How it feels

Was it also sponsored by the "I want my kids to have a better life than me" crew who then complains about kids having it too easy these days?

I want them to have it better and easier. But an easier life, not just an easy childhood that doesn't prepare them for their inevitable crushing adulthood.
- I want the opposite tbh, kids just don't appreciate it. Send them to the mines first, and then give them an easy adulthood.
- University years aren't really "childhood", but if their childhood at the grade school level was better that would both make it happier and prepare them better for adulthood. And college.
- What a better way to achieve this, than putting education behind a paywall!

The goverment paying off student loans is like bucketing water out of your boat and ignoring the hole. Like sure, its gonna keep some people afloat for a little longer but the issue hasn't really been addressed, the problem is still there and the cycle remains a perpetual shit storm. The cost of education is preposterous, the people taking these loans dont have jobs to support paying it back, and most of them are too young to have the experience informing them of what a monumental undertaking paying it back will be. If they tried to get the same loan for a house or business they would be denied. There are so many issues to tackle but paying off the loans rewards the groups who created the problem in the first place. It incentivizes them to continue the foul play and prey upon vulnerable youth. Without some systematic reform accompanying the loan payoffs to ensure this doesn't continue we will end up in the same situation over and over again.

While I fully agree the issue is the underlying problem... that is some All Lives Matter shit.
Because basically anyone who brings that up as an excuse to not wipe the slate clean are in that same "We need to think really hard about how we do this and not do anything for another 30 years". Same as most "Banning guns won't stop gun violence" people. It is a bad faith argument that boils down to insisting that the perfect MUST be the enemy of the good.
- Im not saying we shouldn't pay off the loans or delay doing so. I'm saying that alone will not solve the problem. We must do both. I never hear discussion on that second part. Ignoring it is foolish.
  And yes, the snails pace at which reform would occur is infuriating. It shouldn't take 30 years because some asshats will continue to argue in the nature of "how dare we hurt these businesses?!" while people continue to suffer. It sucks that it likely will, but if we dont start now it will never happen instead of eventually.
- Same as most "Banning guns won't stop gun violence" people.
  This one doesn't fit your argument. It might affect gun violence, but you're ignoring the fact that people have access to a ton of ways of killing others.
  The main driver of violent crime is poverty and income inequality. The solution is to tax the rich, give everyone fair wages, provide universal healthcare, properly fund schools, etc. All things that are already part of the core liberals stance, and none of those involve introducing unpopular legislation that stomps all over constitutional rights.
  But heaven forbid we talk about actually fixing the root causes of violent crime. No, some people just want to ban guns to own the conservatives, and get mad when anyone pokes holes in the plan.
  Being pro-gun control is the liberal equivalent of being "pro-life".
- At no point does the comment say your government shouldn't pay off loans. It sounds more like they want the perfect and the good.
Way too many jobs require degrees to apply as well. Yeah, if you're a doctor, scientist, engineer, or other specialist that really does require advanced education, you need that level of education.
But I'm hiring a new permit tech to process contractor registrations, take permit payments, and answer the phone. It's ludicrous that the city wants them to have a degree in "Public Administration, Fiance, Construction Science, or a related field."
The solution, as always, is a land value tax and UBI. Don't need to fret over needing an education to live comfortably if you can already afford and place to live and food.

That mindset sure is a great way to make sure nothing ever gets better for anyone.

Congratulations.

For me, I do kind of think that if someone paid and then forgiveness happened, they ought to be at least partially compensated if they have any history of being low income. They could have put their loan payments into something else but they didn't so they'd kind of end up screwed over by their slavishly responsible bill paying.

That said: its stupid to not want broad student loan forgiveness because the student loan crisis is literally damaging the economy. Its hurting everyone, even people who already paid their loans off.

