What Are Your Thoughts on Student Loan Forgiveness?

[JasonBlack]

Do you approve? Disapprove? Support some other alternative?

[David Horn]

(09-02-2022, 07:23 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: Do you approve? Disapprove? Support some other alternative?

Reluctant supporter.  This is the result of doing bad for decades then awakening from a dream and noticing that student loans are getting toxic (moreso for being impervious to bankrupcy).  In my youth, college was fully afordable, but the GIs were in charge then.  Public money pipelined into the collegiate system and student tuition was low to zero (California being the poster child for 'free').  Do more of that!

[Eric the Green]

I support it, but I wonder why some of those loans, or some portion of them, or at least interest charges, cannot just be forgiven without the taxpayers paying for them; just impose a default on them by law. Students were overcharged by greedy insurance companies and colleges to begin with. They should not be overpaid while saddling young people with impossible debt in a time when prices for housing are so high.

Yes I agree David, the state needs to support free college again too. Evidence is that CA's free college system (which I benefited from too) is what created Silicon Valley. Funding education pays off!

[JasonBlack]

(09-02-2022, 03:26 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I support it, but I wonder why some of those loans, or some portion of them, or at least interest charges, cannot just be forgiven without the taxpayers paying for them; just impose a default on them by law. Students were overcharged by greedy insurance companies and colleges to begin with. They should not be overpaid while saddling young people with impossible debt in a time when prices for housing are so high.

Yes I agree David, the state needs to support free college again too. Evidence is that CA's free college system (which I benefited from too) is what created Silicon Valley. Funding education pays off!

I can agree with that portion for sure.

[sbarrera]

We were recently driving through central PA, which is mountainous and rural. Lost of signs supporting Doug Mastriano, the MAGA candidate for governor. Then we stopped for a visit at Bucknell University, a small liberal arts college in a little town called Lewisburg. Signs for Mastriano's opponent, Democrat Josh Shapiro, started showing up. But it was also evident how much more money was being invested in this town than in the surrounding countryside. I mean, it was really nice there, but once you left the University area, everything was run down and decaying. It made sense of the MAGA support visible in the countryside.

All of this is just to get to my point, which is that inflation of higher education costs is responsible both for the wealth discrepancy which I noticed on this road trip, and the pile up of student debt, some of which is being "forgiven," or rather covered by taxpayers. It occurred to me that all we're doing with student loan forgiveness is helping to subsidize fancy Universities like Bucknell.

That being said, I support the plan because it helps the borrowers who have struggled to make their degrees pay off. But obviously it's just going to sustain the problem of higher education price inflation.

[JasonBlack]

The boomers here all seem to hate conservative boomers more than anyone else, so I don't think y'all will mind this, but a lot of people don't realize how many boomers basically threatened their children with college, essentially saying "You will go to college at 18 or you're on your own in this shit economy....oh, and btw, that means you'll have to take out $70,000 in debt to pay back", then those same boomers will bitch about "why should I have to pay for your dumb course in underwater basket weaving?!" when they had just a decade ago said "it doesn't matter what your major is, just "find your passion" and you'll never have to work a day in your life!".

The blue collar workers, entrepreneurs and other more practical types who carved out their own path have a right to be pissed at this. The boomer parents who forcibly shoved college down their children's throats do not.

[beechnut79]

(09-02-2022, 05:44 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(09-02-2022, 03:26 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I support it, but I wonder why some of those loans, or some portion of them, or at least interest charges, cannot just be forgiven without the taxpayers paying for them; just impose a default on them by law. Students were overcharged by greedy insurance companies and colleges to begin with. They should not be overpaid while saddling young people with impossible debt in a time when prices for housing are so high.

Yes I agree David, the state needs to support free college again too. Evidence is that CA's free college system (which I benefited from too) is what created Silicon Valley. Funding education pays off!

I can agree with that portion for sure.

Obama campaigned on the idea of having two years of college be free. Looks as if that was one of many of his ideas which never bore fruit.

[beechnut79]

(09-06-2022, 02:42 PM)sbarrera Wrote: We were recently driving through central PA, which is mountainous and rural. Lost of signs supporting Doug Mastriano, the MAGA candidate for governor. Then we stopped for a visit at Bucknell University, a small liberal arts college in a little town called Lewisburg. Signs for Mastriano's opponent, Democrat Josh Shapiro, started showing up. But it was also evident how much more money was being invested in this town than in the surrounding countryside. I mean, it was really nice there, but once you left the University area, everything was run down and decaying. It made sense of the MAGA support visible in the countryside.

