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I mean, seriously. I was stupid enough to take on the burden of student loans. At least give me the dignity of having the responsibility of paying them off.

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[-] Steve@startrek.website 28 points 1 year ago
  1. Because your student loans can not be discharged in bankruptcy, you have personally assumed all of the risk, as such your interest rate should be zero.

  2. Therefore the most fair and equitable solution is to retroactively set the interest rate to zero, and refund all interest payments to the borrowers.

What say you?

[-] eating3645@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't even mind the interest, if 100% of the interest was used to fund future student loans for the next wave of students. Banks don't want to give out loans they won't make money from? Make it a requirement to qualify for any future bailouts. We're due for another in a couple of years

[-] Zippy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Interest rate should be zero only if inflation did not exsist.

[-] 1847953620@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Interest rate should be equal to inflation

[-] Zippy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

That is reasonable.

[-] emc@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago

Interest rates represent the opportunity cost of investing that money elsewhere, of which lending risk is only one component. Also, the point is moot because lenders can still lose money if borrowers default, even if borrowers cannot legally discharge the debt in bankruptcy, so the lender does hold risk.

[-] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago

The right answer is to remove or strictly limit tuition for public schools, as many countries do and as the US has in its own recent history.

During much of the 1960s (in the early years of the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, 1960-1975), the three public higher education systems in California – the University of California System (UC), the California State College System (CSUC), and the state’s community colleges – did not charge tuition for in-state residents. Yes, students paid some nominal (called “incidental”) fees. But tuition, we as think about it and know it today, was not an essential part of the financing plan for public higher education in California five decades ago.

The transition to student fees (a rose by any other name?) in the UC and CSUC systems began shortly after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as governor of California in 1967. As reported by the NY Times in 1982, Gov. Reagan “fought hard in the Legislature to impose tuition at four-year colleges.” He lost the battle for tuition, but the California Legislature “agreed to increase student registration fees, which [previously] had been nominal.” The official “no tuition” policy in California’s community colleges ended in 1982.

[-] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

This is the answer. Yes, public universities should be free. UC Berkeley was able to discover plutonium and 15 other elements with no tuition, more than any other university (still no Stanfurdium).

[-] Rbon@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 year ago

Gotta say, “college tuition” was not on my “things Reagan ruined” bingo card.

[-] ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Think of pretty much anything that someone could point to in the years since Reagan as a sign of the fall of civilization and you can be reasonably confident that Reagan is behind it somehow. It's like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon game for politics.

[-] Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Isn't that the argument.

There's an unspoken agreement between a country and its youth.

The youth works hard and takes on debt at a pivotal moment losing years of work opportunity to specialize in something that will contribute to the economy.

In return the country is to provide a stable economy to find work so these people can repay that debt over time.

Question is when the country fails their end, the student still owes and is behind in experience. This debt can ruin them for decades. So should the government help repay to compensate for shitting the bed

[-] JungleJim@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You got scammed and you want the dignity of paying off the con artist? Hey I'll loan you some money too, and you can't bankruptcy out of it.

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The whole Economic point of free schooling is that people with a higher level of education can do work with higher value added, so better paid and also generating more wealth, hence they naturally end up paying back their education (and then some) because of the higher tax take, both directly that they themselves pay and indirectly because it enables more companies in high value added industries.

In other words, it's an investment in people by the State.

This of course, only works when the economic environment actually uses such more highly educated people to generate more wealth using their capabilities for higher value added activities, which isn't mostly the case nowadays in most of the West (you really don't need highly educated workers to be a rent-seeker skimming money from the rest of Society).

By then again, as the original poster is postulating the fantasy and detail-free suggestion of "foster an economy with better-paying jobs" (further below the OP provides "tax cuts" as "detail", which leads one to think maybe the OP has been living under a rock in the last 40 years of ever falling taxes, when the economy actually went in the direction of "worse-paying jobs") I reckon my point requiring an economy geared for production rather than rent-seeking is actually more feasible and less "magical thinking".

[-] who8mydamnoreos@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Millions of dollars that are going to banks every month instead of the local economy doesn’t spur vibrant small business.

[-] crypticthree@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

How? How do you foster this economy? Through what means?

[-] _stranger_@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Regan had this idea, it didn't work.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Government guaranteed student loans are a direct factor in the rise of the cost of education. If a seller knows buyers can afford a certain product, they will raise the price to what they know the buyer's can afford. The loan guarantee means the minimum price of college is going to be the guaranteed loan amount.

Removing government guaranteed student loans, means prices will actually have to follow demand. And there won't be an unlimited pile of " free money " that students can tap into.

