Bernie Sanders Proposal to Forgive $1.6 Trillion on All Student Loan Debt

[sakigt]

Decrease the interest rates....retroactively would be nice. That's all I want. *shrug*

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[ancienbon]

Hurting their credit score is one thing but I also think it is fair for them to prove they can’t pay off the loans they had agreed to pay back.

Yes, this won’t pass. Bernie can’t even convince one single senator to cosponsor his bill!

Uncle bernie is out of touch

 

[Sparda29]

The problem is that we could be facing a whole generation with the inability to purchase a home because of fked up credit or most of their income going towards their student loans. Forget about it if you have student loans and end up with with a child support order.

 

[awval999]

The problem is that we could be facing a whole generation with the inability to purchase a home because of fked up credit or most of their income going towards their student loans. Forget about it if you have student loans and end up with with a child support order.

I just don't understand this.

There already is REPAYE, PAYE,PAYE2.0, TRUMPAYE, OBAMPAYE.
It's just 10-15% of your income above poverty level. It's not that bad.

 

[PharmDBro2017]

I think it's a good move, ultimately it would benefit the US economy.

If tuition costs and interest rates for student loans had not become predatory and so inflated, maybe I would feel differently.

 

[Stagg737]

I don't understand how anyone who understands basic finances or economics can support this bill. It's beyond idiotic.

I've paid off my loans but I still support this 100%. It would do an enormous amount of moral good in relieving the soul crushing anxiety of entering the workforce already enormously in debt - something young adults absolutely do not need. The modern world has stress plenty enough

It would also free young adults to actually move forward with having families, buying homes etc. without a massive Sword of Damocles following them everywhere. This relief of debt would free them to spend and just reinvest in growing our economy.

If someone is so financially burdened that they can't afford to pay a couple hundred dollars a month towards student loans then they absolutely should not be having kids. The median student loan debt is ~$29,000 and median monthly payment is $222, I could have EASILY paid that when I was working as a delivery driver.

Much like healthcare, the system will require the government to intervene at both ends. Its not enough to just subsidize the consumer as that just encourages the suppliers to endlessly inflate prices. The government needs to get involved in negotiating down the costs too. Still, relieving the millions suffering under a ridiculous burden of debt would be an excellent first start at fixing the system.

Except this problem exists because of government intervention in the student loan industry. I have no faith that the government will regulate itself when they're making money off of this unless they see the system about to collapse. A better solution would be capping interest rates and investing that $1.6 Trillion it would take to erase student debt into primary education so our future kids are smart enough not to take on stupid amounts of debt that they can't pay off.

 

[steveysmith54]

Extremely short sighted attempt to resolve the issue. Instead of addressing the cause of the problem, hey let me throw money at it, that we don’t even have.

Makes me completely distrust this guy.

 

[Rybko90]

What are this forum's thoughts on a bill like this actually going through in the next decade?

As someone who graduated last year and has been hyper-aggressive, I'm intrigued.

I don't want to pay it all off and then five years later realize I missed out on a free bailout. I could start saving or aggressively investing the money I'm making right now instead of throwing it all at the loans.

 

[right500]

Personal proverb: "Predicting the future worries fools"

Do what you know is right and hope everything works out. For me, my student loans are getting repaid by the military (HPLRP); I would have made the same decision anyway but the added fringe benefit will become worthless in retrospect if this comes to pass. If I didn't have loans, I would have selected the lump-sum instead.

 

[PharmDBro2017]

What are this forum's thoughts on a bill like this actually going through in the next decade?

As someone who graduated last year and has been hyper-aggressive, I'm intrigued.

I don't want to pay it all off and then five years later realize I missed out on a free bailout. I could start saving or aggressively investing the money I'm making right now instead of throwing it all at the loans.

Invest aggressively now... max out your tax-advantaged accounts asap.

 

[Stagg737]

What are this forum's thoughts on a bill like this actually going through in the next decade?

As someone who graduated last year and has been hyper-aggressive, I'm intrigued.

I don't want to pay it all off and then five years later realize I missed out on a free bailout. I could start saving or aggressively investing the money I'm making right now instead of throwing it all at the loans.

