Biden administration announces partial student loan forgiveness

[Loren Pechtel]

I think it is fantastic that Australia heavily subsidizes university education. I would be far less in favor of the government putting pressure on students to choose subjects according to the rate of subsidation rather than according to store ts’ interests and talents. But that’s me. I am sure Australia has a system that works for them.

If the state is going to subsidize education it should aim to do so in fields of value. We get too many people with degrees where the only real job prospects are teaching the material.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I already paid back my student loans over a decade ago. I want the "forgiveness" as well. They can write me a check.

 

[Toni]

I think it is fantastic that Australia heavily subsidizes university education. I would be far less in favor of the government putting pressure on students to choose subjects according to the rate of subsidation rather than according to store ts’ interests and talents. But that’s me. I am sure Australia has a system that works for them.

If the state is going to subsidize education it should aim to do so in fields of value. We get too many people with degrees where the only real job prospects are teaching the material.

Why should the state decide what is ‘useful?’

Truthfully, I have gotten jobs twice, largely on the basis of coursework my father deemed, like you probably would, useless and a waste of time and money.

No one was more surprised that those classes helped me get a job. Frankly I really needed those jobs. And I enjoyed those jobs as much as any job I ever held. I did not take those courses to help me get a job but because—get this: I was interested and thought they’d be fun. They were.

And so what if I never turned a dime in those classes. They broadened my understanding of the world around me and helped me more deeply appreciate the world, humanity and my life. I’m a better person because I took those courses.

The government is definitely not smart enough to know what courses are valuable it will be valuable in the future.

 

[Jarhyn]

I think it is fantastic that Australia heavily subsidizes university education. I would be far less in favor of the government putting pressure on students to choose subjects according to the rate of subsidation rather than according to store ts’ interests and talents. But that’s me. I am sure Australia has a system that works for them.

If the state is going to subsidize education it should aim to do so in fields of value. We get too many people with degrees where the only real job prospects are teaching the material.

Or getting a job at McDonald's again? The fact is, we still need service industry and I would rather they went and got a "useless" degree and at least some classes in subjects that aren't otherwise merely vapid, I would rather that than they get no education at all.

"Mutually compatible self actualization" is the most useful filter of goals.

Education enables self-actualization, and much more so when the education is not the education we are told to want but the education we actually DO want, for ourselves.

So long as we do it in a mutually compatible way, that should be the only expected purpose.

As we do it, we will inevitably see the effects of the liberal arts requirements of 4 year programs, and the raising of all ships on those waters.

If we want to force an agenda through education, do it by adding things to the liberal arts/general education requirements, not by deciding for them what they will learn and do.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think it is fantastic that Australia heavily subsidizes university education. I would be far less in favor of the government putting pressure on students to choose subjects according to the rate of subsidation rather than according to store ts’ interests and talents. But that’s me. I am sure Australia has a system that works for them.

If the state is going to subsidize education it should aim to do so in fields of value. We get too many people with degrees where the only real job prospects are teaching the material.

Why should the state decide what is ‘useful?’

Compare the number of positions asking for a certain degree with the number of people who want that degree. The state should provide more funding for degrees where the ratio of ask to want is higher.

The government is definitely not smart enough to know what courses are valuable it will be valuable in the future.

Note that I'm talking degrees, not specific classes.

 

[Toni]

I think it is fantastic that Australia heavily subsidizes university education. I would be far less in favor of the government putting pressure on students to choose subjects according to the rate of subsidation rather than according to store ts’ interests and talents. But that’s me. I am sure Australia has a system that works for them.

If the state is going to subsidize education it should aim to do so in fields of value. We get too many people with degrees where the only real job prospects are teaching the material.

Why should the state decide what is ‘useful?’

Compare the number of positions asking for a certain degree with the number of people who want that degree. The state should provide more funding for degrees where the ratio of ask to want is higher.

The government is definitely not smart enough to know what courses are valuable it will be valuable in the future.

Note that I'm talking degrees, not specific classes.

The government is t really a good predictor of where the economy will be in 4 or 10 years. Think of all the kinds of jobs there are now that didn’t exist 15 years ago.

