explain their findings which are completely contradictory to yours...
You just posted a data chart showing wages adjusted for CPI. No complimentary data to compare along side it. Like...are you genuinely trying to have a conversation, or are you just sticking your fingers in your ears going "na na na I can't hear you?"
Please try and listen so I don't need to go over this again.
I am not disagreeing with their findings. Their findings shows flat real wages since the 70s to 2018. That means wages kept up with the cost of living since the 70s to 2018.
Wages adjusted for cost of living have risen fairly dramatically since 2018, as the data shows. The same data they used for their research.
I am not arguing against them, and their findings are not contradictory to my claims.
Okay, my mistake, I actually see what you're saying. You are correct, though there is additional data that and studies that show that the recently interested wages may not dramatically make up for previous gap years.
I would like to respond to this more later after work if possible.
I'd be happy to talk about it more as much as you like if you apologize for calling me dense, acting like I'm not having a real conversation, and saying you contradicted my data.
I mean, your whole point was that wages have gone up but ignore the fact that purchasing power has largely stagnated since the 70s.
If you don't understand how you were being dense to the general points that the conversation was based around, then I can't help you with that.
If you take it as an insult, that's on you. But you were, for all intent and purposes, being deliberately dense to the contentions that other people were making. You just seemed to care about being technically right without acknowledging the general status of the average American.
I fucking shitting my pants cause the last time they looked at my income to decide my IDR was 6 years ago. They are supposed to do it every year to make sure they can extract as much out of me as they can. Well, I must have fallen between the cracks or something because they have not reevaluated my income since 2019. If they did it now, I would be horrendously fucked. I make much more money than 2019, but not enough for them to take this chunk out of my pay, I'm already stretched thin. I could see them saying I could "afford" double what I'm paying now. Absolutely not, I would be ruined. So fingers crossed.
Some of this is on our governments, but some of it is also on the universities themselves. When they are buying wildly expensive software systems like Workday that cost $15k per student per year, maybe the costs overall have just gotten out of hand?
Where are you getting $15k per year per student from? Are you telling me a large state school could be paying over $350 million per year in fees just to work day ?
As we all know, 12 years of publicly funded education is capitalism, and 16 years of publicly funded education is communism. /s
We all benefit from education. All of us. I have no kids, but it's a good thing to me that people are doctors and engineers, and not subsistence farmers or drug dealers. It means more of everything for me.
Wipe out student loans (all of them) and tie future funding to the labor force we need. Doctors, nurses, welders get public education and philosophy professors pay their own way. Help 17 year olds make the right decision by providing the right information to them.
Education should not be tied to Capital's needs. This makes a education a commodity for Capital instead of a key ingredient in a functioning society. Without fail, Capital will skimp on the educational component and attempt to outsource it at every turn. Education, on the other hand, is one of the few bulwarks against the sort of capitalism we're in now, one where Capital was allowed to take over the role of Educational institutions. An educated citizenry is one of the ONLY ways to stop unrestrained capitalism and fascism without bloodshed, and the only way to prevent it from happening again after the bloodshed.
> "Those who own the country ought to govern it" is a noted maxim attributed to John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. It reflects early American Federalist beliefs that property owners, or "freeholders," had the greatest stake in the nation and should therefore control political governance.
Tying future funding to the (current) needs of the labor force wouldn't work because we're training people for their next ~40 years of labor participation. And we can't be certain what we need in the next several decades only educated guesses, which is why STEM is promoted. However, technology research needs social scientists and philosopher types or we'll end up with poor research.
We cannot be certain we will need food, guns, aircraft carriers, or nukes a year from now. Why do you go to work if you cannot be certain you will need the money when your paycheck comes?
Doing nothing is a choice too, and it's absolutely stupid to argue that we might not need doctors in 40 years. You equate an infinitely small possibility with something that 40 years ago, created today's problem. Do you think people in 1990 could not have guessed we would need doctors and nurses?
agree, people in this conversation have been advocating for doing nothing, and you responded to them for actually saying that. not as much as people saying we won't need doctors, but man did they say it.
That’s great and all but if at any point my neighbor gets a break that I don’t I’m going to start blaming a random disenfranchised group for my own self hatred.
I’m not capable of self fulfillment and the only way I can measure my happiness is knowing I have more than others.
> We all benefit from education. All of us. I have no kids, but it's a good thing to me that people are doctors and engineers, and not subsistence farmers or drug dealers. It means more of everything for me.
Most countries that have free or heavily subsidized university also are a lot more selective when it comes to admissions. So as of rn in the US little Sally with a 2.6 GPA can easily get accepted at a low/mid tier state school (she'll be paying full freight tho), that wouldn't fly in most of Europe
> Why do we want unsuccessful academics going to university because they are rich, instead of a successful academic who is poor?
Don't tell that to me, tell that to all the 'college should be free' Americans who think they can somehow have the exact same system we have in the US now but only with no costs.
The vast majoriity of human beings on earth stopped flinging poop long before college or philosophy existed. It was not, in fact, philosophy teachers that made that change. The humans that continue to fling poop to this day are not helped by philosophy teachers.
Also, not saying none are needed. We need coal miners, boxers, and prostitutes. But we are not so short of those workers that labor policy needs to create more of them by paying kids to go to school for those careers.
Scrap it entirely. If you want affordable higher education like we had two generations ago, you can't have no-strings-attached, free Federal money contributing to University bloat, price gouging, and waste. Universities should be lean, judicious, and competitive, not Federally-funded resorts churning out diplomas.
Americans don't like being told no - in other countries, they accept that a large portion are not going to college. The colleges that are available aren't the luxury palaces that many American colleges have become.
I can assure you the colleges I went to were not luxury palaces. And in any case, there are countries with higher college education attainment rates that offer low- or no-cost tuition, so that's probably not it
Yes. That happy medium is to use policy so that labor needs are met and people are successful. Instead of having 1 million software coders you could say "gee, enough people want to do that, lets not fund that, lets pay for nurses, doctors, and welders."
My point is the opposite of free college. Want to be a coal miner, a boxer, or a hooker? Fine, nothing is stopping you. Want to be an English teacher? My proposal changes nothing. But we SHOULD tip the scales for people who want high paying jobs in places that have labor shortages. The English teacher, boxer, hooker and coal miners all need those doctors...
I would love it if we could make post-secondary education more available; however, those demanding it don't seem willing to pay the higher taxes to make it a reality. We need people to be alright with paying more, so we can get more services and societal benefits.
Also, do we even need to maintain the expensive apparatus that accompanies higher education? Why can't we just make one-off continuing education classes more widely available rather than lengthy degree seeking. So many more people could learn specific skills that either interest them or are economically worthwhile rather than having to waste so much time completing classes to fulfill degree requirements.
We pay $1 trillion for the military and adventure wars. China pasy 250 billion. Do we really need 11 aircraft carriers when there are only 3 in the entire rest of the world?
We have the money. We choose to give jobs to young men blowing up foreigners instead of teaching them valuable skills. Fuck that.
Filed for borrower protection on my loans since I went to private tech school. Deferred until 2036. I'll likely pay them off long before then but I don't have to worry about garnishment.
They need to make the student loan repayment plans more generous. It’s a huge tax on education. The burden for improving the labor economy shouldn’t be so high
Why should ANYONE repay their student loans. We were promised higher paying wages and better career opportunities with our degrees. Instead we got unbelievable interests rates, predatory loans, outsourcing to private companies trying to make a profit, Republican controlled states killing affordable payment plans, an attack on PSFL positions and programs, and a whole lot of other nonsense. All that and the rise of costs in everything, no social safety nets, and no fucking jobs what are you even supposed to do!? Plus, a lot of people that took out student loans got them for jobs that serve the community. All of which is being destroyed by Pedo-in-Cheif.
Yeah idk I work for CPS and my payment is $500 almost. With rent and being a single income household I just don’t know how to do it. People act like graduating from college makes you super wealthy, but my friends who never went to college make just as much and don’t have to pay student loan payments… guess that’s my fault for being a mental health provider though.
Government mental health so you make a lot less too. My wife was a social worker for a small non-profit doing counseling and was getting like $35k/year back in 2017. She now makes close to $90k at a hospital and actually enjoys her work now.
Yeah, the barrier is I have to go back to school for a masters degree, so I’m not really able to do things besides case management even with 7 years experience. That’s what really holds me back, unfortunately.
The colleges got paid. Whose is holding the assets in student debt for fed loans? It's the dept of education. Whether or not it's morally okay to default on the gov is going to vary person to person. I personally don't see an issue in allowing the bankruptcy court to allow a 5 year payment plan or just a flat out chapter 7, and start over. After all the nefarious things the fed gov is up to, most wouldn't lose any sleep on burning bridges with some fed gov department, and it wouldn't be any different than stiffing American Express in a bankruptcy court in the grand scheme of things.
It's important to remember that the us fed government, despite all its touchy feeling messages, is the leviathan straight from Hobbes. Some never get that message, even well into old age.
The save plan gave me a payment I could afford! But noooo. Because it came from Biden and the democrats I get screwed! Not a forgiven loan. Payments to pay it back! But F my life.
Good for them. I hope they all collectively refuse to ever pay them.
Student loan debt has been an issue since I was a teenager, and we have had countless administrations do absolutely nothing to alleviate the problem for students. Predatory financiers still exist, loan terms are more stringent in 18 year olds with no knowledge of the world than they are on banks which have been around for centuries.
Financial noncompliance all the way. Let the lenders rot in hell where they belong.
>Good for them. I hope they all collectively refuse to ever pay them.
I respect your vigor, but this is encouraging a class of educated poor.
Degree holders are the statistical affluent. The only other more objective way to isolate the affluent is age. Just like we should help poor old people and not just gift a statistical affluent class aid, we should help poor student loan holders... not just preach some non-compliance that'll trap them in poverty.
Right, but that isn’t happening. 30 years of proof that no administration is going to help them nor care about them.
Financial noncompliance is the only effective outcome. It’s just like how people aren’t going to go to jail for the Epstein files. The system isn’t going to help these borrowers, and neither is anyone else.
The US government is losing a ton of lawyers over ICE's behavior, there's probably a good chance it takes the government ages to even get around to filing a case against people with students loans who decide to just stop paying
This has already happened. The Department of Education has already postponed garnishments reinstatement due to lack of staff and fear of economic collapse. The data spooked them. We could force this if more people just refused to pay.
I think the biggest reason not to default (previously) was that you wouldn’t be able to afford a home one day.
Now that you can’t afford a home anyway, there’s really no reason to pay them back. A garnishment, in most cases, will be less than the minimum payment they want.
data point of one, i would be willing to participate in a movement to house student loan strikers. i have a feeling the future we're headed into is going to require a lot of community solidarity anyway.
