What's your take on student loan forgiveness?

@Ontheroad From my perspective, it's an accident of birth. Specific to the US, you have to be born in the right state, the right city and the right part of the city, and to the right set of parents. Otherwise, all bets are off.

The 30-year old $billionaire manipulating the CryptoCurrency markets, worldwide, was born to 2 Stanford professors, on the Stanford campus, and did not have to break a sweat to get into MIT.

The kid born into an inner city neighborhood, in Chicago, into a broken family, is not going to have the same opportunity.

@Northwest Exactly, and that is wrong. Just wrong.

@Northwest well said

@SW-User Okay. Are loans available specifically for education, with exorbitant interest rates ? It seems like people really get ripped off, here. 🙁

@WintaTheAngle
What's an airframe engineer? Are you designing airframes?


I don't know if you realize this, but the taxpayers did pay for your education, in full, while at the same time paying you a salary that allowed you to have a family.

@Miram thank you - that's a well thought out reply.

@Elessar pretty good point honestly.

@CestManan Nicely written as well.

@REMsleep I will tell you guys how it works. When you obtain a student loan it doesn't always come from one lender so many times you have several lenders each with different intrest rates and conditions once you are no longer in school and each one of them can sell that debt at any time. Its a mess.

@REMsleep Your mother and many, many other mothers, especially single mothers have been and will in the future be caught in the same situation. They are alone, they have children and their options are few. They can take out massive loans to get an education so they can support their children, or live in poverty and draw government benefits while working two or three jobs.

Eventually they reach retirement age and beyond, and the debt is still there, still being paid on and they live paycheck to paycheck, barely getting by.

Why? Because they wanted more for their children.

I agree 100% with you, it is criminal and unconscionable.

@Ontheroad Yes and my mom is very responsible. Saved alot of her money in 401K, never paid bills late after she graduated.
Helped a bit put her kids thru college, paid off her house.
Just very good example but she had no guidance with this loan and she wasn't savvy and its just crazy. There were alot more shady practices involved which added to her loan amount but I don't know all of the details. You cannot negotiate with the lenders because they don't care about you and they have no intrest in assisting you. They bought the debt for pennies on the dollar and its honestly in their best intrest to add as much to the amount as they legally can and try to collect as much as they can.
My mom just retired one year ago. A couple years early to care for her Alzheimers mom. She wants a part time job now in her field but she is now caring full time alone for her Alzheimers aunt so it has become impossible.

@LadyGrace I agree that what we have currently, including this new loan forgiveness program, isn't fair. On the other hand, it is necessary and will have far reaching benefits for millions. Fair and necessary are two different things.

It's important, I think, to understand how we have forced people to get a higher education if they want to partake in the American dream. Either you take on the debt or you stay poor. That should not be the only two options one has.

@Ontheroad Agreed!! Thank you for a different perspective.

@JuniperEmz make me their efficiency expert. EVERYONE with "Diversity" or "Inclusion" in their title would be gone by lunch

@JuniperEmz You certainly made several thoughtful points there.

@SkeetSkeet You rightfully point out one of the many costs to the taxpayer for a failed, cost driven education system.

@Zaphod42 That's the whole point - the cost of an education is out of control.

@caesar7 I agree with this. I understand that Australia provides this benefit to their citizens.

@Slade that is the same as the "free press," i support the press with my subscriptions to a print media and an electronic version.

@softspokenman I have to remember this quote. Perfect, and so spot-on for this thread.

@Ontheroad Ah, that explains the responses to my response being removed.

@Magenta Yes, unfortunately when I removed several of his (and a couple of other posts), it deleted the responses too. I was determined to keep this civil and out of the realm of politics.

@Ontheroad Quite understandable.

@helenS If you had a student loan in the U.S., you already got a gift because the government underwrote them and guaranteed them -- most could not have gotten them otherwise. Unfortunately, too many financial and educational institutions then saw it as a way to bilk the government, handing out loans indiscriminately in many cases, and outright fraudulently recruiting students with false claims of guaranteed jobs on completion and such in the worse cases. It is not a black and white, good and evil issue, with lots of blame to be shared including very poor oversight or controls by the government in how the loan programs were being administered by the private sector.

