American Politics 3.0 - Back to Brunch

[Derek Sutton]

Capping at $125k income buys way more votes then capping at $60k income. If anyone sees this as anything other then vote buying there is little hope for you. This does nothing to address the real problem of tuition costs and student loan interest rates. Furthermore, capping the minimum monthly payments at 5% of gross is only going to increase the interest paid on the loans. Short term, short sighted band aids making no long term change.

[Yamer]

Originally Posted by Derek Sutton

Capping at $125k income buys way more votes then capping at $60k income. If anyone sees this as anything other then vote buying there is little hope for you. This does nothing to address the real problem of tuition costs and student loan interest rates. Furthermore, capping the minimum monthly payments at 5% of gross is only going to increase the interest paid on the loans. Short term, short sighted band aids making no long term change.

If I woke up tomorrow $10K less in debt, considering the interest rates of a student loan, it would shift my life considerably.

As an opening salvo designed to address predatory lending this is pretty....pretty....pretty good.

[Jason14h]

Yeah student loans really should be interest free . If there’s ever an argument for government to be involved its issuing interest free loans for education

I would even offer loan forgiveness for industries that need workers as an incentive

[opendoor]

I love the right wing grifters who gladly took PPP loan forgiveness money railing against student loan forgiveness:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1562100540691054592

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Mull

Someone explain to me the case why student loans should be forgiven for people making >100k when we have extremely high enrolment in universities

You want to help those from lower income? I am all for a 60k cut off potentially

What people make is a red herring promoted by Republicans and bought by an uninformed public. Student loans and forgiveness are part and parcel of an overall broken system that impacts people from all walks of life and earning potential. Those with big salaries are also the ones who have big student loans. It isn't cheap to go to med school or law school, or grad school in general. It is unfortunate, but if you want to get ahead in many industries you need a graduate degree of some sort and that is expensive as hell. If you're going after an MBA you can expect to take on $30-50K in debt. An MSN can cost you $40-60K which is shouldered by loans. That is without having any debt from your undergrad degree. It piles up. What's worse, the interest rates and the compounding of the interest can quickly expand those balances and make the debt that much larger and more difficult to manage. If you're in an income-based repayment schedule your balance can/will spin out of control quickly.

You have to appreciate that these loans usually have interest rates in the 6-8% range after consolidation. You also have to understand that interest is paid first, with very little if any money paid going to principle. A colleague of mine had $75K in student loans after graduate school. They put their life on hold because of the amount of money they had to pay for those loans (the cost of a luxury car payment each month). Only when they became a leader in their field and started to make above $80K did they start to experience life and have any real disposable income. After 14 years of payments, almost $100K paid back, they still had an outstanding balance of just under $50K. They were despondent and depressed because they never felt they would get out from under the debt as they headed into retirement. Fortunately the person worked for a non-profit that qualified under the expansion to PSLF and they got the final $50K forgiven. They can now think about actual retirement.

Originally Posted by Derek Sutton

Capping at $125k income buys way more votes then capping at $60k income. If anyone sees this as anything other then vote buying there is little hope for you. This does nothing to address the real problem of tuition costs and student loan interest rates. Furthermore, capping the minimum monthly payments at 5% of gross is only going to increase the interest paid on the loans. Short term, short sighted band aids making no long term change.

You really don't understand the student loan issue, and I mean at all. This is not about buying votes. It's about trying to right a wrong that affects 44,000,000 people in the country. I don't think they went far enough, but this is a good start. This will wipe out the student loan debt for around 12,000,000 people, many of which come from disadvantaged means. There are plans to take on some of the issues of interest rates and escalating tuitions. This is a good start.

The crying over this today is actually quite embarrassing as people don't understand what this does to the system in general. They also don't want to compare this some of the other bailouts/breaks that have gone on over the past couple decades. The rich have received $2 trillion in tax cuts, impacting most favorably about 168,000 people. Big business has been bailed out multiple times to the tune of several billion dollars, again helping the already rich. But put together a plan that spends $320B to lift 12,000,000 Americans in need, well, that's a hill to far! That's criminal!

Originally Posted by Jason14h

Yeah student loans really should be interest free . If there’s ever an argument for government to be involved its issuing interest free loans for education

I would even offer loan forgiveness for industries that need workers as an incentive

That exists. It's called Public Service Loan Forgiveness and is a program designed to get people into jobs like police, fire, teachers, civil service, and non-profits which provide for the public good. In this program you make 120 payments (10 years) in an approved program and after that period you can have your loans forgiven. Recognize that most of PSLF requires you be enrolled in an income based repayment play, which calculated your payment at 10% of your discretionary spending, which can be a big payment. Most people will exceed the principle amount over that decade, yet have not even scratched the actual principle of the loan. It is a huge benefit and why people will continue to work in public service, for less money, because they have that light at the end of the tunnel. Too bad that under DeVos less than 2% of people who submitted for forgiveness were approved. The government has to live up to their end of the bargain and unfortunately they have not.

