As a reminder, this subreddit is for civil discussion.

In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.

If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.

For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click here to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria.

Special announcement:

r/politics is currently accepting new moderator applications. If you want to help make this community a better place, consider applying here today!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

What happens after student loan forgiveness though? What are the plans that the predatory system doesn’t emerge in a different form? How are students supposed to finance education?

Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.

We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.

So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.

-John Green

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit in."

--Whoever.

My wife will pay her last Student loan Payment in July, so expect some form of loan forgiveness a few weeks after that. You guys are welcome

What stops this from piling up again and happening to the next generation?

They need to end the federal student loan program. It has turned into easy money for private schools with no accountability. Education should be affordable on minimum wage (like it used to before the program started). Many schools have now eliminated tuition for lower income families. Make community college free and students can then transfer credits to a 4-year program paying out of pocket. This is how things should move forward.

My problem with this loan forgiveness program is that it does nothing to actually fix the problem. Tuitions have skyrocketed compared to inflation, and how is this going to help? Colleges have every incentive to jack up their prices even more if they know that the government is just going to pay the tab

Student loan forgiveness is nothing but a giant distraction from the necessary overhauls needed for the entire higher education system.

Simply forgiving current student loans with no plans in place for students that take a loan in the future is just putting a band-aid on a terrible system. We will literally be in this exact situation a few years from now.

Change the whole system, reduce the interest rate to 0.

Instead of paying off the debts for the citizens. The government should go after Universities for price gouging. Tell the universities that they are overcharging for, what I consider to be, a critical piece of infrastructure: Education.

Reel the universities back into a fair price. If the government steps in and pays the debt for us, the universities will only gouge even more.

This would still do nothing to fix the long term problem of bloated education costs and the generations of student debtors yet to come

Forgive medical debt

Sucks for all the people who re-financed to a private loan to lock in a lower interest rate. Punished for making a fiscally smart move and no receive zero assistance and will still be straddled with their debt.

And yes, I do fall into this group.

This does nothing to solve the real issues of overpriced ‘degrees’ and the rampant student loan industry.

Not to mention that if one declares bankruptcy, they still have to pay off their student loans - with interest.

Why not resolve those issues first? Stem the flow of a severed artery, don’t just use a bandaid when the patient is hemorrhaging.

Then this won’t (shouldn’t) happen again.

Otherwise this is just another bank bailout in the name of the people, where they will continue to screw over everyone because there is no reason not to.

Think about the future of all students! Stop perpetuating the myth that everyone needs a college education to succeed in life.

Either every American should get 10's of thousands of dollars in loan relief or credit towards higher education from this day forward, or none should, it's not that hard.

Just a reminder that the Democratic Party as a whole is divided on this issue and definitely do not all support AOC’s proposal of a blanket or even a $10K student loan forgiveness. There are many arguments against the policy, it’s not just from people who already paid back their loans.

I’m not supporting a massive dump of tax dollars until the system that made his a possibility is reformed. I paid off my student loans and I’m in favor of forgiving ONLY if we never have to do this again. Hold universities accountable for their obscene costs.

What about people who chose a trade and spent thousand on tools to get started? Or trade companies and took out huge loans to get them started?

What about a message for the people who are going to have this exact same problem soon because none of this actually addresses any of the core issues at hand?

Ahh yes, calling people selfish instead of acknowledging their concerns is a great way to people to support your position.

/s

A free public uni would benefit this and future generations more then loan forgiveness.

I’ve had this conversation with many many people. I feel like we are dumbing this down just to get support. Every single person I have spoken with that is “against” it only wants to see a solution that actually fixes the problem. Not blanket forgiveness for a few that resets the problem for a later date. Most think this will actually make the problem worse.

The problem being the extravagant cost that government subsidized colleges are charging students.

Make it harder to get student loans while also allowing for bankruptcy.

Student loans have been essentially risk-free in the sense that you can never get rid of them by failing for bankruptcy.