Many on SAVE were paying their loans. SAVE had an Income based repayment plan (5-10%). It was more beneficial as the rates reflected current economic times. Old plans were based on better economic times from 20-30 years ago.
Since Dipshit Trump gutted the entirety of SAVE, including the Income based plans, anyone that was on SAVE now has to sign up for an older IBR, which has a 2x to 3x a month payment. Hence, those that were successfully paying under SAVE, may now have a difficult time. To reiterate, many were paying under SAVE. Trump lied
The worst thing that Biden administration did was constantly talk about loan forgiveness. They should have been strongly, encouraging people to pay off their student loans when there was no interest due to Covid. It seemed like loan forgiveness had no shot to get through the courts, but was just being used as a political tool. If people kept paying their student loans during the interest freeze, many of them would be in a much better position today.
There is no long term planning here in the USA anymore that can be made by anyone lower/middle class. Its all built on administrative promises that are liable to switch around between elections and even within the same administrations tenure
Uh, there was a lot of debate on both sides whether Biden had the authority to do it. Plenty of people, including those who wrote the HELP act (I think that is what it was called?) believed he had the authority to do it.
I mean, just reading the legislation (going off of memory) and it said that the Sec of Education could alter the loans during a crisis, and they claimed COVID was a crisis. I dunno, seems like it was a reasonable plan.
The fact that SCOTUS rejected it isn't because it wasn't a sound plan, but because this SCOTUS is wildly partisan. They routinely defer to the executive's judgment when it is a Republican and block it when it is a Democrat.
He deliberately dragged it out in such a way to give legal challenges a chance, by adding means testing.
If he had universally cancelled all student loans shit would have already been cancelled before a court could have heard it. There is no mechanism to bill everyone anew once their loans are forgiven
The courts could have complained after the fact but they aint got a time machine
It always felt like Biden really didn't want to do loan forgiveness, but he was pretty much forced to try it. During the 2020 campaign, multiple democrats promised to forgive tens of thousands in loans immediately, so Biden had to promise something to not look too bad by comparison. He wanted Congress to pass it into law, but they weren't interested. So he dragged his feet for two and a half years hoping people would forget and not blame him for it not coming to fruition. When multiple Democrats said that he could do it with an executive action (which I'm convinced he didn't believe), he was backed into a corner and just had to try something. He probably thought he'd get a bunch of credit for trying even though he wasn't really on board with the plan, but then people got mad that he just kinda let the Supreme Court derail the most consequential parts of his efforts without a real fight.
It was a crappy situation that really blew up in his face, and the majority of current student loan borrowers (and all future borrowers) are somehow in a worse spot now with respect to their loans than if Biden didn't do anything. For many years, Democratic Administrations were quietly making things incrementally better for borrowers until advocates got a bit too ambitious in 2020. Republicans negated much of that hard work last summer with OBBB. Its going to be really hard for Democrats to claw all that back in the future before trying to make any progress on their own goals.
Agreed. This entire segment just received years of stimulus and the aid apparently worsened the issue. Exploring why is important if more aid is expected to fix the issue.
What the fuck are you talking about "exploring why?!"
We know why, as in, literally anyone who has bothered to research this instead of develop a "gut feeling" opinion
Running a university is more expensive than it used to be for the same reason cost of living has gone up
Vendors and the like for medical programs charge more than they used to
The Federal governmnet doesn't pay colleges for research nearly what it used to
Every fucking state in the goddamn united states has slashed their college subsidies YOY. UCLA used to be 70% state funded just 20 years ago, now its ~25%.
Compared to these, all the usual suspects like "admin fees" are nothing.
None of yall want to hear it though, you want to blame ~student loans~ despite the fact that the student loan cap hasn't been raised in what? 20 years?
In 1990 a public university could expect 2/3 or 3/4 of its costs to be paid directly by the taxpayers, and indirectly another huge percentage by federal grants, leaving only a small fraction that needs to be paid by in-state tuition, with foreign and out of state students paying the bulk of the remainder
That has been my gripe as well. Democratic politicians risk underdelivering on campaign promises they were pressured into making, and also risk suppressing enthusiasm and turnout among constituents. If there was any opportunity to help students with debt, it is preparing for the hypothetical scenario for when payments resumed and if SCOTUS strikes down loan forgiveness, and not acknowledging that potential reality did a great disservice to students that are crushed by loan payments right now. Some students with debt have gotten lucky or taken their situations seriously; cannot say much about the prospects for the rest that didn’t make it out.
It was politically beneficial to talk about, but not beneficial to actually execute because then they couldn’t run on that promise anymore. To forgive the debt would be to get rid of a political tool that could be used to obtain power again in the future. They need ‘promises’ that seem within reach but are never actually fulfilled. Also see affordable health care, housing, etc.
No the worst thing they did was let the courts tell them what they could and couldn't do
I'm sick and fucking tired of Reublicans being able to do anything from drag our nation to war on lies or prosecute political enemies unjustly or lately deploy armed goons who have absolute legal immunity to break the constitution
But Biden had to wishy washily means test and equivocate fucking loan forgiveness for months so they could weasel it before their bought and paid for judiciary
Instead of just
"Today I ordered all student loans expunged, DOE has forgiven all of your loans. each borrower will get a thing in the mail saying their loans are cancelled"
and when the court says nah "Oh well we already did it. We have no mechanism to re-issue new debt to paid off borrowers"
President: Uses the black letter law that says he can forgive loans to forgive loans in a way that makes it difficult if not impossible to challenge
You: Authortarianism
President: Orders his AG and FBI to cover up his involvement in the world's largest child trafficking operation to the tune of more than one million mentions being redacted (more than there are wrods in the Lotr
President: Orders his ICE to violate the fourth amendment of the constitution;tells them they have absolute criminal immunity
President: Tries to arrest opposition party for telling soldiers they dont have to fllow illegal orders
President: I'm going to nationalize the elections; we dont need a mid term
President: FBI raids states election offices at the direction of president and his director of national intelligence
You: Doesn't look like anything to me
Tired of these fucking games.
You don't care about executive overreach.Y ou never have, never will, you just want Liberals to LOSE and you want Amerricnas to SUFFER
That's it, that's your sole political position: All Americans that aren't me or mine must suffer. F Off
I whole reason for pausing repayments is because the employment/financial situations of many people were negatively affected. If you were laid off, and your cost of living went up dramatically, you unfortunately were not in a great position to take advantage of it.
They were paused for more than 3 years, a lot longer than they should have been since it was a Covid measure. Many were capable to be paying it down but were banking on them being forgiven. They were actively mislead unfortunately.
They were never really going to be forgiven. It would have poked a huge hole in the US budget. It's really unpopular to have the US taxpayer pay for it especially when so many didn't go to college
If we're talking strictly in financial terms: if people had other debts with higher interest rates, it would be smarter to stop paying student loan debt and instead focus on lowering other debts with higher interest rates.
And then there is the high unemployment rate and students who cannot find jobs after they get out of college/ University. Hmmmm, what can possibly go wrong when these world intersect
When they paused repayments during COVID borrowers used that money and expanded their on going expenses. When the payments started up again they had already committed that part of their budget and now can't make payments.
Also, only a chump repays their loan while they are being told it is going to be forgiven. Why throw money at a loan when if you wait it may just go away on it's own.
The whole student loan / college system needs to be reworked. The costs are too high, and are spent in all the wrong places. The benefits are dwindling. The areas of study are out of date, and many rooted in elitist culture. Schools will charge what people can pay, which is dictated by what people can borrow. Letting people borrow 6 figures for degrees that will not generate an income to repay that was always going to lead to this collapsing on itself.
I bet they voted for the fucking Cheeto thinking he’d do anything. I’m sitting here a working wage slave trying to scrape by while paying as much as I physically can to see my loans basically sit stagnant growing interest at a rate that’s basically guaranteed that it will sit on my head for many more years to come. I’ve nothing to show for this massive student loan I was allowed to take out at 18.
Cancel all student loans. Make college publicly paid for at least through Bachelor's degrees, work with colleges to reduce costs for schooling. You still want student loans to be a thing? Fine. Make then 0% interest and forgiven after 5 years.
Enough with the BS and hand wringing. Enough with the elitism and "it's not fair" crap. A better educated population benefits us all and is wise investment no matter how you cut it.
(This message brought to you by someone went to college twice, managed to pay off his loans, and still wants to see college loan debt forgive or deferred.)
We've got money to fund ICE better than some foreign militaries? We've got money to build Trump's ballroom? Elon and Co got money to dump into elections so they can get tax cuts? We've got the money to put into college and education for everybody.
Fuck off six ways from Sunday with that "we can't afford it" bullshit. I'd rather my taxes to educating our citizens than Trump's golf trips.
Good luck getting a politician to cut their defense budget in favor of throwing billions of dollars in free upper education. They don't do things like that. Instead, they raise taxes on you and me because we don't offer them anything.
PPP "loans" were explicitly designed to be written off as long as a few very simple conditions were met.
These loans and grants, at their core, were compensation for the losses incurred by the government-mandated closures and other disruptions due to COVID, helping businesses stay afloat. It was about the same helicopter money as personal paychecks, just with some strings attached to reduce the most blatant misuse (not that such blatant misuse didn't happen anyway).
There's no similar force majeure involved in the acquisition of student debt, neither did the government force anyone into schools, nor were the loans explicitly designed to be forgiveable (they are explicitly not forgiveable instead).
The scolding of teenagers who were told to take out loans and in return would get a good job is always a great look for y'all. Especially when you failed to get them the good job.
You’re an adult at 18 able to sign contracts. If you chose a useless liberal arts degree that’s on you and your parents. College is ONLY a business decision. Go for a degree with low unemployment rates that is useful everywhere.
CassadagaValley | 7 hours ago
>What kinds of improvements might act as guardrails at the edge of this default cliff?
>Three letters: IDR. Income-driven repayment plans allow for borrowers' monthly payments to shrink or grow depending on what they can afford.
None of the IDR plans available (at least to me) reflect the massive CoL increase that has happened since COVID though. Rent/housing has basically doubled, utilities have almost doubled, food costs have exploded, etc. IDR plans seem to be based around the CoL of like 2015.
Eliese | 4 hours ago
We need reasonable IDRs. Mine went from $20 month under Biden to $447 now. I am happy to pay my debt, but the terms keeps changing.
kirime | 32 minutes ago
Sorry, but $20/month is not really "reasonable" in any way, unless your debt is like $1000 total.