@Scribbles yes and yes.

@soar2newhighs They should be congratulated. Again, in my opinion this is not about fair, it is about necessary and right. I paid for my education with 20 years of military service to include going into combat.

The thing is, we are not talking about self, we are talking about what is best for the masses, for our fellow human beings.

@ChipmunkErnie it is free to those who receive it. and yes someone or some thing pays for it . how ever if i gave you a buck that is free to you. i just paid for it.

@markansas That assumes people who go to school don't pay taxes.

@ChipmunkErnie every one pays taxs and once they are out of school they will pay even more taxs on the money they earn . if they have a high level job they will also pay even more with that higher paying job.. it benfits the poor and gives them a hand up to better life.

@bijouxbroussard I was thinking more of someone who took the loan and 10 years later hasn't paid it back but is making a mint in whatever their job is post-graduation.

@ChipmunkErnie Makes sense.

@bijouxbroussard If you got your degree via loan and are still working behind a fast food counter because that's the best you can find, it's one thing. If you're pulling down $200,000 a year in salary, start paying up. :)

@Convivial Agreed. I understand, at least in part, how some for profit higher learning institutes have higher costs, but why can't we as a nation take the plunge and have a quality, cost free education system?

@Roadsterrider But the government IS part of the contract by being the one who guaranteed the loan. When payment isn't made, the government buys the debt, and the Dept. of Education sics contract bill collector on the debtor, for which the contractor gets a sizable chunk of whatever is recovered. What affected Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was that the crisis exposed their practices of handing out loans to people who obviously would never be able to repay, with mortgage brokers fraudulently encouraging people to go in debt way over their heads. The same crap the lenders have been doing for the rip-off educational institutions. I have no pity for the lenders -- they are part of the problem, and because of the government guarantees don't have the same risk as the criminals in the housing and now the educational industries who were ripping off the system.

@dancingtongue I don't have any pity for the lenders or the government, but the terms were disclosed to the borrower before they signed. Their poor choice after the government defaults is to saddle the taxpayer with the debt. There is a contract between the government and the lender, not between the government and the borrower. The borrower made poor choices and the lender is counting on the government to pay the note. The government is expecting the taxpayer to pay the note. The same criminals in government that caused the mortgage crisis have also engineered the student loan crisis.

@Roadsterrider Oh, I agree with your last statement about the same criminals in government AND financial circles through their lobbying efforts engineering both deals. And there are a lot of students who saw an opportunity to milk the system and should have known better, or come from millionaire families who could afford to pay for their educations. But there were a lot of educational institutions and lenders preying on those incapable of knowing better, fraudulently selling them a bill of goods. My goddaughter being a prime example: someone on SSA disability, certified unemployable because she has no attention span worth mentioning, told it was a government program to get her off disability and promised a full-time job after completion of her coursework in an industry that went offshore decades ago. Which is why I like that at least the Biden Administration is trying to sort through the mess and make some distinctions, as difficult as that may be.

@Ontheroad That's good idea.

If you perform well and gets a good job, payback your loan, as this would contribute to the fund that is used to grant loans to students. In that way the students will have a sense of proud also because they will be contributing to support for loan to other students also.

If you perform well but not able to get a good job, your loan can be waived or the payback date can be extended/relaxed depending on your circumstances.

If you didn't performed well, you are not entitled to any exemption/relaxation as said above.

@ABCDEF7 You have some good ideas there. Thank you for contributing.

@CestManan I'm not sure - some of the details are still a bit sketchy.

@Rhode57 The concept is nice but the reality; what students might get without paying for their education, some of the universities and colleges who have students attending free; where do they get the monies that keep them functioning?

@GeniUs When I say free, I don't mean free to do nothing. I mean at no out of pocket expense. Benchmarks can be established and if you fail to meet those benchmarks, you are out of the no cost program. There are many ways to establish accountability.

@Slade I have an even more radical suggestion. Don't have a country that puts their people in the situation of having to sign on the dotted line or live in poverty/near poverty forever.

