Do not pay back your student loans, they need to learn fiscal responsibility

@wishforthenight Free tuition is the only ethical choice.

@BorealPedant I'm sorry. And I 100% agree. We can afford it, but politicians choose not to allow it.

@BorealPedant Then who pays?

@wishforthenight All good this joke sounds very right wing even though "don't pay back the loans" is silly.

And yeah my thing is that we need to learn to force politicians to do what the population wants. The student loan crisis is a ludicrous unforced error.

@Ynotisay Taxes. Colleges are not THAT expensive to run. Corporate taxes are constantly being cut, neither political party is bothered by federal debt, and there are more billionaire than ever.

Any capitalist county wants an educated population because that cranks your GDP. Even philosophy majors end up with better careers than uneducated people on average.

Tuition is insane in the US in a way it is not in other countries because student debt is an easy way to slash operating grants to colleges.

It's a silly, broken system that benefits nobody but financiers.

@BorealPedant Colleges are not that expensive to run? Really? And taxes? That already happens with a lot JC's and State universities. But there's still fees. Because there has to be. And there shouldn't be any discrepancy between universities? Where you went to school shouldn't be a factor in the private sector? And I'm not sure you can lean in to "capitalist country" by denying the machinations of capitalism. Might want to think this one through and remember that magic wands don't exist.

@Ynotisay Private colleges can do what they want.

The US is the richest country on the planet yet somehow is magically broke when it comes to funding public services which are affordable or even free in other countries.

There is money already in the system to pay for this.

Those student loans are never being paid off and they're basically a loan against a public service with variable cost. It's a fabricated problem.

Like what do you propose? That this is a working system?

@BorealPedant But you said taxes should pay for it. And the U.S. isn't the richest nation on earth. We have the highest GDP because of the population but we're like number 10 as far as "richest" countries.
And I don't propose anything. This is your trip. But "those student loans are never being paid off?" "Never" is a big word. Good to use that one appropriately.
I paid off my student debt. Did you pay yours?

@Ynotisay Oh I don't have a degree, but I work at a university and am a union leader there. So I have a lot of expertise in post-secondary funding since I'm leading our bargaining team right now.

Student loan forgiveness is a big deal because there is a crisis of the size of the debt expanding, rather than shrinking. Tuition skyrockets and people make less and less money.

The assumption that everyone will just be individually responsible and pay it off is not working at a macro level. It means there is less money in the economy, poorer people, and this trickle of funds going to the government which barely touches the trillion dollar student debt lump. It helps -nobody-.

And "richest" can be measured in a million ways. My point is that the notion of colleges being some kind of luxury that the population needs to fund is ass backwards policy.