All of this is just to get to my point, which is that inflation of higher education costs is responsible both for the wealth discrepancy which I noticed on this road trip, and the pile up of student debt, some of which is being "forgiven," or rather covered by taxpayers. It occurred to me that all we're doing with student loan forgiveness is helping to subsidize fancy Universities like Bucknell.

That being said, I support the plan because it helps the borrowers who have struggled to make their degrees pay off. But obviously it's just going to sustain the problem of higher education price inflation.

A standing saying about the state of PA is that there’s Philadelphia on the east, Pittsburgh on the west, and Alabama in the middle.

[Eric the Green]

(09-06-2022, 02:42 PM)sbarrera Wrote: We were recently driving through central PA, which is mountainous and rural. Lost of signs supporting Doug Mastriano, the MAGA candidate for governor. Then we stopped for a visit at Bucknell University, a small liberal arts college in a little town called Lewisburg. Signs for Mastriano's opponent, Democrat Josh Shapiro, started showing up. But it was also evident how much more money was being invested in this town than in the surrounding countryside. I mean, it was really nice there, but once you left the University area, everything was run down and decaying. It made sense of the MAGA support visible in the countryside.

All of this is just to get to my point, which is that inflation of higher education costs is responsible both for the wealth discrepancy which I noticed on this road trip, and the pile up of student debt, some of which is being "forgiven," or rather covered by taxpayers. It occurred to me that all we're doing with student loan forgiveness is helping to subsidize fancy Universities like Bucknell.

That being said, I support the plan because it helps the borrowers who have struggled to make their degrees pay off. But obviously it's just going to sustain the problem of higher education price inflation.

I agree. The colleges that charge too much should not have to be paid by taxpayers. The excess amount of loans should just be cancelled. Also the high interest rates charged by insurance companies.

I wonder how colleges are able to make those towns wealthy. Are teachers really well-paid? Or is it that those towns support government services to their people, because they are smart and well-informed enough not to swallow neoliberal slogans?

The irony about places like middle PA (or West Virginia, or Alabama, or any other red-voting area) is that they have voted for their own condition, and they vote to perpetuate it. College towns in red areas are like islands of sanity in a sea of ignorance.

I don't think you can pick out one experience in PA that you had, and then forget that what is responsible for wealth discrepancy is neoliberal policies.





And what Hanauer only alludes to in this video, but which is also true, is that neoliberals are using prejudice (e.g. religious right, anti-immigrant, anti-civil rights. anti-welfare) to stoke support for their politicians in rural parochial all-white areas of the USA.

[Eric the Green]

(09-06-2022, 03:06 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: The boomers here all seem to hate conservative boomers more than anyone else, so I don't think y'all will mind this, but a lot of people don't realize how many boomers basically threatened their children with college, essentially saying "You will go to college at 18 or you're on your own in this shit economy....oh, and btw, that means you'll have to take out $70,000 in debt to pay back", then those same boomers will bitch about "why should I have to pay for your dumb course in underwater basket weaving?!" when they had just a decade ago said "it doesn't matter what your major is, just "find your passion" and you'll never have to work a day in your life!".

The blue collar workers, entrepreneurs and other more practical types who carved out their own path have a right to be pissed at this. The boomer parents who forcibly shoved college down their children's throats do not.

How many boomers forced their kids to go to college? Do we really know? Can we not "realize" something, when it's just you saying so from your own experience, rather than verified stats? And can such charges about what some boomers "said" even BE verified?

The high charges for college and student loans are what everyone should be pissed at. There are other high charges we should be pissed at too, of which the high cost of housing is first on the list.

And Republicans are using the current high gas prices to claim Biden is not managing the economy. If Biden had enough Democrats in congress, he could force the gas companies to pay excess profits taxes and refund the money to consumers. That would fix inflation at its source. But that goes against the neoliberal Reaganomics creed that government is the problem.

"in the United States, oligarchs maximize their wealth and keep it, using the “democratically elected” government to shape policies and laws favorable to the interests of their foxy class. They bamboozle the people by insisting... that all of us have the “freedom” to create a business in the “free” marketplace, which implies that being hard up is our own fault.

