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Capping interest on student loans to a level slightly above a mortgage (ex. 3-4%), is probably a good first step. Maybe capping maximum interest payment to some amount relative to the principal?
Both of those don't actively forgive anything in lump-sum, but helps ensure that people can always get out of the hole that borrowing puts them in, even if it's a very deep hole.
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Norway28674 Posts
My university in Norway was mostly free ($50 per semester tuition fee, couple hundred $ per semester for books), 40% of my student loans were turned into scholarships (happens automatically when you pass your subjects), but I still accumulated more than $35k in student loans. (I still needed a place to stay, food to eat, and beer to drink.) Today, as a teacher, because I have a master's degree and three subjects I can teach, my salary is significantly higher than the salary of other teachers who spent fewer years in university. (Something like 30% higher than someone with 4 instead of 7 years of education.) Among people with the same profession, there's a fairly direct correlation between people with more student loans and higher salaries.
If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. Furthermore, I could have gotten by with less student loans. However, that would have meant I'd either have to work more or party less or eat less tasty food or engage less in relative luxury when I was a student.
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Targeted student loan forgiveness (percentages of certain types of loans) or interest exemption is a different beast altogether, I can easily get behind both of those.
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United States24690 Posts
On January 19 2022 02:30 Zambrah wrote:
What we currently call for Biden to do is dictated by the circumstances though, we all want the obvious solutions that involve Congress but Congress is dead and is almost definitely going to be dead for a very long time. Advocating for solutions that involve Congress in that situation is just advocating for doing nothing, because thats what Congress is willing/able to do until Democrats somehow earn an ultra-majority.
You can certainly make the argument that the arbitrary nature of the proposed solution (which doesn't involve Congress) is bad but outweighed by the benefits of the action. I don't personally agree but I can see it.
I am mostly responding to multiple cases of earlier counterarguments that are missing the point while hurling outrage.
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On January 19 2022 02:30 Zambrah wrote:
What we currently call for Biden to do is dictated by the circumstances though, we all want the obvious solutions that involve Congress but Congress is dead and is almost definitely going to be dead for a very long time. Advocating for solutions that involve Congress in that situation is just advocating for doing nothing, because thats what Congress is willing/able to do until Democrats somehow earn an ultra-majority.
Even then their pinnacle achievement was passing a Republican healthcare plan that enshrined profit for insurers into law.
Certainly going to be even harder for Democrats to get such a majority if they can't even protect the voting rights of the people that were indispensable in getting them this far.
On January 19 2022 02:40 Lmui wrote:
Capping interest on student loans to a level slightly above a mortgage (ex. 3-4%), is probably a good first step. Maybe capping maximum interest payment to some amount relative to the principal?
Both of those don't actively forgive anything in lump-sum, but helps ensure that people can always get out of the hole that borrowing puts them in, even if it's a very deep hole.
Capping interest most certainly does not ensure people can always get out. It also emboldens the farkakteh idea that the debt is not the fault of government incompetence in the first place.
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On January 19 2022 02:50 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2022 02:30 Zambrah wrote:
What we currently call for Biden to do is dictated by the circumstances though, we all want the obvious solutions that involve Congress but Congress is dead and is almost definitely going to be dead for a very long time. Advocating for solutions that involve Congress in that situation is just advocating for doing nothing, because thats what Congress is willing/able to do until Democrats somehow earn an ultra-majority. Even then their pinnacle achievement was passing a Republican healthcare plan that enshrined profit for insurers into law. Certainly going to be even harder for Democrats to get such a majority if they can't even protect the voting rights of the people that were indispensable in getting them this far.
Yeah, its almost definitely not something thats going to happen, but I think thats what it'd take, and when I say ultra majority Im talking like 80ish Senators, enough to make spoiler shitheads difficult to give THAT much individual power to.
They can't even do things that are basically entirely positive for themselves electorally (passing voting rights legislation), I definitely dont have any real faith in them managing to do anything that benefits anyone else.
Still, kind of fun to theorize and speculate on the unlikely/nigh impossible, lol.
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On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Given that the average cost of undergrad is over $44k a year (according to this source.), I think for most people the choice is either to take the loans or not go to college at all. If never going to college is what you mean by legitimate option, then I guess yeah. The message is ubiquitous that college graduates have much higher earnings over a lifetime, but anecdotally I hear a lot of people who struggle to find good paying jobs after graduation, who have to move back with family just to survive, and then are saddled with student debt besides.
If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all.
I'd be interested to see what percentage of people paying student loans in the US are considered poor.
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On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
My university in Norway was mostly free ($50 per semester tuition fee, couple hundred $ per semester for books), 40% of my student loans were turned into scholarships (happens automatically when you pass your subjects), but I still accumulated more than $35k in student loans. (I still needed a place to stay, food to eat, and beer to drink.) Today, as a teacher, because I have a master's degree and three subjects I can teach, my salary is significantly higher than the salary of other teachers who spent fewer years in university. (Something like 30% higher than someone with 4 instead of 7 years of education.) Among people with the same profession, there's a fairly direct correlation between people with more student loans and higher salaries.
If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. Furthermore, I could have gotten by with less student loans. However, that would have meant I'd either have to work more or party less or eat less tasty food or engage less in relative luxury when I was a student.