Id be ok if there was some kind of reimbursement, but I wouldn't stop student loan reform from happening if it didn't include reimbursement.
I like that idea. Phase in tax credits based on the student loans you have paid in the last X years, with higher weight given to more recent payments.
To be clear, even though I've just about finished paying mine off, I'd vote for full forgiveness in a heartbeat with or without that provision, but I think it would make it much more pallatable for a large chunk of the population.

I totally agree with this. If someone is opposed to student loan forgiveness because they had to pay theirs off, that person sucks. But if that person thinks maybe they should get a portion of their payments back too, and not as part of opposition, then I am sympathetic.

if that person thinks maybe they should get a portion of their payments back too
I think every one of them assumes they will never get a cent of that money back. They do live in America, after all, the land of "fuck you; got mine."
Change the legislation to give every living person back every cent they ever paid towards student loans, and many opinions would change.
The Republican party would still be completely against it though, so we'd still have millions of boot lickers out there arguing to hurt their own financial situation in order to please their superiors.
Don't take out a loan that you cannot afford.
- How do you know what loan you can afford before you have any income? How do you expect a 17 year old who's never lived on their own and only financial experience is maybe a part time job to be able to comprehend money on the scale of 10s of thousands of dollars?
  Sure you can try to be smart and look at the BLS data to get an estimate of your income after college, but a ton of minutae gets lost when doing so, such as what you'll make early on in that position vs after 20 years in that position, regional pay differences, etc. that also assumes you'll graduate and get a job like you researched in your field but maybe you picked a field that's about to collapse for reasons outside of your control, maybe the field you picked is already saturated with talent, or is experiencing some other significant shift.
  I worked with one person who had gone to university to be a biologist just to graduate right after a significant number of university research positions were closed and laid off, leaving him fighting with folks who have 20+ years of experience for a handful of job openings
  Student loans are the one type of loan you can't simply perform a debt to income calculation to determine if you can afford the loan. There's a million and one things that can happen between when you accept the loan and when you start paying on it that can greatly impact the affordability. The risk of course grows with the cost of education, but so does the potential reward.

You don't need to cure cancer, you need to be able to prevent it in the first place.

Ofc this is following the metaphor, for actual cancer you need both.

For student loans you need to fix the system, higher education in Europe is free, but it really isn't, you pay for your education over your lifetime by earning more money with your higher education and thus paying more in taxes and social security.

Ofc it's not a perfect system, but much better than having young idiots be purposely exposed to predatory lending.

I paid off my student loans at the beginning of this month. it took me 16 years and like $65,000, right? If someone else comes in behind me, goes through the same shit that I went through, and then gets their loan forgiven or paid off in a couple of years?

Then I'm happy for them. Good for them, their life is gonna be so much easier without that burden over their head, and happier people means I get to live in a happier society, which means that I get to be happier too.

I mean I sold 4 years of my life to the military to not have to take loans out, so I get the gut reaction

The main cause of the student loan issue is the commodification of education. Everyone wanted to go to college and at first it was optional but then as more people did it it became a requirement, then they realized they can charge more and more for education that is worse and worse because a good chunk of people dont actually want to learn / be there. They're just there for the paper that'll let them get jobs and not be unemployed, or even just to say that they went.

I look around and people are playing damn Pokémon Showdown in class, there was that one scandal of an influencer girl who was the daughter of someone important that bought her admission to Stanford(?) and would stream literally about how she didn't care about education she just wanted the college experience.

Hot take: Not everyone should be going to college, High School should just prepare people better. Even if we forgive all loans right now it doesn't fix the issue. Instead of your problem it will just be your kids' problem