Unless you are going into a very specific field, your major doesn’t matter much. Sure, it does if you want to be an accountant or a nurse or a teacher. Beyond that? Not so much.

 

[laughing dog]

I think it is fantastic that Australia heavily subsidizes university education. I would be far less in favor of the government putting pressure on students to choose subjects according to the rate of subsidation rather than according to store ts’ interests and talents. But that’s me. I am sure Australia has a system that works for them.

If the state is going to subsidize education it should aim to do so in fields of value. We get too many people with degrees where the only real job prospects are teaching the material.

Why should the state decide what is ‘useful?’

Compare the number of positions asking for a certain degree with the number of people who want that degree. The state should provide more funding for degrees where the ratio of ask to want is higher.

Really? You think one of the roles of gov't is to manage the supply of labor in order to push compensation down?

The government is definitely not smart enough to know what courses are valuable it will be valuable in the future.

Note that I'm talking degrees, not specific classes.

FFS, the same comment is true for degrees.

 

[bilby]

I think it is fantastic that Australia heavily subsidizes university education. I would be far less in favor of the government putting pressure on students to choose subjects according to the rate of subsidation rather than according to store ts’ interests and talents. But that’s me. I am sure Australia has a system that works for them.

If the state is going to subsidize education it should aim to do so in fields of value. We get too many people with degrees where the only real job prospects are teaching the material.

Why should the state decide what is ‘useful?’

Compare the number of positions asking for a certain degree with the number of people who want that degree. The state should provide more funding for degrees where the ratio of ask to want is higher.

The government is definitely not smart enough to know what courses are valuable it will be valuable in the future.

Note that I'm talking degrees, not specific classes.

Education should not be regarded solely as a means to obtain employment.

And employees should not be valued only for knowledge that is directly related to the work tasks they are paid to perform.

Employees are not interchangeable machines; If you are employing them to be, then you are doing it wrong - you should have bought (or commissioned the design and building of) a machine instead of employing humans to do the task.

Humans are valuable for their ability to bring apparently irrelevant information into a situation and demonstrate that it is, surprisingly, relevant.

 

[Ford]

Republicans: "look, if we give rich people a break on the taxes that they owe, all that money will go into the economy and make everything better. A trillion dollar tax cut? That would be the best boost ever!"

Also Republicans: "look, if we give middle class people a break on student loans that they owe, all that money will go nowhere and the economy will tank. A trillion dollars in debt forgiveness? That's crazy talk!"

 

[Jarhyn]

I think it is fantastic that Australia heavily subsidizes university education. I would be far less in favor of the government putting pressure on students to choose subjects according to the rate of subsidation rather than according to store ts’ interests and talents. But that’s me. I am sure Australia has a system that works for them.

If the state is going to subsidize education it should aim to do so in fields of value. We get too many people with degrees where the only real job prospects are teaching the material.

Why should the state decide what is ‘useful?’

Compare the number of positions asking for a certain degree with the number of people who want that degree. The state should provide more funding for degrees where the ratio of ask to want is higher.

The government is definitely not smart enough to know what courses are valuable it will be valuable in the future.

Note that I'm talking degrees, not specific classes.

Education should not be regarded solely as a means to obtain employment.

And employees should not be valued only for knowledge that is directly related to the work tasks they are paid to perform.

Employees are not interchangeable machines; If you are employing them to be, then you are doing it wrong - you should have bought (or commissioned the design and building of) a machine instead of employing humans to do the task.

Humans are valuable for their ability to bring apparently irrelevant information into a situation and demonstrate that it is, surprisingly, relevant.

The fact is, if I didn't have apparently irrelevant knowledge about fluid dynamics from my "physics for non-physics-majors" class, I wouldn't have been able to present solutions and mechanisms that I remembered surrounding precipitation of dissolved gasses and provoking/preventing nucleation events.

Apparently even "the engineers" didn't understand it in truly intuitive ways like "hot soda fizzes more".

 

[Canard DuJour]

The Meme that Refuses to Die: Government Debt Must Be Paid Back

No it doesn't. It almost never is. To pay back government debt, you have to run a budget surplus, and while there may be modest surpluses from time to time, they don't add up to more than a minuscule fraction of all the accumulated debt. But don't take it from me, look at the record :

(...)