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Targeted student loan forgiveness (percentages of certain types of loans) or interest exemption is a different beast altogether, I can easily get behind both of those.
Part of the issue here is that you are comparing 2 incredibly different countries with wildly different systems. As an example, 40% of people with student loans don't actually have a degree to show for it. Lots of people have lifelong debt without any benefit whatsoever.
You have cited interest rates of Norway's loan system before. Imagine if it was (on average) 6% instead of that. There are a variety of other factors too, but those are some of the major ones. The discussion is not what would happen in Norway. The situations are wildly different and the societies the systems are a part of are also very different.
Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but someone without a degree in Norway has a lower chance of filing for bankruptcy from medical debt than someone in the US.
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Norway28674 Posts
On January 19 2022 04:10 Starlightsun wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Given that the average cost of undergrad is over $44k a year (according to this source.), I think for most people the choice is either to take the loans or not go to college at all. If never going to college is what you mean by legitimate option, then I guess yeah. The message is ubiquitous that college graduates have much higher earnings over a lifetime, but anecdotally I hear a lot of people who struggle to find good paying jobs after graduation, who have to move back with family just to survive, and then are saddled with student debt besides. Show nested quote +If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. I'd be interested to see what percentage of people paying student loans in the US are considered poor.
By legitimate option I rather mean attend a less expensive college. I'm reading that 'The average annual cost for attending a public community college in the US is $4,864 for in-state students' - this would certainly be a lot more manageable than $44k per year.
However, if the ones that cost $44k+ per year also give significantly better future earnings than the ones that cost $5k per year, then it sounds like the $44k per year is an investment (granted, perhaps a bad one, and perhaps constituting the type of gamble you wouldn't want to encourage), and if it's an investment, then I'm not sure the people with more student debt are the ones most in need nor most deserving of additional financial aid.
Cancelling student debt makes more sense the more you think of college/university as a scam. Might be true for some colleges and some degrees, but I'm not convinced that it holds true for anywhere close to 'all higher education'.
I totally get that anecdotally people who incur hefty student loans and are then unable to land jobs end up in difficult situations. It might also be a very frequent problem. But there are further unknown factors too: To what degree were people with 'useless' degrees that can't land them a job choose their education based on personal interest, to what degree did they choose the profession based on a promise of a future career?
I mean, I think education has intrinsic value and I'm not negative towards people getting a degree in 80s pop music, but if two people are both told 'you should get a degree in health care, you're certain to land a job there' and one of them goes 'oh but I don't wanna work with old people' and the other is like 'hm, that doesn't really appeal to me, but the job security aspect is more important than being able to work with something I truly enjoy' and then they both spend an equal amount of money getting an education while the former isn't able to utilize his film major for anything while the latter gets a job as some type of health care worker, then I think the latter guy deserves some degree of reward for making such a responsible decision. Yes, 18 year olds aren't fully capable of making informed life decisions for the future, but they're also not complete idiots, and many actually make very sound decisions.
I entirely agree that 'something should be done', but I really haven't seen numbers that convince me that student loan forgiveness is the way to go, unless we add caveats like 'forgive a certain, smallish sum', or 'freeze interest and downpayments for people without relevant jobs'. As for people who incur huge debt without getting a degree, what's their reason? I know a guy who dropped out of medical school after completing 5 years (of a 6 year degree) and accumulating $80k debt, and honestly, I think 'well that was stupid on your behalf', not 'I guess we should erase your student debt then'.
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Norway28674 Posts
On January 19 2022 04:26 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
My university in Norway was mostly free ($50 per semester tuition fee, couple hundred $ per semester for books), 40% of my student loans were turned into scholarships (happens automatically when you pass your subjects), but I still accumulated more than $35k in student loans. (I still needed a place to stay, food to eat, and beer to drink.) Today, as a teacher, because I have a master's degree and three subjects I can teach, my salary is significantly higher than the salary of other teachers who spent fewer years in university. (Something like 30% higher than someone with 4 instead of 7 years of education.) Among people with the same profession, there's a fairly direct correlation between people with more student loans and higher salaries.
If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. Furthermore, I could have gotten by with less student loans. However, that would have meant I'd either have to work more or party less or eat less tasty food or engage less in relative luxury when I was a student.
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Targeted student loan forgiveness (percentages of certain types of loans) or interest exemption is a different beast altogether, I can easily get behind both of those. Part of the issue here is that you are comparing 2 incredibly different countries with wildly different systems. As an example, 40% of people with student loans don't actually have a degree to show for it. Lots of people have lifelong debt without any benefit whatsoever. You have cited interest rates of Norway's loan system before. Imagine if it was (on average) 6% instead of that. There are a variety of other factors too, but those are some of the major ones. The discussion is not what would happen in Norway. The situations are wildly different and the societies the systems are a part of are also very different. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but someone without a degree in Norway has a lower chance of filing for bankruptcy from medical debt than someone in the US.
I've never heard of a Norwegian person filing for bankruptcy from medical debt, that's not really a concept we have.
Anyway, I agree that the countries and systems are very different and can't be directly compared, which is why I'm asking about stuff like 'to what degree does the size of your student loan influence your future pay' (because in Norway they're definitely related). Again, if they're not related, and if higher priced college/university is basically a scam, that's a more convincing argument in favor of blanket student loan forgiveness. But if people with $80k loans make 50% more than people with $20k loans, then erasing the entire debt for both those groups of people will be way more beneficial towards people who make more money. If people with $30k loans make more than people with 0 loan because they figured they couldn't afford college, then erasing the entire debt again favors the wealthier group.
