Posted on 02/13/2018 10:15:29 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
The GOP tax bill is providing a $1.5 trillion windfall, which will mostly be enjoyed by the rich and corporations. But what if there were another way to spend that money that could benefit more middle-income Americans while eliminating some of the country's inequalities?
Look no further than getting rid of America's student debt, argue researchers at Bard College's Levy Economics Institute. They examined the potential impact of canceling the $1.4 trillion in student debt that 44 million Americans are carrying. Erasing it would be a "radical" solution to the student debt crisis, but it would pay off in bountiful dividends to the U.S. economy, noted one of the paper's authors, Marshall Steinbaum.
Because 44 million Americans wouldn't need to repay their loans each month, those households would have greater discretionary spending. That would unlock their ability to buy homes or start a family, given that some economists theorize that millennials are more likely to hold off on both because of their student loan burdens.
Higher spending would stimulate demand for jobs and would lower unemployment, also contributing to economic growth.
Criticism overlooks the fact that minorities and the poor are often hurt the most by student debt. The Federal Reserve Bank found that blacks and Hispanics who earned college degrees have ended up worse off than they were before the recession. That's partially because they often come from poorer families and take on more debt, but the job market also comes into play.
"The crucial difference is simply that white graduates are likely to find a job and start paying down their debt, more-or-less as the system is designed, but black graduates are not," Steinbaum wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Hey, did these exorbitant COLLEGE LOANS (I hate the phrase “student loans” because it makes it sound like young, ignorant CHILDREN made these loans...it was usually grown-ass people who added more and more on top of their initial loan), anyway, did these college loan officers FORCE these people to take out loans that they could never afford, you know, like those EEEVVVIIILLL home mortgage bankers who FORCED people to take out loans on their house(s)!! /s
They took on the debt, then they should pay back THEIR DEBT!
I would like to add one caveat...I think student loans should be included in bankruptcy filings, and that the US Government should NOT be involved in the loan process - AT ALL!! BUT, the only way that I would agree to add the college debt to bankruptcies is if they have a specific college degree, like Bio Engineering or Structural Engineering or Human Resources or Business Management, and they can show PROOF that they have tried, but cannot get work in their degree field for over four years! AND, the college from which they got the degree would LOSE that much in future college funding (because obviously their degree SUCKS)! This would put pressure on the colleges to ensure their program is good and up-to-date on the standards and they would help to get their graduating students hired! Also, the college would be less likely to just graduate someone to get more money from them, if the college KNOWS that this person will never be able to perform in that field after college!
LASTLY, NO OPEN-ENDED LIBERAL ARTS DEGREES will be written off - PERIOD! In other words, you can’t just take out loan, after loan, after loan to get an EIGHT-YEAR Associates degree in Under-Water Basket Weaving or Skydive Knitting, and expect to be able to write off that WORTHLESS degree!!
I’m starting a movement to wipe out mortgage debt, we are all entitled to a house.
My ex went to Bennington, and tuition there was probably $14K when I, okay, my parents, were paying $1K for me to go to a state school. By the end of four years, it was up to $1500/year tuition.
Prepare to be sorely disappointed because I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this WILL happen.
I talk to almost nobody under 40 who does not crib and whine about their student loan burden. How it is deterring them from starting a family, buying a home, etc. The howling is especially severe from guys in the tech field who are $30-40K in the hole and working in a cube next to an H1B holder who got his education for free in his home country.
I also know some parents (including some very conservative parents) who have said they’d vote for the first candidate who promised to get them out from under their kids’ PLUS loans.
You can see where this is headed. The political tidal forces will just be overwhelming. Car companies and the real estate industry will lobby hard for it. Someone WILL be elected to power on this promise, and we should try and ensure it is not the radical Left.
Some bad ideas are inevitable. I don’t see any way this does not happen in my lifetime.
I could have written this. It was ditto, ditto, ditto for me. I went to the hometown college (Ohio State University). I did live off campus, but in a shared house. I worked summers and part time to finance my tuition, while my parents paid for my books and board. I paid back any student loans I had to take out.
This is a character-building sort of endeavor, a side benefit of college education. Would you deprive these poor snowflakes of an experience they really seem to need badly and pay off those loans? And why the heck SHOULD I pay off someone else's loan? They too good to roll up their sleeves and work for what they want, like I did?
