More like, “we’ve invented a cure for cancer, but only people who have cancer right now can get it. People in the future are fucked once again and won’t get the cure.”
Loan forgiveness without making education affordable going forward doesn’t solve the problem. It’s pulling up the ladder.
So we should just not let the people currently sick have the cure? 🤔
Even in your analogy, curing any cancer today, even if it doesn’t extend to future sufferers, is an improvement over curing no one. Because fuck cancer, and fuck student loans.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Imagine if researchers said: We’re working on a cure for cancer, and in the process we’ve generated a bunch of unobtanium. We can use it as a one-time cure for a bunch of current cancer patients, or we can use it to continue further research towards a permanent, universally-available cure. Obviously, if we use it all up now, we’ll be back to square one and have to start generating it again before we can work on a long-term cure. Which would you pick?
“Unobtanium” is political will. If we just do a round of bailouts for current loan-holders instead of addressing the root cause of spiraling education costs, we’re just kicking the can down the road. The pressure will be off, a whole generation of 20- and 30-somethings will lose interest in the issue, and it’ll fall off the political radar for another few decades, by which time GenZ+ will be well and truly fucked, since educational costs are only going up and up.
The absolute worst way to address rising education costs is to encourage a bunch of students to take ridiculously large loans and then wipe them off the books. That means: 1) schools can raise prices to the roof because they know students have access to mountains of cash from loans, and 2) students won’t hesitate to take the loans because they’ll probably just be forgiven eventually. Probably. Maybe. Or maybe it’ll be a millstone around their neck for the rest of their lives…but hey, what choice do they have, that’s just what school costs (because governments make sure students have all the money they need for a bidding war to get in).
So it amounts to just transferring huge piles of taxpayer money directly to overpriced schools and predatory banks, with no plan to stem the flow. It’s like trying to help your drug-addicted friend recover with a one-time gift of a brick of heroin. They’ll feel great for a while, and they’ll love you for it while it lasts, but it’s only going to make the problem much worse in the long run.
“Sorry about your cancer. We have to let you die so maybe cancer researchers will be motivated to try harder for a permanent cure.”
Get out of here with that bullshit.
Why not contribute something yourself, or address the arguments they’re making instead of dismissing them out of hand?
The argument is bad and probably in bad faith. If I can paraphrase it in a few lines and demonstrate how ridiculous it is, it’s not deserving of a response.
You don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to.
Why on earth do you think I’m arguing in bad faith? What do you think my real beliefs & agenda are? Do you know what arguing in bad faith means?
“Sorry about your cancer. We have to let you die so maybe cancer researchers will be motivated to try harder for a permanent cure.”
If the US poured it’s full resources into saving John Doe from Birmingham Alabama, who has cancer, they could probably do it. Of course, then those resources (cash, equipment, researchers & doctors) couldn’t be used to help other people, or to perform research towards an eventual cure for everybody. It would be a bad use of resources, right?
You don’t let John Doe die because you want his death to motivate researchers. But you only have a certain amount of resources, and you have to allocate them in a way that makes sense, and pouring everything into a temporary solution that only affect this one dude (or one batch of student loan recipients) at the cost of a long-term, permanent solution to the root causes of the issue is just…a bad idea.
Why on earth do you think I’m arguing in bad faith? What do you think my real beliefs & agenda are?
I think your real beliefs and agenda are that you don’t want student loan forgiveness for anyone, ever, under any circumstances. Maybe you’re bitter because you didn’t go to school or maybe because you did and already paid off your debt. Maybe you have a chip on your shoulder, or maybe you’re just a troll. I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter, because the argument is reprehensible regardless of your motives:
We should let John Doe in Alabama die because it’s too expensive to save him.
You decided that the financial expense of saving a life is worth condemning a patient to death just like you decided that the imaginary, hypothetical political cost of a change in policy is worth consigning multiple generations to lifelong debt.
You should be ashamed of yourself. But whether you are or not, I’m not interested in debating with you.
We can use it as a one-time cure for a bunch of current cancer patients, or we can use it to continue further research towards a permanent, universally-available cure.
How is this what’s happening? Who said it’s a one-time-only thing? Who said they can’t also research permanently available cure? Wouldn’t proving that removing the debt is a huge boon to everyone cause people to invest more in the idea of a cure?
Sure, once it becomes clear that students being debt-free on graduation is a benefit to society, I’m sure voters will scramble to wipe out student debt! That’s why baby boomers, who graduated with very little debt, are such staunch opponents of heavy student loans! /s
Once the pressure is off millennials and gen z, you’ll be able to watch the issue drop right out of public discourse. The focus will shift to housing costs, or health care, or some other topic that directly affects them. That’s just how politics works, especially in the US, where the constant gridlock in congress means that things only get done in a crisis. If you think we young people are just better than the boomers, and we wouldn’t forget to go back and fix the root causes even though we’re not immediately affected anymore…you’re in for disappointment.