To simply provide initial money for the student loan, the government itself borrows it at a rate of currently 4.8% (20-year treasury yield, same as the average repayment period). That's just the cost of existence of that money. If your payments don't cover even 1/10th of that, it's not even remotely close to "paying the debt".
EmergencyThing5 | 4 hours ago
How much would you say is fair? That is a pretty big gap. If you feel compelled to pay off the debt, you can just opt for the standard repayment and don't have to worry about the number changing. Otherwise, you are kinda stuck with how much of a break the government is willing to give you at the time.
SpareManagement2215 | 3 hours ago
Most of the people those IDR plans are for select them because standard is unaffordable, and because they CAN’T pay extra to just “pay off their loans”. For example, my IBR payment is $375, which I can do but barely. My standard is well over $1500, which I could in no way afford.
EmergencyThing5 | 3 hours ago
That's understandable. I just threw that in there since IDR payments will likely change ever year while the standard payment does not, and there are people who might be better off just paying the standard if its not substantially higher than the IDR. They didn't give numbers, so it wasn't possible to know.
The crux of the comment was trying to understand what was considered fair. If their current monthly IDR payment is $447, they would be paying almost twice as much in one month now compared to what they would have paid annually under Biden. That's a huge gap. What is a fair amount to pay under IDR? Should borrowers be expected to at least pay off their principal like it probably will be under RAP or should it be more heavily subsidized like it would have been under SAVE?
SpareManagement2215 | 4 minutes ago
IDR payments go up each year, too, as your income increases and you file to recertify it. The idea being that you don't start out making much at the start of your career, so you can't put much away towards your loans when you're also trying to do things like build an emergency fund. So yes, the balance increases, but as you start earning more you'll start paying towards the principal. An issue there is obviously that employers are NOT paying more and there's a shortage of advancement opportunities for millenials and zoomers due to boomers and gen x not retiring.
Unless you start out in a high earning field, you are almost never better off starting on standard, because the money would be better spent paying off private loans and "bad debt", maxing out retirement/HSA, building an emergency fund, and saving for a house.
Many folks DO switch to standard after being on IDR while they were building up their incomes. Many other people pay their original balance plus much more in that case.
Then, ofc, you have your PSLF folks who HAVE to be on an IDR plan for their payments to qualify - standard only counts when there's a ton of asterisks associated with it.
If someone is paying $447/mo on an IDR, they're likely earning over 80k/year. I earn 72k/year, no dependents, and my monthly payment is $375. 80k can be considered a "great" income in some areas, and is almost low enough in other areas to qualify you for state based poverty resources. However, your federal loan rate doesn't factor ANY of that into account. Hence why folks are like "my payment is too high".
The Biden SAVE plan guidance were what I'd consider to be quite reasonable. RAP, honestly, for anyone earning under about 70k, is pretty reasonable too. The reason people's payments are jumping isn't because anything changed; Biden made the payments more affordable under SAVE and that went away because of the SAVE litigation. The payments they're seeing now is what it would have been this whole time without SAVE.
The issue with saying things like "it should have to be x percentage of your original loan balance" is it fails to take into account a lot of variables. your monthly payment being tied to, say, 10% take home pay via your tax forms filed for 20 years and whatever is left is discharged seems pretty reasonable to me. I don't know how the feds even begin to factor in COL; changing things to take home pay would be VERY helpful tho IMO.
The other issue I have is I shouldn't have to micromanage my servicer and know this much about loan repayment. Any bank would be sued to oblivion if they pulled half the stunts servicers pull. Mohela has been sued a bunch of times and yet still is allowed to operate.
So many of the issues really just boil down to:
employers don't pay employees enough, student loan servicers are predatory and scummy organizations, and it's unfair to borrowers they're caught up in that and told it's their fault.
Eliese | 3 hours ago
I could do $200 per month. I cannot afford standard repayment. I graduated in 2017, and I'm in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. I would never have gone back to school without PSLF and reasonable IDR. As you might be aware, borrowers have been jerked around like crazy. That's not right.
EmergencyThing5 | 3 hours ago
Yea, the back and forth sucks. Fortunately, they didn't throw out PSLF. I wish Democrats and Republicans would get together and figure out the rules, so there is not need to constantly change them. I can see a world where Democrats reverse a bunch of things Republicans just did over the summer. Then Republicans come back in and change it back. There is just no consensus and the whole thing is pretty much broken anyway.
Gamer_Grease | 3 hours ago
That’s terrible economic and education policy, though.
dust4ngel | 2 hours ago
it depends if the goal of the policy is to increase or decrease the number of educated people
EmergencyThing5 | 3 hours ago
what part?
Gamer_Grease | an hour ago
Wildly swinging expectations of monthly expenses for educated professionals.
flamehead2k1 | 5 hours ago
Or stop extending gigantic loans to 18 year olds who don't understand what they are getting into.
especially when those loans increase the demand for college to the point where colleges increase tuition in excess of inflation
swamrap | 5 hours ago
To make that happen they need to allow student loans forgiven in the event of bankruptcy. That will make the banks actually calculate risk, instead of agreeing to any number for any student, which also leads to inflation of tuition fees.
flamehead2k1 | 5 hours ago
you could make the universities themselves a guarantor of part of the loan. give them some skin in the game.
fruitybrisket | 3 hours ago
I like the idea of schools having more accountability for the success of their students, but I think this idea could end up with universities selling loans to other schools, or even fudging numbers for state programs that have a gpa requirement for students to retain eligibility, e.g, here's a semester's worth of tuition as long as your student maintains a 2.5.
flamehead2k1 | 3 hours ago
I don't see why making the school guarantee a percentage of the loans would result in this things.
if the government were to do this, they could create some type of escrow/collateral system and/or prevents transfer of the guarantor obligation.
I don't see how state programs factor in. are you saying there would be a new incentive to cheat those programs beyond what exists today?
SpareManagement2215 | 3 hours ago
But colleges don’t control the suppressed wages employers pay. So that doesn’t make sense at all.
flamehead2k1 | 3 hours ago
They do control their exorbitant costs and the quality of education they deliver
freakincampers | 23 minutes ago
A lot of those costs are because parents demanded it.
ILUVBIGBOONS | 4 hours ago
In order for this to happen, then you’d introduce loan covenants, collateral, and other incentives. Aka banks are only going to provide loans to majors with clear ROI, only give loans to students who can clearly prove their acumen, only give loans to the best schools, say students are in breach of covenants if they change their majors, etc.
I don’t disagree that we need to allow the debt to be dischargeable in bankruptcy, but then the banks will need collateral that they can go take from students/parents if a student goes into bankruptcy. I assume you’d be okay with all this?
Seeing as most people’s only asset is their home, the implication is that banks would go take parents homes when their child defaults on their student loans…
jennimackenzie | 4 hours ago
You absolutely can have your student debt forgiven in a bankruptcy.
You just have to be the child of a Congressperson.
EmergencyThing5 | 4 hours ago
Banks generally do take risk into account when extending student loans. The government does not take repayment risk into account when they lend to students, and the vast majority of these loans are held by the government.
Herban_Myth | 4 hours ago
Tariffs will fix the debt issue while the rich minority get more tax breaks and party on taxpayer money!
‘Til debt do us part!
(/s)
rocketblue11 | 3 hours ago
I can't speak for everyone, but I can give my own anecdotal example. It's not that I didn't understand what I was getting into at age 18. It's that the kinds of salaries and stable jobs I was promised never really materialized.
Now, if I had landed an entry level job right after graduation with the kinds of starting salaries my advisors specifically cited, those salaries grew at about the rate of inflation and I wasn't disrupted by endless cycles of layoffs, then sure, I would have been able to pay my loans off forever ago.
But what actually happened far exceeded the worst-case scenarios I ran when trying to calculate the risk of taking out undergrad loans and then taking out more loans to go to grad school to level up and weather a recession.
flamehead2k1 | 2 hours ago
What industry? if you don't mind me asking.
4look4rd | 4 hours ago
I’ve been saying this for a while but the way we fund higher ed is upside down. All risk is on the borrower, banks and institutions have no skin in the game.
Make the default loan to be 10% of earnings for 10 years or some shit like that and watch higher ed totally transform.
Maleficent_Ant_8895 | 4 hours ago
This is 100% spot on
Capping student loans will forces universities to stop their outrageous tuition hikes
The loan limits are setting the tuition, not the other way around
4look4rd | 4 hours ago
It would also force schools to focus on job placement, since expected wages after graduation would be a major factor on banks deciding to loan.
Higher education is fucked because it’s an incentives problem.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Except college, despite its cost, continues to result in dramatically better lifetime outcomes..
DABOSSROSS9 | 5 hours ago
That does not mean they need to increase their costs every single year
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
They do if inflation exists, unless they are a for-profit college with wide margins, in which case they don't need to.
DABOSSROSS9 | 5 hours ago
Yes, but the cost of college has drastically increased beyond inflation
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
True, but his claim was the price doesn't need to increase each year, which is what I was contesting.
Agile_Land_9951 | 4 hours ago
Really need to send these kids to community college if they’re going to need massive loans. My state recently passed a law allowing community colleges to offer 4 year degrees. It’s $100 a credit for 100-200 level and they’re planning on $150 a credit for upper division. This includes a free electronic copy of the book. The local state public university costs $1000 a credit not including the book and program fees. I understand colleges have a lot of buildings maintenance, research, high paying faculty.
awesome-alpaca-ace | 39 minutes ago
State and federal funding for colleges has decreased while prison funding has increased. That almost certainly increases the cost of college and makes you wonder what the hell our "representatives" are doing.
DidAnyoneElseJustCum | 5 hours ago
Employers are so out of touch with reality. They use 6 figure college degrees as a vetting system when the reality is that most jobs out there don't require that kind of training. A mid level marketing position for example requires probably requires 3 weeks to get into the groove and an online course on InDesign.
The basic concept is that if you have the ability to make it through 4 years of college you're probably not a total piece of shit which is obviously not true and not worth sinking the US economy over.
welshwelsh | 4 hours ago
Most jobs don't need a college degree, but they do need people who can read and do basic math.
A high school diploma doesn't mean anything anymore, and we regularly give diplomas to people who have an elementary-school level reading ability. So college degrees are the new proof of literacy.
DidAnyoneElseJustCum | 4 hours ago
Surprise surprise. Lift up the rock and you find roaches. Just like so many other things in America for the last 50 years. The problem begins to feel so monumental that we just throw are hands up and hope that we die before it becomes truly unbearable.
Yes, you're not wrong. US education is fucked from day one and now we need to spend 100k to prove we can form a sentence. Some real late stage capitalism type stuff.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
I agree most jobs don't need college, but employers can pretty easily find people with degrees, so from their point of view they will hire people with degrees over those without.
