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[Ocelot II]

1. Are you concerned that someone not sufficiently *worthy* might get this benefit?

[question everything]

2. I would like to have the debtors understand how they got into this and to prevent

another financial missteps in other area.

[msongs]

4. personal responsibility is so overrated these days nt

[Wednesdays]

19. So is compassion. nt

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. Carrying college debt is a financial misstep? Huh.

[question everything]

9. If your major pays $40 K and you took $70 K loan then yes.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

10. Is buying a $125K home when you make $80K a year a financial misstep?

If your major pays $40 K and you took $70 K loan then yes.

Show your work.

[question everything]

35. Mortgage is considered "good debt.". You don't pay rent and you build equity

this is part of being financial proficient.

But, of course, you know that.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

40. "Is considered" doing a lot of work here.

Are you saying people who never buy homes aren’t being financially proficient?

[question everything]

48. Trying hard to win, are you? Many people do not purchase houses for many reasons

But the ones who do with the example that you cite have good reasons to do so.

During the 2008 real estate bubble it was amazing how many, at different income levels, purchased homes at 10x their income leading to trouble.

[Demsrule86]

60. Oh, so 2008 was the borrowers fault...silly me. And here I thought it was the banks making

improper loans and then cutting them into pieces and selling them (CDOs). They had big eight accounting firms labeling these pieces of junk as prime. I should say the big four as there are no longer eight.

[edhopper]

8. What fucking misstep?

They are in this situation because this onerous debt is the only way many can get a college education.
They aren't buying fucking yatchs.

[question everything]

15. No, they could have started in Junior college. They should have researched

their potential earning and then determined how much debt they could afford.

Sadly high school counselors did not help.

[edhopper]

17. Bullshit

Bye.

[Demsrule86]

21. Junior college isn't cheap either and not all credits transfer you know...

[Demsrule86]

29. Oh, I see it is you belief that if they didn't go to junior college than they are not worthy of

debt relief. Seriously?

[Demsrule86]

11. What gives you the right?

[question everything]

23. to what? Having a say in where my tax dollars go?

I really would like yo see teachers, and adjunct professors and nurses being helped and I don't think that many are making $125K as individuals.

[Demsrule86]

27. None of us have a say where our tax dollars go...and it is none of you business nor is it your

job to investigate student borrowers...Jesus, can't we just be happy that some who need help are getting it? Must we make it our business to determine who is 'worthy' of help? I say no. And you might as well face it...not going to happen.

[Ocelot II]

18. Sounds like the kind of bullshit hoops people applying for other benefits have to jump through

because Republicans think people are poor because they are undeserving and unworthy. You are assuming people need student loan relief because they didn't select their college major sensibly enough, or that they didn't go to a cheap enough school, or that they did something foolish. So the lender or the government might tell the borrower, Sorry, you should have gone to Bob's Marginally-Accredited Junior College and Bait Shop and majored in something useful like data entry, but instead you went to this highly-respected university and majored in biology? Why should we forgive your loan when all you are going to do with your degree is go to grad school and become a scientist instead of immediately getting a job as a corporate drone so you can pay your loan back right now?

Seriously?

[question everything]

26. If one majored in Biology and became a scientist one should have no problem

paying student loan. Unless they have different priorities.

[Ocelot II]

31. Since the program is available only to those who make less than $125K annually,

if you do manage to get a good job as a biologist you wouldn't be eligible. However, it's always possible that you won't be able to get that job right away. You might be stuck for a long time working as adjunct faculty at a university for $3K per semester credit. There's no guarantee that any major will result in a big salary, which is why it would be seriously dumb to condition loan forgiveness on the choice of a major.

[harumph]

61. One doesn't major in biology and become a scientist

- they teach or go on to get their PhD. A bachelor's in biology by itself is not
an income generator. Also, doesn't the state have a compelling interest in
seeing young people go into fields that aren't necessarily big income
generators? The statement you make "If one majored in Biology and became a scientist one should have no problem"
tells me that you have not thought this out sufficiently. And BTW, many scientists don't make that much
$ - it depends on who is funding your research. You sure as shit don't make much as a climate scientist which
we need more of. You can however leverage your medical degree by flogging unproven remedies and bogus
nutraceuticals. Lots of people make lots of money in occupations that add nothing to societies well being and
in fact, many of "those" occupations have a negative effect.