Out of all the crazy things he says, the only things I take seriously are the potential tax increases and a shift towards some form of universal healthcare system. If the US somehow gets to the point of dispersing student loans in the next 10 years, that will be the least of our problems.

 

[VictorOfHungerGames]

Bernie Sanders unveils plan to cancel all $1.6 trillion of student loan debt

Sen. Bernie Sanders unveiled a plan to cancel $1.6 trillion of student loan undergraduate and graduate debt for approximately 45 million people. His ambitious plan has no eligibility limitations and would be paid for with a new tax on Wall Street speculation.

www.wtva.com

No pre-qualification or limit cap. Anyone and everyone that has student debt will have it all forgiven. How? Taxing Wall Street on stock trades, bonds, and derivatives.

For those current pharmacists with current loan debt, do you feel possible relief? Will it go through? Would current students try to max out unsubsidized, grad plus loans to take advantage of a taxation that may affect your retirement funds?

Personally I don't agree with it nor think it'll work. But curious what current pharmacy investment traders and those with student debt think of the proposal.

So... apparently this is just a campaign gimmick that Elizabeth Warren is also pushing. Its illegal and itll have a catastrophic consequences to our economy.

On the other hand, freedom deviant from Andrew Yang may work out in our favor. $1000 a month sounds great.

 

[VictorOfHungerGames]

Invest aggressively now... max out your tax-advantaged accounts asap.

No one should ever pay more on their loans than the smallest amount possible and invest heavily instead with the money you wouldve paid your loans with. That makes much more economical sense than just giving away money with zero value in return.

 

[PikminOC]

All Joe Biden has do to is keep kissing babies and not say anything controversial and he has got the nomination.

What do you think after the Dem Debate that just happened tonight?

 

[BenJammin]

Decrease the interest rates....retroactively would be nice. That's all I want. *shrug*

The only way to fix the student loan crisis is to increase interest rates. 15% would be a great start.

 

[mentos]

No one should ever pay more on their loans than the smallest amount possible and invest heavily instead with the money you wouldve paid your loans with. That makes much more economical sense than just giving away money with zero value in return.

Stafford loans are 6.8% and grad plus loans are 7.9% at least when I was in school. Hard to beat those after-tax numbers by investing in a taxable account.

 

[sakigt]

The only way to fix the student loan crisis is to increase interest rates. 15% would be a great start.

So only people that can pay out of pocket should be able to further their education at a reasonable rate?

 

[mentos]

The only way to fix the student loan crisis is to increase interest rates. 15% would be a great start.

Students will still borrow no matter the interest rate. They have no regard for their future and don't think about how to pay it back.

The fix is for the government and banks to stop lending a mortgage to anyone with a pulse. That's the reason tuition is so high, they can charge whatever they want cause loans are so easy to get.

To qualify for a mortgage, you must show proof of income, have good credit, a steady job and ample savings. The same should apply for student loans. Only majors with good job prospects should be lent big money.

 

[sakigt]

Students will still borrow no matter the interest rate. They have no regard for their future and don't think about how to pay it back.

The fix is for the government and banks to stop lending a mortgage to anyone with a pulse. That's the reason tuition is so high, they can charge whatever they want cause loans are so easy to get.

To qualify for a mortgage, you must show proof of income, have good credit, a steady job and ample savings. The same should apply for student loans. Only majors with good job prospects should be lent big money.

According to who? Pharmacy seems to have good prospects.....

I think there should be no federal dollars going to private universities but many will argue against that. Probably those who go to public universities.

WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THE FACT THAT AFTER 2008 STATES CUT FUNDING FOR COLLEGES, ARTIFICALLY RAPIDLY INCREASING THE COST OF TUITION? AND SINCE THE ECONOMY HAS RESTABILIZED VERY FEW HAVE RETURNED THE FUNDING?

 

[BenJammin]

So only people that can pay out of pocket should be able to further their education at a reasonable rate?

The day that most Americans cannot afford to take out loans to go to college is going to be a great day. It's the only way schools are going to lower their tuition.

