JUburton wrote:It's absurd. Even if you go engineering and come out making 75k or 80k a year, you're still 200k in the hole at bad interest rates that you're paying off at 1k-1.5k per month for 20 or 30 years. It's almost literally an extra mortgage. I wonder why people can't save up for a down payment these days.

Gimpy wrote:
I think there’s a belief that students aren’t picking schools based on price and it’s easy to get student loans to cover the cost of school. So there’s this issue that it allows colleges to drive up tuition because they know that students are willing and will be able to pay it.

If that’s the case, capping how much a student can borrow would make colleges whose tuitions are in that range the only options for many students and since colleges want to attract students, they would need to have tuitions near the cap to be able to get them.

I don’t think that belief would quite work out like that in the real world.

JFLNYC wrote:
I think this is right. It's a poor solution to a real problem.

College loans are an unholy trinity among the government (who make it impossible to discharge the debt in bankruptcy and farm out the loan process to commercial banks), the commercial banks and the colleges. Once the banks realized the debt could not be discharged they were only too happy to loan as much as possible (and continually raise interest rates). Once the colleges saw students could borrow a virtually limitless amount, they were only too happy to raise tuition.

The result is now a generation of Americans who have literally mortgaged their future earnings to get an education so the banks' shareholders and colleges can get richer and richer. It's literally a form of indentured servitude for millions. In addition to the harm done to the students whose income is reduced for years, even decades, it slows the economy by making it more difficult for that generation to buy homes, cars, etc. And, of course, it's another very significant driver of inequality as it shifts wealth from the workers to the investor class. It has made a generation of Americans renters of their own futures.

Capping the amount students can borrow is an attempt to break (or at least slow) the cycle but, as with wage and price controls or trying to limit health insurance premiums, it misses the source of the problem. As with other serious domestic problems (the environment, healthcare, etc.) we've created huge vested interests in the system not changing. As usual the proposed solution doesn't directly address those vested, powerful interests (bank profits, college tuition) but, instead, would force the least powerful interest (i.e., the students) to change their behavior, probably to their detriment.

JFLNYC wrote:I'm going to post again what I posted almost a year ago:

Gimpy wrote:
I think there’s a belief that students aren’t picking schools based on price and it’s easy to get student loans to cover the cost of school. So there’s this issue that it allows colleges to drive up tuition because they know that students are willing and will be able to pay it.

If that’s the case, capping how much a student can borrow would make colleges whose tuitions are in that range the only options for many students and since colleges want to attract students, they would need to have tuitions near the cap to be able to get them.

I don’t think that belief would quite work out like that in the real world.

JFLNYC wrote:
I think this is right. It's a poor solution to a real problem.

College loans are an unholy trinity among the government (who make it impossible to discharge the debt in bankruptcy and farm out the loan process to commercial banks), the commercial banks and the colleges. Once the banks realized the debt could not be discharged they were only too happy to loan as much as possible (and continually raise interest rates). Once the colleges saw students could borrow a virtually limitless amount, they were only too happy to raise tuition.

The result is now a generation of Americans who have literally mortgaged their future earnings to get an education so the banks' shareholders and colleges can get richer and richer. It's literally a form of indentured servitude for millions. In addition to the harm done to the students whose income is reduced for years, even decades, it slows the economy by making it more difficult for that generation to buy homes, cars, etc. And, of course, it's another very significant driver of inequality as it shifts wealth from the workers to the investor class. It has made a generation of Americans renters of their own futures.

Capping the amount students can borrow is an attempt to break (or at least slow) the cycle but, as with wage and price controls or trying to limit health insurance premiums, it misses the source of the problem. As with other serious domestic problems (the environment, healthcare, etc.) we've created huge vested interests in the system not changing. As usual the proposed solution doesn't directly address those vested, powerful interests (bank profits, college tuition) but, instead, would force the least powerful interest (i.e., the students) to change their behavior, probably to their detriment.

JUburton wrote:It's absurd. Even if you go engineering and come out making 75k or 80k a year, you're still 200k in the hole at bad interest rates that you're paying off at 1k-1.5k per month for 20 or 30 years. It's almost literally an extra mortgage. I wonder why people can't save up for a down payment these days.

pacino wrote:Tax mike Bloomberg specifically

Thephan - I have no idea what you mean by "keep slackers out"

da_bad_ass wrote:

slugsrbad wrote:

da_bad_ass wrote:we have to unite behind the frontrunner. the party can no longer be divided. the presumptive nominee is bernie. he's going to win nevada, probably win south carolina now that bidens done and have a great showing on super tuesday.