While I agree in theory, I'm not really sure there's much that can be done in practice. The genie is out of the bottle here: jobs want the paper, so people get the paper, leading to jobs expecting people to have the paper. An employer is unlikely to deliberately "lower their standards" (in their view) if the pool of potential employees with a degree is large enough for their needs already. Since you can't legislate that employers are not allowed to require a degree, and you can't expect people to not get a degree and sacrifice their own potential future to break that cycle, we're kind of at an impasse.
That's why the only way forward that anyone's figured out so far is government funded higher education.
Edit:typos
- I agree, but there is things we can move towards, but some are more... radical solutions.
  I think the Swiss do something where after a certain point in the education pipeline (Age 16?) they decide either university or vocational school.
  I think the ratio is 20-80.
  If the decision is made for you (via being evaluated by the institutions in charge of the students) it definitely would be filled with bribes and scandals where the rich try to subvert it.
  But if that wasn't a problem I think it would definitely help university degrees "matter" again and it would be more feasible to make free for those who pursue it.
  Again this requires a whole restructuring-- and would not see results for atleast a generation-- and red-lining would potentially have very visible effects on this depending on how its done.
Trades are a good option, but how long before plumbing drones are crawling through the sewers?
- how long before plumbing drones are crawling through the sewers
  That would be lit
- What makes you think they aren't already?

What happened to all that student loan vote-for-me-again (or so it felt for a European, IMO) relief stuff in the end?

It's next to the Epstein's files.

I cant believe how many time I have to say "just because I was hungry yesterday doesn't mean you sould starve tomorrow." That line was fundamental in my upbringing, it's so simple and do correct and now,no one understands this very basic concept for children

I think there are three problems with loan forgiveness:
We can't just keep bailing people out. If you're going to forgive loans, you need to actually address the root cause first.
Why do the people who did the right thing by paying back the loans get shafted? They made sure they could pay back their loans and made sacrifices to do so, and now youre letting people unprepared for the loans leap frog them?
It's almost like "too big to fail" but for people.
- It’s almost like “too big to fail” but for people.
  How? "Too big to fail" is bad because companies have multiple other methods of dealing with debt, like selling assets and declaring bankruptcy. Student loans can't be discharged via bankruptcy, and most people with loans don't have enough assets to cover their loans.
  My loans were discharged under Biden, but that's because the government fucked me over on the PSLF and changed their mind after I'd done the time doing palliative care for developmentally disabled adults.
  You want to talk about sacrifice? I did a decade of dealing with literal feces because I was providing care to autistic people that had developed dementia, and I was only getting a couple bucks more than minimum wage. The payoff was supposed to be student loan forgiveness, but the fucking government went back on their word, and now Biden's the bad guy for doing what was originally promised? C'mon.
- Why do the people who did the right thing by paying back the loans get shafted?
  This is literally the guy in the OP. For a closer comparison, this is like saying "you're freeing all slaves? What about people like me who bought their own freedom? We made so many sacrifices to do it and now we're just being shafted?!"
  A good thing happening to me is not a bad thing happening to you and vice versa.
I cant believe how many time I have to say "just because I was hungry yesterday doesn't mean you sound stave tomorrow." That line was fundamental in my upbringing, it's so simple and do correct and now,no one understands this very basic concept for children
What does "sound stave" mean?
- "Should starve" I don't know what happened there
- I might be wrong here, but it looks like autocorrect got them and it’s supposed to be ‘should starve’.

Dude.

Fuck cancer, AND fuck people that have that logic about school loans or anything else.

Don't take out a loan that you cannot afford, that is on you.
Totally! If I got cancer free and then a simple and quick cure for cancer came out, I'd obviously wish that that came out earlier, but one would have to be a royal asshole to with that others suffered and died because one had to suffer as well.

This is som weird metaphor... So some people get voluntary "cancer" in hope theycan fight it and it will benefit them in the long run, and some don't. While someone will have just the benefits and not the cancer while everyone chips in.

I get that in the long run highly educated people tend to pay more taxes. So makeing education affordable in is a net benefit for everyone. But this analogy is just weird...

I don't know man, at the end of the day it is unfair, and making fun of that seems inappropriate.

Plot twist, he actually beat up every single kid in the paediatric cancer ward at his local hospital.

Capitalism is cancer, prove me wrong.