DidAnyoneElseJustCum | 5 hours ago
They can easily find those people because way too many people have unnecessary college degrees that they have to go into debt for.
I'm not trying to gatekeep or anything. I honestly regret going to college. I had a great time. Made great friends and memories. Learned a lot. But I hindsight I wish I just got a 4 year head start on my life because I've learned infinitely more in the time since college.
AdmirableBus6 | 5 hours ago
I did not go to college, I had a couple of hiccups in life and now I’m in my mid 30’s and wishing I’d have just committed to a degree 15 years ago
DidAnyoneElseJustCum | 5 hours ago
The system is self selecting. The kind of person with the drive and resources to go likely would've done fine anyway. That will skew the numbers on incomes for those with college degrees.
We're half a century past a bachelors degree being anything resembling a guaranteed pathway to prosperity. There's just so many resources out there. If you cared that much you'd get an associates degree in your free time for a fraction of the cost. But you haven't done that. So the self selecting system worked.
allchattesaregrey | an hour ago
I also think it’s interesting that so many jobs require “a degree” that clearly don’t require specific degrees, or they would state exactly what they were. While 4 years of college indicates something about a candidate, the traditional college time frame is a point in your life when there’s some structure and guidelines placed in front of you. Typically you’re fresh out of high school, where there’s some sense of structure and what’s expected of you. Many people have guidance councilors or parents keeping up with them. At the very least there are much more clear expectations. Adult life is not like that at all. If you were to judge a candidate on their actual performance in adult life (not what they may have done many years ago in a structured environment) fewer people would be portrayed in as good a light. Adult life is not easy and it’s easy to miss the mark on a lot of it.
DidAnyoneElseJustCum | an hour ago
I think that middle period when you're becoming an adult is certainly important and it was nice to have somebody to hold your hand through it but yeah if you really wanna separate the cattle and chaff gimme the person who hustled on their own and is still motivated.
AgileDrag1469 | 5 hours ago
The other side of this is the sheer number of people employed by colleges and universities, even the diploma mills. Everyone looks at professors and administrators but there’s other headcount that rely on these institutions to survive out in the real world.
flamehead2k1 | 5 hours ago
That varies highly by degree and if it were broadly true, there wouldn't be these large defaults.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
No, it's pretty much universal.
https://www.studentchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/ROI-by-major-5.png
flamehead2k1 | 4 hours ago
I want to note that this is a consortium of lenders publishing that analysis and it uses total earnings to calculate ROI instead of the increase in earnings vs not having a degree.
it also doesn't account for the opportunity cost of lost wages while in school for 4 years.
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
Abel and Dietz did this research a decade ago and found it's still worth it even with four years of lost earnings, but good research like that won't come out every year.
flamehead2k1 | 5 hours ago
That's a neat statistical trick.
You said college was worth it. This argues the degree is worth it which conveniently excludes anyone who doesn't get a degree (even though they still have to pay the debt)
If what you're claiming is broadly true, why the high default rates?
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
It's not a trick.
If you're too stupid to finish college, then yeah, don't go to college, you're only hurting yourself. If you go, you have to finish it.
Can you define high? Student loan default rates are basically at the long-term average.
flamehead2k1 | 5 hours ago
>It's not a trick.
yes it is, you're excluding the worst performers from your analysis.
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
When you check if the military helps people financially, do you say it doesn't because some people die from it before they can benefit?
Wiegarf | 4 hours ago
…yes? I’d include the number who died before benefiting? If it swings the math it swings the math, excluding them is negating a significant risk
flamehead2k1 | 4 hours ago
I absolutely would factor that in
SalaciousSubaru | 5 hours ago
Not in every case but in many yes
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
Yes because when I made that statement I meant literally every single person who goes to college..
yourdailyorwell | 3 hours ago
Well then, by all means let's keeping making it more and more expensive.
morbie5 | 5 hours ago
True but the cost of college is growing faster than wages so that calculation gets worse every year
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Yes, if the trend continues eventually it won't be worth it, but we don't know if that will occur or if the market will adjust for it.
morbie5 | 3 hours ago
> but we don't know if that will occur or if the market will adjust for it.
It is already adjusting in my state. Enrollment at all public 4 year schools has dropped like a rock except at the 3 most prestigious schools.
So those schools that have suffered huge declines will either need to downsize or cut costs
deepoutdoors | 4 hours ago
Are you a college administrator?
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
No, I actually hate traditional colleges. They are incredibly inefficient.
AddyTurbo | 5 hours ago
I would say it depends. I believe a union welder will earn more than a holder of B.A in liberal arts. If however, the college grad earns his/her degree in STEM, health care or finance, that grad will eventually overtake the union welder, despite college loans.
itsmariokartwii | 4 hours ago
A union welder will make more than the vast majority of college graduates in general
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
Except the non-college bucket doesn't consist of just union welders, I'm speaking aggregates.
Brilliant-Block-8200 | 3 hours ago
Not everyone can do labor jobs tho. There need to be more ‘office type’ jobs available
WiseBelt8935 | 5 hours ago
only if you pass and do well
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Sure, if you're too dumb for college don't go, obviously.
WiseBelt8935 | 5 hours ago
So you need very tight control over admissions. Individuals aren’t the best judges of their own ability, especially when claims like “continues to result in dramatically better lifetime outcomes” are being made.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Yes, agreed, we should do it based on test scores and be stricter.
vand3lay1ndustries | 5 hours ago
Yes, it used to. However, recent data shows new grads currently struggling to find their first job. Especially CS grads.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Struggling to find a first job is not indicative of lifetime earnings not increasing as a result of college. After 2008 the market was brutal for years. Yet those people still on track to make more over their lifetimes.
TgetherinElctricDrmz | 5 hours ago
Agreed.
Maybe we should start funding college instead of Israel, Egypt, Argentina, ICE, and $200 billion in GLP-1 meds
morbie5 | 5 hours ago
> Or stop extending gigantic loans to 18 year olds who don't understand what they are getting into.
That doesn't happen. Undergrad fed direct loans are capped at about 30k for dependent students in most cases.
It is parents who took out parent plus loans or grad students that have the massive balances. Both parent plus and grad plus loans had to caps before OBBB
An 18 year old could take on massive amounts of private student loans but to do so they would almost certainly require a cosigner
Complaintsdept123 | 4 hours ago
Yep, we need to stop parasitic behavior like these companies ignoring their fiduciary duty by lending to kids with no assets because the government made it impossible to discharge these loans in bankruptcy. Lenders own students for life. That's the point.
oneWeek2024 | 4 hours ago
OR you know tax billionaires and corporations ....or instead of 1.5 trillion of discretionary spending on the war machine. we fund higher/continuing education
OR you know regulate the fuck out of student loan companies. HOW ABOUT ALLOW STUDENT DEBT TO BE DISCHARGED IN BANKRUPCY or a max threshold of income based repayment of 7 yrs (like in the bible) or even just cap interest to max 1/2 the loan amt. ---so a student loan is less a loan and more like a mortgage. where there's a fixed end point/balance expressed via the payment, and additional payments/faster payments means savings for the borrower. OR fixed/low interest rates based on income.
You could probably even regulate/tax large university endowments, or have checks against universities becoming hedgefunds. requiring certain high percentages of endowed scholarship for low salary degree programs or graduate studies to maintain tax exempt status. ie... the world needs social workers. any institution with over 50mil endowment should have to scholarship those students at rates of like 80-90%
Maroccheti | 5 hours ago
How about we hold the schools accountable as well. If their students aren’t getting jobs that pay well enough to repay then the schools should bear some responsibility and help repay as well
flamehead2k1 | 4 hours ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/s/fM8rDMFhHV
dust4ngel | 2 hours ago
> If their students aren’t getting jobs that pay well enough to repay then the schools should bear some responsibility
this would probably entail that every school becomes a vocational school, and virtually nobody knows anything about history, philosophy, political theory, the arts, etc. more people might be able to get jobs but no one would be able to carry out civic responsibilities of any kind.
dust4ngel | 2 hours ago
> stop extending gigantic loans to 18 year olds who don't understand what they are getting into
by definition, you can never expect not-yet-educated people whose brains are literally still undergoing the maturation process to be able to predict their own future, or the future of the job market in a decade or two.
the_fresh_cucumber | 44 minutes ago
Make universities guarantee a large portion of the loan.
Hit those overpaid school administrations where it hurts if a student is failing to advance their career after attending
Maleficent_Ant_8895 | 4 hours ago
Or just cap student loans and their interest rates while offering avenues for forgiveness/shortened payments via public service programs
CRoss1999 | 4 hours ago
But college is still a great investment, the increase in salary on average is far above the cost of the loans. If you stop offering loans fewer people can get ahead.
dThink_Ahea | 4 hours ago
Or make higher education free. Like many other 1st World countries, and even some US States.
RECCE_HIPPO | 14 minutes ago
First two years after high school should be free, pick a trade or get an associates degree that will get your foot in the door somewhere that generates value for the economy. If you want a bachelor’s degree you can pay for that yourself, and the repayment terms should be fair.
Gamer_Grease | 3 hours ago
I mean we can do that, but then we’re going to have every business screaming about not having employees. That was a major factor in the politics of 2020-2022, and we’re still dealing with it to this day.
flamehead2k1 | 3 hours ago
There will still be employees. There just won't be the unreasonable requirement of a college degree for a lot of jobs that really don't need it.
Comparing that to 2020-2022 COVID issues is off the mark unless you're referring to something else in that timeframe
Gamer_Grease | an hour ago
It’s not hard for those employers to get educated staff from overseas. So we’ll just have to vastly expand our skilled immigrant visas at the expense of Americans.
SpareManagement2215 | 3 hours ago
They could bring back government grants for higher ed, like the boomers had.
OhGr8WhatNow | 5 hours ago
Even at that, IDR plans are how people pay $170,000 over 20 years on an original $90,000 debt and now still owe $120,000.
The expectation was that college degrees would lead to higher incomes, but lack of oversight for greedy corporations has put that to rest.
SpareManagement2215 | 3 hours ago
They don’t factor COL in at all in any repayment plan. It’s a set percentage calculation of your AGI, or gross if you upload paystubs. Meaning that your payment is only based on income, regardless of where you live or how much necessities like housing cost.
JimJam4603 | 5 hours ago
This is incorrect. IDR payments scale with income and the federal poverty level, which is set based on the cost of living. They are not set at a particular dollar amount.
BlueberryFunk | 5 hours ago
> federal poverty level
Is a complete JOKE. It is $15,960 for single person in the year 2026.