[Sky Jewels]

24. "How dare these damn kids not have the sense

to be born before 1990, like I was, and grow up in a time when higher education was affordable, student loans weren’t onerous, and one could feasibly work their way through college?!”


Give me a fucking break! You sound ridiculous!

[Johnny2X2X]

3. First show me yours

Show me your financial proficiency while you use my tax dollars to federally guarantee your bank deposits. My tax dollars to federally guarantee your home mortgage.

And before you get 1 dime of a child tax credit, prove to me you’re not wasting my tax dollars.

Give me a break with this BS. The average American gets more than $10K from my tax dollars every year and I don’t demand they explain.

[question everything]

7. I can guarantee you that my household has been a "donor" one throughout

our working lives. Even now we do have our Social Security benefits taxed and we do not complain.

And we saved, lived within our means so we enjoy our retirement.

[Johnny2X2X]

14. Prove it before you take $1 of Medicare!

Open your books. Show me.

[Demsrule86]

16. Everyone has their social security benefits taxed...that still does not give you the right to

to investigate others to determine if they are worthy. I bet in the course of your life you made some bad decisions and someone bailed you out.

[question everything]

30. Federally, not states.

https://www.gobankingrates.com/retirement/social-security/states-that-dont-tax-social-security/

[Demsrule86]

12. +1000

[WhiskeyGrinder]

6. Means testing is just putting up barriers.

This is some shit.

[Sky Jewels]

13. Did you want that way every business that got

pandemic relief? Are you upset that rich corporations get subsidies with very little scrutiny?

[2 Meow Momma]

20. Each and every one of 45 million? nt

[obnoxiousdrunk]

22. Who died ...

[Solly Mack]

25. I want people to major in art, in music, in philosophy, in languages, in dead languages

in French poetry, and the list goes on. The bottom-line isn't what creates well-rounded, decent people. It isn't what creates music and art. Nor does it expand the mind to new ideas and new ways of seeing the world. The bottom-line is not transformational. People need to be.

The idea that people are looking at the bottom-line on what a student should major in as an excuse to shame them (and it is shame, as the reason behind it is determining if they and their major are worth anything) is no different than those who demand an accounting from the poor for just about everything from government help to how many children they should have to if they should have a pet.

Just, no.

[Ocelot II]

37. Yes, exactly!

The OP seems to suggest that there are only certain courses of study that are "worthy" of loan forgiveness, presumably those that would create more corporate drones - business administration and the like. Of course, once you make more than $125K you aren't eligible any more, so it must be that you have to major in something that leads to a job that makes you ineligible - that way that $10K wouldn't have to paid out anyhow! But I also want a society where people study the arts and literature, even if it doesn't make them rich and even if they need a little help. The loan forgiveness program will mostly help the poorest among us, those who wouldn't have the opportunity to get any kind of higher education, whether it's a major in medieval German literature or a two-year trade school program to become an aircraft mechanic. The idea that there should be all kinds of prerequisites is impractical, unfair, and kind of Republican.

[Solly Mack]

44. Instead of singing in the lifeboat, we can lament how we let the shipbuilder down for

not becoming shipwrights.

[Sympthsical]

28. I don't know a lot of 18 year olds with a financial education

Or very good long-term financial planning skills.

Which these banks and institutions very much count on as they honey-talk what signing those papers mean.

"Once you get your degree, all will be fine." And when it's the counselors, the people who are tasked with giving the students the best advice, who are selling this line, there's a problem.

I just don't understand. As liberals, we should be attuned to predatory industries and the wealthy engineering policy so they keep as much as possible for themselves.

Working people get one fucking break, and it's the end of the entire world and let's put all these conditions and safeguards all over it.

I need to make this my sig:

It seems human nature that a person climbing the ladder is never more hated than by the people occupying the next rung.

[Demsrule86]

39. I had a few misgivings at first. Then I thought, when I went to school I could pay my tutition with

a part-time job. That is not possible anymore. And I thought of my mistakes (marrying a guy with a black leather jacket, a motorcycle, and a Drug habit as an 18-year-old). My parents took me back and gave me a place to live while I went to college and watched my kid too. They didn't decide I was unworthy as I had made mistakes.