 

[VictorOfHungerGames]

The day that most Americans cannot afford to take out loans to go to college is going to be a great day. It's the only way schools are going to lower their tuition.

Ron Paul talked about this during his campaign. This is how it should be but with our greed for materialism grows immensely, since our society is being force fed these images and ideas that we have to the newest and the bestest things, its impossible to stop.

Maybe the govt figured people arent gonna be able to pay off their $300k loans in a few years and came up with the forgiveness plan. And people who are economically savvy are abusing the f out of it lol

 

[sakigt]

Unlimited personal accountability and subsequent triumph is dependent on the society it comes from. How many Pharmacists would lose their jobs if Medicaid didn't exists and stopping paying for meds?

 

[VictorOfHungerGames]

Unlimited personal accountability and subsequent triumph is dependent on the society it comes from. How many Pharmacists would lose their jobs if Medicaid didn't exists and stopping paying for meds?

If medicaid didnt exist... well, it almost doesnt exist lol I seriously still dont understand why we dont have a single payer system. Oh wait, thats bc we are too greedy lol

 

[mentos]

According to who? Pharmacy seems to have good prospects.....

No it doesn't, pharmacy has terrible job prospects. They should not be lending 200k+ to pharmacy students. That's why there's so many damn pharmacy schools and saturation right now.

 

[BenJammin]

Unlimited personal accountability and subsequent triumph is dependent on the society it comes from. How many Pharmacists would lose their jobs if Medicaid didn't exists and stopping paying for meds?

Zero. A pharmacy that only accepts Medicaid patients would go bankrupt within weeks.

 

[right500]

Single payer will basically be Medicaid-for-all based on Bernie Sanders' plan: no premiums, no co-pays, and no deductibles with unilateral cost-controls set by politicians. It will set-off ripples throughout the industry.

 

[VA77]

What do you think after the Dem Debate that just happened tonight?

Way too early. 18 months out. BTW....I am not a fan of any party or affiliation. They all in it for themselves and we get the scraps if we are lucky.

 

[VictorOfHungerGames]

Way too early. 18 months out. BTW....I am not a fan of any party or affiliation. They all in it for themselves and we get the scraps if we are lucky.

Andrew Yang will disagree with you.

 

[VA77]

Andrew Yang will disagree with you.

A lot of people would disagree with me. I would be worried if everyone agreed with me.

BTW...who the hell is Andrew Yang

 

[Nguyen]

A lot of people would disagree with me. I would be worried if everyone agreed with me.

BTW...who the hell is Andrew Yang

He's a democratic candidate running for president in the 2020 election. His primary platform is UBI (universal basic income) where every American adult age 18+ receives $1,000/month. He plans to generate that money by adding a VAT (value added tax) to high tech corporations like amazon, google, facebook, netflix, etc. He's currently polling at 2%+ nationally and has 130K+ unique donors already and will qualify for the July, September democratic debates. See his website for more policies, I believe he has 100+ Yang2020 - Andrew Yang for President

 

[right500]

He's a democratic candidate running for president in the 2020 election. His primary platform is UBI (universal basic income) where every American adult age 18+ receives $1,000/month. He plans to generate that money by adding a VAT (value added tax) to high tech corporations like amazon, google, facebook, netflix, etc. He's currently polling at 2%+ nationally and has 130K+ unique donors already and will qualify for the July, September democratic debates. See his website for more policies, I believe he has 100+ Yang2020 - Andrew Yang for President

A VAT is paid by the buyer, not the seller, by the way. So buying things on Amazon would become 20% more expensive (for example), The difference between sales tax and VAT is whether the tax is included in the retail price or not. The average VAT-induced increased cost-of-living should exceed the average UBI payment because of inefficiencies (and a back-order on magic fairy dust). I bet Amazon and other large companies will manage to exempt their products thereby crushing small businesses (remember Andrew Yang is from Silicon Valley). One alternative is the proliferation of extensive black markets in daily life. Nothing like buying bread flour out of the back of a Buick!