“Universities caused the problem with high costs and worthless degrees. Why should they get of without any pain. Let the debt be paid out of the endowments and require all future loans to be endorsed by the school where the student goes.”
Exactly. Otherwise, if their debts were just forgiven, the universities would just boost their tuition.
Why not forgive house mortgages (purchasing a house is as integral to fulfilling the American dream as going to college, no?)?
Medical debt? After all, it's not like anyone wants to get sick!
And what about car loans (since that would stimulate the market, and the U.S. auto industry needs all the help it can get)?
In short: What debt shouldn't be forgiven - and why?
Regards,
Right. And I’m guessing that you’re like me in feeling that we didn’t do anything that was out of the grasp of anyone else.
I’m proud of what I did, but it’s really not all that impressive. Anyone could have done what I did.
Anyone CAN do what I did.
UCSD was more affordable in those days. $212 per quarter registration. $46 per year for parking. Books around $100 per quarter...less money recovered by reselling books from a prior quarter. Brown bag lunch. Gas was 30 cents per gallon. I burned about 2 gallons per day on campus. Some days I had pocket change for a bagel with cream cheese. Never had better than a 4 function calculator and a slide rule until after graduation. Others had HP-35 and HP-45. Hard to compete with that even for square roots. Factorials in the genetics classes were cumbersome with a 4 banger. A good school managed with pedestrian financial resources.
I’m all for it as long the schools don’t have to pay their teachers either.
Liberals just can’t stand the thought of losing control of all of that money.
For the first ten years after college, I had to build a student loan payment in to my personal budget. I even managed to pay my loans back in a less than eight years instead of ten, simply by making a payment every 4 weeks instead of once a month.
That was the cost. My engineering degree and associated increase in earning power was the benefit, and I have benefited. I have not regretted taking out those loans for one minute. I would not have been able to finish college in four years without them.
Of course, I cannot understand why anyone would go $200,000 in debt to get a useless degree in “Inequality Awareness” or “Social Justice” or some other idiotic “major”. I just write those people off as dumb-asses, and I figure life will eventually take care of them - one way or another.
But I don't want to have to pay off their loans.
The ONLY WAY I could see doing this is that once their loans are forgiven they could NEVER EVER in any form ever get a loan again for their lifetime.
No more student loans, no house loans, no car loans, no credit of any kind. They would have to work for everything and save for purchases, like the rest of us.
ONLY that way.
“Because 44 million Americans wouldn’t need to repay their loans each month, those households would have greater discretionary spending. That would unlock their ability to buy homes or start a family, given that some economists theorize that millennials are more likely to hold off on both because of their student loan burdens.”
How about the students who got the education go ahead and pay their debts, and put that one point five trillion where it makes doing business worthwhile in this country, thus creating higher paying jobs for people who will then be spending more money.
Always have these progs finding ways to make stuff free for someone. Probably makes them feel good, I suppose.
If I worked to put myself through college (which I did), I would be grossly offended that deadbeats who borrowed and then whined about paying it back were forgiven for their loans. If I had chosen a non-college career (which my brother did) to avoid the cost of tuition, I would be offended that these deadbeats were getting their college loans repaid by those of us (like my brother and me) who work for a living and pay our own debts and our own taxes. "Forgiving" student loans should be a non-starter with all decent people . . . which means only democrats should be supporters.
I was fortunate. When I came along a few years later the HP-11C was on sale at the Virginia Tech University bookstore for about $85. I bought one in 1982 and I still have it. It's got quite a bit of wear, and it once got dropped in to a sewage pump station during a start-up test, but it still works as well today as it did 36 years ago.
By the way, I also have an HP-35 I picked up a few years back. It now has a burned out element on its LED display so I'll need to tear in to it some time and replace the display module.
If you have any interest today in HP calculators, there is an excellent HP-41 emulator available for smart phones. The app functions as an HP-41CX (the crown jewel of calculators - the one space shuttle astronauts carried as a back-up navigation computer). It includes emulators for just about every plug-in module HP ever made for that series of calculators. I think it costs about $10-$15 for the full version. It's one of the few phone apps I have ever paid real money for, and it was well worth it.
Good job. I paid as I went with jobs and night school etc. It was hard . But I managed. I wore Tee shirt and jeans and old tennis shoes. I had a very old car. No one ever helped me. I put my sons through undergrad. When they got in grad school they borrowed onlt tuition and we paid the rest and they waited tables/ I have no willingness to pay others student debt— not 1 dime.
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