Geeks + Gamers › Forums › Community Hub › Current Events › College Debt “forgiveness”
You see a few people at the top driving nice cars and you compare them to the rest. Most people who will benefit from this, are at the bottom. Mininum wage in my state is 7 something an hour. trash helpers make 9, i make 15. i dont drive a new car, in fact i dont own a car. Last car i owned was used, that i bought off my mom. Some people at the top will get to laugh and joke about how they got the last bit paid by the government. But the ones at the bottom this is just a trickle in the bucket to them. The government spends billions over seas, Billions on the dumbest shit possible. and slowly, little by little, a tiny bit of aid makes it way down to the guys at the bottom of the bucket with me.
Bankruptcy is not a last resort for many, many people do it multiple times in their life. It isnt a fun option for most, but it is an option. its a forgiveness for mistakes. Not everyone does the right thing. Some people rack up debt because they want to rack up debt. Sorry to hear you know people that committed suicide over bankruptcy, but that doesnt change anything.
Some times people need some forgiveness. I racked up 12k in debt to be an over the road truck driver. But after 3 years a doctor decided my tongue was too big and i would need an operation not covered by my health insurance to keep my CDL. i couldnt afford it, so now i cant drive Commercial trucks any more. I still have the debt from the school. I did everything right, do i not deserve a little forgiveness and understanding? I took up driving because no one hired for my degree, now i use my degree and barely scrape by. the student loans racked up interest to now its 3 times what i borrowed. Why should a government profit off the struggles of its citizens? 9/10 people with student loans would happily pay back what we borrowed. they dont tell you that if you miss a payment they can change the interest rate to literally anything they want. Nor do they explain that making the payment doesnt pay anything on the balance. It is only the interest payment. You have to pay double if not triple the amount to pay on the balance. When you get a car, they tell you, this many payments for this many years total and your set. With student loans there is no end in site for most of us.
I personally think they should end the program completely, an 18 year old can not sign 100k loan for a house, or a car. But we let them sign for student loans knowing they have no way to pay it back.
People in this thread are seeing the 125k and taking their anger out on the people down making 20k. the 125k were close to if not done paying off their loans.
I never made $125K USD a year in my life. Converted to USD with bonuses and OT I made below $70K USD in my best year.
Yet I spent like six years in post-secondary education total, got three diplomas during that time and paid off ALL by student loans. I got no financial support from my parental units (they could not afford anything) and all the scholarships they had I did not qualify for.
So I have no sympathy to today’s snowflake (I need a safe-space from reality) failed students to being prepared for the real world.
NONE!
But to say that someone like me MUST pay for the deliberate mistakes of those entitled snowflakes anyone who was responsible for their own finances should be offended with what is being proposed.
If you are making money in a different currency why do you care what American tax payers do and pay? No one is asking you to pay anything, and depending on the country your from us American tax payers probably sent billions to help your country out. So im very confused why your so upset about this bill.
Also everyone acts like they are the ones paying directly for this. Take the oldest person in this thread, add up every penny you ever paid in taxes, and will ever pay in taxes, plus your kids, grandkids, and their kids, combine it all together, and congress spent that in the time it took me to type this post. “YOUR” every penny you were ever going to pay in taxes was spent before your doctor handed you to your mother. From birth to the second your mother held you the first time. EVERY penny you were ever going to pay was already spent. Elon musk paid the most tax in the history of the country and congress “gave” more away to Ukraine for fun.
So this idea of “your tax dollars” is a joke. Your state tax doesnt even cover the yearly salary of a single State trooper. Your federal tax is higher sure, but really, unless your a millionaire your federal taxes doesnt cover the cost of sending a single soldier through 9 weeks of boot camp. I fucking hate taxes, because it does so little but hurts so fucking much to have it taken from your paycheck. But lets be real here, 80% of all tax is paid by 1% of the country. We are all free loaders in their minds.
Are you guys gonna stop supporting politicians like Matt Gaetz and right-wing talking figures like Steven Crowder that had their PPP loans forgiven, too, or are you just angry at this specific loan being in any way alleviated when you admit people are often ‘brainwashed’ into going to college as the only correct pathway and somehow the loans keep spiking to unreasonable level?