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On January 19 2022 04:10 Starlightsun wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Given that the average cost of undergrad is over $44k a year (according to this source.), I think for most people the choice is either to take the loans or not go to college at all. If never going to college is what you mean by legitimate option, then I guess yeah. The message is ubiquitous that college graduates have much higher earnings over a lifetime, but anecdotally I hear a lot of people who struggle to find good paying jobs after graduation, who have to move back with family just to survive, and then are saddled with student debt besides. Show nested quote +If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. I'd be interested to see what percentage of people paying student loans in the US are considered poor.
Not to be a stickler but public universities are 18k not 44k.
Also community college i remember being 2-4k a year but dont quote me.
Still a ton of money and its a mess but its not 44k a year for most people and there are other options out there.
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On January 19 2022 04:52 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2022 04:26 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
My university in Norway was mostly free ($50 per semester tuition fee, couple hundred $ per semester for books), 40% of my student loans were turned into scholarships (happens automatically when you pass your subjects), but I still accumulated more than $35k in student loans. (I still needed a place to stay, food to eat, and beer to drink.) Today, as a teacher, because I have a master's degree and three subjects I can teach, my salary is significantly higher than the salary of other teachers who spent fewer years in university. (Something like 30% higher than someone with 4 instead of 7 years of education.) Among people with the same profession, there's a fairly direct correlation between people with more student loans and higher salaries.
If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. Furthermore, I could have gotten by with less student loans. However, that would have meant I'd either have to work more or party less or eat less tasty food or engage less in relative luxury when I was a student.
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Targeted student loan forgiveness (percentages of certain types of loans) or interest exemption is a different beast altogether, I can easily get behind both of those. Part of the issue here is that you are comparing 2 incredibly different countries with wildly different systems. As an example, 40% of people with student loans don't actually have a degree to show for it. Lots of people have lifelong debt without any benefit whatsoever. You have cited interest rates of Norway's loan system before. Imagine if it was (on average) 6% instead of that. There are a variety of other factors too, but those are some of the major ones. The discussion is not what would happen in Norway. The situations are wildly different and the societies the systems are a part of are also very different. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but someone without a degree in Norway has a lower chance of filing for bankruptcy from medical debt than someone in the US. I've never heard of a Norwegian person filing for bankruptcy from medical debt, that's not really a concept we have. Anyway, I agree that the countries and systems are very different and can't be directly compared, which is why I'm asking about stuff like 'to what degree does the size of your student loan influence your future pay' (because in Norway they're definitely related). Again, if they're not related, and if higher priced college/university is basically a scam, that's a more convincing argument in favor of blanket student loan forgiveness. But if people with $80k loans make 50% more than people with $20k loans, then erasing the entire debt for both those groups of people will be way more beneficial towards people who make more money. If people with $30k loans make more than people with 0 loan because they figured they couldn't afford college, then erasing the entire debt again favors the wealthier group.
There are some careers where you of course make more money (STEM, Finance, Law, all the fields you associate with high pay) but it is not a generalized thing. Teachers generally have very poor pay in the US. And the reason I brought up 40% of people with debt not even having a degree was to show that even if we ignore the poor financial performance of a wide range of degrees, 40% of people with student debt don't even have a degree. They didn't finish.
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Norway28674 Posts
On January 19 2022 04:56 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2022 04:52 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 19 2022 04:26 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
My university in Norway was mostly free ($50 per semester tuition fee, couple hundred $ per semester for books), 40% of my student loans were turned into scholarships (happens automatically when you pass your subjects), but I still accumulated more than $35k in student loans. (I still needed a place to stay, food to eat, and beer to drink.) Today, as a teacher, because I have a master's degree and three subjects I can teach, my salary is significantly higher than the salary of other teachers who spent fewer years in university. (Something like 30% higher than someone with 4 instead of 7 years of education.) Among people with the same profession, there's a fairly direct correlation between people with more student loans and higher salaries.
If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. Furthermore, I could have gotten by with less student loans. However, that would have meant I'd either have to work more or party less or eat less tasty food or engage less in relative luxury when I was a student.
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Targeted student loan forgiveness (percentages of certain types of loans) or interest exemption is a different beast altogether, I can easily get behind both of those. Part of the issue here is that you are comparing 2 incredibly different countries with wildly different systems. As an example, 40% of people with student loans don't actually have a degree to show for it. Lots of people have lifelong debt without any benefit whatsoever. You have cited interest rates of Norway's loan system before. Imagine if it was (on average) 6% instead of that. There are a variety of other factors too, but those are some of the major ones. The discussion is not what would happen in Norway. The situations are wildly different and the societies the systems are a part of are also very different. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but someone without a degree in Norway has a lower chance of filing for bankruptcy from medical debt than someone in the US. I've never heard of a Norwegian person filing for bankruptcy from medical debt, that's not really a concept we have. Anyway, I agree that the countries and systems are very different and can't be directly compared, which is why I'm asking about stuff like 'to what degree does the size of your student loan influence your future pay' (because in Norway they're definitely related). Again, if they're not related, and if higher priced college/university is basically a scam, that's a more convincing argument in favor of blanket student loan forgiveness. But if people with $80k loans make 50% more than people with $20k loans, then erasing the entire debt for both those groups of people will be way more beneficial towards people who make more money. If people with $30k loans make more than people with 0 loan because they figured they couldn't afford college, then erasing the entire debt again favors the wealthier group. There are some careers where you of course make more money (STEM, Finance, Law, all the fields you associate with high pay) but it is not a generalized thing. Teachers generally have very poor pay in the US. And the reason I brought up 40% of people with debt not even having a degree was to show that even if we ignore the poor financial performance of a wide range of degrees, 40% of people with student debt don't even have a degree. They didn't finish.
