[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by HockeyIlliterate

I’m not going to respond to your entire wall of text because much of it is off point, but let’s start with the facts.

No, its all on point, you just may not like being painted into a corner and having to explain your cognitive dissonance on what is acceptable use of government spending and what is not. Frankly it is appalling that we sit by and watch millions of dollars funneled to the already rich and then force the working poor to struggle.

As of July 1, 2020, federal student loan rates for undergraduate loans are 2.75%, graduate loans are 4.30%, and Parent PLUS loans are 5.30%. Source: https://www.investopedia.com/student...-rates-5069743 None of those numbers equal “6.5-9%”

Your numbers are bull####. My loans, held by the federal government, are currently 6.65%. My wife's are currently 8.89%, also held by an arm of the Department of Education. There's the rub with what rates are "currently" at. Your loans and rate are locked in when you consolidate and finance them, so a claim of what rates are right now is really disingenuous. Refinance to take advantage of lower interest rates is not a possibility unless you want to penalize yourself.

Federal student loans do not have “horrible terms”. Nor are the terms oppressive. I took them out (a lot of them, actually, for both undergraduate and law school) and, shockingly, paid them all off in about 7 years. And at a higher interest rate than what the loans are at now. But the terms were not horrible, they were standard. And they were acceptable.

The terms suck. You were very lucky to have a job that probably paid pretty well (attorney IIRC), and you had the discretionary spending to pay your loans off, or had an employer who would do it for you. But most people don't have that luxury. They are stuck with terms they can't get out from under without penalizing themselves. I seriously doubt you had to worry about being in an income-based repayment plan and having your money budgeted for you. I also doubt you had to worry about forbearance because of you weren't living paycheck to paycheck. Worst of all, you likely didn't have to worry about not having the option to refinance to take advantage of lower rates, helping lower your monthly payment, and then knowing that even if you went bankrupt, those loans would never be discharged. Those are ####ty terms, but because you had a great paying job you were never exposed to the ruthless parts of the loan programs. Walk a mile in the average student's shoes.

If you are going to enter a program and take out loans to do so, you better be sure that you can complete the program successfully and that you will earn enough to pay back the loans. If you don’t do that sort of due diligence, I’m not about to bail you out and it is insulting to ask anyone else to do so.

I wonder where your outrage was when we bailed out the banks and the automotive industry and the airlines and then every rich swinging dick on Wall Street? Were you this indignant when you funneled millions and billions to individuals who were irresponsible and brought our systems to its knees? Did you have moral outrage then? Or did you save that moral outrage for the millions of people who lost their homes and retirements in the failures of the rich whose only motivation was to get "theirs" and then "get more?" The moral indignation only seems to surface when the poor get something, but when the rich are swimming - Scrooge McDuck fashion - in the money we funnel to them, crickets.

Student loans aren’t special. Just like any other debt, it is something taken on voluntarily to achieve an end. Like mortgages, they can help people better themselves and their communities. Like car debt, they can help create jobs and can be used to create mobility. Like credit card debt, they can be used to create opportunities and access to new things.

Yet they are treated as special by the government and by the courts. They are one of the few debts that cannot be discharged or retired in any way other than full repayment. Even if someone goes through bankruptcy the government will still garnish the wages of the destitute to extract the payment as identified by their note holder. That process is unique to student loans and makes them very special. It pained me to see the hopes of students crushed by the reality of student debt being amplified by a sluggish economy that was only working for the uber rich. People trying to better themselves discovering the system is still set up against them and holding them back.

Lastly, there is a lot of wrong and inequality in this world. That doesn’t mean that we should use it as a reason to create more of it.

You're right. There is no equity in this world. The rich get their and everyone else gets ####ed. It's time to let those rich pricks have their "eat cake" moment and do something for the proletariat who are only trying to improve their standing and become a rich prick themselves one day. This is more than a fair ask from a system that routinely pisses on the poor and tells them its raining.