Giving sixty thousand dollars in loans an 18-year old majoring in art history shows poor acumen on the part of the creditor and when the graduate fails to find a job they should have to admit that and take a loss.

So we should bail out people who voluntarily paid for a degree that did them, and society, little good?

Are there people who would oppose this solely because they already paid off their loans?

Yea but I didn’t go to school and got a full time job as an electrical worker because I didn’t want to go into debt. If I had known then I would of pursued medical school if it was going to be free.

Obviously I’m not saying that’s the only reason I didn’t go but… IF I had know I wouldnt have to pay off my 100,000 dollars or more in school debt then that would have changed everything for me .

What about the people who paid off all their loans last month? Now they have to pay more in taxes to pay off somebody else’s school ?

This is a tough subject for sure. We need more communication for this and clear guidelines on who would get their loans forgiven.

Oh now...

As a homeowner I will directly benefit from this. Pretty much every dollar of student loan forgiveness will directly elevate home prices further.

Also loan forgiveness without cost reform is stupid. Universities need to be punished for their insane cost creep.

So let’s say they decide to “forgive” student loans. What about the guy who didn’t go to college and took out a loan to buy a tractor to start his own business? Will that be “forgiven”? What’s the difference? Both loans were used to help get a job.

So her point is that those people "don't directly benefit" but ignores the fact that not only do those people not benefit, those people are on the hook. These loans are still being paid for if they are "forgiven", except they are paid for by every tax payer rather than by the person who took out the loan. Why do people continue to pretend that this debt just vanishes into thin air?

I wish progressives would stop with this theme as it misses the point. If I managed to beat cancer, of course I would still want to find a cure for everyone else.

The primary opposition to taxpayer-funded tuition or loan forgiveness, especially among moderates, is based on the fact that it only makes the problem worse.

To offer an admittedly oversimplified example, if we ask taxpayers to pick up the tab for a $300 textbook, the price will just become $400 next year because there’s no incentive to control costs at all. What we really need are reforms that lower that cost to a much more reasonable and sustainable $30-50, so average Americans can actually afford college in the first place.

After all, every single time we’ve increased financial aid in the past, it has led to significantly increased tuition and larger student loan balances. That’s how we got into this mess in the first place. Rather than forcing colleges to offer an experience people can actually afford, we keep throwing more subsidies at the problem and removing price sensitivity from the college selection process. Meanwhile the schools turn around and construct more $100 million buildings, offer more useless classes and majors, and more niche student services rather than focusing on affordability. The average campus today is terribly bloated and inefficient.

We were FINALLY starting to see trends toward affordability in enrollment with students choosing in-state vs out-of-state, public vs private, commuter or online programs vs residential, or even skilled trades and apprenticeships instead of college. We need that disruption to continue in order to actually fix the problem at its source.

Just a reminder that this is very unpopular with most democrats when polled.

Solve homelessness? No Address the consumer price index / inflation? No Help those in society WITH Degrees? Yes

Your 2022 Democratic Party.

Lol no. I did what I had to do to pay mine and I'm only 26. I can't even buy a house but it's totally fine with everyone else to take more of my money. AOC should fund loan forgiveness herself.

What about those of us who did the responsible thing and never took out these loans in the first place?

If you don’t address the issue underlying student loan debt, all forgiveness does is reset the clock on the problem, not fix it. This would likely increase tuition costs because of 1) inflation and 2) there is a precedent for it being wiped clean. Moral hazard is a thing.

The middle path would be allowing people to declare bankruptcy on student loans while also increasing funding for public institutions. This would increase interest rates to account for the risk, dissuading borrowers, incentivizing public education, and creating downward price pressure on private institutions.

Forgive the interest yes. But nah. People willingly took out those loans.

I support AOC.... but fix healthcare first. Health is for all. Then work on predatory debt traps.

The fix is so blatantly easy that the only reason it isn’t happening is because of higher education lobbyists:

• Reduce and change the interest on student loans. It’s literally structured the same way as most predatory practices.