Why should not finishing mean you don't have to pay, though? I assume it's not that 40% were arbitrarily kicked out or failed for reasons entirely outside their own control.
Again, some of the sums seem exorbitant, the interest rate strikes me as absurd, education should be free or close to free, and I think the US is in dire need of serious redistribution of resources. BUT, I'm still seeing people making the decision to get expensive education and I think I'm seeing that in quite some cases, the more expensive education results in higher paying jobs. None of this is convincing me that non-targeted student debt relief is a particularly good method to achieve the redistribution of wealth that I acknowledge is important.
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On January 19 2022 05:13 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2022 04:56 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 04:52 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 19 2022 04:26 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
My university in Norway was mostly free ($50 per semester tuition fee, couple hundred $ per semester for books), 40% of my student loans were turned into scholarships (happens automatically when you pass your subjects), but I still accumulated more than $35k in student loans. (I still needed a place to stay, food to eat, and beer to drink.) Today, as a teacher, because I have a master's degree and three subjects I can teach, my salary is significantly higher than the salary of other teachers who spent fewer years in university. (Something like 30% higher than someone with 4 instead of 7 years of education.) Among people with the same profession, there's a fairly direct correlation between people with more student loans and higher salaries.
If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. Furthermore, I could have gotten by with less student loans. However, that would have meant I'd either have to work more or party less or eat less tasty food or engage less in relative luxury when I was a student.
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Targeted student loan forgiveness (percentages of certain types of loans) or interest exemption is a different beast altogether, I can easily get behind both of those. Part of the issue here is that you are comparing 2 incredibly different countries with wildly different systems. As an example, 40% of people with student loans don't actually have a degree to show for it. Lots of people have lifelong debt without any benefit whatsoever. You have cited interest rates of Norway's loan system before. Imagine if it was (on average) 6% instead of that. There are a variety of other factors too, but those are some of the major ones. The discussion is not what would happen in Norway. The situations are wildly different and the societies the systems are a part of are also very different. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but someone without a degree in Norway has a lower chance of filing for bankruptcy from medical debt than someone in the US. I've never heard of a Norwegian person filing for bankruptcy from medical debt, that's not really a concept we have. Anyway, I agree that the countries and systems are very different and can't be directly compared, which is why I'm asking about stuff like 'to what degree does the size of your student loan influence your future pay' (because in Norway they're definitely related). Again, if they're not related, and if higher priced college/university is basically a scam, that's a more convincing argument in favor of blanket student loan forgiveness. But if people with $80k loans make 50% more than people with $20k loans, then erasing the entire debt for both those groups of people will be way more beneficial towards people who make more money. If people with $30k loans make more than people with 0 loan because they figured they couldn't afford college, then erasing the entire debt again favors the wealthier group. There are some careers where you of course make more money (STEM, Finance, Law, all the fields you associate with high pay) but it is not a generalized thing. Teachers generally have very poor pay in the US. And the reason I brought up 40% of people with debt not even having a degree was to show that even if we ignore the poor financial performance of a wide range of degrees, 40% of people with student debt don't even have a degree. They didn't finish.
Why should not finishing mean you don't have to pay, though? I assume it's not that 40% were arbitrarily kicked out or failed for reasons entirely outside their own control.Again, some of the sums seem exorbitant, the interest rate strikes me as absurd, education should be free or close to free, and I think the US is in dire need of serious redistribution of resources. BUT, I'm still seeing people making the decision to get expensive education and I think I'm seeing that in quite some cases, the more expensive education results in higher paying jobs. None of this is convincing me that non-targeted student debt relief is a particularly good method to achieve the redistribution of wealth that I acknowledge is important.
I'm not saying "so they shouldn't have to pay". I am pointing out why the situation is very bad right now and a lot of people are suffering under debt they have no hope of ever paying off. Assigning guilt to matters of financial policy doesn't usually make sense. It is ethical to pay for addicts to get off of drugs, despite the long number of mistakes they have made in life. This is because not only is it good to help people, but society also benefits from having a contributing member of society who stops harming society.
Asking ourselves if someone suffering "deserves" to be saved is not always the right approach.
In a general sense, I would say the financial sector has been allowed (through capitalism) to exploit the working class to an extent that the ship is beginning to sink. 6% interest student loans are an example of this exploitation. The US government should not feel ethical collecting 6% interest on student loans. The entire loan system in the US is designed to exploit. The US government participating in this is criminal. The US government has guilt to atone for. This is a situation largely created by them.