Governments that issue their own money don’t have to pay off their debts. They actually can’t. In fact, they issue money — the money that’s necessary for a growing economy to operate — by deficit spending.

That leaves the idea that future net ("deficit") govt spending is constrained by previous net govt spending - the idea that "future tax payers will get less".

The evidence is very much to the contrary. Govts, if anything, constrain current spending by debt to GDP ratios (a bit like why you spend more than when you were a teenager). The GDP component of that ratio mainly increases with human skills and education. Apart from natural resources, there isn't really any other significant source of economic growth.

 

[Jarhyn]

The Meme that Refuses to Die: Government Debt Must Be Paid Back

No it doesn't. It almost never is. To pay back government debt, you have to run a budget surplus, and while there may be modest surpluses from time to time, they don't add up to more than a minuscule fraction of all the accumulated debt. But don't take it from me, look at the record :

(...)

Governments that issue their own money don’t have to pay off their debts. They actually can’t. In fact, they issue money — the money that’s necessary for a growing economy to operate — by deficit spending.

That leaves the idea that future net ("deficit") govt spending is constrained by previous net govt spending - the idea that "future tax payers will get less".

The evidence is very much to the contrary. Govts, if anything, constrain current spending by debt to GDP ratios (a bit like why you spend more than when you were a teenager). The GDP component of that ratio mainly increases with human skills and education. Apart from natural resources, there isn't really any other significant source of economic growth.

I think we have had this discussion before ya?

We took our fiat money out of the void, we have no need to pay it back as such.

As long as the money we have taken out of the void represents a fair bit of work collective contribution per dollar, the economy can be said to be rather healthy...

Assuming all that action is not tied up in one or two small tumorous overgrowths of power.

 

[Canard DuJour]

The Meme that Refuses to Die: Government Debt Must Be Paid Back

No it doesn't. It almost never is. To pay back government debt, you have to run a budget surplus, and while there may be modest surpluses from time to time, they don't add up to more than a minuscule fraction of all the accumulated debt. But don't take it from me, look at the record :

(...)

Governments that issue their own money don’t have to pay off their debts. They actually can’t. In fact, they issue money — the money that’s necessary for a growing economy to operate — by deficit spending.

That leaves the idea that future net ("deficit") govt spending is constrained by previous net govt spending - the idea that "future tax payers will get less".

The evidence is very much to the contrary. Govts, if anything, constrain current spending by debt to GDP ratios (a bit like why you spend more than when you were a teenager). The GDP component of that ratio mainly increases with human skills and education. Apart from natural resources, there isn't really any other significant source of economic growth.

I think we have had this discussion before ya?

We took our fiat money out of the void, we have no need to pay it back as such.

As long as the money we have taken out of the void represents a fair bit of work collective contribution per dollar, the economy can be said to be rather healthy...

Assuming all that action is not tied up in one or two small tumorous overgrowths of power.

Yah. People have been having this discussion since ..money.. at least since Aristotle. What is money and where does it come from? Like time and space, you think you know until you think about it. It has become more obscured than ever since about 1980, and not by accident.

 

[Trausti]

We took our fiat money out of the void, we have no need to pay it back as such.

It's like when Nero debased the Denarius. It increased the money supply so no problem.

 

[Jarhyn]

As long as the money we have taken out of the void represents a fair bit of work collective contribution per dollar, the economy can be said to be rather healthy...

Looks like someone dropped this...

Though to be fair "work" is superfluous in the statement.

 

[Canard DuJour]

We took our fiat money out of the void, we have no need to pay it back as such.

It's like when Nero debased the Denarius. It increased the money supply so no problem.

If Nero thought that by debasing the currency he was increasing real wealth, then he was making the same mistake as today's "fiscal conservative" who thinks an artificial scarcity of money will increase its value and, thus, real wealth.

Same cognitive error with the signs reversed.

 

[Playball40]

The comment section is full of a lot of angry people who don't want anyone to have loan forgiveness. I find that surprising since most surveys claims there is over 50% support for student loan forgiveness. The article should be available for anyone to read for at least two weeks, according to WaPo's gifting rules.

