[juskrey]

How about giving back money to people who paid back their loans, possibly going through even greater difficulties to do that.

[ohCh6zos]

I ended up working 60 hour weeks to not take out student loans. People talk about having a good time at college but all I remember is getting up at 4am to go to my first job, doing class all day and working my second job until 10pm. No spring breaks and no summers or holidays because I could work those hours to stay out of debt. It is hard to have much sympathy for people asking for student loan forgiveness.

On the plus side I ended up graduating with $20 and no debt.

[zeku]

Don't fall prey to these tales to yourself.

I worked full time thru college for bad pay and still needed 30k in student loans to make it out with my degree. I went to a state school, nothing fancy.

I hardly ever had fun in college, it was awful. The working world is waaaaaaay better for me.

Not everyone who has loan debt just partied away on borrowed cash.

[zapdrive]

I agree. I also remember working Friday/Saturday nights in the lab (as that was the only time I got to work on my projects), while everybody went out clubbing.

[xur17]

And we're definitely in a spot right now where folks that can pay off their loan are holding off in case the US forgives all loans or something. A perverse incentive that is going to boost the number of student loans that are not paid off.

[n8cpdx]

Not just that, but with interest rates at zero and inflation at 8.5% per year (and growing!) it is incredibly stupid to pay even a single penny of federal loan debt early, unless you have a really good need to polish your credit score.

Federal student loan debts are getting cheaper by the minute, why pay more now?

[fortran77]

People in the US are always punished for being financially responsible.

[happytoexplain]

This attitude, as stated, is one of the fundamental evils, I think (the implication being "If I can't have it, nobody can", or, in this case, "If I didn't get it when it was relevant to me, nobody can"). In this case, the core grievance is valid ("I think there's a better way to address the problem"), but this expression of it makes the problem into the super common "us vs them" where "them" is defined by the terrible cultural obsession with the concept of "deserved" punishment and personal responsibility in an unqualified, absolutist manner ("He committed a crime, he deserves anything that happens", "He failed to pay a loan, he deserves anything that happens", "She had sex, she deserves anything that happens", etc).

[nr2x]

More people are punished for being born poor - lead paint, air pollution, and crumbling schools don’t exactly lend themselves to upward mobility.

[31098347]

People who have paid their student loan debt are in exactly the same situation they were after this forgiveness than they were before: that is, they have no student loan debt.

People in the US are not punished for being financially responsible. They are rewarded for taking risks, but not punished for being responsible. Very different.

[halJordan]

How about the govt just obey the terms of the agreement they made? This program has been on the books since 2007. Anyone who didn’t use it made their own decision.

[fuzzer37]

Me me me! What about me!?

[dudul]

It is a case of "me me me" indeed. This is why people support canceling existing loans instead of changing the college tuition/loan system. They don't want to fix things for future generations, they want to fix their own problem with their own student loan and move on.