In the Nordic countries, on the other hand, democratically elected governments give their populations freedom from the market by using capitalism as a tool to benefit everyone. That liberates their people from the tyranny of the mighty profit motive that warps so many American lives, leaving them freer to follow their own dreams—to become poets or philosophers, bartenders or business owners, as they please.

Maybe our politicians don’t want to talk about the Nordic model because it shows so clearly that capitalism can be put to work for the many, not just the few."
https://www.thenation.com/article/archiv...heres-why/

Maybe if we followed the Nordic model instead of insisitng the USA is the best, we might be able to do what "boomer paresnts" advised their children to do and "follow their passions." We can't, because the USA is the WORST developed country in the world.

It doesn't have to be. It's founding documents offer the potential to become the best, and have inspired the world. We could "live up to the true meaning of our creed" as Martin Luther King said. But we have to vote for it.

http://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html

[pbrower2a]

College education used to be inexpensive. It was not an extreme hardship except to the destitute, for whom everything is fiendishly difficult. Know well that most of the colleges were liberal arts schools, and that college instructors were generally not PhD's. The liberal arts schools typically had rigid curricula, which made the results predictable enough that anyone who graduated from them could be expected to know a few predictable things. Knowing the subtleties of great literature has little direct influence on how one records debits and credits on a ledger or sells widgets on the road, but on the other hand the graduate of a liberal arts program knew that there was more to life than pop culture and boozing-and-whoring. There were technical schools for those who had the passion for engineering or accounting.

Today we could probably revive such education as the norm for anyone smart enough to get anything out of such schooling, which means that one could get a solid, humanistic education if one has adequate grades and school-board scores. (the College Board scores largely weed out the scatterbrains and dimwits who were going to flunk out anyway -- or those interested only in "sex&drugs&rock-n-roll".

College wasn't fiendishly expensive. Herbert Hoover, a poor boy, got through Stanford University doing college chores.  

The liberal arts school established a culture of norms for the middle and upper-middle classes; we could all recognize its value today. With the Multiversity that came into being in the 1960's one could get a four-year degree and anyone looking at the sheepskin might not know what walked through the door. Today we need among those who are to have any responsibilities over others or for others to recognize the validity of the great body of wisdom and apply that. The laws of formal logic are just the same as the ones in Socrates' world, thank you. Recognizing the distinction between 'high' and 'low' culture and the difference in what they offer people is a good idea. Knowing some economics (there is no such thing as a free lunch), psychology (how the mind works -- or doesn't), statistics and probability (many people who thought that Trump actually won the 2020 election did not realize that his modest leads in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were going to disappear as late votes not then counted were largely from Atlanta,  Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee obviously knew little about statistics and probability and instead saw vote fraud), philosophy (finding meaning in life), and some other material not part of the high-school curriculum.

Let's put it this way: if you have this and know what it is



you have little excuse for being bored.  

The trick is to know how magnificent this music is. Everyone responds to it a bit differently, but it is well worth the time.  

Let's connect this to some of our concerns. Global warming implies heavy consumption leading to waste heat that warms the atmosphere and allows more humidity to entrench itself in the air and prevent much night-time cooling. Having experience-based lives instead of material-based lives will be genuine progress. 

Another is the seduction of the angry demagogue who tells people that they are better than those unlike them because... well, in America because you are white and Christian. When times get rough, or the politicians fail to solve all problems, then out comes a demagogue like Trump or Bolsonaro. It would be best if we could see through the type, but populists of their type appeal to people not quite poor except in wisdom.  If enough people fall for such a demagogue, things get nasty.

[JasonBlack]

(09-07-2022, 02:14 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Knowing the subtleties of great literature has little direct influence on how one records debits and credits on a ledger or sells widgets on the road, but on the other hand the graduate of a liberal arts program knew that there was more to life than pop culture and boozing-and-whoring. There were technical schools for those who had the passion for engineering or accounting.

Unfortunately, "boozing and whoring" seem to be what most people specifically go to college to do these days. Many middle and late wave millennials and early wave homelanders have a hedonist-masquerading-as-idealist and moral-relativist-masquerading-as-intellectual approach to life that is most apparent during their college years. I don't think there's much hope in this regard for the middle wave millennials of this ilk (my age cohort), but the late millennials and early homelanders are still young, so they may have some time to correct course.

I'm not saying this out of some moral contempt for the more sensory pleasures of life. What gets me is the way it wreaks of a giant cope, a coverup for crippling anxiety, nihilism and lack of self-regulation and ambition.