Noo, cancer is when cells start to grow infinitely and therefore destroy the body. Capitalism is about economic infinite growth that destroys the planet and the people. Know the difference.
When the makers of a game don’t setup rules or enforce them, then the game can suck because of how unbalanced it can get.
The issue at the end of the day is with the game makers (politicians) not making the game fair and fun. Elements could be added to balance the game, such as cash being distributed each time you pass GO (a monthly Universal Basic Income[UBI]) and setting lower costs the on the property you want to rent. More properties could even be added to the board to help lower the cost of owning a property.
The game in theory could have some interesting elements, such as innovation and competition fueling creativity. But when the game makers totally removed themselves from a judging role, those interesting features completely disappeared due to the big players being allowed to swallow up all the competition.
The big players’ greed also fuels the game to be worse for everyone, including themselves. Incentives to create the lowest priced products sounds great on paper. However, when the greed from the big players has caused the majority of players to not be able to afford even their cheapest products, then suddenly those big players start cutting corners. More and more. Until they are providing their customers with actual garbage and they might even call it ‘food’ too!
Contrast this with if people were actually getting a base amount of money (thanks to UBI) and those same people could afford to not just have the worst/cheapest versions of everything. Suddenly, the scale can be flipped to be a race geared around providing the best and highest quality goods and services. Rules can be enforced to punish wasteful, unsustainable, and unethical business practices as well, since people aren’t dependent on everything being a race to the bottom.
- Makes sense. It's like, if you think about it, the last three rounds of Monopoly, when one person clearly has all of the property and everyone else is just playing and playing, waiting to eventually go bankrupt, is the worst part of the entire game, by far.

Read all the comments🧵. Nobody mentioned that higher education was free in the 🇺🇲 until a racist made it costly for colors to attend.

Changed the link, since folks had difficulty trickling to the sources.🥁

made it costly for colors to attend
Are you sure that's the right link? The Wikipedia page talks about a law that mandates a permit for carrying firearms.
- changed the link so if folks want to verify sources they can.
Are you sure you linked the right bill? The bill in uour second link is about public carrying of firearms in California.
- Refresh🧵(🔄). Even explained why.

False equivalent. People do not choose to have cancer, but some people chose poorly and took out loans they could not afford; that is on them.

What a horrible, uninformed and ignorant hot take.
- wym? all humans are perfectly rational actors operating in a complete ideological, moral, economic, and social vacuum; therefore literally everything boils down to personal responsibility and natural consequence.
  except for me of course.
- Is it? I went to a state college to take advantage of in state tuition, commuted because gas for my Geo Metro 2-seater was cheaper than a dorm room, etc to cut my costs down to where I wouldn't need to put myself in debt and got a small scholarship/grant (that in turn came with an in-state work commitment that shaped my choices after graduation). Other people my age made other choices related to college that landed them in massive amounts of debt that I avoided.
  If I had known that I could borrow as much as I wanted and expect someone else to pay it off instead of being stuck holding responsibility for my debts, I likely would have made different substantially less frugal and less restrictive choices.
  Tell, you what, nix an equivalent amount of my debts, and we'll call it a deal. You don't mind paying off my mortgage, right? Just because you didn't take out a mortgage doesn't mean you shouldn't be responsible for mine, right?

I mean I wouldn't want it to not exist but if I just nearly died of chemo + cancer I'd be a little mad if they found an EASIER way to cure cancer...

Cancer survivor here. Nothing would make me more happy to see a simple cure for what almost killed me, the sooner the better. Even if it was just after I finished chemo; perhaps even especially right after it to be honest. Remember that there's always the 5-year time where the danger of the cancer coming back is constantly lingering (especially during the first 12 months). Even if you just finished chemo, that new drug means you won't have to go through chemo again for that cancer no matter what happens from now on. Nothing, and I mean abso-fucking-lutely nothing, would've given me more peace of mind at that time.
That would actually kind of be funny in retrospect. Like, if you survived it, and it was the most horrible, painful year of your life, and then the day the doctor gave you the all-clear, the FDA released a drug that takes care of it in seven days with minimum side effects.
Like any time anybody said anything to me, I would be whipping out my cancer photos and then using that to explain that the universe hates me, and so therefore I am absolved of all sin.

