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Old 05-03-2014, 07:12 AM
 
Location: Great State of Texas
86,052 posts, read 84,230,301 times
Reputation: 27718

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Who wouldn't take advantage of that program.
Got get a government job, have your payments indexed to your salary and then the balance is written off in 10 years.
That would be a no brainer to someone with a huge student loan debt.

And since the FedGov nationalized student loans it's just more taxpayer debt.
No banks will be impacted.
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Old 05-03-2014, 07:14 AM
 
3,490 posts, read 6,077,379 times
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Seeing as right now it is the young generation being severely screwed, I hear an awful lot of complaining when the table are turned.

Thank you for the link. I too, have been screwed, and if there is a solid option for allowing those that killed the economy to bear some of the cost I have no qualms with using that option.

PS. I wish I had seen more about this when my wife was first graduating college. I suspect I paid far more of the balance than I never needed to pay. I was under the impression this was going to be based off disposable income, not discretionary income. Off discretionary income, before food, housing and utilities, we would not have seen any reduction. We have more debt than we should, because we were forced to pay out of state tuition, though three states (supreme courts) have already ruled it invidious discrimination and contrary to the constitution of our country. Honestly, the only thing I feel bad about is how much we went without so we could pay down the balance in the first few years. If we can figure out what math they are using we can jack up our 401k contributions and have the balances forgiven. I might even decide to take out some loans for my Master's program.

PPS. This is the reason not to have a system where debt is the method of financing college. It should be equity based. As in a percentage of future earnings. That would keep colleges from preparing people for absolutely no jobs, and would encourage them to provide actual job placement assistance instead of one look at a resume and then telling the graduates to **** off.

Last edited by lurtsman; 05-03-2014 at 07:23 AM..
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Old 05-03-2014, 07:15 AM
 
Location: Great State of Texas
86,052 posts, read 84,230,301 times
Reputation: 27718
Quote:
Originally Posted by lurtsman View Post
Seeing as right now it is the young generation being severely screwed, I hear an awful lot of complaining when the table are turned.

Thank you for the link. I too, have been screwed, and if there is a solid option for allowing those that killed the economy to bear some of the cost I have no qualms with using that option.
Banks will not lose any money on this.
The government already paid the schools.
The unpaid balances will become taxpayer liabilities.
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Old 05-03-2014, 07:30 AM
 
459 posts, read 482,515 times
Reputation: 1117
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan View Post
Banks will not lose any money on this.
The government already paid the schools.
The unpaid balances will become taxpayer liabilities.
No, no, no. It wasn't the banks in isolation. It was the Baby Boomer generation that lowered taxes on themselves at the expense of future generations, stopped subsidizing public schools so that tuition spiraled out of control, bought into the deregulation of the financial sector and most other sectors, and pursued policies that made the banking sector vastly more powerful. The unpaid balances will become taxpayer liabilities because the policies Boomers pursued for 30 years finally came back to bite them.

It really does irk me to no end to see people who are 50 or 60 and graduated college with 5k in debt (and got a job straight away) complaining about how unfair it is that kids graduating with 40k or 100k in debt (or more if getting a graduate degree) might get some subsidy. And the 50 and 60 year olds might have to pay a little for it?! The horror! The travesty!

Spare me. We live in a society, not an unrelated series of human islands. It is your/our duty and responsibility to pay it back down the line.
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Old 05-03-2014, 07:45 AM
 
Location: Great State of Texas
86,052 posts, read 84,230,301 times
Reputation: 27718
Quote:
Originally Posted by kwhitegocubs View Post
No, no, no. It wasn't the banks in isolation. It was the Baby Boomer generation that lowered taxes on themselves at the expense of future generations, stopped subsidizing public schools so that tuition spiraled out of control, bought into the deregulation of the financial sector and most other sectors, and pursued policies that made the banking sector vastly more powerful. The unpaid balances will become taxpayer liabilities because the policies Boomers pursued for 30 years finally came back to bite them.