Bloomberg looks. He spent too much money to not try and muck it up on Supa Tuesday.

we'll see with bloomberg but i doubt he's gonna clean up on super tuesday with his only form of campaigning being commercials.

Chad Mizelle, a Trump administration official who is viewed as an ally of senior White House policy adviser and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller, has been tapped to be the Department of Homeland Security's top attorney.

Some Republican senators said on Wednesday that President Trump shouldn't weigh in on pending sentences after he publicly criticized an initial recommendation from the Department of Justice (DOJ) in the case of Roger Stone.

Graham has rejected the calls, saying he will not call Barr before the Senate panel specifically over the Stone decision.

JUburton wrote:It's absurd. Even if you go engineering and come out making 75k or 80k a year, you're still 200k in the hole at bad interest rates that you're paying off at 1k-1.5k per month for 20 or 30 years. It's almost literally an extra mortgage. I wonder why people can't save up for a down payment these days.

Grotewold wrote:

JUburton wrote:It's absurd. Even if you go engineering and come out making 75k or 80k a year, you're still 200k in the hole at bad interest rates that you're paying off at 1k-1.5k per month for 20 or 30 years. It's almost literally an extra mortgage. I wonder why people can't save up for a down payment these days.

But why can’t you pay off 40/50K a year the first several years out of school? I lived pretty comfortably on 20-25K and could have stretched those dollars much further if I needed to (with a much brighter light at the end of the tunnel). And you’re probably gonna get a nice bump in five years or so.

I totally get what people are up against and the abuses of the loans system but don’t see that particular scenario — high salary right out of school, high college debt — as a terrible predicament.

Grotewold wrote:

JUburton wrote:It's absurd. Even if you go engineering and come out making 75k or 80k a year, you're still 200k in the hole at bad interest rates that you're paying off at 1k-1.5k per month for 20 or 30 years. It's almost literally an extra mortgage. I wonder why people can't save up for a down payment these days.

But why can’t you pay off 40/50K a year the first several years out of school? I lived pretty comfortably on 20-25K and could have stretched those dollars much further if I needed to (with a much brighter light at the end of the tunnel). And you’re probably gonna get a nice bump in five years or so.

I totally get what people are up against and the abuses of the loans system but don’t see that particular scenario — high salary right out of school, high college debt — as a terrible predicament.

PTOITWCFTPP wrote:

Grotewold wrote:

JUburton wrote:It's absurd. Even if you go engineering and come out making 75k or 80k a year, you're still 200k in the hole at bad interest rates that you're paying off at 1k-1.5k per month for 20 or 30 years. It's almost literally an extra mortgage. I wonder why people can't save up for a down payment these days.

But why can’t you pay off 40/50K a year the first several years out of school? I lived pretty comfortably on 20-25K and could have stretched those dollars much further if I needed to (with a much brighter light at the end of the tunnel). And you’re probably gonna get a nice bump in five years or so.

I totally get what people are up against and the abuses of the loans system but don’t see that particular scenario — high salary right out of school, high college debt — as a terrible predicament.

Literally a month after I graduated, CFNC called me to set up a repayment plan. We decided on 300 a month. I paid that for I think 4 years, then I decided to start making those payments and huge principal payments. I had to do this for 2.5-3 years. When I was 29, I had it all paid off. I was making 35-40k in those days, I just had to sacrifice a lot in that 2.5-year time frame. My wife did the same thing for her loans. Then we saved for 2 years for our house down payment. Your financial future requires discipline and sacrifice that most people just don’t have.

So if you’re making 80k right out of school, saddled with 200k in debt, I don’t feel bad for that person. You are making what a lot of Americans consider a really good salary. At the age of 22. Where is this person living? As long as it’s not like NY/LA, you can afford whatever housing situation you want, but if you want to prioritize your financial future, you can get a cheaper place to live and start saving or repaying more aggressively. The problem is, nobody wants to do that at that age (I didn’t).

It was a hellacious 3 years for me and my wife where we did nothing. We didn’t go out to eat, we rarely traveled, etc. It sucked, but now we are reaping the benefits of those sacrifices.

I agree it’s a national crisis, but to wave a magic wand and make this go away is not something I agree with. Can something be done about the interest rates? They need to be more maneagable, especially for kids right out of school. There should be escalations after certain time benchmarks, but your first 5 years (for example) are at a low, fixed amount.

Grotewold wrote:I totally agree with thephan's and Burt's larger point and would honestly hate to be a high school or college student right now.

But I still think the 80K right out of school, a lot of college debt scenario is waaay down on the list of problems here. I would have gladly signed up for that and would be in a much better position now