 

[BMBiology]

A VAT is paid by the buyer, not the seller, by the way. So buying things on Amazon would become 20% more expensive (for example), The difference between sales tax and VAT is whether the tax is included in the retail price or not. The average VAT-induced increased cost-of-living should exceed the average UBI payment because of inefficiencies (and a back-order on magic fairy dust). I bet Amazon and other large companies will manage to exempt their products thereby crushing small businesses (remember Andrew Yang is from Silicon Valley). One alternative is the proliferation of extensive black markets in daily life. Nothing like buying bread flour out of the back of a Buick!

If Amazon sellers could increase their price, why haven’t they done so already? Why are they leaving money on the table?

The truth is...yes, some of the $1000 will go toward VAT but a lot of it will go toward other more urgent needs like student loans, childcare, healthcare.

 

[BidingMyTime]

I would let students, who simply can’t pay off their student loans, file for bankruptcy like any other debt.

This. Student loans should be treated like any other loan (and not guarenteed by the government, just like any other loans.) Sure the interest rates would probably be higher (along the line of credit card interest rates), but if someone qualified for bankruptcy, then they could do so and not have to have their social security garnished for loans they took out decades before when they were in their late teens/early 20's.

What do you think after the Dem Debate that just happened tonight?

If polls are to be believed (and many times they aren't), and they could still change a lot, Harris and Sanders are the only 2 with any chance of winning. The Democrat rulers definitely want Biden, so they will keep pushing him regardless of his polling. All the other contenders are polling so low, and most of them don't have anything to stand out from the others, that it's seems unlikely they would win the primary. My personal favorite is Gabbard, but I don't think she has a chance, especially since the Democrat party and media are treating her the way the Republican party and media treated Ron Paul.

According to who? Pharmacy seems to have good prospects.....

It would be according to the banks/people loaning the money. Just like auto insurance has different rates for preferred/non-preferred customers and will flat our refuse to cover certain customers, banks would certainly get informed on which majors were good investments, and how much an investment to make for any major.

Unlimited personal accountability and subsequent triumph is dependent on the society it comes from. How many Pharmacists would lose their jobs if Medicaid didn't exists and stopping paying for meds?

It's hard to say. If Medicaid didn't exist, sure some people wouldn't get prescriptions they didn't need, but prices of medicine overall would be lower. Companies want to sell medicine, and they would price it to whatever the market could bear. Charities would probably step in to help out the poorest of the poor. Pharmacists salaries might drop....but then so might the price of our health insurance if drugs/doctors/lab tests etc were all cheaper because of Medicaid not existing. So maybe it would be a wash.

 

[Stagg737]

If Amazon sellers could increase their price, why haven’t they done so already? Why are they leaving money on the table?

The truth is...yes, some of the $1000 will go toward VAT but a lot of it will go toward other more urgent needs like student loans, childcare, healthcare.

The buyers wouldn't be increasing their prices. The prices would rise because there would be that much more of a tax to purchase items through Amazon. I think 20% is a bit of an exaggeration, but buying things on Amazon would certainly become more expensive.

The bolded are good things to use that extra money for, but tell me how this will stimulate the economy any time soon (which is the purpose of the UBI according to him). I very much doubt that a large percentage of that would go into purchasing things as opposed to things like you previously mentioned or savings which doesn't really stimulate the economy and only serves to make commodities more expensive to the public through the VAT.

 

[right500]

The buyers wouldn't be increasing their prices. The prices would rise because there would be that much more of a tax to purchase items through Amazon. I think 20% is a bit of an exaggeration, but buying things on Amazon would certainly become more expensive.

The VAT is 20% in the UK (VAT rates) and comparable in many other countries (VAT Per Country | Value Added Tax Rates By Country | USCIB).

 

[Stagg737]

The VAT is 20% in the UK (VAT rates) and comparable in many other countries (VAT Per Country | Value Added Tax Rates By Country | USCIB).

Yang is stating he will implement a 10% VAT.

Value-Added Tax - Yang2020 - Andrew Yang for President

Brief A VAT is currently used by 160 out of 193 developed countries because it is a more efficient way of generating revenue with no loopholes. Big companies and rich people are excellent at moving things around to avoid taxes – Amazon, Google, and other companies funnel hundreds of billions…

www.yang2020.com

 

[lord999]

I don't understand how anyone who understands basic finances or economics can support this bill. It's beyond idiotic.