JimJam4603 | 5 hours ago
That’s why there’s a multiplier.
GuiltyJudge | 5 hours ago
Am I missing something I thought the federal poverty level was set to a particular dollar amount. According to census.gov based on the family size of 4 with 2 kids poverty threshold is 32,762. Also stated is “The same thresholds are used throughout the United States (they do not vary geographically).” https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidance/poverty-measures.html
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Prepare to be downvoted.
JimJam4603 | 5 hours ago
Oh, I’m well aware of how much Reddit appreciates economic realities as opposed to doomer vibes.
RichIndependence8930 | 5 hours ago
I think the numbers used by the Fed here are wholly detached from reality. For example, what u/BlueberryFunk said about what the Fed considers to be the poverty level.
Thats really it now a days. Sure the numbers are there, and "real", but they don't reflect the actual experienced situations.
deadguyinthere | 3 hours ago
I agree. I’m supposed to pay $320 a month. My IDR is like $210. Realistically I can afford to pay $80-$100 a month but that’s not an option.
tossawayheyday | an hour ago
Yeah, I’d love to pay something but the IDR cripples me
New-Anybody3050 | 56 minutes ago
It should be based on the borrower not the household.
Nemarus_Investor | 6 hours ago
Wages have kept up with cost of living in aggregate since 2015. In fact wages have grown faster than cost of living since 2015.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
For the people here who don't know economic terms, 'real' means adjusted for costs of goods and services.
I'm fascinated by the people downvoting facts.
CassadagaValley | 4 hours ago
Your post history is a lot of you trolling posts about student debt and just being wrong about nearly everything, which is weird.
Aside from that no, wages for most workers have not doubled to keep up with everything else nearly doubling in the last few years. Rent and housing seeing a nearly 100% increase in 6 years has not led to wages also having a 100% increase in those 6 years.
The argument isn't "wages have not gone up" it's "wages have not gone up enough to keep up with costs" which has been the issue for all of this decade. I get that people in the top 3rd have seen great wage increases which is what's led to the US having a K economy, but everyone else has been left behind.
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
My post history is a lot of correcting false claims, like you made. I don't focus on student loans whatsoever. And I correct myself whenever proven wrong, unlike you.
The data I showed is ADJUSTED FOR COST OF LIVING. I literally said that in my comment.
Here is the data again.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Do you admit you're wrong now?
Vegetable_Tomorrow41 | 5 hours ago
Because wages haven’t grown for the working class. Just the tech heads and financial gurus
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
They have. The first quartile (lowest 25%) have done well since 2015. But I guess people don't care about facts.
Teamawesome2014 | 5 hours ago
People care about what they see their own finances doing. You aren't going to convince people that wages are keeping up or surpassing the cost of living when their wages aren't going up, but their cost of living is.
Whatever facts you're presenting do not reflect the reality that people are living.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Yes, some people do not have the intelligence required to understand their life doesn't represent 330 million people.
These people probably need to be kept in soft padded rooms for their own safety, but yes they exist.
Teamawesome2014 | 5 hours ago
What a silly and insensitive thing to say. Kinda seems like you just hate people who are struggling and hoping for life to get better and are angry that they're being left behind.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Yes, I hate people who are too stupid to understand how data works. I wish they would stop breeding.
Teamawesome2014 | 5 hours ago
Data is irrelevant if it doesn't serve the needs of human beings. You care more about being technically correct than actually creating a better world for people who are struggling.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
I care about both, actually. But you can only create a better world if you acknowledge reality first.
CSMegadeth | 4 hours ago
That comment alone should be reason enough to have you sterilized.
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
I already am, so you're welcome.
Brilliant-Block-8200 | 3 hours ago
So individual people don’t matter at all? People who can’t afford rent or have to skip meals or heating don’t exist to you?
Nemarus_Investor | 3 hours ago
What a wild question to ask me. Of course individual people matter, why would you assume they don't?
BidenGlazer | 5 hours ago
You literally sound like a Trumper right now. "I don't care about the facts, I care about my own reality!!"
Teamawesome2014 | 5 hours ago
Well, that's a strawman. I'm not saying the fact isn't real, I'm saying that it isn't a useful fact when we're dealing with a highly segregated economy and that the fact doesn't accurately reflect reality for large sections of the population.
Statistics can be twisted to say whatever you want them to say, depending on how you present them. This is a fundamental aspect of political science.
BidenGlazer | 5 hours ago
No, it isn't a strawman. I'm merely pointing out how you sound like a Trump supporter. That isn't an argument.
> 'm saying that it isn't a useful fact when we're dealing with a highly segregated economy and that the fact doesn't accurately reflect reality for large sections of the population.
Post-COVID the poor were the one seeing the biggest gains in inflation-adjusted income. Every single income decile saw inflation-adjusted income growth. Which section isn't seeing reality reflected for them?
> Statistics can be twisted to say whatever you want them to say, depending on how you present them. This is a fundamental aspect of political science.
Great! Find me ANY source that indicates inflation adjusted income is currently falling. You can't, because you can't actually twist statistics to say what you want them to say.
TheRealBananaWolf | 4 hours ago
Real, inflation-adjusted wages for the typical U.S. worker have largely stagnated or grown very slowly since the early 1970s, failing to keep pace with the dramatic rise in costs for housing, healthcare, and education. While nominal wages have risen significantly, their purchasing power has barely budged for over 40 years, with substantial gains often skewed towards higher earners.
Economic Policy Institute +3
Stagnant Real Wages: When adjusted for inflation, the average hourly earnings for non-supervisory workers have remained largely flat since roughly 1973.
Purchasing Power Disparity: While nominal median income has increased, it has not consistently outpaced the cost of living, leading to a loss of purchasing power for many, especially in sectors like education.
Huh, a quick Google search shows the real information. It's almost like you're picking a very specific metric to try and push your false world view.
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
Real means adjusted for cost of living. If real wages are higher than the past, as my data showed, by definition they outpaced the basket of goods and services.
Positive-Stomach3121 | 5 hours ago
Fake news
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Ok weird little MAGA dude
Vegetable_Tomorrow41 | 5 hours ago
If anything maga is the one saying wages are fine lol
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Ah yes, it's maga to use data to support your claims..
Vegetable_Tomorrow41 | 5 hours ago
I’ll just use my own eyes and experience at my tax office.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Ah yes, because your local area represents the entire US economy of 330 million people.
Striper_Cape | 5 hours ago
In 2013, I was look for an apt for college in Sunnyvale, CA. $1500 for a flat with AC. That unit is now 3k a month. Wages have not doubled or quadrupled with housing.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
I'm sorry when I said in aggregate maybe you confused that for you personally. Not sure how, but you did.
Teamawesome2014 | 5 hours ago
The aggregate doesn't reflect the reality of the individual. It isn't a relevant statistic to individuals, so I don't understand why you think individuals are going to be comforted by it.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
I'm not doing this to comfort or coddle anyone, I'm doing it to show wages have kept up with cost of living in aggregate, contrary to the false claim that they didn't.
Teamawesome2014 | 5 hours ago
No, you're here to tell people that because things are getting better for some people, they shouldn't be angry about being left behind. You aren't helping anybody. You're just using a statistic to push a pacifying narrative.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
I never said that, what are you talking about? Who did I tell not to be angry? I'm not trying to help anyone. I'm just correcting a false claim.
Teamawesome2014 | 5 hours ago
For a lot of people, it isn't a false claim. You're using the aggregate to blanket over what reality is for a lot of people. For a lot of people, the cost of living is outpacing their wages, but you're saying it isn't true because that isn't happening for this other group of people. You're using data like a hammer to tell people their reality isn't relevant.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
"Most men are taller than women" - me
"For a lot of people that's a false claim" - you
No, the claim is true even if you are a woman taller than a man.
Please try thinking a little harder.
Striper_Cape | 5 hours ago
Cause "in aggregate" changes how affordable things are.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
For you? No, but when making claims about aggregated things, as the person I corrected did, this applies.
Striper_Cape | 5 hours ago
Idk how you think yourself a serious person. If the wage starts below snuff, it rising with inflation doesn't mean it matches conditions. My parents didnt even recover from 2008/9 until after 2019.
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
Again with the anecdotes. You simply cannot handle the concept of data.
Striper_Cape | 4 hours ago
I sure can. If you start the race 50 meters back and then maintain pace, you haven't caught up
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
Except that's not how that data works..
Promethia | 5 hours ago
This is the K shaped economy, and it's only getting worse.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
So the data showing the bottom quartile doing well is just something you're ignoring?
RichIndependence8930 | 5 hours ago
What kind of data is it? It is the kind of data that uses math and economic figure gerrymandering to claim "well actually poor people have on average invested an extra 5 dollars into their savings every month this year"
Not mentioning the fact that said 5 dollars are withdrawn near immediately upon deposit.
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
No, it's data showing their wages increasing faster than overall cost of living, from the BLS.
RichIndependence8930 | 5 hours ago
I just struggle to consider that concrete. There are so many factors that make a single metric like that non viable to me. What is included in "cost of living". Is healthcare included? assumed savings for a house purchase? emergency funds? child care?
what it their apartment gets sold to a new property manager and rent goes up 200 a month? there is too much flux in the system
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Why not look it up rather than reject it before even considering it?
Cappyc00l | 5 hours ago
Surely someone as learned as yourself would understand the nuance behind cpi and how different demographic groups have experienced different rates of inflation based on their unique expenses?
Nemarus_Investor | 5 hours ago
Yes, that's why I said in aggregate, not a single person.
TheRealBananaWolf | 4 hours ago
Real, inflation-adjusted wages for the typical U.S. worker have largely stagnated or grown very slowly since the early 1970s, failing to keep pace with the dramatic rise in costs for housing, healthcare, and education. While nominal wages have risen significantly, their purchasing power has barely budged for over 40 years, with substantial gains often skewed towards higher earners. Economic Policy Institute Economic Policy Institute +3 Stagnant Real Wages: When adjusted for inflation, the average hourly earnings for non-supervisory workers have remained largely flat since roughly 1973. Purchasing Power Disparity: While nominal median income has increased, it has not consistently outpaced the cost of living, leading to a loss of purchasing power for many, especially in sectors like education.
Here you go, hope this changes your views now that you've been presented with contradicting evidence.
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
Real means adjusted for cost of living. If real wages are higher than the past, as my data showed, by definition they outpaced the basket of goods and services.
TheRealBananaWolf | 4 hours ago
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
Here is another link. This isn't Just a measure of wages, but the purchasing power of the average American worker.
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
Why are you citing an article from 2018 which uses the same data I cited for you?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
TheRealBananaWolf | 4 hours ago
You never showed any data?? Please at least link the source you pulled your numbers from.