If the goal is to help young people graduate with less debt, randomly forgiving large loans has got to be the worst possible approach. That only encourages educational costs to rise, and encourages students to take on ridiculous debts, and thus ends up transferring taxpayer money directly to schools and banks–and the more outrageous the loans and charges of those schools & banks, the more taxpayer money they get. That is legitimately a crazy way to solve the problem! As I said, it’s like giving a drug addict a bunch of heroin. Surely these businesses won’t want even more money, right?
So what do you do instead? Well, just off the top of my head: cap student loans. That’s what Canada does. I applied for a student loan when I went to school there, and I didn’t get to pick an amount. Based on where I was living and the school I was planning to go to, the government just said: “Okay, here’s $N”. It wasn’t that much, something like $6k per term (in the late 00’s).
Since students in that case won’t have access to arbitrary bags of cash, schools that actually want students will have to, you know, lower prices and compete. So my tuition was something like $4-5k per year, not $20k or $80k. I graduated with something like $50k in debt, which I paid off in a few years.
That would be a reasonable first step. Do that first, while you’ve got the political support, and then forgive student loans. Don’t do that first!
What I don’t get, is that what moderates keep saying…
You know, the people that constantly shit on progressives and claim we don’t want anything unless it’s everything.
Isn’t the whole moderate mission to take what we can get now and keep working for more? I’m not saying that’s what they actually do, that’s just their excuse for not fighting for more.
So shouldn’t the ones pushing for loan forgiveness now and fixing the underlying issue later be the moderates?
Instead they say if we can’t 100% fix the problem in perpetuity, we can’t do anything.
Exactly. Arguing that you’re against helping people now because it doesn’t go far enough is ridiculous. Help people now. Then continue helping people. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of progress.
Those unrealistic idealists are so frustrating to argue with. Is this a great first step? YES! Can we do more? Also YES.
Take the win, and use that momentum to drive mode change. Trying to go from 0 to 100 in one step is just not realistic.
Take the win, and use that momentum to drive mode change.
There’s a difference between a start and means testing tho…
Those same moderates like to use means testing to erode away support for more, and to get the people who don’t make the cut to vote against it.
It’s how moderates have been opposing universal healthcare for over 80 years.
Social Security was supposed to be a temporary compromise to help the neediest while the government worked out the wrinkles for universal healthcare that was for everyone.
It’s because moderates are what conservatives claim to be. They are pro-status quo and keeping change as show as possible (as opposed to conservatives that just want hierarchical power structures that let them exercise power over others, no matter what changes are required).
Well observed. Conservatives in the US are reactionary but those described as moderates are basically NIMBYs standing in the way of those who want to tear down what’s left of the country.
Exactly , rather than only forgiving existing loans that should make education free and also forgive existing loans , and perhaps give people who have already paid off their loan some kind of stimulus check as a kind of recognition that their struggle was just as hard as everyone else’s and they deserve a break too.
Declare that future student loans are also automatically forgiven. You take a student loan tomorrow? You don’t have to pay it back. This, of course, will mean that no one will want to give student loans - which will force the tuition down.
At that point why not just cut out the lenders entirely and make college free/publicly funded for all students like they do in Germany? An educated population yields many returns for a society and it will pay for itself with the boost to our economy it would provide.
Loan forgiveness without making education affordable going forward doesn’t solve the problem. It’s pulling up the ladder.
You’re 100% correct. But be careful, these folks don’t take kindly to shining a light on their hypocrisy. They signed their names to a legally-binding contract, spent the money, but now don’t like paying it back under the terms they agreed to.
College tuition is far too high. But without fixing the root cause, tuition loan forgiveness does nothing for everyone before and after, and it actually makes the whole problem worse.
Blaming the people taking the loans is kind of absurd, for many it’s their only option if they want to continue their education. It’s not like they’re taking out loans they don’t need and burning the money.
“Legally-binding contract” is meaningless too, would you make the same argument against people who signed away their lives before slavery was abolished? Just because it’s legal now doesn’t mean it always will be, or that it must be enforced indefinitely.
You’re absolutely right that reducing tuition is the right move. Tuition is free where I am and some of the costs I see elsewhere are crazy. However, the options are not necessarily mutually exclusive; you can reduce tuition and help people that have already been shafted by the existing system.
Could you walk me through what you see as these folks’ hypocrisy? I don’t get it.
Is somebody arguing that loan forgiveness should be a one time thing and no one after them should get it?
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I spent five figures paying mine off two years ago.
Still 100% support my tax dollars paying for people’s college. In fact, I’d love that instead of the nine wars my tax dollars are paying for instead.