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On January 19 2022 01:06 Nick_54 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2022 21:44 EnDeR_ wrote:On January 18 2022 17:45 Nick_54 wrote:On January 18 2022 17:31 EnDeR_ wrote:On January 18 2022 17:22 Nick_54 wrote:On January 18 2022 17:04 gobbledydook wrote:
Is it fair to cancel student debt? What about those who decided to pay their fees and not incur debt? What about those who decided not to go to college because of the debt?
Is it fair that university administrators, professors, and staff make obscene salaries while 18 year old students are forced take on life changing debts at an age they don't know what they're getting into. They're fucking crooks and the main problem as far as I'm concerned along with forgiving the debt. The issue has to be corrected for generations going forward. Very sure that the majority of university administrators, professors and staff do not make obscene salaries. There are some eyewatering salaries, true, but these are exceptions, not the norm and tend to be the really senior staff. You included university staff in your list which also includes sanitation staff as well as catering staff or even campus police -- I'd be surprised if any of those are much above minimum wage. The cost of education has little to do with the salaries of the people running the place. You should do your homework. It's a bit like the poster a couple pages back that argued they could cut school budgets by 50% by cutting salaries of overpaid staff... Obviously I'm not talking about the staff making minimum wage. Campus police should be severely defunded if not eliminated entirely. I'm talking about the public servants making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Football and basketball coaches making million up millions. The cost of university needs to go down as well the debt forgiveness to not put the next generation in this spot. I've done enough homework to know that teenagers racking up 6 figure debts to pay 6 and 7 figure salaries to go along with golden parachutes for the elite isn't right. I'm not saying it would solve the cost problem entirely, but its a start. Certainly one can reduce the cost of education by removing services. I'm not going to defend the exploitation of college students for profit (which I find abhorrent -- they should be paid) but I think it is arguable that having a top-tier team brings in more value than it costs in the form of sponsorships, advertising, investments, etc. and effectively making your education actually have higher value for the cost. In other words, removing them arguably would not make your education cheaper because that's not why your education costs are so stupidly expensive. I highly disagree with the top-tier pay, even if it brings it a top-tier team having good value. Obviously if it had value there wouldn't be a bunch of broke graduates in debt right now.
What? I don't understand the argument here. If a branch of the university generates money than it costs to run it, it does not necessarily mean that the gains will be spent in lowering tuition fees -- in my experience, they're far more likely to be re-invested back into other areas of the university to attract more international students that pay far more fees than home students, which itself generates more revenue for the university that then gets reinvested back into even more services/facilities to attract even more high-paying students. In a vacuum it'd be a winning strategy, but the fact that all universities compete for the same pool of students means that everything just got more expensive for everybody.
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Norway28674 Posts
On January 19 2022 05:35 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2022 05:13 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 19 2022 04:56 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 04:52 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 19 2022 04:26 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
My university in Norway was mostly free ($50 per semester tuition fee, couple hundred $ per semester for books), 40% of my student loans were turned into scholarships (happens automatically when you pass your subjects), but I still accumulated more than $35k in student loans. (I still needed a place to stay, food to eat, and beer to drink.) Today, as a teacher, because I have a master's degree and three subjects I can teach, my salary is significantly higher than the salary of other teachers who spent fewer years in university. (Something like 30% higher than someone with 4 instead of 7 years of education.) Among people with the same profession, there's a fairly direct correlation between people with more student loans and higher salaries.
If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. Furthermore, I could have gotten by with less student loans. However, that would have meant I'd either have to work more or party less or eat less tasty food or engage less in relative luxury when I was a student.
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Targeted student loan forgiveness (percentages of certain types of loans) or interest exemption is a different beast altogether, I can easily get behind both of those. Part of the issue here is that you are comparing 2 incredibly different countries with wildly different systems. As an example, 40% of people with student loans don't actually have a degree to show for it. Lots of people have lifelong debt without any benefit whatsoever. You have cited interest rates of Norway's loan system before. Imagine if it was (on average) 6% instead of that. There are a variety of other factors too, but those are some of the major ones. The discussion is not what would happen in Norway. The situations are wildly different and the societies the systems are a part of are also very different. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but someone without a degree in Norway has a lower chance of filing for bankruptcy from medical debt than someone in the US. I've never heard of a Norwegian person filing for bankruptcy from medical debt, that's not really a concept we have. Anyway, I agree that the countries and systems are very different and can't be directly compared, which is why I'm asking about stuff like 'to what degree does the size of your student loan influence your future pay' (because in Norway they're definitely related). Again, if they're not related, and if higher priced college/university is basically a scam, that's a more convincing argument in favor of blanket student loan forgiveness. But if people with $80k loans make 50% more than people with $20k loans, then erasing the entire debt for both those groups of people will be way more beneficial towards people who make more money. If people with $30k loans make more than people with 0 loan because they figured they couldn't afford college, then erasing the entire debt again favors the wealthier group. There are some careers where you of course make more money (STEM, Finance, Law, all the fields you associate with high pay) but it is not a generalized thing. Teachers generally have very poor pay in the US. And the reason I brought up 40% of people with debt not even having a degree was to show that even if we ignore the poor financial performance of a wide range of degrees, 40% of people with student debt don't even have a degree. They didn't finish.