Yeah I don't think this covers the situation as much as it's a nice feel good story.

Imagine for a second you are relatively poor, you go to a state school or community college in order to afford it. You have loans, but they are small.

Now imagine you're upper middle class, you go to a private or out of state school and take loans out for a much much larger amount than the other person, with the expectation that you're getting more value for your money (let's ignore the labyrinth there for a second -- this is something many people believe and believing it, for some, makes it true).

Now, both loans are forgiven

Youve succeeded in making the rich richer, giving them both the higher valued education and all of their money back.

Or imagine you're that poor student but you're smart: you got a grant or scholarship making your loans nonexistent, but only if you go to the state school.

Once again, forgiving loans makes the already wealthy person significantly more wealthy and does nothing to benefit the poorer person.

Yes, of course, there's a wide range of reasons a person might go down either route, and I'm absolutely certain there are many millions of people who have gotten loans way above their wealth in order to go to a better school and jump out of poverty (or whatever). This comic ignores the nuance.

In the cancer analogy, this would be a poor person dying or otherwise experiencing terrible health problems because they couldn't get the care they needed, then when a cure is developed, only administering it to the people who could afford care to begin with (ie american health care)

If this is a one-time event it's hardly the solution to the problem. Education should be free or close to free in general.
If that's the case, things suddenly look different. Even only if e.g. state schools are free.
In my country the tuition fee for a state university is around €30 per semester, and that doesn't even go to the university but to fund the student governing body (not sure what's the right translation for the term).
This means, that everyone can get a quality education even if they are poor. In fact, most people I went to university with funded their flat/student accomodation and food with a part-time job while going to university. No debts or financial assistance needed.
This doesn't cover private universities, but (a) the difference in quality and reputation isn't relevant and (b) free public universities means that private universities are also somewhat price capped if they want to stay competitive.
- Of course, but that's never been a serious proposal in this country so I wasn't responding to it.
  It's feasible to do this today in the US at some schools, but your parents have to really push you to get a lot of scholarships. It's not common.

I just want the playing field to be level, I prioritized paying my loans off instead of buying a home when that would have actually been affordable. Now that money is gone and the housing market has blown up so much that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to afford it. If all the people currently paying their loans suddenly get the slate cleared it will create even more competition for homes and my situation will be even worse. Reimburse me for mine and I'll shut the fuck up about it.

Dead curious if anyone can provide a legit rebuttal to this comment rather than down voting.
This would be more like cancer treatment being made free for all after a certain date, I can def see someone who went bankrupt paying for their treatment being a bit salty. Hell, Tesla and Apple buyers get mad when there is a steep discount after they buy, and this is factored into costumer relation decisions. Ultimately, people can tell individuals making this posters argument to "get fucked," but it just alienates more people.
Your problem is essential "if things get better for other people that'll be bad for me." The problem here isn't student loan forgiveness; it's the housing market being out of whack.
- Your problem is essential “if things get better for other people that’ll be bad for me.”
  Yes, that's correct and I'm hardly the only person without student loans it would be bad for. Why do only people with student loan debts deserve help? Why not give everyone a flat 50/100/whatever thousand dollars and let us do with it what we will. I could solve a lot of problems for myself if I had all the money I spent on college back.
  The problem here isn’t student loan forgiveness; it’s the housing market being out of whack.
  Yes, and I haven't heard anyone put forth any kind of solution for that.

I am once again reminded: Humanity is fucking ugly. I'm starting to get nihilists.