[pbrower2a]

(09-07-2022, 03:05 AM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 02:14 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Knowing the subtleties of great literature has little direct influence on how one records debits and credits on a ledger or sells widgets on the road, but on the other hand the graduate of a liberal arts program knew that there was more to life than pop culture and boozing-and-whoring. There were technical schools for those who had the passion for engineering or accounting.

Unfortunately, "boozing and whoring" seem to be what most people specifically go to college to do these days. Many middle and late wave millennials and early wave homelanders have a hedonist-masquerading-as-idealist and moral-relativist-masquerading-as-intellectual approach to life that is most apparent during their college years. I don't think there's much hope in this regard for the middle wave millennials of this ilk (my age cohort), but the late millennials and early homelanders are still young, so they may have some time to correct course.

Surely you exaggerate about the proportion of college students to go there for "boozing and whoring". One of the strongest non-financial correlations to dropping out of college is alcohol consumption. I think we can figure that one out. 

Due to the high cost of such basic necessities in life as property rent and (for about forty years) low real wages, one can easily understand why people get greedy and materialistic. Greed and materialism have been typical hallmarks of the peasantry, the people least successful in material achievements and usually damned to poverty no matter what they do.  The young Jewish women of Anatevka (Fiddler on the Roof) express who their ideal husband is -- and he is rich by the standards of the community. That is what they wants in their dealings with the match-maker: someone who will be well-off enough to make life something other than grinding poverty. (The gentiles don't have it so great, either -- they just happen to be on the right side of the regime when a pogrom happens).  Imperial Russia was a horrible place in which to be a Jew. It was also a horrible place in which to be a Russian. 

I come from an antisemitic family that kept telling me how greedy, materialistic, and crass the Jews were. When I went on a corporate-mandated move from rural America to a large urban area I met lots of Jews. They were the people with surnames similar to mine (basically any German-sounding surname 'can be Jewish'). I found most of those that I met civilized, sophisticated, and moral. They were close to me in culture and moral values. Greedy, crass, and materialistic? Such described the stupid people that I met. 

...People have gotten greedier and more militaristic as economic life becomes harsher and more precarious. The Corporate wants people to be like that so that they can more easily control them and so that they can market all sorts of schlock merchandise and entertainment as salves to hurt feelings that will never be resolved. This applies even to college students who know what awaits them. They may have a four-year degree and still hold on for dear life to the dreadful job that they had while attending college. "Suffer for my all-holy greed", says the plutocrat and the executive who exploit the worker -- "and always remember to smile!"

When the shopping mall lost its charm, then along came the casino. Is that a coincidence?   One way to waste money quickly replaced another, and the casino may be even be more efficient because there is no merchandise.   
 

Quote:I'm not saying this out of some moral contempt for the more sensory pleasures of life. What gets me is the way it wreaks of a giant cope, a coverup for crippling anxiety, nihilism and lack of self-regulation and ambition.

The problem is that the instant delights that come from drugs, alcohol, speeding, gambling, impulse spending, sweets, reckless promiscuity, and other bad habits are intense, costly, and ephemeral. For people who rely upon those for bliss, life is a series of long, dreary times between rare bliss that may result in poor health, injuries, fights, poverty, legal problems, bad teeth, and a vile reputation.  

Some people have learned to take delight in the signals of a build-up. Maybe we need also learn to abandon conspicuous consumption as a wasteful, empty, and even destructive bad habit.

[JasonBlack]

Eric The Green

Quote:How many boomers forced their kids to go to college? Do we really know? Can we not "realize" something, when it's just you saying so from your own experience, rather than verified stats? And can such charges about what some boomers "said" even BE verified?

Indeed, my own experience talking to dozens of millennials. I went to group counseling several times during university and that was by far the biggest issue that came up. Studies are an important supplement to an educated mind, but so is drawing your own conclusions based off of repeated observations. Studies may suffice in total when they have a study for every relevant question under the sun, but even then, I would have my doubts they would be enough. 

Keep in mind I'm talking about boomers who specifically 
- forced their kids to go to college
- didn't pay for it 
- AND are bitching about student loan forgiveness 

ie, people whom you would probably hate much more than I do

[Eric the Green]

(09-07-2022, 03:55 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: Eric The Green

Quote:How many boomers forced their kids to go to college? Do we really know? Can we not "realize" something, when it's just you saying so from your own experience, rather than verified stats? And can such charges about what some boomers "said" even BE verified?