Why should not finishing mean you don't have to pay, though? I assume it's not that 40% were arbitrarily kicked out or failed for reasons entirely outside their own control.Again, some of the sums seem exorbitant, the interest rate strikes me as absurd, education should be free or close to free, and I think the US is in dire need of serious redistribution of resources. BUT, I'm still seeing people making the decision to get expensive education and I think I'm seeing that in quite some cases, the more expensive education results in higher paying jobs. None of this is convincing me that non-targeted student debt relief is a particularly good method to achieve the redistribution of wealth that I acknowledge is important. I'm not saying "so they shouldn't have to pay". I am pointing out why the situation is very bad right now and a lot of people are suffering under debt they have no hope of ever paying off. Assigning guilt to matters of financial policy doesn't usually make sense. It is ethical to pay for addicts to get off of drugs, despite the long number of mistakes they have made in life. This is because not only is it good to help people, but society also benefits from having a contributing member of society who stops harming society. Asking ourselves if someone suffering "deserves" to be saved is not always the right approach. In a general sense, I would say the financial sector has been allowed (through capitalism) to exploit the working class to an extent that the ship is beginning to sink. 6% interest student loans are an example of this exploitation. The US government should not feel ethical collecting 6% interest on student loans. The entire loan system in the US is designed to exploit. The US government participating in this is criminal. The US government has guilt to atone for. This is a situation largely created by them.
Freezing downpayments and interest sounds like a viable solution without having to cancel the loans.
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On January 19 2022 04:56 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2022 04:10 Starlightsun wrote:On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Given that the average cost of undergrad is over $44k a year (according to this source.), I think for most people the choice is either to take the loans or not go to college at all. If never going to college is what you mean by legitimate option, then I guess yeah. The message is ubiquitous that college graduates have much higher earnings over a lifetime, but anecdotally I hear a lot of people who struggle to find good paying jobs after graduation, who have to move back with family just to survive, and then are saddled with student debt besides. If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. I'd be interested to see what percentage of people paying student loans in the US are considered poor. Not to be a stickler but public universities are 18k not 44k. Also community college i remember being 2-4k a year but dont quote me. Still a ton of money and its a mess but its not 44k a year for most people and there are other options out there.
No, you are right, my mistake. I used the figure for private schools.
@Liquid'Drone I don't really disagree with anything in your reply to me. It seems like a complicated problem that probably should have a more nuanced response than blanket forgiveness.
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On January 19 2022 05:49 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2022 05:35 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 05:13 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 19 2022 04:56 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 04:52 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 19 2022 04:26 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
My university in Norway was mostly free ($50 per semester tuition fee, couple hundred $ per semester for books), 40% of my student loans were turned into scholarships (happens automatically when you pass your subjects), but I still accumulated more than $35k in student loans. (I still needed a place to stay, food to eat, and beer to drink.) Today, as a teacher, because I have a master's degree and three subjects I can teach, my salary is significantly higher than the salary of other teachers who spent fewer years in university. (Something like 30% higher than someone with 4 instead of 7 years of education.) Among people with the same profession, there's a fairly direct correlation between people with more student loans and higher salaries.
If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. Furthermore, I could have gotten by with less student loans. However, that would have meant I'd either have to work more or party less or eat less tasty food or engage less in relative luxury when I was a student.
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Targeted student loan forgiveness (percentages of certain types of loans) or interest exemption is a different beast altogether, I can easily get behind both of those. Part of the issue here is that you are comparing 2 incredibly different countries with wildly different systems. As an example, 40% of people with student loans don't actually have a degree to show for it. Lots of people have lifelong debt without any benefit whatsoever. You have cited interest rates of Norway's loan system before. Imagine if it was (on average) 6% instead of that. There are a variety of other factors too, but those are some of the major ones. The discussion is not what would happen in Norway. The situations are wildly different and the societies the systems are a part of are also very different. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but someone without a degree in Norway has a lower chance of filing for bankruptcy from medical debt than someone in the US. I've never heard of a Norwegian person filing for bankruptcy from medical debt, that's not really a concept we have. Anyway, I agree that the countries and systems are very different and can't be directly compared, which is why I'm asking about stuff like 'to what degree does the size of your student loan influence your future pay' (because in Norway they're definitely related). Again, if they're not related, and if higher priced college/university is basically a scam, that's a more convincing argument in favor of blanket student loan forgiveness. But if people with $80k loans make 50% more than people with $20k loans, then erasing the entire debt for both those groups of people will be way more beneficial towards people who make more money. If people with $30k loans make more than people with 0 loan because they figured they couldn't afford college, then erasing the entire debt again favors the wealthier group. There are some careers where you of course make more money (STEM, Finance, Law, all the fields you associate with high pay) but it is not a generalized thing. Teachers generally have very poor pay in the US. And the reason I brought up 40% of people with debt not even having a degree was to show that even if we ignore the poor financial performance of a wide range of degrees, 40% of people with student debt don't even have a degree. They didn't finish.