I’d settle for interest free loans tbh…
And then do it for personal homes, too.
I’d settle for universal housing. And universal education. And universal healthcare.
I don’t understand why you need all of that. Let’s say we agree, next you’ll say people deserve clean water and steer the world away from climate disaster and genocide. You <insert group name> want it all!
next you’ll say people deserve clean water and steer the world away from climate disaster and genocide.
First falls both under housing and healthcare(utility and preventive healthcare + hygene), genocide is opposite of healthcare and we are already in climate disaster.
Hey don’t bring common sense to this conversation, this is the Internet
The Australian model is also interesting. After your degree you pay a certain percentage of your income to your university for a decade or so. But only if you earn more than the average person.
This means a university gets more money when their students gets good job.
Other points about the Australian system:
- The cost of the university course is subsidised by the government. The government pays the majority of the cost, usually around 70-80%. For example, a Bachelor of Computer Science degree at the university I went to (Swinburne) is currently AU$9k/year (~US$5.8k) subsidised vs AU$39k/year (~US$25.4k) full price.
- The loans for the amount you have to pay are through the government and are interest free. They’re indexed for inflation once per year, but this is a much lower increase compared to interest from a bank loan.
- You only have to pay it off once you earn over $51k/year, like you said. Repayments start at 1% of income and are paid as part of your income tax return.
- They used to have a program where if you paid $500 or more of the loan upfront, you’d get a 10% discount (so e.g. if you paid $500, it’d reduce your loan balance by $550).
Note that this system only applies to citizens and permanent residents. International students still have to pay the full price. Having said that, Australian universities frequently advertise at college fairs in the USA, as even at the full price plus flights plus accomodation, studying in Australia can still end up cheaper than the USA, and Americans love Australia 🙂
This is all I care about. I was forced to refinance into private loans because the interest rates on the federal loans were fucking stupid. All I want is the loans to be more reasonable.
I saw my wife’s student loans last night. She took out 37,000 dollars in 2008. She’s been paying her monthly amount for over 10 years, and she now only owes 43,000 dollars.
Cancel student debt. Most of us have already paid for college more than once.
Edit: also worth noting that up until now, only about 30% of PSLF applications are approved, and something like 37 (that’s total, not percent) of loans are fulfilled using IDR plans.
Cancel student debt.
Agreed. Tanks don’t teach, don’t heal, don’t feed and don’t pay pensions.
Fucking PutinWhich nine are you counting, out of interest?
I actually beat cancer. If they suddenly find a cure for cancer now I am going to be so fucking happy! This comment is about student loans…and fuck cancer.
Congratulations! I also hope they find a cure for cancer and I would be so happy if they did. I’ve never been diagnosed with it so I have no bearing on this conversation. Fuck cancer.
This comment is also about student loans. (Which I’ve had and paid and still hope they grant loan forgiveness, tyvm).
This also needs to go into the cancer he beat is dramaticly easier to overcome than cancer in the future.
“What do you mean? Just get a part time job. I waited tables and paid my way through college.”
“How much was your tuition?”
“$500 a semester. Why? How much is yours?”
“$19,000 a semester”
Yes exactly. They just don’t get it.
I’m all for student loan forgiveness and all that. I think education should be socialised for anyone till any level.
That being said, this meme is an example of false equivalency. Where is the money for student loan forgiveness coming from? From taxes. Taxes that these ppl (who also had to pay for student loans) have to pay. Hence, effectively, these guys paid their own loans off and are contributing to pay others’ loans as well. That’s their grime from what I understand.
Morally, I believe that they’re wrong. I’m just pointing out the false equivalency generated here.
I have to wonder if my generation [Millenial] had any effect on university enrollments yet. My kids aren’t quite the age to talk about education plans as I had kiddos later in life @30yo (40 now). I’ll be strongly discouraging uni unless it’s completely unavoidable to what they want to do.
I mean the numbers still say that a bachelor’s degree doubles or triples your lifetime earnings over a high school diploma. Moreover, an educated society benefits everyone. College is still the right move at every scale. What we need to do is make it a more equitable system.
Maybe. Depends on how functional you are overall. Turns out I can pass college courses, but not keep a job so well.
I’m really good at getting high paying jobs, but my executive function is terrible. I can’t keep the jobs.
People with good executive function tend to not be aware of it as a factor. For them “getting that job” is the big uncertain hurdle on their path to success.
Not once in my upbringing all the way through college graduation did anyone talk about keeping jobs. It was all about getting the job. I’ve gotten some pretty amazing jobs … and lost them.
Yeah crossing my fingers there’s some fixes in the works along side any debt forgiveness, but with this political environment and some folks attitude of “F you, I got mine “, I’m doubtful.
