There’s no need to measure anything. The problem with student loans is qualitative.
Banks are allowed to make unsecured loans and the borrowers can’t usefully declare bankruptcy. Colleges have every reason to raise prices and lenders have no skin in the game.
It isn’t any more complicated, and no amount of data analysis can possibly refute this.
If data showed that at regional state universities and community colleges the rise in tuition corresponded with the decrease in public funding per student then you wouldn’t believe it? Or that such data would mean nothing to you? Consider the linked article and keep in mind that enrollment in higher Ed has declined since 2008.
It hasn’t been “banks” for a decade: Student loans today are overwhelmingly supplied directly by the federal Department of Education. That’s why a huge jubilee is even plausible.
Of course and there's no reason to refute this. The reason we got here is that the quantatative measures a Bank would use are biased by actual societal bias. This is a situation like asking why your ML became racist.
Letting a bank choose the interest rate based on your zip code would allow banks to predict which families will remain rich and that would be a self fulfilling continuation of current class distinctions in a system where they are allowed to do that.
>But that’s because such measures exclude the very asset the person borrowed to buy—an education that increases lifetime earnings. That’s like assessing a homeowner’s wealth by counting their mortgage balance but not the value of their home.
The value of a higher education that it's sold to young people with is the income it allegedly brings in. If that's the case someone uses the product and their income goes up then we already have a means to tax that income it's called income tax. If the product fails to deliver that income but the money is still taken (and as others mention in a non dischargeable way) then I don't see how that isn't fradulent.
If you think it’s fraudulent for the federal government to give a 22yo a $120,000 loan for a Master of Fine Arts program in theater, then you have to argue that such loans should stop. Only the rich or the beneficiaries of private charity will be able to access MFA programs—or perhaps the taxpayer should make degree programs like that “free”?
I think that’s a defensible argument, but it’s regressive in a different way from the status quo.
- AFAICT, the argument that a massive loan forgiveness would not be regressive rests entirely on excluding from the analysis low-income members of the 25-40yo cohort with no student debt. Sure, that fraction may be smaller than in the past, but it’s hard to see how discounting a bunch of poor folks who would see $0 benefit from this expenditure is intellectually honest.
- It’s amusing to see a left-wing analysis complain about policy benefits being described in absolute dollar amounts when it’s a doctor making $250k having $50k of his medical school loans forgiven. As I recall, every tax cut debate of the last 20 years has featured charts in absolute amounts showing the tens of thousands of dollars the average 1%’er would save, not the relatively small fraction of income that represented.
So did I. I don't want others to have to go through with it. The lesson will be others will have money to spend on other things that will be more beneficial to me in the long run.
If everyone did that we would have negative interest rates and from my experience economists aren't ready for a world that isn't enslaved through involuntary debt.
The lesson here is some of us aren’t selfish. Ive paid all my debts, and I found it awful. I would rather a greater proportion of humans weren’t debt slaves
Mathew 20:13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
For student loan forgiveness the government is in the role of the landowner in this parable.
[+] [-] brunellus|4 years ago|reply
Banks are allowed to make unsecured loans and the borrowers can’t usefully declare bankruptcy. Colleges have every reason to raise prices and lenders have no skin in the game.
It isn’t any more complicated, and no amount of data analysis can possibly refute this.
[+] [-] syki|4 years ago|reply
https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig...
[+] [-] twoodfin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smorgusofborg|4 years ago|reply
Letting a bank choose the interest rate based on your zip code would allow banks to predict which families will remain rich and that would be a self fulfilling continuation of current class distinctions in a system where they are allowed to do that.
[+] [-] anm89|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tanjreeve|4 years ago|reply
The value of a higher education that it's sold to young people with is the income it allegedly brings in. If that's the case someone uses the product and their income goes up then we already have a means to tax that income it's called income tax. If the product fails to deliver that income but the money is still taken (and as others mention in a non dischargeable way) then I don't see how that isn't fradulent.
[+] [-] twoodfin|4 years ago|reply
I think that’s a defensible argument, but it’s regressive in a different way from the status quo.
[+] [-] dv_dt|4 years ago|reply
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/06/is-student-debt-cance...
[+] [-] twoodfin|4 years ago|reply
- AFAICT, the argument that a massive loan forgiveness would not be regressive rests entirely on excluding from the analysis low-income members of the 25-40yo cohort with no student debt. Sure, that fraction may be smaller than in the past, but it’s hard to see how discounting a bunch of poor folks who would see $0 benefit from this expenditure is intellectually honest.
- It’s amusing to see a left-wing analysis complain about policy benefits being described in absolute dollar amounts when it’s a doctor making $250k having $50k of his medical school loans forgiven. As I recall, every tax cut debate of the last 20 years has featured charts in absolute amounts showing the tens of thousands of dollars the average 1%’er would save, not the relatively small fraction of income that represented.
[+] [-] tamaharbor|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bzudo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imtringued|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamjamjamjamjam|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syki|4 years ago|reply
For student loan forgiveness the government is in the role of the landowner in this parable.
[+] [-] kelseyfrog|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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