When my Bride and I graduated four decades ago we had combined student loan debt of $20,000.00. That’s the equivalent of about $60,000 today. In my first law job I earned 16k a year. Payment on the loans took a big bite out of my initial take home pay. It took us until the year 2000 to fully pay that debt, although over the years the payments shrank as a portion of our net income . The student loans were an investment in our future and our return on that investment has been very good over time. Our son, who now is my fellow worker in the law mines, paid off his student loan debt of 60k, demonstrating admirable fiscal discipline, in two and a half years after his graduation from law school in 2017.
Under Biden’s plan any student loan borrower will have 10k picked up by the taxpayers if the borrower does not earn over 150k a year. Married borrowers will get the same if they do not earn over 300k a year. The median annual wage in this country is about 34k a year. Thirty five percent of adult Americans have a bachelor’s degree. The income limits on this plan are not accidental as the Marxists used to say. They were set to cover even the highest earning new grads from law school and medical school. Reverse Robin Hood. The Democrat party has long falsely claimed to be the party of the little guy. In actual fact they are primarily the party of college educated Leftists, as demonstrated by this very bad idea being pushed by those forces who want Uncle Sucker to tax those blue collar whites they so loathe and use the funds generated to benefit them. The Biden plan is under attack from the Left in the Democrat party who are outraged that all the student loan debt of their supporters will not simply be erased. None of this of course would be done with Congress passing a law forgiving the debt.
The Puppetmasters’ regime is governing this country very much as if they are conquerors governing an enemy population. Few of their initiatives demonstrate better the utter contempt they have for the average American than this attempt to saddle voters who never went to college with the debt of those who did.
How many like me who worked two or three part-time jobs to attend college? No money from Dad and Mom. No student loans. Hard work, sacrifices, and only indebted to my parents who taught me to take responsibility for myself and never trust any government promise.
Next, they’ll give $12,000 to each EV buyer . . . No, wait!
They don’t care about taxpayers the major of whom [non government employees and pensioners] are ultra-MAGA, domestic terrorists.
I was thinking I could not be more cynical. We’ll see what they come up with next.
Something needs to be done about the student loan problem, but Biden and the other leftists are of course not going to address the root problems but only make temporary gestures aimed at getting votes.
If I were president, the first thing I would do as president would be to make an executive order forbidding the issuance of new federal student loans. Then we would work out the details of how to fix the system and what do by the current crop of students screwed over by the status quo.
Student loans are a necessity for many students. I would suggest that the loans should be dischargeable in Bankruptcy 15 years after they are incurred, and that Colleges be co-signors on the loans, responsible for 50% of the debt in the event of default.
A college education isn’t a necessity, how can a loan for one be a necessity?
If you want to go to college and you lack the cash a loan is necessary. Same for most trade schools. The loans I and my Bride took out were absolutely essential for us. The rich are never harmed by lack of loans, while the poor and the middle class often are.
I think if rich left wing democrats want to help alleviate the student loan debt, why don’t they hit up their rich pals to pool some of their resources and help out. They can even start a fund that people can voluntarily donate to.
The fact of the matter is they don’t give a damn about these people. They just want to further divide people by stoking the belief one group of people should bankroll the college education of another group of people.
Harvard alone has an endowment of 53.2 billion dollars. However doing good with other people’s money is an article of the Leftist creed.
“However doing good with other people’s money is an article of the Leftist creed.“
Which does nothing but enormous harm.
Justice Clarence Thomas was still paying down his law school debt after he was seared on the Supreme Court.
The only reasons that most students need to go to college is going to college has been so pushed that anyone without a college degree is looked at as an idiot or a flake. No one expects a college degree to mean that you are competent, but the lack of one can be used to say you are incompetent.
But why was it possible to get to this high level of college enrollment? Because of student loans. Student loans are only “necessary” because of a situation created by student loans. Similarly college tuition exploded precisely because of the vast number of loans. Not only in terms of tuition, but rooming, board, “activity fees,” and various other expenses. If loans were cut off then most students would not be able to afford these, which would mean that universities would have to cut down on their bloated administrative castes (or they could go bankrupt; I’m fine with either outcome.)
At the same time if there were suddenly good reasons for students to not be able to go college businesses would be more inclined to consider applicants without a college degree (though we would need to do a lot of changing to hiring laws to fully fix the problem.)
However, that being said, I am not against loans totally, but only those which are exploitative and usurious (as most student loans are.) I support having loans discharged through bankruptcy and having colleges be co-signers as you have suggested.
In fact, I would go further and have the college act as the lending agency and reduce the amount of time necessary to discharge the debt by bankruptcy. If colleges don’t do due diligence and either make sure that their degrees translate to real earning power or only give loans to students who can pay back independent of their college careers, then they can eat the expenses when their students go bankrupt.
Many jobs have listed a college degree as a requirement for consideration for employment. The job application and/or the resume needs to have one listed to avoid being discarded. There were a series of lawsuits that curtailed the use of employer administered tests. There is an article giving the history of colleges as de facto employment gatekeeper employer-sanctioned cartels. it is titled “Busting the College-Industrial Complex”
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https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/busting-the-college-industrial-complex
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People seeking to get their meal tickets punched via college helps to drive the demand for student loans. The college diversocracy has done its part to help inflate college costs and the financial burden on students. There are times when poorly prepared college students end up taking remedial classes to make up for deficiencies in their education that should have been covered by the precollegiate educational systems. College is a pretty expensive place for this to take place at. Currently there is little to incentivize colleges to keep their costs under control so as to lower the financial burden on the students. They end up sticking the student with the bill.