So they should get their college loans paid off by taxpayers that had nothing to do with their really really bad decision?
So by your logic, yes taxpayers are responsible to the extent they are guaranteeing loans in the first place which is what allows the schools to charge artificial prices which the data shows can’t be repaid in millions of cases because the jobs and wages aren’t there. The article maybe just a few anecdotes but when the data amounts to 1M defaults a year, at what point are you going to stop complaing about the taxpayers having to make up for the bad decisions of 18 year old kids trying to better their future and question taxpayer funded loans allowing the runaway school costs in the first place?
Taxpayers have no choice: pay taxes or face fines / jail.
In the first place, a government like that of the US is a massive bureaucracy, only a tiny fraction of which is actually elected. No matter who is elected, pretty much the same people will be administering student loans.
That's approximately 44.4% of potential votes by people who likely choose politicians that are spending the money of those who do pay taxes. And of those that pay income taxes, a few pay the disproportionate share of those taxes.
So basically, many people who are tax filers but not tax payers are getting to choose who they vote for, but others are left shouldering all the tax responsibility for the bad policies of those politicians. These tax filers might be paying other taxes like state and local sales tax, but those taxes are pretty much all state and local and irrelevant when we are talking about federal loan programs.
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/model-estimates/tax-units-ze...
* "A tax unit is an individual, or a married couple, that files a tax return or would file a tax return if their income were high enough, along with all dependents of that individual or married couple."
Maybe you vote for a politician who will terminate federally guaranteed student loans. Maybe support one that will provide UBI, which will be adjusted based on student loan obligations. Maybe elect one that will reform the existing IBR/repayment options so 1M students are going into default every year.
But as we all know what your saying is a strawman when you have people like warran buffet paying less in taxes than his secretary. Obviously that’s not by accident and rich taxpayers have successfully organized/lobbied/passed multiple laws over the last 40 years providing tax breaks for the themselves and corporations.
Problem is, that joker wants to criminalize abortion and lock up anyone who smells of weed. Now what do I do?
This was a state school of 30,000. The school and the state decided what tuition was going to be, not the students.
No lender is actually stupid enough to do this, other than the US taxpayer.
No one is stupid here. Stupidity would imply a net loss on one or both sides, which simply isn’t true.
Putting all the blame on individuals for making bad choices shows a distinct problem of your understanding of the issue.
This debt is a huge bottleneck on the economy; it's slowing things up for a huge part of the population, and for what? We're not better off as a people. We're not building a better country or future this way.
The arguments I've seen in favor are all "they made a bad decision, they should live with it" or "I paid mine off, why should they get a free ride" or any number of variations on that sort of thing. I haven't seen a single argument that the student debt status quo is good or healthy for the country, or is getting us where we want to be as a people.
Personally, I don't give a shit what stupid degree people got or how much student debt there or how hurt those who paid theirs off will feel; hurt feelings or resentment are no good basis for policy. This is a bad scene for the country and forgiving the student debt would improve things in so, so, so many ways; the trade-offs are absolutely 100% worth it.
Improve things for whom? Who is going to shoulder the disproportionate burden of forgiving all those loans?