I guess apprenticeships aren’t that common yet in the US, but in many countries you can learn a profession not only at uni. In that case the high school diploma isn’t the last/highest diploma one would get.
This… is sad. Both discouraging and why you discourage.
Yeah…I agree. I will say I hope I can at least mitigate the debt issue as much as I can because I won’t be able to help pay, and I’m sure by the time my oldest is ready I’ll make too much for him to qualify for much aid. Maybe community college first or a trade school depending on what their interested in.
I generally encourage kids to just go live a normal life for a few years before college. That way they’re going for something specific they really want to do, and they have an experiential sense of what the dollar amounts mean.
I’m pretty resentful that I had tens of thousands of loans offered to me, far beyond anything my credit would warrant, when I was a teenager, who had been propagandized to go to college for the past ten years of my life.
I feel tricked. Perhaps not on purpose, but I feel like I was tricked.
Are you me? Though i don’t necessarily blame my parents, they just thought that they were encouraging me to do the right thing for my future. I can’t say that my degree was entirely useless but I’d like to think i could have gotten to spot similar to where i am now without the 100k in student loans.
I hope they find a cure because even if you beat cancer, it can still come back.
But the post is about student loans.
It’s never too late to go back to school.
No thanks. I don’t want more debt.
I spent five figures paying mine off two years ago.
Still 100% support my tax dollars paying for people’s college. In fact, I’d love that instead of the nine wars my tax dollars are paying for instead.
Hi I’m a fucking idiot, how can you beat cancer if there is no cure for it yet?
I thought there was a cure but I guess not a very good one since some people don’t make it
Edit: Thank you for the answers, that really cleared it up for me, and I understand cancer a bit better now.
A “cure” in this situation means an essentially guaranteed method of treatment. Cancers vary greatly, with some being benign, some being very treatable, and some being extremely deadly (at least with current technology).
Indeed. Beat it, but at what cost.
My mum beat cancer. She lost parts of her body in the process and chemo changed her physically (her hair and nails never came back the same). It took three years of regular testing to finally be given the “you’re officially cancer free” verdict. Three tense years.
All that said she’s incredibly lucky not only to have beat it but not to have to live with additional medication due to it. I know somebody who lost a lot more and while is alive now needs a lifetime of medication to “put in” what the partial removed organs no longer produce.
Cancer, as far as I’m aware, goes into remission and isn’t cured. Remission is when there isn’t any detectable signs of a cancer mass or growth in your body. So imaging doesn’t pick up any tumors, your blood work doesn’t indicate any hormonal changes, and biopsies come back negative.
A cure would be like say there is no cancer and it won’t come back. Remission is more like we have no evidence of cancer and x% of maintain that state for x years.
Fun fact: your body is constantly making cancerous cells, but you have the ability to detect and destroy them before they get out of hand. Keep that immune system strong.
There are some treatments for some cancers with varying success rates. A cure would be a treatment for all cancers that always works.
He beat it with his fists.
Boof, biff, pow!
Where does the forgiveness come from? After paying for my education I now pay a bunch of taxes, I assume that’s what is paying for their education? So the cartoon should say, I just fought and beat cancer and now I need to go work on a cute. “They” cutting cancer is not the same.
Beating cancer builds character!
Guaranteed student loans, that you had to be approved for, were a terrible idea to begin with.
US student finance is for sure broken. I really hate comparing biological ills to social, though. Nobody graduates high school and says “I’m going to go sign up for cancer”. Nobody says “well, if I knew cancer was going to be cured, I would have got it instead of being a plumber!” This metaphor is breaking down rapidly.
Nobody graduates high school and says “I’m going to go sign up for cancer”.
Maybe not in a literal sense, but there are plenty of people who apply for jobs which pose inherent danger to health, including increased risks of cancers, because they need the money.
No one signs up for college to take on all that student debt just because they enjoy it, it’s seen as an investment in better job prospects to have a degree despite the financial risk of debt. This is at least somewhat similar to how more dangerous jobs pay more, because you take on a risk. You’ve got physical danger and financial danger to consider based on your choice. Sometimes both.
Well this is a poor taste take on a common sense issue .
I was pissed about the debt relief until my boss reminded me that school wouldn’t have helped me much even had I gone the four-year route or more.
Still pissed I had to settle for a shitty degree at a shitty college, live with an abusive family member and work full-time while I attended in order to get a piece of fucking paper without worrying about debt, only for some politician do decide a couple years later than now is a good time to slap a band-aid on the failing system. But oh well, I’ve come to expect no less from the government that has told me on separate occasions “yes you are entitled to the program’s assistance, but we’re not dispensing it because of a technicality nobody told you exists till now”. All I have to say to my government is: since you gave me nothing, I owe you nothing-- my skillset is entirely self-built and I have sole discretion over where and how I apply it.