If someone is so financially burdened that they can't afford to pay a couple hundred dollars a month towards student loans then they absolutely should not be having kids. The median student loan debt is ~$29,000 and median monthly payment is $222, I could have EASILY paid that when I was working as a delivery driver.



Except this problem exists because of government intervention in the student loan industry. I have no faith that the government will regulate itself when they're making money off of this unless they see the system about to collapse. A better solution would be capping interest rates and investing that $1.6 Trillion it would take to erase student debt into primary education so our future kids are smart enough not to take on stupid amounts of debt that they can't pay off.

I don't like the idea either because there is no payback, but it does have precedence. Why would you give a bunch of barely literate hicks college educations? That was the main criticism of the Servicemen Readjustment Act or what we now know as the GI Bill. Part of the reason it was passed was an apology to the survivors for fighting a rich man's war, part of it was to raise the level of productivity for returning soldiers and have a more controlled release into the labor market, and part of the reason was because these guys were organized and knew how to use a gun. Worked out well, but there was a trade.

What I don't like about this proposal is that there is no exchange here. I have no problem with the idea of forgiving loans if it meant we get people who work, but many of those who have loan debts don't work either, and those people, I don't care about. I would like it structured that there would be some tax relief (instead of charging the amount on taxes, credit that toward the loans like we do with the Earned Income Credit for the working poor) as that rewards productivity. For those who chose majors that don't lead to employment, well, that should be still their problem.

In any budget proposal right now, it is going to have to address:
1. The military and entitlement spending
2. The ratio of taxpayers and percentages
3. The national debt

Or, we go full Dutch Republic and get bankrupted over sixty years or so. No problem with us going that route, as long as the military situation doesn't get too far out of hand with either an internal coup (Dutch Republic) or empire building (Rome and what made the UK).

 

[BMBiology]

I very much doubt that a large percentage of that would go into purchasing things as opposed to things like you previously mentioned or savings which doesn't really stimulate the economy and only serves to make commodities more expensive to the public through the VAT.

Lets say you spend the money paying student loans. You would save money from interest rate and that money could be spend on other things like going to a dinner here and there. If you paid it off sooner, then that would decrease your debt to income ratio and you would qualify for a mortgage.

 

[lord999]

It's hard to say. If Medicaid didn't exist, sure some people wouldn't get prescriptions they didn't need, but prices of medicine overall would be lower. Companies want to sell medicine, and they would price it to whatever the market could bear. Charities would probably step in to help out the poorest of the poor. Pharmacists salaries might drop....but then so might the price of our health insurance if drugs/doctors/lab tests etc were all cheaper because of Medicaid not existing. So maybe it would be a wash.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. People just died, which was the state of affairs before Great Society. That was part of the major social unrest prior to the changes in welfare law due to the poor willing to overthrow the social order because they were at the end of their rope.

There's theory behind it, and it works like this:
1. (Classical theory) The negative reason you'd buy health insurance is the same as car and house insurance. You're insuring against a loss.

2. Health insurance doesn't work like car or house insurance as health is not a fungible good. Sure, you'd like a car or a house, but you're not going to get an voluntary amputation (unless you're mentally ill) just because a surgeon discounts it by 40%.

3. (Current theory of Health Insurance) Because of 2, it turns out that for certain services that no one could afford (could you afford $500k in cash for a renal transplant minus everything else?) you can pool together with others and buy it if it turns out that you need it. Health insurance allows many people to purchase medical services that it would be impossible to afford under realistic conditions, but are possible for an insurance pool to buy for people who need it. So you don't need a renal transplant right now, but if you ever did, your insurance opens access to it for a socialized price that was not possible otherwise (contrast with a house or a car).

That's why all that dystopian fiction about health care totally rationed away doesn't work on an economic level. Yeah, it wouldn't be great with either extreme of socialized medicine or complete free-enterprise, but it's just not possible given the technology that a productive society would tolerate (if the government didn't offer insurance, some group will for just the social control aspects of it).