And over the years, I made more mistakes (not a fast learner I guess) and had people help me because they were great people with big hearts. Also, I am definitely 'unworthy' because after my second husband's first illness, we declared bankruptcy (as did more than a few complaining now about this program, I bet). So now, after some thought, I am super happy Biden did this. By God, this sort of thing is why I am a Democrat and not a Republican swine. This is a BFD. And I support it 100%.

[Sympthsical]

54. I was told all through childhood "Go to college."

Get the degree or else you're practically a bum.

Every teacher, every counselor, every program. College college college. It could not have been drilled in more.

When I was a freshman at 18 years old, the loans were treated as no big deal. It's just what you did. Go down to the financial aid office and sign those papers. The end. Hooray! Now you're all set for college!

No one, not a single person, was ever saying, "The economy will go to shit, you will choose between loans and food, and you will be paying this until you're in your 40s or 50s."

I got out of it. I had a time of things in my 20s but ultimately fell into a job that paid well. I had some lucky breaks. Knew someone who got me into my current company. Paid less for my apartment than a lot of other friends due to just finding a lucky listing in an area not being taken over yet. This allowed me to save up enough so that my partner and I could down pay on a house. I have never been ill outside of the rare flu (and some omicron).

So many people my age have not been as fortunate. They didn't get those breaks. Lay offs or living expenses or medical bills. And all the while, there's that payment month after month after month eating into what breathing room they try to scrap together for themselves.

We (collective we) put people in this situation. We put these papers in front of inexperienced kids and then yell at them, "Why didn't you know any better?!"

And it really, really, really rankles when some of the loudest voices saying it are those that were never in that position to begin with, because their educations were affordable.

I'm a liberal. I help the people who aren't as lucky as me, and I make sure the ladder not only stays down behind me, but gets extended for those who come after and were left behind.

[Demsrule86]

58. This is a wonderful post and honestly, I learned today that you are a terrific human being...

always suspected it of course...we need millions more like you.

[Celerity]

32. de rec nt

[Demsrule86]

41. I agree...I am glad Biden did this. I had not realized how deeply we had all drank the ...

'you must be worthy' kool-aid. Are we so f'ing 'worthy' all the time? Off-topic-did you see that Gen-Y kid that won in Florida? What a kid!

[Celerity]

55. Yes, it is pretty cool to see someone the same age as me win a US House Primary, lol

He seems to be a wonderful politician and human from all I have observed.

All in all was a pretty damn good night for us!

I am glad Crist won as well, he is better positioned, IMHO, to make a serious run at the monster DeathSentence.

Florida so depresses me, I could not imagine living there for ages and see the state turn a hideous shade of Hate Number 1 Red.

We have our own nasty issues here in Sweden (our national elections are Sept 11). Most of the parties have lost their minds and went halfway to full stop xenophobic, even mine to a small degree (S aka the Social Democrats). I fear we will end up for the first time ever with a RW government (not new, that has happened so much over the past 150 years) that will have a hard RW, racist party (SD, ie the Sweden Democrats) actually in the Government (the PM and their cabinet).

[Demsrule86]

57. Oh dear, I hope Sweden doesn't go far right...Florida is depressing.

There is so much hatred in that one state.

[Eko]

33. With that kind of thinking we wouldnt have had

Mozart, Einstein, Picasso, Warhol, Dali, Elvis, Louis Armstrong, the Beatles.

[WaterSong1951]

34. Negative on your idea

People in their 30s faced the 2008 recession- tried to get ahead- took out loans to go to college- whoa! If you didn’t go to school to become a quant at a big financial firm what were you left with - ok- try to rent an apartment- $2000 a month in most places - their parents never faced this headway trying to make a foothold in this country- are you people that are against this so cruel to deny some grace for the younger generation? Did you write letters to the corporations that received tax breaks to tell them to take classes in financial management? Come on!

[jmbar2]

36. Benefit of a college degree were pushed mercilessly for decades.

A college education was the key to gaining entrance to the middle class. A lot of folks - myself included - didn't understand how to use the college experience to join the middle class.

I just thought that if I graduated with a degree - any degree - that I could go out and get a middle class job. Boy was I wrong! I had no one to explain to me how career and educational choices were related. The way that I did it definitely did not work the first time.