Why should not finishing mean you don't have to pay, though? I assume it's not that 40% were arbitrarily kicked out or failed for reasons entirely outside their own control.Again, some of the sums seem exorbitant, the interest rate strikes me as absurd, education should be free or close to free, and I think the US is in dire need of serious redistribution of resources. BUT, I'm still seeing people making the decision to get expensive education and I think I'm seeing that in quite some cases, the more expensive education results in higher paying jobs. None of this is convincing me that non-targeted student debt relief is a particularly good method to achieve the redistribution of wealth that I acknowledge is important. I'm not saying "so they shouldn't have to pay". I am pointing out why the situation is very bad right now and a lot of people are suffering under debt they have no hope of ever paying off. Assigning guilt to matters of financial policy doesn't usually make sense. It is ethical to pay for addicts to get off of drugs, despite the long number of mistakes they have made in life. This is because not only is it good to help people, but society also benefits from having a contributing member of society who stops harming society. Asking ourselves if someone suffering "deserves" to be saved is not always the right approach. In a general sense, I would say the financial sector has been allowed (through capitalism) to exploit the working class to an extent that the ship is beginning to sink. 6% interest student loans are an example of this exploitation. The US government should not feel ethical collecting 6% interest on student loans. The entire loan system in the US is designed to exploit. The US government participating in this is criminal. The US government has guilt to atone for. This is a situation largely created by them. Freezing downpayments and interest sounds like a viable solution without having to cancel the loans.
I agree. My general perspective is that the current situation is untenable for a variety of reasons and that it should just all pause until we find a way to not make it a giant train wreck. The long term goal should be to join the rest of the civilized world in having school either be free or extremely cheap
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On January 19 2022 05:49 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2022 05:35 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 05:13 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 19 2022 04:56 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 04:52 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 19 2022 04:26 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
My university in Norway was mostly free ($50 per semester tuition fee, couple hundred $ per semester for books), 40% of my student loans were turned into scholarships (happens automatically when you pass your subjects), but I still accumulated more than $35k in student loans. (I still needed a place to stay, food to eat, and beer to drink.) Today, as a teacher, because I have a master's degree and three subjects I can teach, my salary is significantly higher than the salary of other teachers who spent fewer years in university. (Something like 30% higher than someone with 4 instead of 7 years of education.) Among people with the same profession, there's a fairly direct correlation between people with more student loans and higher salaries.
If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. Furthermore, I could have gotten by with less student loans. However, that would have meant I'd either have to work more or party less or eat less tasty food or engage less in relative luxury when I was a student.
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Targeted student loan forgiveness (percentages of certain types of loans) or interest exemption is a different beast altogether, I can easily get behind both of those. Part of the issue here is that you are comparing 2 incredibly different countries with wildly different systems. As an example, 40% of people with student loans don't actually have a degree to show for it. Lots of people have lifelong debt without any benefit whatsoever. You have cited interest rates of Norway's loan system before. Imagine if it was (on average) 6% instead of that. There are a variety of other factors too, but those are some of the major ones. The discussion is not what would happen in Norway. The situations are wildly different and the societies the systems are a part of are also very different. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but someone without a degree in Norway has a lower chance of filing for bankruptcy from medical debt than someone in the US. I've never heard of a Norwegian person filing for bankruptcy from medical debt, that's not really a concept we have. Anyway, I agree that the countries and systems are very different and can't be directly compared, which is why I'm asking about stuff like 'to what degree does the size of your student loan influence your future pay' (because in Norway they're definitely related). Again, if they're not related, and if higher priced college/university is basically a scam, that's a more convincing argument in favor of blanket student loan forgiveness. But if people with $80k loans make 50% more than people with $20k loans, then erasing the entire debt for both those groups of people will be way more beneficial towards people who make more money. If people with $30k loans make more than people with 0 loan because they figured they couldn't afford college, then erasing the entire debt again favors the wealthier group. There are some careers where you of course make more money (STEM, Finance, Law, all the fields you associate with high pay) but it is not a generalized thing. Teachers generally have very poor pay in the US. And the reason I brought up 40% of people with debt not even having a degree was to show that even if we ignore the poor financial performance of a wide range of degrees, 40% of people with student debt don't even have a degree. They didn't finish.
Why should not finishing mean you don't have to pay, though? I assume it's not that 40% were arbitrarily kicked out or failed for reasons entirely outside their own control.Again, some of the sums seem exorbitant, the interest rate strikes me as absurd, education should be free or close to free, and I think the US is in dire need of serious redistribution of resources. BUT, I'm still seeing people making the decision to get expensive education and I think I'm seeing that in quite some cases, the more expensive education results in higher paying jobs. None of this is convincing me that non-targeted student debt relief is a particularly good method to achieve the redistribution of wealth that I acknowledge is important. I'm not saying "so they shouldn't have to pay". I am pointing out why the situation is very bad right now and a lot of people are suffering under debt they have no hope of ever paying off. Assigning guilt to matters of financial policy doesn't usually make sense. It is ethical to pay for addicts to get off of drugs, despite the long number of mistakes they have made in life. This is because not only is it good to help people, but society also benefits from having a contributing member of society who stops harming society. Asking ourselves if someone suffering "deserves" to be saved is not always the right approach. In a general sense, I would say the financial sector has been allowed (through capitalism) to exploit the working class to an extent that the ship is beginning to sink. 6% interest student loans are an example of this exploitation. The US government should not feel ethical collecting 6% interest on student loans. The entire loan system in the US is designed to exploit. The US government participating in this is criminal. The US government has guilt to atone for. This is a situation largely created by them. Freezing downpayments and interest sounds like a viable solution without having to cancel the loans.
That's more of a weaker kick of the can down the road than a solution.