It really does irk me to no end to see people who are 50 or 60 and graduated college with 5k in debt (and got a job straight away) complaining about how unfair it is that kids graduating with 40k or 100k in debt (or more if getting a graduate degree) might get some subsidy. And the 50 and 60 year olds might have to pay a little for it?! The horror! The travesty!

Spare me. We live in a society, not an unrelated series of human islands. It is your/our duty and responsibility to pay it back down the line.
So you rack up $80K in student loan debt and it's "our" responsibility to pay it back ?

I have a niece with an $80K student loan debt who just stopped paying.
She has a degree in Women's Studies and works as a receptionist at a day care center.
She CHOSE to go to an out of state 4 year college and use student loans to finance not only her education but social life as well.
She now chose to stop paying because she wants more spending money for herself.

And you're saying it's "my responsibility" to pay that loan back ?

I went to college on the GI Bill and worked 3 p/t jobs while doing it.
I didn't have this notion that I could take on a mountain of debt and society would help me pay it back.
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Old 05-03-2014, 08:12 AM
 
459 posts, read 482,515 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan View Post
So you rack up $80K in student loan debt and it's "our" responsibility to pay it back ?

I have a niece with an $80K student loan debt who just stopped paying.
She has a degree in Women's Studies and works as a receptionist at a day care center.
She CHOSE to go to an out of state 4 year college and use student loans to finance not only her education but social life as well.
She now chose to stop paying because she wants more spending money for herself.

And you're saying it's "my responsibility" to pay that loan back ?
Yes, I am saying exactly that. If you want an educated and functional society, either you push for pretty far-left wing candidates who believe in taking control of public universities and subsidizing them like in almost all developed nations we compete with or you suck it up and pay for it. And yeah, I get the problem with private schools or out-of-state schools, but that's more an issue with her parents and our funding structure than her choice. It's one of many problems with having college education control devolved to the states rather than the federal government (see my law school, William & Mary, which like UVA is thinking about going private because of how bad the funding is).

Still, are you really blaming an eighteen year old for not thinking long-term? If so, I've got some studies in behavioral psychology and neurology that should clear that up fast; most young people are - quite literally - incapable of consistent, structured long-term rationality.

We are already falling behind the rest of the first-world in achieving undergraduate degrees, and we used to be the leader.

Even having a "Women's Studies" degree is miles better for a resume than "High School Diploma". And she is eligible to go on to grad school in a professional degree program if she ever wants to.

Quote:
I went to college on the GI Bill and worked 3 p/t jobs while doing it.
I didn't have this notion that I could take on a mountain of debt and society would help me pay it back.
What do you think the GI Bill was!? Charity? It was taxpayers providing generous benefits for the good of society (and not just themselves).

Second, your decision to work part-time was counterproductive. Studies have shown that the more you work during college, the worse your grades are. In a more competitive society with higher unemployment, that becomes even more crucial.

Even so, in your day, working part-time would have put a big dent in your college bills (or eliminated them). That's not even an option, which makes the value of working in college even less attractive. I worked part-time during law school and all it did was make me miserable and unhealthy and monstrously stressed out.

And it's very easy to say "you didn't have this notion" because it wasn't a possibility. There was no mountain of debt to accrue. Period. My dad did just like you did, and even worked 40-50 hours per week sometimes. But he also paid 1-2k per year for school in a cheap little town. I went to the same undergrad as he did years later and it was... vastly more expensive in inflation adjusted terms. Since I left there eight years ago, it's gone up even more (of course) in comparison to inflation.
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Old 05-03-2014, 08:32 AM
 
47,525 posts, read 69,510,800 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CityLover9 View Post
The cost of going to university in this country is absolutely ridiculous. What's worse is the fact that the price is only expected to increase even more exponentially as we progress into the future. We need to move to a European-stlye university subsidization system. Young people shouldn't have to start their careers thousands in debt. Not to mention that it'd probably be good for the country as a whole too in the sense that an educated workforce is better for the nation.
There used to be limitations on who could go to college. You have to qualify but now everyone goes, many universities no longer have admission standards.

