I don’t live in the USA and I never had student loans. So, this isn’t personal for me. I have to say, this seems like a ridiculous characterization to me.
People take out student loans to go to school, which improves their prospects of a higher paying job. I don’t really care about people who went to school and paid off their debt and whether they think that future generations should also have to pay off their crippling debt. What I care about are the opinions of the people who could have gone to university but didn’t because the debt required seemed outrageous.
Imagine co-valedictorians at a high school. One gets into university, takes on huge debt, gets a good white-collar job, and starts paying off that debt. The other sees how enormous the cost would be, and instead gets a blue collar job. I would imagine that if the white collar worker got their debts wiped out, while the blue collar worker got nothing, that blue collar worker would be pretty annoyed. I would also imagine that someone choosing to go into a blue collar job out of high school would be much more common among a certain group / class of people.
Why do one person’s past decisions (to not go to university / to take on and pay off debt) mean that people in the future should not benefit from a better system?
Education is great! Whether it is through college, or vocational training, or on the job learning. If removing student debt can allow people to earn one type of education with less stress, how is that not a benefit?
mean that people in the future should not benefit from a better system?
I think there would be a lot less controversy if it were about people in the future. If the plan was to make university more affordable, that would be different. Or, if the government introduced a student loan system where the interest rate was pegged to the inflation rate, I don’t think that would be so controversial.
What’s controversial is the student loan forgiveness programs. Rather than fixing the broken system so that university costs were more manageable, it’s structured as a targeted bailout of a certain group of people (people with a university education who haven’t yet fully repaid their loans) paid for by everyone else.
I don’t live in the USA and I never had student loans. So, this isn’t personal for me. I have to say, this seems like a ridiculous characterization to me.
People take out student loans to go to school, which improves their prospects of a higher paying job. I don’t really care about people who went to school and paid off their debt and whether they think that future generations should also have to pay off their crippling debt. What I care about are the opinions of the people who could have gone to university but didn’t because the debt required seemed outrageous.
Imagine co-valedictorians at a high school. One gets into university, takes on huge debt, gets a good white-collar job, and starts paying off that debt. The other sees how enormous the cost would be, and instead gets a blue collar job. I would imagine that if the white collar worker got their debts wiped out, while the blue collar worker got nothing, that blue collar worker would be pretty annoyed. I would also imagine that someone choosing to go into a blue collar job out of high school would be much more common among a certain group / class of people.
This is the same argument, just stretched out.
Why do one person’s past decisions (to not go to university / to take on and pay off debt) mean that people in the future should not benefit from a better system?
Education is great! Whether it is through college, or vocational training, or on the job learning. If removing student debt can allow people to earn one type of education with less stress, how is that not a benefit?
I think there would be a lot less controversy if it were about people in the future. If the plan was to make university more affordable, that would be different. Or, if the government introduced a student loan system where the interest rate was pegged to the inflation rate, I don’t think that would be so controversial.
What’s controversial is the student loan forgiveness programs. Rather than fixing the broken system so that university costs were more manageable, it’s structured as a targeted bailout of a certain group of people (people with a university education who haven’t yet fully repaid their loans) paid for by everyone else.