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by opendoor

I love the right wing grifters who gladly took PPP loan forgiveness money railing against student loan forgiveness:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1562100540691054592

How are these things remotely comparable?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

How are these things remotely comparable?

The constant refrain from clowns like Crowder is "you took out the loan, you repay it." So it's a bit hypocritical when they ask the government to forgive their PPP loans.

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by rubecube

The constant refrain from clowns like Crowder is "you took out the loan, you repay it." So it's a bit hypocritical when they ask the government to forgive their PPP loans.

these people and those they follow also use every loophole in the book to avoid paying any kind of tax...then cry when someone gets "something for nothing"

how much tax did dear leader pay again?

[SebC]

I am generally a proponent of leaving programs like this uncapped - just tax the rich progressively. I think it's less divisive to have the rich pay more for programs that everyone has access to than to have people pay into programs they can't even use, even if the net result is the same. It also reduces administrative burden.

Admittedly tax dodgers are a reason why this might not always be practical, but it certainly is the way things should be.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

How are these things remotely comparable?

Seriously? According to the "fiscal conservative" types complaining about the SLF angle, they are both taking government money and not paying it back. The people, like Crowder, who took out PPP loans later asked to have them forgiven, are getting free money from the government, or as the ilk likes to say, getting a hand-out. That's where the comparison is.

Where the comparison ends is the fact that these student loans are a vehicle that those who had them have been repaying them to the best of their ability. Student loans were given with some pretty draconian conditions, rarely explained to the recipient. So while the debt piled up, accruing ridiculous amounts of interest, the student was put further behind the eight ball, many times without their knowledge. These students still accepted those terms and continued to pay, many of the students who receive forgiveness paying near the original principle amount, which is more than we can say for those who had their PPP loans forgiven. Most of those never paid a red cent back.

[PsYcNeT]

America is the full realization of Crabs In A Bucket goaded on by the Crabs That Already Escaped/Were Born Outside The Bucket

[Maritime Q-Scout]

First off, I'm in favor of interest free student loans.

I'm also in favor of forgiveness for all sorts of reasons (not carte blanche, but I'm open to having my mind changed on that).

I do think student loan forgiveness based on income is problematic.

If I make $80,000/yr and live in Pittsboro, Mississippi then maybe not. But if I make $80,000 living in San Franciso then yeah.

It's contextual.

But I'm open to having my mind changed.

[nfotiu]

I am skeptical of broad student loan forgiveness for various reasons. This policy looks thoughtful and to be a decent move. Hopefully it plays well in the midterms.

The comparison to ppp loans seems a little off. Those loans were not intended to be paid back. They were intended to be forgiven from the start if the company met the terms of keeping employees under payroll during covid and the money should basically went to the employees.

His company though sounds like it is his podcast business? Were they really impacted by covid?

His tweet was offensive enough without bringing up his ppp payment.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

The comparison to ppp loans seems a little off. Those loans were not intended to be paid back. They were intended to be forgiven from the start if the company met the terms of keeping employees under payroll during covid and the money should basically went to the employees.

Then why call them loans? Why not just call them grants or incentives? Why call something one thing when you really mean another? It was all bull#### and dreamed up as a way for companies and individuals to bilk more money out of the system. If you seriously support PPP loans (sorry, grants) then you clearly aren't paying attention to how they are being abused. It's been scary how badly this system has been misused and abused.

"Tens of thousands of approved and disbursed loans were made to borrowers for amounts that exceeded the maximum allowed based on the number of employees and compensation rates as defined in the CARES Act.
Tens of thousands of loans that matched a Do Not Pay data source record indicating potential loan ineligibility.

Hundreds of businesses that exceeded the greater of 500 employees or the SBA size standard for number of employees in the industry obtained PPP loans that may have been erroneously approved.

We found thousands of businesses obtained PPP loans with Tax Identification Numbers (TINs) that were not registered until after that date indicating the business was created after the fact."

A $659B program that has been resulted in free money to grifters around the country because the authorities don't have the manpower to chase down the bad guys. Free money for the taking.

"We determined SBA did not always have sufficient controls in place to detect and prevent duplicate PPP loans. As a result, lenders made more than one PPP loan disbursement to 4,260 borrowers with the same tax identification number and borrowers with the same business name and address. These disbursements totaled about $692 million for PPP loans approved from April 3 through August 9, 2020."

And what was the Republican response to this gong show?

"Did Congress stop the program or demand more oversight? No. Congress extended the PPP. "

This program is waaaaaay worse than anything you'll see in SLF. This isn't like some well off family scamming some Pell grants here or there to minimize their loan load, PPP was a gross abuse of government funds. At least in SLF the government was seeing money come back from people who acknowledged their responsibilities and paid their loans. The same cannot be said for PPP.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Then why call them loans? Why not just call them grants or incentives? Why call something one thing when you really mean another? It was all bull#### and dreamed up as a way for companies and individuals to bilk more money out of the system. If you seriously support PPP loans (sorry, grants) then you clearly aren't paying attention to how they are being abused. It's been scary how badly this system has been misused and abused.