Are you forgetting to count for inflation?
Economic institute can show you how wages and purchasing power has stagnated since 1979, and it incorporates all the different data points you might have forgotten or left out of your "data".
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
I did in my first comment. Here it is again.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
This wage data is adjusted for inflation.
As you can see, it's been on an upward trend for decades.
kreepynees | 3 hours ago
Real median wages often fail to account for soaring costs of specific necessities not fully reflected in inflation indices, such as housing, groceries, and education. It's an easy number to point to but no single number is going to tell the whole story.
Nemarus_Investor | 3 hours ago
Housing is the largest component of CPI, which is what is being adjusted for. I believe the next largest is food, so what are you talking about?
TheRealBananaWolf | 4 hours ago
Like, did you even read what i commented? Wages have grown... psst it's called inflation... But purchasing power has not.
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
Yes, the data I cited in my first comment is adjusted for purchasing power..
TheRealBananaWolf | 4 hours ago
Real, inflation-adjusted wages for the typical U.S. worker have largely stagnated or grown very slowly since the early 1970s, failing to keep pace with the dramatic rise in costs for housing, healthcare, and education. While nominal wages have risen significantly, their purchasing power has barely budged for over 40 years, with substantial gains often skewed towards higher earners.
Economic Policy Institute +3
Stagnant Real Wages: When adjusted for inflation, the average hourly earnings for non-supervisory workers have remained largely flat since roughly 1973.
Purchasing Power Disparity: While nominal median income has increased, it has not consistently outpaced the cost of living, leading to a loss of purchasing power for many, especially in sectors like education.
Nemarus_Investor | 4 hours ago
Real means adjusted for cost of living. If real wages are higher than the past, as my data showed, by definition they outpaced the basket of goods and services.
TheRealBananaWolf | 4 hours ago
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
Here is another link from a research institute.
Look, I'm all for having a real discussion using actual data, and actual evidence.
But are you?
Nemarus_Investor | 3 hours ago
Why are you citing an article from 2018 which uses the same data I cited for you?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
I don't think you know what you're talking about and you need to understand the basics before arguing with me.
TheRealBananaWolf | 3 hours ago
Cause you're disagreeing with the findings. This article was measuring the data since the 70s.
Or are you arguing that purchasing power has increased in the last 8 years???
Cause you're arguing against an entire research institution who is using the same data as you, but their findings are contradictory to yours?
Nemarus_Investor | 3 hours ago
Please try and listen so I don't need to go over this again.
I am not disagreeing with their findings. Their findings shows flat real wages since the 70s to 2018. That means wages kept up with the cost of living since the 70s to 2018.
Wages adjusted for cost of living have risen fairly dramatically since 2018, as the data shows. The same data they used for their research.
I am not arguing against them, and their findings are not contradictory to my claims.
TheRealBananaWolf | 3 hours ago
I am absolutely baffled that people are as dense as you in this world...
There's so research and data and multiple multiple multiple articles that literally show and explain their findings which are completely contradictory to yours...
You just posted a data chart showing wages adjusted for CPI. No complimentary data to compare along side it. Like...are you genuinely trying to have a conversation, or are you just sticking your fingers in your ears going "na na na I can't hear you?"
Nemarus_Investor | 3 hours ago
Please try and listen so I don't need to go over this again.
I am not disagreeing with their findings. Their findings shows flat real wages since the 70s to 2018. That means wages kept up with the cost of living since the 70s to 2018.
Wages adjusted for cost of living have risen fairly dramatically since 2018, as the data shows. The same data they used for their research.
I am not arguing against them, and their findings are not contradictory to my claims.
TheRealBananaWolf | 3 hours ago
Okay, my mistake, I actually see what you're saying. You are correct, though there is additional data that and studies that show that the recently interested wages may not dramatically make up for previous gap years.
I would like to respond to this more later after work if possible.
Nemarus_Investor | 3 hours ago
I'd be happy to talk about it more as much as you like if you apologize for calling me dense, acting like I'm not having a real conversation, and saying you contradicted my data.
TheRealBananaWolf | 3 hours ago
I mean, your whole point was that wages have gone up but ignore the fact that purchasing power has largely stagnated since the 70s.
If you don't understand how you were being dense to the general points that the conversation was based around, then I can't help you with that.
If you take it as an insult, that's on you. But you were, for all intent and purposes, being deliberately dense to the contentions that other people were making. You just seemed to care about being technically right without acknowledging the general status of the average American.
Nemarus_Investor | 3 hours ago
You are the one being dense if you think I was ignoring purchasing power by citing wages ADJUSTED FOR PURCHASING POWER USING THE SAME DATA YOU DID.
forgotmyemail19 | 5 hours ago
I fucking shitting my pants cause the last time they looked at my income to decide my IDR was 6 years ago. They are supposed to do it every year to make sure they can extract as much out of me as they can. Well, I must have fallen between the cracks or something because they have not reevaluated my income since 2019. If they did it now, I would be horrendously fucked. I make much more money than 2019, but not enough for them to take this chunk out of my pay, I'm already stretched thin. I could see them saying I could "afford" double what I'm paying now. Absolutely not, I would be ruined. So fingers crossed.
Various_Cup4986 | 4 hours ago
Don’t let this distract you from the fact that higher education was FREE until the 1960s.
ballmermurland | 2 hours ago
Some of this is on our governments, but some of it is also on the universities themselves. When they are buying wildly expensive software systems like Workday that cost $15k per student per year, maybe the costs overall have just gotten out of hand?
KareasOxide | 44 minutes ago
Where are you getting $15k per year per student from? Are you telling me a large state school could be paying over $350 million per year in fees just to work day ?
rdldr1 | an hour ago
We were also promised jobs if we graduated college.
SpareManagement2215 | 3 minutes ago
because they're a business and it's 2026, not 1926.
LeadingStuff8426 | 5 minutes ago
Interest free student loans until Regan
TastySpermDispenser6 | 7 hours ago
As we all know, 12 years of publicly funded education is capitalism, and 16 years of publicly funded education is communism. /s
We all benefit from education. All of us. I have no kids, but it's a good thing to me that people are doctors and engineers, and not subsistence farmers or drug dealers. It means more of everything for me.
Wipe out student loans (all of them) and tie future funding to the labor force we need. Doctors, nurses, welders get public education and philosophy professors pay their own way. Help 17 year olds make the right decision by providing the right information to them.
brainrotbro | 6 hours ago
Absolutely. Alternatively, get rid of student loans altogether and implement a public college system.
african_cheetah | 5 hours ago
It would be more like first implement a public college system, then wipe out all previous debt. Or at-least make them 0% interest.
Interest is what eats up people. A force that constantly pulls you down.
alltehmemes | 6 hours ago
Education should not be tied to Capital's needs. This makes a education a commodity for Capital instead of a key ingredient in a functioning society. Without fail, Capital will skimp on the educational component and attempt to outsource it at every turn. Education, on the other hand, is one of the few bulwarks against the sort of capitalism we're in now, one where Capital was allowed to take over the role of Educational institutions. An educated citizenry is one of the ONLY ways to stop unrestrained capitalism and fascism without bloodshed, and the only way to prevent it from happening again after the bloodshed.
dust4ngel | an hour ago
> Education should not be tied to Capital's needs
this is why capitalism and democracy are at odds:
> "Those who own the country ought to govern it" is a noted maxim attributed to John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. It reflects early American Federalist beliefs that property owners, or "freeholders," had the greatest stake in the nation and should therefore control political governance.
Durka1990 | 6 hours ago
Tying future funding to the (current) needs of the labor force wouldn't work because we're training people for their next ~40 years of labor participation. And we can't be certain what we need in the next several decades only educated guesses, which is why STEM is promoted. However, technology research needs social scientists and philosopher types or we'll end up with poor research.
TastySpermDispenser6 | 5 hours ago
Holy shit.
We cannot be certain we will need food, guns, aircraft carriers, or nukes a year from now. Why do you go to work if you cannot be certain you will need the money when your paycheck comes?
Doing nothing is a choice too, and it's absolutely stupid to argue that we might not need doctors in 40 years. You equate an infinitely small possibility with something that 40 years ago, created today's problem. Do you think people in 1990 could not have guessed we would need doctors and nurses?
dust4ngel | an hour ago
agree, people in this conversation have been advocating for doing nothing, and you responded to them for actually saying that. not as much as people saying we won't need doctors, but man did they say it.
BronzeAgeArtifact | 5 hours ago
That’s great and all but if at any point my neighbor gets a break that I don’t I’m going to start blaming a random disenfranchised group for my own self hatred.
I’m not capable of self fulfillment and the only way I can measure my happiness is knowing I have more than others.
No_Novel8228 | 2 hours ago
I appreciate your devil's advocacy
morbie5 | 5 hours ago
> We all benefit from education. All of us. I have no kids, but it's a good thing to me that people are doctors and engineers, and not subsistence farmers or drug dealers. It means more of everything for me.
Most countries that have free or heavily subsidized university also are a lot more selective when it comes to admissions. So as of rn in the US little Sally with a 2.6 GPA can easily get accepted at a low/mid tier state school (she'll be paying full freight tho), that wouldn't fly in most of Europe
TastySpermDispenser6 | 5 hours ago
Sorry... so? Why do we want unsuccessful academics going to university because they are rich, instead of a successful academic who is poor?
In your example, Sally can go to community College or pay her own way at a university. Why should she go to college but a 4.0 poor student cant?
morbie5 | 3 hours ago
> Why do we want unsuccessful academics going to university because they are rich, instead of a successful academic who is poor?
Don't tell that to me, tell that to all the 'college should be free' Americans who think they can somehow have the exact same system we have in the US now but only with no costs.
> can go to community College
She isn't tho
> or pay her own way at a university
She is doing just that (or her lender is)
confusiondiffusion | 5 hours ago
"...philosophy professors pay their own way."
Remember when we flung poop from trees?
Yeah, I think we should go back to the times before we had philosophy, but this time with nuclear weapons, drones, and advanced biotech.
TastySpermDispenser6 | 5 hours ago
The vast majoriity of human beings on earth stopped flinging poop long before college or philosophy existed. It was not, in fact, philosophy teachers that made that change. The humans that continue to fling poop to this day are not helped by philosophy teachers.
Also, not saying none are needed. We need coal miners, boxers, and prostitutes. But we are not so short of those workers that labor policy needs to create more of them by paying kids to go to school for those careers.
