quote:

Originally posted by Horace:
The tax on all stock market transactions is what bothers me. That's essentially a recurring flat tax on everybody's life savings.

quote:

Originally posted by Bernard:

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:

quote:

Originally posted by Bernard:
Fair? How fair is it that wages have stagnated for decades? How fair is it that all increases in wealth go to a minuscule portion of the population? Fair!?

However, if one thinks college should be free, then student loan forgiveness could be thought of as retroactive implimentation, and besides cancelling currently held debt you'd have to reimburse people who paid their debt after such-and-such a reatroactive date.

The question is, should college be free?

What this ignores is the fact that people would have been presented with different options, and possibly made choices, if college (or public college) had been free.

If you took out loans to go to Middlebury, would you have gone to UVM instead if UVM had been free?

Do you pay off loans for people who went to private college, or just public college?

And what about the people who went to community college because they didn't want to take out loans? What do you do about them? Do you give them the money they could have spent, if they had taken out loans? Or do you say, tough luck, them's the breaks?

And there is some evidence (and PD will, I am sure, correct me if I'm getting it wrong) that going to an elite private college results (on average) in higher annual income. What about all those people who didn't take out loans to go to Middlebury or Dartmouth, but went to UMass instead, and gave up a lifetime of potentially greater income?

Do Michigan and Virginia count as public colleges for out-of-state students, or private ones? What about Virginia Tech? William and Mary?

Cornell is partially private, partially public (the Colleges of Agriculture and Industrial and Labor Relations are state colleges ... Arts and Sciences, Engineering, and Hotel Management are private). Will part of Cornell be free?

It's an intractable problem.

Yes, that's all true, but life changes. After all, we use wheels even though neanderthals didn't have the option. Surely they would have made different choices if they'd known about the wheel. To use an extreme example.

So things change, c'est la vie. I never went to college partly because 1) it was basically discouraged, and 2) I had no means. Would I have made different choices if college had been free at the time? Quite possibly. Will I begrudge those of today who could end up having free college available to them? Of course not.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
I can see this issue costing Democrats the election. It’s a loser out of the box.

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Anna:
The problem isn't intractable, but it is complicated.

There are a couple of questions at play here. One of them is "Should the cost of post-secondary education be eliminated or reduced?" I think there's an argument for this. It is an artifact of history that our default presumption for most Americans is that education should be free from ages 6 through 18. Free kindergarten, at least part of the day, has become more the norm during my lifetime. Pre-K, too, is coming on strong. It is not that big a step to add two years of community college or even four years of college to the education provided to citizens. I think there's a case to be made for it, based on longer lifespans and the increasing complexity of the technology that young people must learn.

The student loan forgiveness plans are an attempt to address the problems that have arisen over the past thirty years or so as it has become increasingly difficult for most people to afford this extra education. I do think that young people have been taken advantage of by predatory loans and for-profit institutions and, in a harder-to-quantify way, by the pressure that often came from everyone around them to take out the loans to get the college education that would be so critical to their future. This is particularly sad because eighteen-year-olds don't have the life experience to understand the fallout of such far-reaching decisions. To an extent, that's life, but the tremendous scope of student debt leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

And thus the question of student loan forgiveness rears its head. Things seem to have gotten out of hand for our young people for reasons that aren't wholly their fault. Can we do something to help them? I'd like to see us try.

Any such plan is going to have some inequities. Some people will miss out because they already paid off their debts. (My children-in-law fall into this category.) Some people would have made different choices if they'd known this might happen. No remedy for any problem is perfect. That doesn't mean we should do nothing.

I'd like to see any student loan forgiveness first address people dealing with predatory loans and those who paid overpriced tuition from for-profit schools (like Trump U). Beyond that, even a partial forgiveness would be a shot in the arm for a large fraction of our children's generation at a time when they are thinking about buying homes and having children.

quote:

Originally posted by Horace:
I imagine the discussion alone is causing some people to rethink paying back their loans, and others to care less about borrowing more.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:

quote:

Originally posted by Horace:
I imagine the discussion alone is causing some people to rethink paying back their loans, and others to care less about borrowing more.

Imagine what a chump you’d be to make a balloon payment on your loan in 2019 just to see it ‘canceled’ (whatever that means) in 2021.


Not that I think this would pass. But as you point out the mere discussion has to change behavior.

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Anna:
The problem isn't intractable, but it is complicated.

There are a couple of questions at play here. One of them is "Should the cost of post-secondary education be eliminated or reduced?" I think there's an argument for this. It is an artifact of history that our default presumption for most Americans is that education should be free from ages 6 through 18. Free kindergarten, at least part of the day, has become more the norm during my lifetime. Pre-K, too, is coming on strong. It is not that big a step to add two years of community college or even four years of college to the education provided to citizens. I think there's a case to be made for it, based on longer lifespans and the increasing complexity of the technology that young people must learn.

The student loan forgiveness plans are an attempt to address the problems that have arisen over the past thirty years or so as it has become increasingly difficult for most people to afford this extra education. I do think that young people have been taken advantage of by predatory loans and for-profit institutions and, in a harder-to-quantify way, by the pressure that often came from everyone around them to take out the loans to get the college education that would be so critical to their future. This is particularly sad because eighteen-year-olds don't have the life experience to understand the fallout of such far-reaching decisions. To an extent, that's life, but the tremendous scope of student debt leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

And thus the question of student loan forgiveness rears its head. Things seem to have gotten out of hand for our young people for reasons that aren't wholly their fault. Can we do something to help them? I'd like to see us try.

Any such plan is going to have some inequities. Some people will miss out because they already paid off their debts. (My children-in-law fall into this category.) Some people would have made different choices if they'd known this might happen. No remedy for any problem is perfect. That doesn't mean we should do nothing.

I'd like to see any student loan forgiveness first address people dealing with predatory loans and those who paid overpriced tuition from for-profit schools (like Trump U). Beyond that, even a partial forgiveness would be a shot in the arm for a large fraction of our children's generation at a time when they are thinking about buying homes and having children.

In many instances, the simple answer to a lurching change is a phase-in, or a decision that makes the change sometime in the future, so that people can plan. Or, a long and painful debate about whether to do it, which then gives people warning that it may happen, and allows them to adjust their expectations.

In the town context, for example, I recall that adding kindergarten or pre-K to a public school program is the kind of thing that usually takes years for rabble-rousers to bring to fruition.

But there are issues. What about people like plumbers, car mechanics, etc.? Do we provide free public technical college-type experiences for them?

And how will this affect the already enormous financial pressures on smaller liberal arts colleges?

Neither of those approaches addresses the student loan part of your analysis, though. And I don't know what to do about that. I don't know how to draw a rational line between those who were taken advantage of, those who were pressured, and those who just took loans because it was a smart decision.

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Anna:
You can't. Is it necessary?

quote:

There is certainly the option of doing nothing for the people carrying student loan debt now. They made their decision. Life isn't fair. Let's move forward with better policies. I'm not actually against this option.

quote:

I am, however, willing to consider an option that will help mitigate some of the effects of policies that have recently allowed the student debt situation to run amok. Whatever policy we adopt should be designed to be as fair as possible and help the most people possible, with the motivation for it being to help the country and its economy as a whole. It won't be perfect. Nothing is, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

quote:

People who feel that the ultimate plan is unfair to them should consider the follow-on consequences. If they are living in a country with a healthier economy because a large number of people are suddenly carrying a lightened debt load, their own economic and personal situation might well improve.