Indeed, my own experience talking to dozens of millennials. I went to group counseling several times during university and that was by far the biggest issue that came up. Studies are an important supplement to an educated mind, but so is drawing your own conclusions based off of repeated observations. Studies may suffice in total when they have a study for every relevant question under the sun, but even then, I would have my doubts they would be enough. 

Keep in mind I'm talking about boomers who specifically 
- forced their kids to go to college
- didn't pay for it 
- AND are bitching about student loan forgiveness 

ie, people whom you would probably hate much more than I do

I don't think judgements of what people think or value based on personal observations creates any basis for conclusions about generations. Not that any study would suffice for that either, but it would be better.

No, I would not like those boomers very much. I wonder though how much of such control boomers have over their childrens' decisions of life and career paths these days.

[pbrower2a]

(09-07-2022, 03:55 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: Eric The Green

Quote:How many boomers forced their kids to go to college? Do we really know? Can we not "realize" something, when it's just you saying so from your own experience, rather than verified stats? And can such charges about what some boomers "said" even BE verified?

Indeed, my own experience talking to dozens of millennials. I went to group counseling several times during university and that was by far the biggest issue that came up. Studies are an important supplement to an educated mind, but so is drawing your own conclusions based off of repeated observations. Studies may suffice in total when they have a study for every relevant question under the sun, but even then, I would have my doubts they would be enough. 

Keep in mind I'm talking about boomers who specifically 
- forced their kids to go to college
- didn't pay for it 
- AND are bitching about student loan forgiveness 

ie, people whom you would probably hate much more than I do

Parents cannot force their kids to attend college, but I would insist upon one of three destinations for one of my kids at the end of high school: college, a union apprenticeship, or the Armed Services. If full-time work I would pressure the offspring to work somewhere that offers college education as a perquisite (which is becoming a norm among employers who have long had difficulty finding employees to hold onto low-paying, servile or menial jobs and keeping them and want employees with more intellectual nimbleness to be able to talk intelligently to customers who might want that along with their latte. 

Nobody can now reasonably see a high-quality education as a sure meal ticket. If society needs people to do low-paying jobs that offer little prestige but a requirement of a nimble mind (insurance adjusters? early elementary teachers? Preachers, often the effective leaders in some communities? Librarians?) then we are going to need inexpensive or highly-subsidized education. Even for wise decisions on politics, the ability to do complex thinking is good for detecting and rejecting crass demagogues. Say what you want, but figure how America addressed the Axis leadership: to follow the Axis leaders required that one stop thinking and numb one's conscience. Trump may not have been quite that bad, but I can't see anything about the MAGA cult that suggests a need for conscience, imagination, or rational discernment. Anti-intellectualism has been a part of American life since the time of the Know-Nothings, and one long-lasting current (the Dixiecrat faction in American life) thrived on the low educational levels and unrefined resentments of poor white people. It may be safe to assume that Strom Thurmond in 1948 and George Wallace in 1968 appealed to the stupidest white people and the economic leadership of the agrarian South but won over little else and that they are anomalies unlikely to be imitated.  Overt racism fails, although more subtle racism can flavor some statewide politics. 

It is shocking that someone like Donald Trump could get elected despite saying things that praise people for civic vice such as being "low-information voters" and ridiculing anyone with a hardship not of his own making.  But he did, and whatever it takes to prevent someone like him to achieve the Presidency. People with the attributes of well-educated people are the appropriate ones for deciding political races.  If we have highly-subsidized education, then we don't have the problem of people who get college degrees, take stopgap jobs that pay little and offer little chance of advancement, yet have hefty student loans to pay. So you will get your liberal arts degree and 'only' become a claims adjuster or bookkeeper. But you will also create prosperity for people other than yourself, and if you don't have a huge college loan to pay off, then you will do fine. The issue is to bring dignity to your work, and if that takes a strong and militant union, then such is the right way to do things. 

I see another angle: that people with little education (high-school dropouts) are still the bulk of the worst of the worst. Criminals. A cursory examination of a large death row (Texas is obvious) shows an inordinate number of people with less than twelve years of formal education (a GED counts as a high-school diploma in adulthood). One may be talking about issues other than stupidity (violent crime is dumb, and people with poor impulse control are trouble-makers who often get themselves in criminal binds), but if one recognizes that criminal deeds just aren't worth the risk one does not do crime.