As a bonus make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy again.

[-] paysrenttobirds@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

This is sort of true, but in fact demand has also risen a ton and colleges have not expanded or multiplied enough to keep up.

[-] HocEnimVeni@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

You're not wrong. If wages had increased alongside cost of living and tuition increases then we wouldn't be in this position now. We've been fighting for $15 dollars an hour minimum for so long that we really need $25 an hour.

[-] cynar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

While far from perfect, the system the UK has (had?) is a lot better, and can be implemented easily, and even retrospectively.

Basically, the loan is paid back as a percentage tax, over a (fairly high) set limit. If you don't earn above that limit for 10 years, it's written off. If you don't pay it back after 20, it's written off. The interest is tied to the Bank of England base rate, and so is basically inflation corrected.

By paying it off as a progressive tax, it doesn't cause the stress levels a loan does. By having a set time limit, it discourages over-lending for courses. Loaning £20,000 for a basket weaving course will never get paid back. The same loan for a medical course is very likely. The course charges are also capped.

As for your situation, you've got to ask yourself, what is better for society as a whole? Large debts, particularly on the young can be devastating. It cripples the explosive growth of skills and lifestyle needed to fuel future growth of the economy.

If you truly want to maintain your dignity, why not accept the write off, and instead invest the money into a scholarship fund for future students? Those with pride can keep it, while those whose pride has been ground away under the load can get out from under their mistake.

[-] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

Then support Lina Khan and the FTC is their anti-trust legislation against big tech.

[-] thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

It's an unpopular and unrealistic opinion. To change it into a good opinion regardless of popularity is to find the place where the situation currently lives and not in a theoretical.

[-] Rottcodd@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah - that arguably would be cheaper, and it definitely would be better for society as a whole.

That's entirely irrelevant though, because it's not going to happen.

The primary reason that decently-paying jobs have become so much less common is that, over the last few decades in particular, the money that would've paid decent wages has been diverted to pay truly obscene salaries to a handful of executives.

And the people drawing those obscene salaries, and making general pay decisions for corporations, tend to be, quite seriously, psychopaths.

A person who has morals, principles, integrity and empathy will exercise self-restraint - they'll have particular choices that they simply will not make.

A person without any of those qualities - a psychopath - will not be constrained. They will be entirely free to choose any course of action that will benefit them in any way, entirely regardless of the consequences to others.

So all other things being more or less equal, paychopaths will have a strategic advantage in competitions for position in hierarchies like corporations or governments.

In a sound society, that advantage will be blunted by the simple fact that people with morals, principles, integrity and empathy find them and their tactics reprehensible. That has historically made them more the exception than the rule.

In the 80s in the US, there was a fundamental change. Society was sold the idea that "greed is good" - that winning is everything and to the victor goes the spoils and watch out for number 1 and so on - essentially psychopathic views were marketed as virtues. Successfully.

And throughout that period, enough psychopaths succeeded that theirs became the dominant viewpoint, particularly in the largest corporations (or the most rapacious, and thus most successful throughout the takeover era of corporate consolidation). And since then they've just grown more entrenched and more self-serving, and richer, and more powerful.

Which brings me back to the point - yours is a relatively sound viewpoint, but it's entirely irrelevant, because the people who control the power by which such a thing might be accomplished are psychopaths, and they are not going to act in a way that might diminish by even a fraction their undeserved and destructive wealth and privilege, even if it's not only for the good of society as a whole, but then necessarily for their own long-term good. They just aren't psychologically or morally equipped to make that choice. And they control the power in our society, so nobody else can meaningfully make that choice.

So really, the only remaining option is the same one that eventually befell Sumer and Egypt and Athens and Rome - societal collapse. Just as was the case with them, the upper classes have become too entrenched, too self-serving and too greedy to make the choices that would save their civilization, and nobody else has the power to overcome them. And just as was the case with those civilizations, the common people, between being confused and being self-servingly manipulated and misled, blame subsets of each other instead of the people who really bear the lion's share of the responsibility for the woes facing their civilization. So just as was the case with their societies, things will just get uglier and uglier until they finally fall apart. Like it or not.

Have a nice day anyway though, because that's really all you can do. We can't stop the relentless downhill slide, but we can at least try not to make each other unnecessarily miserable along the way.

[-] ihavenopeopleskills@kbin.social -1 points 1 year ago

I ought to report this post for violating the rules. It's not an unpopular opinion. 👍🏻

[-] nbafantest@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago

Jobs have been getting better pay for decades now. Especially college jobs.

this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
29 points (64.6% liked)

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