I don't feel like the comparison works, because we don't know a clear cure for cancer right now, but loan forgiveness is something we can technically do just fine (it's entirely human made after all)

I don't think you can feel unfairness about something not happening that, to our current knowledge, is not possible. You can feel a bit unfairness if something that might as well have helped you, won't be done for you... For no clear reason.

I'm somewhat torn on this:

Yes, I totally agree that federal loans should be forgiven even if someone pays theirs off.

Private loans though? Not so much. That's basically the same as a mortgage from a bank. Or a car loan even. That money ultimately ends up in the borrower's possession after the school balance is paid. That? I am not so willing to share the cost of.

I, somewhat, feel you. My hang up is federal loans are often s pittance
Maybe my FAFSA has the wrong code(at this point, for my oldest). Maybe I should have lied about my assets? I haven't done my research, but it did not seem like my lack of home or non-beater factor in
Debt itself has a history of forgiveness. Western Societies could benefit from being more forgiving imo. 30% apr loans should absolutely be illegal, but thats a lot of credit debt today.
- My first car loan had a 26% interest rate. Over that 36 month loan I would have literally paid over twice the total value of the loan if I didn't refinance it after 6 months.
  I learned a lot through the mistakes I made that day and have endeavored to not repeat any of those mistakes (and so far I haven't!)
- 30% apr loans should absolutely be illegal
  Are you talking of a specific instance? Because, we do have anti-usery laws.

Do we all think loan forgiveness is the cure for student loans?

Not at all, but loan forgiveness wasn't mentioned in the comic. It's just putting a bandaid on a capitalized educational system that should not be for making money but rather a societal investment into our betterment. Id keep my loans I have left and vote for free education any day of the week if we had the option. (Of course I wouldn't say no to both) But I think some people were trying to use loan forgiveness to breach the doors of free education.

I admit I kinda feel this way about Ozempic after having to fight for years to finally get into better shape.

Behavioural change is the crucial part of getting in shape, Ozempic is helpful for those who already did change their behaviour but still can't lose weight. Your fight is never wasted, you're significantly more healthy and fitter than those solely rely on Ozempic and never do the work, and that should be worth it.
Thing is once they stop the pounds come back unless they change their behavior. If all they do is take the shots, they're likely signing up for an expensive long-term roller-coaster of weight loss and gain and emotions.

I don't live in the USA and I never had student loans. So, this isn't personal for me. I have to say, this seems like a ridiculous characterization to me.

People take out student loans to go to school, which improves their prospects of a higher paying job. I don't really care about people who went to school and paid off their debt and whether they think that future generations should also have to pay off their crippling debt. What I care about are the opinions of the people who could have gone to university but didn't because the debt required seemed outrageous.

Imagine co-valedictorians at a high school. One gets into university, takes on huge debt, gets a good white-collar job, and starts paying off that debt. The other sees how enormous the cost would be, and instead gets a blue collar job. I would imagine that if the white collar worker got their debts wiped out, while the blue collar worker got nothing, that blue collar worker would be pretty annoyed. I would also imagine that someone choosing to go into a blue collar job out of high school would be much more common among a certain group / class of people.

This is the same argument, just stretched out.
Why do one person’s past decisions (to not go to university / to take on and pay off debt) mean that people in the future should not benefit from a better system?
Education is great! Whether it is through college, or vocational training, or on the job learning. If removing student debt can allow people to earn one type of education with less stress, how is that not a benefit?
- mean that people in the future should not benefit from a better system?
  I think there would be a lot less controversy if it were about people in the future. If the plan was to make university more affordable, that would be different. Or, if the government introduced a student loan system where the interest rate was pegged to the inflation rate, I don't think that would be so controversial.
  What's controversial is the student loan forgiveness programs. Rather than fixing the broken system so that university costs were more manageable, it's structured as a targeted bailout of a certain group of people (people with a university education who haven't yet fully repaid their loans) paid for by everyone else.

Nailed it

And next he will be paying for physiotherapy to treat the msd from twisting his wrists like that.