At least canceling student debt actually solves the problem of having student debt for millions of people. Granted neither solve the larger fundamental problems of the exploitative and oppressive system which the schools are indoctrinating people to be "productive" in.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 19 2022 05:13 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2022 04:56 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 04:52 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 19 2022 04:26 Mohdoo wrote:On January 19 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:
My university in Norway was mostly free ($50 per semester tuition fee, couple hundred $ per semester for books), 40% of my student loans were turned into scholarships (happens automatically when you pass your subjects), but I still accumulated more than $35k in student loans. (I still needed a place to stay, food to eat, and beer to drink.) Today, as a teacher, because I have a master's degree and three subjects I can teach, my salary is significantly higher than the salary of other teachers who spent fewer years in university. (Something like 30% higher than someone with 4 instead of 7 years of education.) Among people with the same profession, there's a fairly direct correlation between people with more student loans and higher salaries.
If Norwegian student loans were erased tomorrow, it would to a greater degree benefit myself and others with longer education and higher pay, and it would hardly benefit poor people at all. Furthermore, I could have gotten by with less student loans. However, that would have meant I'd either have to work more or party less or eat less tasty food or engage less in relative luxury when I was a student.
While I understand that salaries in the US are less explicitly defined in relation to your level of education, that I guess a larger % of student loans are entirely necessary because they pay for tuition and that consequently the points I'm making for Norway aren't equally valid for the US, is there really no relationship between a) frugality and student loans and b) future pay and student loans?
If there is no such relationship, that literally nobody foregoes getting student loans because they don't want to incur the debt, and that nobody gets more student loans because they expect to earn a higher future salary because of it, then sure. Just erase all the debt, clearly it was incurred for everyone across the board regardless of choices they made and without granting any benefit. But if not getting student loans was a legitimate option for some people who got student loans and if some people get more student loans because that will enable them to get higher pay in the future, blanket student loan forgiveness strikes me as a rather poor method of redistribution.
Targeted student loan forgiveness (percentages of certain types of loans) or interest exemption is a different beast altogether, I can easily get behind both of those. Part of the issue here is that you are comparing 2 incredibly different countries with wildly different systems. As an example, 40% of people with student loans don't actually have a degree to show for it. Lots of people have lifelong debt without any benefit whatsoever. You have cited interest rates of Norway's loan system before. Imagine if it was (on average) 6% instead of that. There are a variety of other factors too, but those are some of the major ones. The discussion is not what would happen in Norway. The situations are wildly different and the societies the systems are a part of are also very different. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but someone without a degree in Norway has a lower chance of filing for bankruptcy from medical debt than someone in the US. I've never heard of a Norwegian person filing for bankruptcy from medical debt, that's not really a concept we have. Anyway, I agree that the countries and systems are very different and can't be directly compared, which is why I'm asking about stuff like 'to what degree does the size of your student loan influence your future pay' (because in Norway they're definitely related). Again, if they're not related, and if higher priced college/university is basically a scam, that's a more convincing argument in favor of blanket student loan forgiveness. But if people with $80k loans make 50% more than people with $20k loans, then erasing the entire debt for both those groups of people will be way more beneficial towards people who make more money. If people with $30k loans make more than people with 0 loan because they figured they couldn't afford college, then erasing the entire debt again favors the wealthier group. There are some careers where you of course make more money (STEM, Finance, Law, all the fields you associate with high pay) but it is not a generalized thing. Teachers generally have very poor pay in the US. And the reason I brought up 40% of people with debt not even having a degree was to show that even if we ignore the poor financial performance of a wide range of degrees, 40% of people with student debt don't even have a degree. They didn't finish. Why should not finishing mean you don't have to pay, though? I assume it's not that 40% were arbitrarily kicked out or failed for reasons entirely outside their own control.
Mohdoo gave his answer, but I do want to offer my own perspective on this general question as well.
It's definitely fair to say that the group with high debt, high salary is not necessarily the right one to target for loan forgiveness given limited government budget and other methods that do a better job of targeting the poors for aid. But one group that you can definitely sympathize with in general is the "got loans, but didn't get their money's worth for a college education" one. Didn't finish, bad job prospects, unlucky, can't work the right job for whatever reason. It's hard to pin down this group per se, but "didn't finish" is definitely one of the clear signs of not getting their money's worth.
Furthermore, the US system definitely provides some real ugly perverse incentives on this front. For example, I would suspect that one way in which loans are correlated with bad educational outcomes is in how merit scholarships are generally handed out to the students most likely to pass, whereas lesser students have to pay their own way. And though it's not entirely fair to say that 18 year olds don't have agency, it's undeniable that college is dishonestly sold to a lot of them. Bad major choices are sold as something like gender studies, but that's less common than students pouring into seemingly-employable traps; a degree like Biology, for example, is sold as STEM and hyper-employable, but the reality of that is questionable. Few universities are seriously concerned about placements of students into jobs, just about getting their money. Even for engineering - a rather substantial (>30%) of my own graduating class was significantly underemployed after graduation for one reason or another.
Obviously all this hints at a need for a much more thorough reform of the system. And I'm not the world's biggest fan of blanket loan forgiveness (although not of a repayment-starts-now cliff of ending the student loan moratorium either). But on a moral level, I definitely see why those who didn't finish into a group that deserves larger-than-average sympathy on the student loan front.
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EPT
