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.

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 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?

@BeardedMountain: yes, I’m against bankrupcy as well.

All debts shall be paid in full. Everything else is thievery

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.