@justanothername As are 99.99999% of ALL moves by ALL politicians.

@Ontheroad Of course, otherwise how do you win votes?
Politicians tend to promote policies that they feel will win voters.

@justanothername Which, in my opinion, is why we term strict term limits.

@Ferric67 No, you aren't. It would be nice, but nice and can happen are two different things.

@Rhode57

It's
Never
Free

Someone else has to pay for it

@Slade I know that but the better educated the person the more likely they will get a job hopefully a higher paid job the more taxes they will pay so giving back to society so the next generation have free education etc etc .

@Rhode57 so if they can get a higher paid job they already have plenty of incentive to make the investment themselves

@TheSentinel Hmmm, while I disagree with the thought that just because you did it that means everyone can, I do see your point.

@CestManan I don't think anybody knows what the real cost will be, just as we can't really know what the benefits will be. At least this is a step forward. Doing nothing is, in my opinion, not acceptable.

@CestManan Federal Loan
Federal Loans aren't from the government. They are from various banking and lending institutions that are contracted to offer these loans. Once you apply you don't have any say in which bank offers up the loan. You put in your school, expected costs, your income info and then you get offered an amount. My loans were offered by Wells Fargo. Similar to the example that I posted half was unsubsidized and half was subsidized which just means that half had a bad intrest rate and half had a really horrible intrest rate.
Federal student loans can also be sold at any time to a different lender.
They are supposed to keep the terms the same but even paying well over the minimum usually doesn't get you anywhere due to the very high rates some of which are variable. If you pay over the minimum without specifying to apply to the principal they only apply it to your intrest and again you get nowhere.

You know I work around the country in various hospitals and no matter how small the town many of the physicians are foreign born, 1st generation arrivals.
I used to often wonder why but as I spoke to my counterparts in the hospital and considered my own situation I realized that the difference is cost of education.
I paid for half of my own University fees in cash working 2 part time jobs while completing a difficult laboratory science degree which slowed me down and I failed a couple of classes. In the end I was forced to take on debt to finish again only owing 38K.

@REMsleep unfortunately, this is a common situation. Even when things were far less expensive, I graduated from medical school only $10k in debt, in 1967. I earned $1,200 per year as an intern and my monthly load payment was $91.16. I had to virtually live in the hospital, to get a shared "on call room," and 4 meals a day. The second year my income grew to $3,600 for the year when the Committee of Interns and Residents achieved across the board raises. I felt rich, could afford an apartment. It was difficult times, but worse now.

@REMsleep I am helping my ex for many reasons, primarily because she is still my hero and always will be. Too, we are still close, very close and I could not stand by and watch her quietly struggle to pay off such crushing debt while supporting and paying off just not just her college debt, but that of three of her children (my step children who I am still close to).

Her story, unfortunately, is not uncommon and the practices of these predatory loans, plus the outrageous cost of education today is simply not right. I'm tired of not right. I'm tired of what I see and tired of seeing strong people like my ex, your mother and countless others honorably struggle with unbearable loads of debt just so they could better themselves and their children, and thereby rise the value of our nation and people.

Their struggle has to be honored and acknowledged and that's why I'm so much in favor of this loan forgiveness and hope it is the beginning of a correction in righting the cost to millions simply to better themselves and our nation.

@JaggedLittlePill Absolutely agree with this.

@JaggedLittlePill It will help millions and I for one am a willing, even a happy taxpayer to be taking part in righting a broken system of education.

@Ontheroad I don’t generally get into these debates on line because the other side is aware of the arguments already and has made their mind up. There is no chance of me convincing you of anything, and vice versa, to be fair.

My plan is zero interest loans so we remove the problem of revolving debt and interest added to principal. Income then rises over time to make the payment less onerous and inflation means you will be paying 2020 debt with 2030 dollars.

@Fukfacewillie I like that idea. A sound, reasonable approach to a least one fix. Thank you.

@Ontheroad Thanks!

@SW-User Bingo! Yeah, I did that for the first 20 years of my life, but that was a choice - something I knew going in and I was trained and equipped to do deal with it.