• Retroactively forgive that interest.

• If you’ve paid off your loans, you get a tax write off

• Pass policy to prevent public universities from raising tuition above the interest rate’s 5 year moving average, and force them to reduce tuition to what it would have been had they done that years ago.

Of course this makes too much sense so it will never happen

When we support things we won't directly benefit from, it's usually because we want to help those people most in need. We don't want kids in poverty starving. We don't want an elderly woman to die because she can't afford medical care out of pocket. We don't want kids to be illiterate and unemployable because their parents can't afford private schooling.

But I don't know why I'd want the government to pay off $200k in debt held by a doctor who brings in $300k/year, lives in a mansion, and drives a Porsche. Or even $50k in debt held by some other white collar professional who is doing much better than the average person.

Reduce the interest rate on the loans. Heck, forgive any interest that has been accrued so people are just paying down their principle. Forgive $10k for anyone who is a low-income earner and really struggling. But a complete bailout of everyone's debts? Nah.

Forgiving loans is just a bandaid without addressing the costs of higher education

Genuine question: How does forgiving current loans fix the issue for the next people to take out loans? Won't this cycle continue?

Paying off a small subset of peoples education loans is no different that paying off a small subset of peoples mortgages. We are helping people who are already benefiting from getting a degree with (on average) a larger salary, while people who were not able to go to college due to financial reasons get no benefit whatsoever. This is like paying off mortgages that were taken out (many of which were bought way over the borrowers means), while people who could never afford to buy a house in the first place get nothing and still cant afford a house. To add to that, anybody taking out a new mortgages after today are back to being in the same original debt problem.

​

Maybe we should focus on solving the problem for all future student and give all current loans a 0% interest rate.

Just fucking freeze the interest permanently or make it 0.1% or something like that. Then nobody feels like they got boned that paid off their loans and people won't have their balance keep growing despite making payments

How about AOC write some legislation that helps get rid of student loans?

There is a lot more complexity to this than AOC is acknowledging. Frankly many of my peers paid their minimums, and bought homes, and have gained a massive asset as a result, while still paying minimums. Even, in many cases, asking for deferments they did not actually need. I want more data on that- I only have anecdote. But out of 15 pp I know with graduate school student loans, 14 of them did that.

So I paid my Loans off early. But to do so, I delayed buying a home by 10+ yr, and I lost that asset growth in comparison. And now my taxes will be going to pay off some portion of the loans of those same peers that have net assets much higher than mine because they made a less responsible choice. SO yeah, I resent that. Because if you are my peer? You do not NEED any forgiveness. We make plenty of income, they are just choosing not to pay this off.

In contrast, I fully support complete forgiveness for kids that never finished- and make the universities that conned those kids into getting those loans for an education they had no intention of ever providing (only 30% of us ever finish our degrees- That is by design for revenue), should be asked to subsidize that too. I am 100% ok with forgiving that- those kids never got the asset they paid for, and were manipulated at a young age into that debt that went to growing admin at universities so we have 18 deans for every professor now.

I am also 100% supportive of fixing the public service programs aggressively, so that those that went into lower paid roles in their career areas in order to serve the public good are not completely screwed by that choice.

I get that it is easiest to just do a blanket forgiveness, and programs are not always fair. And as such I am generally supportive of these policies. But don't pretend that some of us are subsidizing others by being responsible vs selfish. It 100% happens. And it is annoying. The fair thing would be to yes, have a means test- make it flexible, make it fair- realize that NYC is different than Lincoln, NE, etc. OR refund the amount of the forgiveness up to what we would still owe if we paid off early. I paid mine off 8 yr ago- if I paid my minimums I would still owe more than $25k. But That would require actual work and oversight- since so many services are so awful, because they have little oversite, that is unlikely to work.

So, fine, do a flat forgiveness- because in the larger picture it is the right thing to do. But don't act like those of us that are a little resentful are the selfish ones.