Includes a bit of resentment from people who endured crippling student debt and don't like the thought of other people getting out easy.

The problem is people who suffered being responsible dislike seeing others get rewarded for irresponsibility.

So people paying student loans today are "irresponsible" but when you did it, it was a good investment? What a crock.

Wut? Isn’t it about folks who were responsible and paid back their loans resenting that their taxes will be used to write off the loans of others? Is the government going to refund our payments with interest? Or are we just suckers for being responsible?

It’s like people who were children before there were vaccinations available to prevent measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, polio and more resenting kids today who can be vaccinated against these diseases.

That analogy doesn’t work at all.

How so?

People took out loans. Some paid them back, as agreed. Others did not. So those who breached the agreement would be rewarded while those who were responsible are out the money they repaid. What suckers.

Having your loan forgiven is not breaching any agreement. The lender forgives the loan. This is not the same thing as the borrower skipping out on the loan.

Kids are born. Some are born when there were no vaccinations against measles, mumps, rubella, polio, chickenpox, etc. They got those diseases and some died or were permanently disabled because of them. Then there were vaccinations and those children whose parents were smart and able to get them vaccinated did not become ill from those preventable diseases. Some kids have stupid parents and unfortunately, they tend to get sick. Even more unfortunately, some kids cannot be vaccinated because they are undergoing treatment for childhood cancers or are otherwise immune suppressed and they get sick and die from things like chickenpox or measles instead of cancer which was in remission.

I grew up (mostly) with indoor plumbing, something my parents did not have as children. That is in no way unfair to them because they suffered from not having indoor plumbing.

My kids grew up with cable tv and cell phones and computers. That is in no way unfair to me because I did not have those things.

Keep in mind that most of those loans were taken out by kids who are too young to legally consume alcoholic beverages or to sign other kinds of contracts. Also, those loans cannot be discharged under most circumstances due to serious misfortune. Some are able to get their loans discharged if they can document permanent disability AND if they remain below the poverty line for a certain number of years.

Let's not forget that WE had the benefit of going to college when it WAS affordable. We were able to work part time and pay for school. That simply does not exist anymore.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Compare the number of positions asking for a certain degree with the number of people who want that degree. The state should provide more funding for degrees where the ratio of ask to want is higher.

The government is definitely not smart enough to know what courses are valuable it will be valuable in the future.

Note that I'm talking degrees, not specific classes.

The government is t really a good predictor of where the economy will be in 4 or 10 years. Think of all the kinds of jobs there are now that didn’t exist 15 years ago.

Unless you are going into a very specific field, your major doesn’t matter much. Sure, it does if you want to be an accountant or a nurse or a teacher. Beyond that? Not so much.

Really, now? You don't realize there are degrees with very poor job prospects because there's so little demand for the skill? Such basically worthless degrees are a fair chunk of the student loan problem.

 

[Trausti]

Let's not forget that WE had the benefit of going to college when it WAS affordable. We were able to work part time and pay for school. That simply does not exist anymore.

This is true. The older generation has screwed the younger generation; lived high on the hog and sent the bill to their children and those yet to be born. But this is no excuse to screw over those who responsibly paid their debts or make others pay the debts of the irresponsible.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The Meme that Refuses to Die: Government Debt Must Be Paid Back

No it doesn't. It almost never is. To pay back government debt, you have to run a budget surplus, and while there may be modest surpluses from time to time, they don't add up to more than a minuscule fraction of all the accumulated debt. But don't take it from me, look at the record :

(...)

Governments that issue their own money don’t have to pay off their debts. They actually can’t. In fact, they issue money — the money that’s necessary for a growing economy to operate — by deficit spending.

That leaves the idea that future net ("deficit") govt spending is constrained by previous net govt spending - the idea that "future tax payers will get less".

The evidence is very much to the contrary. Govts, if anything, constrain current spending by debt to GDP ratios (a bit like why you spend more than when you were a teenager). The GDP component of that ratio mainly increases with human skills and education. Apart from natural resources, there isn't really any other significant source of economic growth.

This is the leftist equivalent of tax cuts pay for themselves. It's no more correct.