Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
|
I’m on a phone, so I’m not going to cut and paste a rebuttal to each paragraph.
Rants about Trump’s COVID relief is not relevant to student loans issues.
The current interest rates aren’t my numbers. They are the numbers.
I’m aware of consolidating student loans and it’s effects. But locking in a rate at consolidation is a risk you take. Voluntarily, I might add.
The penalization comment about refinancing is interesting. I won’t presume what you mean by that, but I will state that your own comment acknowledges that refinancing is an option—just one that you don’t want to take.
My take from that is that you’d rather not avail yourself of existing options (and possibly regret availing yourself of one previously), which is fine. But then don’t expect others to give you other options that amount to a bailout from the pockets of those who paid off their own loans or never took them out in the first place because they couldn’t afford to do so.
You make many assumptions about my job while I was paying off my student loans. Unfounded and incorrect assumptions. The truth is that I didn’t have a great paying job, deferred a lot of spending, lived like a very broke student for years, and buckled down and paid the loans off. I did it and millions of others have done it.
I was not in favor of bailing out the banks, the car companies, or the homeowners who bought houses way beyond their means.
I would possibly be in favor of allowing student loans to be discharged through bankruptcy, but only on a go-forward basis for new loans. But I would expect any such bankruptcy relief to be conditioned on the to-be-debtor having first being soundly evaluated, much like those who apply for a mortgage or car loan, on their career plan, job options, and educational history and probable chance of success at school.* I suspect that many potential borrowers wouldn’t like that because, chances are, they won’t get to go to their preferred school or study what they want.
But oh well. You want the money? You accept the terms and obligations that come with it.
And if you don’t like the terms or find then to be oppressive or terrible or sucky, then don’t take the money and find another way to attend college and grad school.
But to take the money and spend it, and then turn around and whine about the terms and ask (or demand) for others to pay off your debt just reeks of entitlement, selfishness, and immaturity.
* There are potential problems that could still show up with this, much like the liar loans in the housing market. Fraud could be rampant. Monitoring that the evaluations are done correctly could cost a lot of money. But to just hand out essentially unsecured money that can then be discharged through bankruptcy, well, we might as well just set dollar bills on fire. Which, I guess, is close to what will happen if the government just wipes out all of the student loan debt.