It would be cheaper to foster an economy with more better-paying jobs so students would be able to pay off student loans, than creating a student loan relief program.

1. Because your student loans can not be discharged in bankruptcy, you have personally assumed all of the risk, as such your interest rate should be zero.

2. Therefore the most fair and equitable solution is to retroactively set the interest rate to zero, and refund all interest payments to the borrowers.

What say you?

The right answer is to remove or strictly limit tuition for public schools, as many countries do and as the US has in its own recent history.

During much of the 1960s (in the early years of the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, 1960-1975), the three public higher education systems in California – the University of California System (UC), the California State College System (CSUC), and the state’s community colleges – did not charge tuition for in-state residents. Yes, students paid some nominal (called “incidental”) fees. But tuition, we as think about it and know it today, was not an essential part of the financing plan for public higher education in California five decades ago.

The transition to student fees (a rose by any other name?) in the UC and CSUC systems began shortly after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as governor of California in 1967. As reported by the NY Times in 1982, Gov. Reagan “fought hard in the Legislature to impose tuition at four-year colleges.” He lost the battle for tuition, but the California Legislature “agreed to increase student registration fees, which [previously] had been nominal.” The official “no tuition” policy in California’s community colleges ended in 1982.

Millions of dollars that are going to banks every month instead of the local economy doesn’t spur vibrant small business.

How? How do you foster this economy? Through what means?

The whole Economic point of free schooling is that people with a higher level of education can do work with higher value added, so better paid and also generating more wealth, hence they naturally end up paying back their education (and then some) because of the higher tax take, both directly that they themselves pay and indirectly because it enables more companies in high value added industries.

In other words, it's an investment in people by the State.

This of course, only works when the economic environment actually uses such more highly educated people to generate more wealth using their capabilities for higher value added activities, which isn't mostly the case nowadays in most of the West (you really don't need highly educated workers to be a rent-seeker skimming money from the rest of Society).

By then again, as the original poster is postulating the fantasy and detail-free suggestion of "foster an economy with better-paying jobs" (further below the OP provides "tax cuts" as "detail", which leads one to think maybe the OP has been living under a rock in the last 40 years of ever falling taxes, when the economy actually went in the direction of "worse-paying jobs") I reckon my point requiring an economy geared for production rather than rent-seeking is actually more feasible and less "magical thinking".

When you come up with a realistic plan get back to us. And no dignity is derived from repaying debt that should never have been required in the first place.

You got scammed and you want the dignity of paying off the con artist? Hey I'll loan you some money too, and you can't bankruptcy out of it.

You're not wrong. If wages had increased alongside cost of living and tuition increases then we wouldn't be in this position now. We've been fighting for $15 dollars an hour minimum for so long that we really need $25 an hour.

Regan had this idea, it didn't work.

Yeah - that arguably would be cheaper, and it definitely would be better for society as a whole.

That's entirely irrelevant though, because it's not going to happen.

The primary reason that decently-paying jobs have become so much less common is that, over the last few decades in particular, the money that would've paid decent wages has been diverted to pay truly obscene salaries to a handful of executives.

And the people drawing those obscene salaries, and making general pay decisions for corporations, tend to be, quite seriously, psychopaths.

A person who has morals, principles, integrity and empathy will exercise self-restraint - they'll have particular choices that they simply will not make.

A person without any of those qualities - a psychopath - will not be constrained. They will be entirely free to choose any course of action that will benefit them in any way, entirely regardless of the consequences to others.

So all other things being more or less equal, paychopaths will have a strategic advantage in competitions for position in hierarchies like corporations or governments.

In a sound society, that advantage will be blunted by the simple fact that people with morals, principles, integrity and empathy find them and their tactics reprehensible. That has historically made them more the exception than the rule.

In the 80s in the US, there was a fundamental change. Society was sold the idea that "greed is good" - that winning is everything and to the victor goes the spoils and watch out for number 1 and so on - essentially psychopathic views were marketed as virtues. Successfully.

And throughout that period, enough psychopaths succeeded that theirs became the dominant viewpoint, particularly in the largest corporations (or the most rapacious, and thus most successful throughout the takeover era of corporate consolidation). And since then they've just grown more entrenched and more self-serving, and richer, and more powerful.

Which brings me back to the point - yours is a relatively sound viewpoint, but it's entirely irrelevant, because the people who control the power by which such a thing might be accomplished are psychopaths, and they are not going to act in a way that might diminish by even a fraction their undeserved and destructive wealth and privilege, even if it's not only for the good of society as a whole, but then necessarily for their own long-term good. They just aren't psychologically or morally equipped to make that choice. And they control the power in our society, so nobody else can meaningfully make that choice.

So really, the only remaining option is the same one that eventually befell Sumer and Egypt and Athens and Rome - societal collapse. Just as was the case with them, the upper classes have become too entrenched, too self-serving and too greedy to make the choices that would save their civilization, and nobody else has the power to overcome them. And just as was the case with those civilizations, the common people, between being confused and being self-servingly manipulated and misled, blame subsets of each other instead of the people who really bear the lion's share of the responsibility for the woes facing their civilization. So just as was the case with their societies, things will just get uglier and uglier until they finally fall apart. Like it or not.

Have a nice day anyway though, because that's really all you can do. We can't stop the relentless downhill slide, but we can at least try not to make each other unnecessarily miserable along the way.

I ought to report this post for violating the rules. It's not an unpopular opinion. 👍🏻

It's an unpopular and unrealistic opinion. To change it into a good opinion regardless of popularity is to find the place where the situation currently lives and not in a theoretical.

While far from perfect, the system the UK has (had?) is a lot better, and can be implemented easily, and even retrospectively.

Basically, the loan is paid back as a percentage tax, over a (fairly high) set limit. If you don't earn above that limit for 10 years, it's written off. If you don't pay it back after 20, it's written off. The interest is tied to the Bank of England base rate, and so is basically inflation corrected.

By paying it off as a progressive tax, it doesn't cause the stress levels a loan does. By having a set time limit, it discourages over-lending for courses. Loaning £20,000 for a basket weaving course will never get paid back. The same loan for a medical course is very likely. The course charges are also capped.

As for your situation, you've got to ask yourself, what is better for society as a whole? Large debts, particularly on the young can be devastating. It cripples the explosive growth of skills and lifestyle needed to fuel future growth of the economy.

If you truly want to maintain your dignity, why not accept the write off, and instead invest the money into a scholarship fund for future students? Those with pride can keep it, while those whose pride has been ground away under the load can get out from under their mistake.

Then support Lina Khan and the FTC is their anti-trust legislation against big tech.

Jobs have been getting better pay for decades now. Especially college jobs.