The dwindling number of taxpayers simply cannot give every 18 to 26 year old a free ride to the party school of his/her choice. In addition there are the growing numbers of people living off welfare handouts. Adding another $100,000 for each and every 18 year old for the taxpayers to cough up is not a good idea.
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Old 05-03-2014, 08:44 AM
 
20,591 posts, read 19,257,030 times
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Money is a rationing system. If you have any plan that does not basically identity money as a rationing system then leave the debate. Your have nothing to add. Even adding supply is a problem because one school will have more reputation than the other. So there is monopoly power that both the universities and financiers will exploit.

The only way to cut costs is to add another rationing system like raising academic standards. That's how they do it in other countries. You don't buy your way in. You study your way in. But the fun part is that that might cause certain minority representation problems. So guess what? neither the deep pockets on the right or the bleeding hearts on the left are going to solve this problem. So bankruptcy and financial servitude is the answer. So good bye middle class. Nice to have known ya.
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Old 05-03-2014, 08:49 AM
 
Location: Paranoid State
13,044 posts, read 13,805,731 times
Reputation: 15837
Quote:
Originally Posted by CityLover9 View Post
The cost of going to university in this country is absolutely ridiculous. ...
I suspect you mean the price of going to university is ridiculous.

Paradoxically, the reason the price of attending a University is so high is because of financial subsidies provided by our government in the form of student financial aid.

Everyone who did well in Econ 101 knows that when the government subsidizes the price of something, as a society we both consume too much of it and we produce too much of it.

Sometimes this is easy to justify (e.g., subsidized childhood vaccines). Sometimes this is not so easy to justify (e.g., subsidies to tobacco farmers).

Moreover, anyone who did well in graduate Econ can prove, with a few white boards & some not particularly advanced mathematics, that subsidizing a product ineluctably results in a non-efficient allocation of capital which leads to everyone being slightly worse off. The subsidy recipient (the university student, and note that all college students receive a subsidy as the price of tuition is less than the cost of attending) is better off, but as a whole societal GDP is worse off compared to a world without those subsidies.

We see the results everywhere: getting in to a university is a blood-sport, the price of university goes up faster than the general price level, and far too many students, once they graduate, begin their careers asking "would you like fries with that?"

In the real world, these subsidies have turned University into a game, where the true benefit is "sex for the students, football for the alumni, and parking spaces for the administration."

The solution is obvious, but painful. We need to cut subsidies & financial aid.

Three things would happen rapidly:

1) Student demand would plummet. Lots of students would drop out of school because they couldn't afford it absent someone else footing part of the bill. This would be painful.

2) Universities would respond to falling enrollment, with a drop in their price (tuition). Of course, mostly universities would howl and squawk, but ultimatley they would drop their price.

3) Universities would slash costs in the system. There is a TON of fat at universities - see the row upon row of administrative buildings filled with people who don't actually, you know, educate our sons & daughters.

Ultimately, many marginal universities & colleges would close or merge, resulting in an equilibrium of far fewer slots for students. This is probably a good thing.


Students who might otherwise attend a University (assuming someone else pays the tab) will instead probably select trade school, which is not a bad thing. We need more HVAC technicians, carpenters, electricians, automobile mechanics and the like. There is nothing wrong with becoming a skilled tradesman or tradeswoman. Not everyone should go to a University.
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Old 05-03-2014, 08:54 AM
NCN
 
Location: NC/SC Border Patrol
21,663 posts, read 25,537,625 times
Reputation: 24368
You make a debt; you pay the debt. This country is having the life sucked out of it by freeloaders. My ancestors sacrificed to build this country and Obama's deadbeats are destroying it.
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