Rock-n-RollingStart | 6 hours ago
Scrap it entirely. If you want affordable higher education like we had two generations ago, you can't have no-strings-attached, free Federal money contributing to University bloat, price gouging, and waste. Universities should be lean, judicious, and competitive, not Federally-funded resorts churning out diplomas.
fleeter17 | 5 hours ago
Why can't we just copy what other countries are doing?
flamehead2k1 | 5 hours ago
which countries specifically? they all do things a bit differently and those differences come with pros and cons
fleeter17 | 5 hours ago
Tbh I'm indifferent to the specifics, as long as poor people arent forced into taking tens of thousands in loans to afford an education
bunsNT | 3 hours ago
Americans don't like being told no - in other countries, they accept that a large portion are not going to college. The colleges that are available aren't the luxury palaces that many American colleges have become.
fleeter17 | 3 hours ago
I can assure you the colleges I went to were not luxury palaces. And in any case, there are countries with higher college education attainment rates that offer low- or no-cost tuition, so that's probably not it
bunsNT | 2 hours ago
Where do you think the tuition goes to?
fleeter17 | 2 hours ago
I'm not following the question
1-Dollar-Doge-Coins | an hour ago
Well said, /u/TastySpermDispenser6
bunsNT | 3 hours ago
Doctors have seen their wages increase by something like 3X in the past 30 years.
Your argument would make sense if there was not a college wage premium - there is, there has been one, and there will continue to be one.
I think college costs too much but surely there's a space between free college for everyone and student loans that amount to usury no?
TastySpermDispenser6 | 2 hours ago
Yes. That happy medium is to use policy so that labor needs are met and people are successful. Instead of having 1 million software coders you could say "gee, enough people want to do that, lets not fund that, lets pay for nurses, doctors, and welders."
My point is the opposite of free college. Want to be a coal miner, a boxer, or a hooker? Fine, nothing is stopping you. Want to be an English teacher? My proposal changes nothing. But we SHOULD tip the scales for people who want high paying jobs in places that have labor shortages. The English teacher, boxer, hooker and coal miners all need those doctors...
dust4ngel | an hour ago
> Doctors have seen their wages increase by something like 3X in the past 30 years
it should be noted that cumulative inflation since 1996 is 106.58%
EmergencyThing5 | 4 hours ago
I would love it if we could make post-secondary education more available; however, those demanding it don't seem willing to pay the higher taxes to make it a reality. We need people to be alright with paying more, so we can get more services and societal benefits.
Also, do we even need to maintain the expensive apparatus that accompanies higher education? Why can't we just make one-off continuing education classes more widely available rather than lengthy degree seeking. So many more people could learn specific skills that either interest them or are economically worthwhile rather than having to waste so much time completing classes to fulfill degree requirements.
TastySpermDispenser6 | 2 hours ago
We pay $1 trillion for the military and adventure wars. China pasy 250 billion. Do we really need 11 aircraft carriers when there are only 3 in the entire rest of the world?
We have the money. We choose to give jobs to young men blowing up foreigners instead of teaching them valuable skills. Fuck that.
Altruistic_Story257 | 3 hours ago
Filed for borrower protection on my loans since I went to private tech school. Deferred until 2036. I'll likely pay them off long before then but I don't have to worry about garnishment.
ConsiderationDry9084 | an hour ago
Might want to check on that. My wife was kicked off her deferment for Concord and didn't know till she got a demand letter.
tombrady011235 | 3 hours ago
They need to make the student loan repayment plans more generous. It’s a huge tax on education. The burden for improving the labor economy shouldn’t be so high
Mountain3Pointer | 4 hours ago
Why should ANYONE repay their student loans. We were promised higher paying wages and better career opportunities with our degrees. Instead we got unbelievable interests rates, predatory loans, outsourcing to private companies trying to make a profit, Republican controlled states killing affordable payment plans, an attack on PSFL positions and programs, and a whole lot of other nonsense. All that and the rise of costs in everything, no social safety nets, and no fucking jobs what are you even supposed to do!? Plus, a lot of people that took out student loans got them for jobs that serve the community. All of which is being destroyed by Pedo-in-Cheif.
Mizerae | 2 hours ago
Yeah idk I work for CPS and my payment is $500 almost. With rent and being a single income household I just don’t know how to do it. People act like graduating from college makes you super wealthy, but my friends who never went to college make just as much and don’t have to pay student loan payments… guess that’s my fault for being a mental health provider though.
ParadoxicalIrony99 | 33 minutes ago
Government mental health so you make a lot less too. My wife was a social worker for a small non-profit doing counseling and was getting like $35k/year back in 2017. She now makes close to $90k at a hospital and actually enjoys her work now.
Mizerae | 28 minutes ago
Yeah, the barrier is I have to go back to school for a masters degree, so I’m not really able to do things besides case management even with 7 years experience. That’s what really holds me back, unfortunately.
heavyramp | 3 hours ago
The colleges got paid. Whose is holding the assets in student debt for fed loans? It's the dept of education. Whether or not it's morally okay to default on the gov is going to vary person to person. I personally don't see an issue in allowing the bankruptcy court to allow a 5 year payment plan or just a flat out chapter 7, and start over. After all the nefarious things the fed gov is up to, most wouldn't lose any sleep on burning bridges with some fed gov department, and it wouldn't be any different than stiffing American Express in a bankruptcy court in the grand scheme of things.
It's important to remember that the us fed government, despite all its touchy feeling messages, is the leviathan straight from Hobbes. Some never get that message, even well into old age.
Introverted-headcase | 3 hours ago
The save plan gave me a payment I could afford! But noooo. Because it came from Biden and the democrats I get screwed! Not a forgiven loan. Payments to pay it back! But F my life.
CyberSmith31337 | 6 hours ago
Good for them. I hope they all collectively refuse to ever pay them.
Student loan debt has been an issue since I was a teenager, and we have had countless administrations do absolutely nothing to alleviate the problem for students. Predatory financiers still exist, loan terms are more stringent in 18 year olds with no knowledge of the world than they are on banks which have been around for centuries.
Financial noncompliance all the way. Let the lenders rot in hell where they belong.
NottheIRS1 | 5 hours ago
Remember when courts said Biden didn’t have the power to forgive student loan debt, as Trump makes the world his personal playground?
Liminal_Aspect | 25 minutes ago
I, for one, will never fucking forget.
in4life | 5 hours ago
>Good for them. I hope they all collectively refuse to ever pay them.
I respect your vigor, but this is encouraging a class of educated poor.
Degree holders are the statistical affluent. The only other more objective way to isolate the affluent is age. Just like we should help poor old people and not just gift a statistical affluent class aid, we should help poor student loan holders... not just preach some non-compliance that'll trap them in poverty.
CyberSmith31337 | 5 hours ago
Right, but that isn’t happening. 30 years of proof that no administration is going to help them nor care about them.
Financial noncompliance is the only effective outcome. It’s just like how people aren’t going to go to jail for the Epstein files. The system isn’t going to help these borrowers, and neither is anyone else.
in4life | 4 hours ago
I get it's a problem. I don't get making it worse for these people.
The U.S. will pursue this debt repayment... as you had already acknowledged. It would be like willingly getting on the IRS' shit list.
Student loan debt is a huge asset for the Federal government. In some context, the largest.
SelectKangaroo | 4 hours ago
The US government is losing a ton of lawyers over ICE's behavior, there's probably a good chance it takes the government ages to even get around to filing a case against people with students loans who decide to just stop paying
ConsiderationDry9084 | 2 hours ago
This has already happened. The Department of Education has already postponed garnishments reinstatement due to lack of staff and fear of economic collapse. The data spooked them. We could force this if more people just refused to pay.
SelectKangaroo | an hour ago
Good news for a change? What a shocker!
extera658 | 5 hours ago
I agree, but the repercussions to defaulting are substantial. Credit score drop, wage garnishing, etc..
CyberSmith31337 | 5 hours ago
I think the biggest reason not to default (previously) was that you wouldn’t be able to afford a home one day.
Now that you can’t afford a home anyway, there’s really no reason to pay them back. A garnishment, in most cases, will be less than the minimum payment they want.
canopey | 5 hours ago
really? whats the percentage behind garnishment? asking for a friend…
CyberSmith31337 | 5 hours ago
15% of the check
dust4ngel | an hour ago
data point of one, i would be willing to participate in a movement to house student loan strikers. i have a feeling the future we're headed into is going to require a lot of community solidarity anyway.
TESThrowSmile | an hour ago
Many on SAVE were paying their loans. SAVE had an Income based repayment plan (5-10%). It was more beneficial as the rates reflected current economic times. Old plans were based on better economic times from 20-30 years ago.
Since Dipshit Trump gutted the entirety of SAVE, including the Income based plans, anyone that was on SAVE now has to sign up for an older IBR, which has a 2x to 3x a month payment. Hence, those that were successfully paying under SAVE, may now have a difficult time. To reiterate, many were paying under SAVE. Trump lied
DABOSSROSS9 | 5 hours ago
The worst thing that Biden administration did was constantly talk about loan forgiveness. They should have been strongly, encouraging people to pay off their student loans when there was no interest due to Covid. It seemed like loan forgiveness had no shot to get through the courts, but was just being used as a political tool. If people kept paying their student loans during the interest freeze, many of them would be in a much better position today.
RichIndependence8930 | 5 hours ago
There is no long term planning here in the USA anymore that can be made by anyone lower/middle class. Its all built on administrative promises that are liable to switch around between elections and even within the same administrations tenure
ChemEBrew | 5 hours ago
Republican SCOTUS stops student loan forgiveness. Why would Biden do this!?
Prestigious-Smoke511 | 4 hours ago
Biden won the election in part because of student loan forgiveness he knew would never make it through the courts.
That’s a sketchy thing to campaign on and has hurt the country.
Uncle2Drew | 3 hours ago
How does going through on a campaign promise and it getting rejected by the conservative supreme court fall on Biden?
Prestigious-Smoke511 | 3 hours ago
He knew it wasn’t gonna go through. We all knew it wasn’t happening, right?
Technically he was supposed to be able to make it happen bypassing the courts but chose not to pursue that path.
It was a sketchy pay to play campaign promise.
ballmermurland | 2 hours ago
Uh, there was a lot of debate on both sides whether Biden had the authority to do it. Plenty of people, including those who wrote the HELP act (I think that is what it was called?) believed he had the authority to do it.
I mean, just reading the legislation (going off of memory) and it said that the Sec of Education could alter the loans during a crisis, and they claimed COVID was a crisis. I dunno, seems like it was a reasonable plan.
The fact that SCOTUS rejected it isn't because it wasn't a sound plan, but because this SCOTUS is wildly partisan. They routinely defer to the executive's judgment when it is a Republican and block it when it is a Democrat.