I am afraid that if this payout/bribe cons enough people in the US, other nations (like mine) will be forced by entitled snowflake students to pay off their “watch paint dry” degrees or they won’t be getting their votes.
And I know our failed substitute drama teacher would love nothing more than to use its power as a libtard to spend other people’s money to get re-elected/stay in power.
This is a very spirited and in-depth discussion. Good stuff all around.
But at the end of the day there is this. NOTHING outside of the grace of God is free.
“What is freely given to one is taken from another”
Forgiving student loans is one thing only. Stealing money from the taxpayer to give to someone else. And that has consequences that NO ONE will escape ultimately hurting those they claim to help.
Finally, college is only needed if you require a degree. I never went and I do quite well without it. It has its uses but not every one has to go. It does not guarantee success.
My college education (Which I took voluntarily to help learn a little more about running my business and the legalities) at the JUCO cost me $11,500.00 All my trade schools cost me over the years $16,000.00.
I did that while still working a 40+ hour week, raising a family and working my way up in the trades then having to get My business license and insurance etc. it took DECADES, let me repeat that DECADES.
Again, this was all voluntary, I could have just stayed a Labor all my life and become at best a Superintendent. College and Trade Schools were an investment in “ME” I could have failed, sure, but I wanted better.
I knew that the money I borrow had to be paid back, there is no way morally or ethically I would have ever allowed my debt to be forgiven. That is just not in me. I borrowed it, I owed it, and I had to do whatever it took to pay it back.
College is NOT mandatory. No one forces you to go with a gun at your head. You go because you want to. And if your degree does not work out (As many liberal arts students find out) then you need to get a job and continue to keep applying for better ones.
That is exactly what I did, I kept applying with other companies to the point I had companies’ head-hunting me. There is no better feeling than to have people coming to you offering you positions, because you earned it. With the exception of the day you open your own business.
I know many “Tradesmen” that are business owners with NO college or very little. They worked their way up in the trades and saved and did without for years. They make no excuses, they just do. It is not easy, it sure ain’t fast but it can and is done.
BTW. I have sold houses to 18-year-olds (no co-signer) so long as they had the job and the down payment etc. I had not problems, many of them went on to sell and upgrade. Actually, had one kid I sold a house to at 18 who 5 years later had me build him a custom home and then did many flips with him. And to be sure things have not changed, I talked to a couple realtors I use to work with and it is still 100% legal to sell to a person 18 years of age without a co-signer.
There is just no way a person should be forgiven the loan, you took it out and you know going in you have to pay it back. Like I said, that is me though and my morals and ethics say if you owe the money pay it back!
I do understand why members of the Gen X/Boomer generation feel angry about this – It goes against the work ethic values you were raised on and from your perspective it’s your potential tax dollars going to a bunch of whiny, spoiled brats you despise. I get that. But as a Millennial myself I like to think that gives me a bit of insight into my own generation’s grievances.
I finished secondary school in 2005. While I live in the UK and my own circumstances are a bit different, there was still this fierce pressure for us to go into higher education. Every single authority figure I can think of, be it teachers or in some cases even parents, was insisting that we must go to college, or we would end up doing something menial like scrubbing toilets. Looking back on it, this sort of fixation on higher education was just bizarre, especially when we learned later in life that no credible employer cares what some piece of paper says but only your actual work experience. But when you’re 16-18 years old and not really sure what you want to do in life, and all the grown-ups around you are telling you “Go to college! That’s how you get ahead in life!” you’re of course going to listen them. And do you really expect someone who isn’t even in their twenties yet, to look at a course like “Gender Studies” and recognize that for the nonsense that it is? Of course not, at that age, you trust the adults around you. You assume that they’re competent, know what they’re doing and want what’s best for you. You assume all courses are there to better equip you with the desired skill set that a employer seeks and that’s how you get started on the career ladder. We only learned later the hard way that the reality was quite different.
