Some initial thoughts on the declaration by the Biden administration regarding student loan forgiveness:
I think this may be cover for a collapsing college system in terms of enrollment and students not paying back their loans. Many people obtained degrees that were not useful in the workplace (I don't think college degrees should be a requirement of any job, expect for maybe a couple). Pastors/priests should have degrees to show that they adhere to the faith if you will.
This reminds me of Obamacare in some ways with forcing everyone to pay for something that is collapsing. I think that Obamacare was cover for a collapsing hospital system, and the COVID response may have been the same thing.
A lot of training should be done on the job site. As far as I know, engineers learned engineering at the workplace not too long ago and not at schools. The colleges and the universities are an entrenched lobbying group and want to have the guaranteed federal money to justify high tuition. The federal government should have never been involved in this business.
This is also a tax in disguise. If you think about it, many of these loans were never going to be paid. So, the forgiveness will be taxed next year as income as far as I know. So, the borrower will have to pay tax money on this (an unexpected surprise for many).
Lastly, I don't think the executive branch has the unilateral authority to grant this forgiveness. It should be struck down by the courts in a sane world, but I don't think that sane world has existed for a long time.
P.S. Colleges like Hillsdale College that don't take any federal funding may be the future of college in the United States. I would personally recommend a college that does not take federal funding to avoid the evils of DIE policies and other initiatives.
It's fundamentally bullshit because they force people who never went to college to pay for people who did. Blue collar workers have to pay the bills of social studies retards.
It's a bribe for Dem voters and a fuck you to Rep voters, with a heaping portion of redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich.
It also forces people who paid for their own college and worked full time jobs while being full time students to pay for those who either wasted their money on dumb degrees with no prospect of future pay or wasted their time spending 10 years on a 4 year degree.
Yup. Government once again taking our money to fund people that hate us. Lovely.
Of the people receiving this student loan forgiveness, what percentage are left wing? Probably 90%. Conservatives are far more likely to 1) enlist to pay for college, 2) aggressively pay off their debts after college, or 3) avoid college altogether.
This is just a massive transfer of wealth from the tax payer to the demographic that is probably more leftist than any other. The universities, which were wholly complicit in this scam, will be untouched - because they are the frontline indoctrinators of the youth.
All of the arguments in favor of this bullshit are retarded.
The universities are the biggest winners. The debtors won't be helped all that much, especially in the long term as the tuition costs keep rising.
This hard right college grad will gladly take the government up on this offer. Because I ran all the way through my GI bill benefits by my junior year, thanks to community college, I had to take 3 semesters of loans. I have $9.5k of student debt that has been put on hold since COVID started, and I was supposed to start payments on next month.
I am fully aware that this forgiveness will come from tax revenue, but as a white male I am taking any and all benefits I can get from the government, because it hates me, and would rather see me dead.
Like many, I think the universities should be forced to use their endowments for this, but we are not there yet, as a nation. Society is going to have to get a lot worse before that becomes a realistic option, and we are going to have to put in our mouth guards and ride this bitch all the way down through the crash. I'm going to extract as much benefits as I can as it does, because the more I do, the quicker it crashes.
Yes, that is accelerationism, and I don't care. I'm about to turn 51, and I'd like to see this shit finally crash all the way while I am sorta able to help build in the aftermath.
I don’t blame you even a little for taking advantage. The problem is that people like you probably comprise 5% of those who will benefit from this horseshit.
I will take this, because it partially undoes an injustice. I had two full ride scholarships and a job, and then my ex falsely accused me, and I had nothing. And then I was told if I took a break from classes, I would not be allowed to return. So I took the loans.
So, a decade later, having paid almost all the loans off, while supporting my parents and sacrificing luxuries and vacations, the last 20k will disappear, thanks to an idiot my ex voted for.
Maybe she should have voted for Bad Orange Man, the fucking thundercunt.
$125k is twice the average income in the US for people who work fulltime. That's a long shot from being some downtrodden poor who can't make payments.
$125k is also more than almost all college graduates make.
This loan forgiveness is going to cost $300 billion in the first year. Without the $125k limit it would "only" go up to $344b. Meaning this is WAY more than just a handful of people who couldn't pay it back anyway. It's almost all of college students and graduates.
It also disproportionately benefits people in the top income brackets.
Because the upper income brackets start way below $125k (which is $250k for couples). $125k/$250k is more than most people make.
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2022/8/23/forgiving-student-loans
From what I've read the feds won't be treating the loan forgiveness amount as taxable income. Some states might depending on their laws. Going to your larger point: The problem with college is that it used to act as a signal that a graduate had a certain IQ level. Employers started requiring degrees in lieu of the actual IQ tests they had to stop using because the racial makeup of the failures wasn't politically correct. The signal doesn't work anymore because the flunk outs have the same racial makeup as the people who were failing employer IQ tests in earlier decades so the colleges have been passing people who can't demonstrate competency. Because of this college graduates are now a dime a dozen and employers know they they don't mean jack shit when it comes to identifying good employees. That's why most degrees aren't worth shit anymore.
The other problem is that student loans are federally guaranteed, so lenders be they the government itself or private companies have no incentive to make sure that the student will get a return on their investment and thus be able to repay the loan. The ideal student loan program would have no government involvement. The lender would make decisions based on the student's IQ and major. That way the student gets a return on his investment and the lender makes money on the loan. You know, like any other lending decision. If some airhead woman wants to major in grievance studies she can do it on her own dime. This has the nice effect of starving the bullshit departments. Colleges should be in the business of education, not creating woke activists.
the universities should be paying, not the taxpayer. the universities (and the government creating these loans to begin with) are the problem here.
Expropriation by decree. No vote, nothing. Naked banditry.
We’ve entered a new era in government theft in America. They used to at least make the effort to attach this unpopular bullshit to a massive spending bill so that conservatives had to ostensibly vote against popular clauses in order to shoot down the pork. Now a leftist president just forces massive spending (to benefit almost exclusively his voters) with the flick of a pen.
In the "everyone loots the Treasury" stage of empire the only rational response is to make sure you get your share (and/or prevent the Treasury from taking what's yours: money is fungible so there's a certain equivalence between the two) and use it to set yourself up for when the thing can no longer sustain itself.
They're just looting the treasury in their favor while it still exists and they can.
I didn't think about a collapsing school system. That makes sense. The entire thing is a pyramid scheme, so the best answer is to prop up the bottom, but only enough the entire system thinks they need you.
That part is wrong. Nearly all of these loans would have been repaid. 7.8% of student loans default, and so only roughly 7.8% of these loans would have defaulted.
The criteria for this loan forgiveness has nothing to do with means testing or forgiving only people in default. It's literally "the taxpayer is going to pay $10k of your loans even if you make $125k a year and would have easily paid them off yourself".
Thank you for correcting me. I didn't know what the default rate was, and I didn't how many loans were never repaid (i.e. default by death).