ConsiderationDry9084 | an hour ago
They are tying themselves in knots trying to make Trump Tariffs legal.
Anyone blaming Biden is a Scum bag conservative trying to deflect.
ConsiderationDry9084 | an hour ago
Man anything to blame Biden. Stuff it.
EncabulatorTurbo | 4 hours ago
in the way he did it.
He deliberately dragged it out in such a way to give legal challenges a chance, by adding means testing.
If he had universally cancelled all student loans shit would have already been cancelled before a court could have heard it. There is no mechanism to bill everyone anew once their loans are forgiven
The courts could have complained after the fact but they aint got a time machine
DABOSSROSS9 | 2 hours ago
Its Scotus not a republican Scotus.
EmergencyThing5 | 3 hours ago
It always felt like Biden really didn't want to do loan forgiveness, but he was pretty much forced to try it. During the 2020 campaign, multiple democrats promised to forgive tens of thousands in loans immediately, so Biden had to promise something to not look too bad by comparison. He wanted Congress to pass it into law, but they weren't interested. So he dragged his feet for two and a half years hoping people would forget and not blame him for it not coming to fruition. When multiple Democrats said that he could do it with an executive action (which I'm convinced he didn't believe), he was backed into a corner and just had to try something. He probably thought he'd get a bunch of credit for trying even though he wasn't really on board with the plan, but then people got mad that he just kinda let the Supreme Court derail the most consequential parts of his efforts without a real fight.
It was a crappy situation that really blew up in his face, and the majority of current student loan borrowers (and all future borrowers) are somehow in a worse spot now with respect to their loans than if Biden didn't do anything. For many years, Democratic Administrations were quietly making things incrementally better for borrowers until advocates got a bit too ambitious in 2020. Republicans negated much of that hard work last summer with OBBB. Its going to be really hard for Democrats to claw all that back in the future before trying to make any progress on their own goals.
in4life | 5 hours ago
Agreed. This entire segment just received years of stimulus and the aid apparently worsened the issue. Exploring why is important if more aid is expected to fix the issue.
EncabulatorTurbo | 3 hours ago
What the fuck are you talking about "exploring why?!"
We know why, as in, literally anyone who has bothered to research this instead of develop a "gut feeling" opinion
Compared to these, all the usual suspects like "admin fees" are nothing.
None of yall want to hear it though, you want to blame ~student loans~ despite the fact that the student loan cap hasn't been raised in what? 20 years?
In 1990 a public university could expect 2/3 or 3/4 of its costs to be paid directly by the taxpayers, and indirectly another huge percentage by federal grants, leaving only a small fraction that needs to be paid by in-state tuition, with foreign and out of state students paying the bulk of the remainder
in4life | 3 hours ago
Did you read my comment?
Nothing in your response addresses why the problem got worse despite the aid to student debt holders during the pandemic.
super_fallguys | 5 hours ago
That has been my gripe as well. Democratic politicians risk underdelivering on campaign promises they were pressured into making, and also risk suppressing enthusiasm and turnout among constituents. If there was any opportunity to help students with debt, it is preparing for the hypothetical scenario for when payments resumed and if SCOTUS strikes down loan forgiveness, and not acknowledging that potential reality did a great disservice to students that are crushed by loan payments right now. Some students with debt have gotten lucky or taken their situations seriously; cannot say much about the prospects for the rest that didn’t make it out.
MobilePenguins | 3 hours ago
It was politically beneficial to talk about, but not beneficial to actually execute because then they couldn’t run on that promise anymore. To forgive the debt would be to get rid of a political tool that could be used to obtain power again in the future. They need ‘promises’ that seem within reach but are never actually fulfilled. Also see affordable health care, housing, etc.
zachmoe | an hour ago
Now you get it.
Then, you find out they were all just plain bad ideas all along.
EncabulatorTurbo | 4 hours ago
No the worst thing they did was let the courts tell them what they could and couldn't do
I'm sick and fucking tired of Reublicans being able to do anything from drag our nation to war on lies or prosecute political enemies unjustly or lately deploy armed goons who have absolute legal immunity to break the constitution
But Biden had to wishy washily means test and equivocate fucking loan forgiveness for months so they could weasel it before their bought and paid for judiciary
Instead of just
"Today I ordered all student loans expunged, DOE has forgiven all of your loans. each borrower will get a thing in the mail saying their loans are cancelled"
and when the court says nah "Oh well we already did it. We have no mechanism to re-issue new debt to paid off borrowers"
DABOSSROSS9 | 3 hours ago
That sounds a lot like authoritarian government.
EncabulatorTurbo | 3 hours ago
President: Uses the black letter law that says he can forgive loans to forgive loans in a way that makes it difficult if not impossible to challenge
You: Authortarianism
President: Orders his AG and FBI to cover up his involvement in the world's largest child trafficking operation to the tune of more than one million mentions being redacted (more than there are wrods in the Lotr
President: Orders his ICE to violate the fourth amendment of the constitution;tells them they have absolute criminal immunity
President: Tries to arrest opposition party for telling soldiers they dont have to fllow illegal orders
President: I'm going to nationalize the elections; we dont need a mid term
President: FBI raids states election offices at the direction of president and his director of national intelligence
You: Doesn't look like anything to me
Tired of these fucking games.
You don't care about executive overreach.Y ou never have, never will, you just want Liberals to LOSE and you want Amerricnas to SUFFER
That's it, that's your sole political position: All Americans that aren't me or mine must suffer. F Off
Silver-Mushroom-8027 | 4 hours ago
this 110% everyone took it as i don’t need to pay. stopped paying when they could have all but paid off there loans or at the very least made a dent
whatthewhat_007 | 4 hours ago
I whole reason for pausing repayments is because the employment/financial situations of many people were negatively affected. If you were laid off, and your cost of living went up dramatically, you unfortunately were not in a great position to take advantage of it.
DABOSSROSS9 | 4 hours ago
They were paused for more than 3 years, a lot longer than they should have been since it was a Covid measure. Many were capable to be paying it down but were banking on them being forgiven. They were actively mislead unfortunately.
Illustrious-Rush8797 | 4 hours ago
They were never really going to be forgiven. It would have poked a huge hole in the US budget. It's really unpopular to have the US taxpayer pay for it especially when so many didn't go to college
whatthewhat_007 | 3 hours ago
If we're talking strictly in financial terms: if people had other debts with higher interest rates, it would be smarter to stop paying student loan debt and instead focus on lowering other debts with higher interest rates.
DABOSSROSS9 | 3 hours ago
Sure no disagreement from me.
AstralCode714 | 3 minutes ago
It was to bribe voters.... Republicans do the same thing with other empty promises.
ecleipsis | 4 hours ago
This 100%. The idea of loan forgiveness is ridiculous as well as it’s a bandaid instead of a solution.
Sufficient-Bid1279 | 52 minutes ago
And then there is the high unemployment rate and students who cannot find jobs after they get out of college/ University. Hmmmm, what can possibly go wrong when these world intersect
Seaguard5 | 44 minutes ago
What’s the government going to do? Garnish wages?
Wha when that drives them to the streets out of their apartments because they can no longer afford rent?
What when they lose their jobs because they’ve been forced to the streets?
This does not end well one way or the other…
bupde | 42 minutes ago
When they paused repayments during COVID borrowers used that money and expanded their on going expenses. When the payments started up again they had already committed that part of their budget and now can't make payments.
Also, only a chump repays their loan while they are being told it is going to be forgiven. Why throw money at a loan when if you wait it may just go away on it's own.
The whole student loan / college system needs to be reworked. The costs are too high, and are spent in all the wrong places. The benefits are dwindling. The areas of study are out of date, and many rooted in elitist culture. Schools will charge what people can pay, which is dictated by what people can borrow. Letting people borrow 6 figures for degrees that will not generate an income to repay that was always going to lead to this collapsing on itself.
godDamnitImHereAgain | 2 hours ago
I bet they voted for the fucking Cheeto thinking he’d do anything. I’m sitting here a working wage slave trying to scrape by while paying as much as I physically can to see my loans basically sit stagnant growing interest at a rate that’s basically guaranteed that it will sit on my head for many more years to come. I’ve nothing to show for this massive student loan I was allowed to take out at 18.
Iron_Knight7 | 3 hours ago
Cancel all student loans. Make college publicly paid for at least through Bachelor's degrees, work with colleges to reduce costs for schooling. You still want student loans to be a thing? Fine. Make then 0% interest and forgiven after 5 years.
Enough with the BS and hand wringing. Enough with the elitism and "it's not fair" crap. A better educated population benefits us all and is wise investment no matter how you cut it.
(This message brought to you by someone went to college twice, managed to pay off his loans, and still wants to see college loan debt forgive or deferred.)
Swing-Too-Hard | an hour ago
That requires dollars that the government does not have so the only way to fund this would be to increase federal income taxes.
Iron_Knight7 | an hour ago
We've got money to fund ICE better than some foreign militaries? We've got money to build Trump's ballroom? Elon and Co got money to dump into elections so they can get tax cuts? We've got the money to put into college and education for everybody.
Fuck off six ways from Sunday with that "we can't afford it" bullshit. I'd rather my taxes to educating our citizens than Trump's golf trips.
Swing-Too-Hard | an hour ago
Good luck getting a politician to cut their defense budget in favor of throwing billions of dollars in free upper education. They don't do things like that. Instead, they raise taxes on you and me because we don't offer them anything.
Conservatarian1 | 3 hours ago
If you take out a loan pay it back. If you say you were young or got a useless degree it doesn’t matter. You signed the papers and got the education.
Wasabi- | 2 hours ago
Tell that to the millions of borrowers who took out PPP loans that they didn't pay back smart guy. Many of whom didn't even qualify for assistance.
kirime | 28 minutes ago
PPP "loans" were explicitly designed to be written off as long as a few very simple conditions were met.
These loans and grants, at their core, were compensation for the losses incurred by the government-mandated closures and other disruptions due to COVID, helping businesses stay afloat. It was about the same helicopter money as personal paychecks, just with some strings attached to reduce the most blatant misuse (not that such blatant misuse didn't happen anyway).
There's no similar force majeure involved in the acquisition of student debt, neither did the government force anyone into schools, nor were the loans explicitly designed to be forgiveable (they are explicitly not forgiveable instead).
ballmermurland | 2 hours ago
The scolding of teenagers who were told to take out loans and in return would get a good job is always a great look for y'all. Especially when you failed to get them the good job.
Conservatarian1 | 56 minutes ago
You’re an adult at 18 able to sign contracts. If you chose a useless liberal arts degree that’s on you and your parents. College is ONLY a business decision. Go for a degree with low unemployment rates that is useful everywhere.