Later on, I went back to school and studied intensively about career choice and the return on investment to education. I learned that low income folks, foster kids, orphans, and first generation college goers often got little, or inaccurate guidance on how to make a good educational investment.

These folks were also preyed upon by universities, colleges and technical schools such as the University of Phoenix that targeted their Pell grants with little or no concern for whether they would achieve sustainable employment at the end. Millions were scammed and left in debt.

I later created career exploration curriculum to teach the relationship between a sustainable living, career and educational choices. These were the lessons I had learned the hard way, and I didn't want others to make the same mistakes.

Don't blame the folks who thought they were doing the right thing to improve their lives. Most never got information on the right way to go about it. This education was not available to them in most cases.

I applaud Biden's decision. It is a form of restitution in my eyes for misleading so many people into poor educational investment decisions that they didn't have the knowledge to evaluate.

[NewHendoLib]

38. wow. this is the type of post I never thought I would see at DU. Sad.

[leftstreet]

45. +1

[delisen]

42. How about scolding the government and banks who sold these loans to teenagers?

They sold these loans to teenagers who trusted them because they were the government and because they were institutions they were taught to admire.

Student Loans made universities rich and banks flush. It also corrupted financial aid departments at universities as they enjoyed gifts from unscrupulous lenders who further saddled students with private loans that are not being forgiven. At the same time large corporations stopped investing in worker training.

It also fueled a despicable private education businesses that saddled students with debt they could never pay off. Many of the students these predatory colleges marketed to were mentally ill.

Civilizations that want to survive don’t eat their seed corn and don’t eat their young.

Germany and other developed countries have been able to produce educated people without impoverishing the individual student. Their companies still invest in training. We have always had the ability to do the same.

Our financial institutions were looking for low risk and no risk business. They were not being capitalists, they were securing guaranteed profits for themselves.

The purpose of education in a democracy or democratic republic is not just to secure a job or provide job training, it is to create thinking citizens. When universities become job factories, education has to still take place elsewhere.

[haele]

43. Moral Hazard is a Calvinist premise.

People are not worthy of they make the wrong choices, even if there is no opportunity to make the "right" choices.
People are not worthy if "bad things" happen to them. That's obviously Gawd's punishment for an inner evil within them that must be removed for them to get grace or mercy.
People are not worthy if there's some disability or genetic "fault" that creates an obstacle to them being able to make "the right choice".

Unworthy people deserve to be punished, to be sick, to be poor, to suffer until they "take responsibility" and make "the right choices".

Haele

[leftstreet]

46. Where are the tests for rich pricks who got PPP forgiven?

Unbelievable to see this kind of thing on DU

smh

[Throck]

47. The wife and I went to financial counseling.

It worked. We learned to live within our means and paid off our college loans in 15 years. We scraped, drove shitty cars, ate a lot of rice and beans and didn't have cable TV. Our kids went to 2 year schools and lived at home before going on to 4 year schools. They both worked through school. My son paid off his student loans in 5 years and my daughter with a masters is 8 years out and almost paid off. I'm really proud of them. We all drive shitty cars still. We can afford chicken with our rice and beans now.

Financial counseling helped us become disciplined. No regrets.

We love thrift stores.

I guess some people like paying interest to the banks.

[Ocelot II]

49. Good for you.

I'm glad you're so virtuous and responsible.

[Demsrule86]

59. That is some serious snark...hah

[question everything]

51. Kudos to you and to your wife, and the kids

and the great example that you provided.

[blogslug]

50. I would like state and community college to be completely tuition-free

[question everything]

52. Agree about community college

I am having a problem with some state Us where footballs coaches are paid millions of dollars while adjunct professors, who do the teaching are barely making $40 K.

[Mr.Bill]

53. Examing the debts of tens of millions of people

would be a monumental project that would maybe cost more than the loan forgiveness project does. And who would set the standards? I see what you are saying and maybe could agree in principle, but I don't think it's practical.

Maybe in the future, we could require some study and testing on personal financial mamgement in order to qualify for the loan.

[Hekate]

56. Jesus Christ on a trailer hitch. The terms of the loans ended up being ruinous and were...

…. turned into big profits. There are people still conscientiously paying off their loans decades later.

Read this https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217079727

[H2O Man]

62. +1