"Tens of thousands of approved and disbursed loans were made to borrowers for amounts that exceeded the maximum allowed based on the number of employees and compensation rates as defined in the CARES Act.
Tens of thousands of loans that matched a Do Not Pay data source record indicating potential loan ineligibility.

Hundreds of businesses that exceeded the greater of 500 employees or the SBA size standard for number of employees in the industry obtained PPP loans that may have been erroneously approved.

We found thousands of businesses obtained PPP loans with Tax Identification Numbers (TINs) that were not registered until after that date indicating the business was created after the fact."

A $659B program that has been resulted in free money to grifters around the country because the authorities don't have the manpower to chase down the bad guys. Free money for the taking.

"We determined SBA did not always have sufficient controls in place to detect and prevent duplicate PPP loans. As a result, lenders made more than one PPP loan disbursement to 4,260 borrowers with the same tax identification number and borrowers with the same business name and address. These disbursements totaled about $692 million for PPP loans approved from April 3 through August 9, 2020."

And what was the Republican response to this gong show?

"Did Congress stop the program or demand more oversight? No. Congress extended the PPP. "

This program is waaaaaay worse than anything you'll see in SLF. This isn't like some well off family scamming some Pell grants here or there to minimize their loan load, PPP was a gross abuse of government funds. At least in SLF the government was seeing money come back from people who acknowledged their responsibilities and paid their loans. The same cannot be said for PPP.

The bolded accounts for .1%. Yeah sure there were abusers like with any government program, but the ppp loans directly helped my young adult step kids and their friends to keep getting paid early in the pandemic more than any other program did. There definitely was some good to come out of it. It was a better idea and more directly helpful to people who needed it than giving everyone $1000.

I don't know why they called it a loan, and not a grant, but it was pretty clear that it was a conditional grant that had to be paid back if they didn't use it for the intended purpose.

[Azure]

It is not the same comparison, but he still does look like a hypocrite.

Shocking that a program like that would be abused, amirite?

As for the loan forgiveness, mostly vote buying. If you make $125k living in Kansas, and you need help repaying your loans, maybe you should make better life choices financially.

I do agree however with paying tuition for certain industries like doctors, nurses, engineering, trades, etc. But for a MBA? Yeah right.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by SebC

I am generally a proponent of leaving programs like this uncapped - just tax the rich progressively. I think it's less divisive to have the rich pay more for programs that everyone has access to than to have people pay into programs they can't even use, even if the net result is the same. It also reduces administrative burden.

Admittedly tax dodgers are a reason why this might not always be practical, but it certainly is the way things should be.

Yeah, this is always my main criticism with means-testing. At the very least, if you're going to means-test, claw it back at tax time instead of restricting it at the time of application.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Azure

I do agree however with paying tuition for certain industries like doctors, nurses, engineering, trades, etc. But for a MBA? Yeah right.

What's the difference? Why do you get to determine the value of a degree and what it can offer to the world and whether it should be available for funding? I've never understood this mentality. If someone wants to pursue a given field of study to better themselves and learn skills that are transferable to any situation, why should we be stopping them? I'm not a fan of the number of students enrolled in sports related programs, but they are at least learning and picking up skills that should translate to other professions. Learning to write, think critically, problem solve, and research are very important skills that transcend all fields of study.

Also curious, what's your grind against MBAs? I get the stereotype, but you still need the expertise and understanding taught in these programs to drive multiple industries in the right direction. Having management expertise is how you improve businesses and make them run more efficiently. This extends to government as well. Having that business acumen can help government better interface with private industry and then also apply those learnings to making government run more efficiently. The number of disciplines that have spun up in MBA programs make them very useful in developing high performing managers, especially in executive MBA programs.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

What's the difference? Why do you get to determine the value of a degree and what it can offer to the world and whether it should be available for funding? I've never understood this mentality. If someone wants to pursue a given field of study to better themselves and learn skills that are transferable to any situation, why should we be stopping them? I'm not a fan of the number of students enrolled in sports related programs, but they are at least learning and picking up skills that should translate to other professions. Learning to write, think critically, problem solve, and research are very important skills that transcend all fields of study.

I know many of the engineering and business school types sneer at the fact that they have to take electives that have nothing to do with their degrees, but so what? You can get a lot out of them if you pick the right ones. No one is forcing you to take basket-weaving if you'd prefer to take a biology class.

I majored in political science, but I used my electives to dabble in psychology, philosophy, English, sociology, etc., and I came out with a much more well-rounded education as a result.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by rubecube

I know many of the engineering and business school types sneer at the fact that they have to take electives that have nothing to do with their degrees, but so what? You can get a lot out of them if you pick the right ones. No one is forcing you to take basket-weaving if you'd prefer to take a biology class.

I majored in political science, but I used my electives to dabble in psychology, philosophy, English, sociology, etc., and I came out with a much more well-rounded education as a result.

Has engineering school changed over the years? I switched out of engineering after a year because all it was is engineering, math, physics and chem for 8 hours a day. English for Engineers was the only non core engineer class, and wasn't exactly a mind opening class!