No, Millennials were not forced to go college. Some of us didn’t, or we did but took a course which was government funded, or it was a course that was dirt cheap so our families helped pay for it, so none of us ever accrued massive debt. But the ones who did were basically talked into it, and coming out the other end they feel like they got conned. They wouldn’t have gone into college if someone had just told them some courses were worthless and they’d be paying it off for several years, ending up having to work at McDonald’s or Starbucks, anyway. And while I know it’s not all Boomers, the way they see it, is that the same generation of people who insisted that they should go into college, are now turning around and saying, “It’s your own darn fault! Suck it up, buttercup!” If your own ignorance was taken advantage of and then mocked, you’d of course feel enraged and want to give a gigantic “fuck you” in response. The 2008 financial crash didn’t help matters, and after the lockdowns, I can imagine any debt now seems impossible to pay off.
Personally, no, I can’t really see Biden and co. doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. But you have to understand, Millennials don’t have your lived experiences, only theirs. As far they see it, they were given a crappy product which didn’t do what it was supposed to, and now are being told that they are the problem. In any other context, you’d be demanding for your money back. So, from that position, is it really all that unreasonable?
I am a gen x’r. I do understand some of the “anger” and agree with some of it, but I do not think this is such a black and white issue. I think there is merit so some forgiveness in some circumstances and qualifications.
However, agree or disagree, the “forgiveness” is just a political ploy to distract from all the real problems and get “good” PR for the coming elections. That’s really what it is in the end.
Remember, it isn’t forgiving the entire loan, just up to 10k or 20k of it.
“Vote for me and get 10k knocked off your student loan” in the meantime the country is crumbling all around us and a singular ideology known as “woke” or identity politics is indoctrinating our citizens and children into hysteria and submission.
With the ridiculous prices of college, it’s hard to say no to that if given the opportunity to go. I’ve read people say “it was your choice to go to college”. Actually, some of us had to go to college. Some of us had a wife to think about and taking care of with a future to think about. Some of us weren’t 18 and more like 30 when we went to college as well. We needed something to not work temp jobs and market research making crumbs for money forever. Some of us were denied college funding, and were only finally qualified for it later because we got married (not anymore however lol). Yes it was a “choice”, but not really. Either go to college, because I was presented with the opportunity to finally go, or just “get by” the rest of my life. Not really a choice there frankly. Everything is not black and white here. If they want to forgive 10k of the 19k I still owe, just fine with me. Why? I give back by saving lives because I work in healthcare on the front lines, I contribute. However, If I was some gender studies graduate, I would not for one second think to get any forgiveness, nor deserve it. Imo degree’s and education like that don’t deserve forgiveness.
@BeardedMountain: yes, I’m against bankrupcy as well.
All debts shall be paid in full. Everything else is thievery
To those of you thinking this is a good thing. I am not sure you understand the ramifications of it. There is no such thing as “debt forgiveness”. Taxpayer money will be used to pay that back one way or the other. And that will affect everyone including those being forgiven in a negative way financially and well beyond the tiny bit of your debt that was “forgiven”.
It’s like this. Let’s say the government decides Netflix is a human right. And now it’s “free” for everyone. Yay free Netflix right? But then the following year taxes go up $100 a year for everyone to pay for “free” Netflix and all the other streaming services raise their prices by $10 a month to compensate because now everyone has Netlfix and it gets a river of taxpayer money. So in the end what is “free” costs you far more than what you would have paid on your own.
If anyone ought to forgive the debt, it should be the university. Because as it stands now, this is just funneling taxpayer money to universities.
This is the “Preamble” to the U.S. Constitution.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Tell me where it says give debt forgiveness or anything in it about Education?
How about the remainder of the Constitution or Amendments?
Answer is simply IT DOES NOT. Truthfully Government (Federal) needs to get out of Educations way, Let the States deal with it and more so the Local Level is where it really needs to be. It is a States RIGHT Issue as it is NOT in the Constitution.
The federal policies and regulations cripple educations. Students being promoted to the next grade that have no business being moved ahead. The ability to remove problem children is extremely difficult. Language barrier issues in class make teaching those who actually speak English harder. I can go on and on about the problems that need to be corrected to actually help the Kids and Teachers. It all starts Locally and the Fed needs to be removed from it 100%.
The only time they Federal Gov should have anything to do with Education is the GI-Bill and that is it. Also a way people could get the education, you know Serve the Country, not only will you get money for college you can be getting hands on training in that field you would study in college. No brain surgeon or rocket scientist needed to figure out how good that option is.