• Fraylor
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    1 year ago

    I’m just confused as to why it’s all fine and dandy that PPP loans were all forgiven regardless of the corrupt practices used for disbursement, but student loans, which impact the economy as a whole far more than PPP ever will, is a must repay.

    • Cleverdawny
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      1 year ago

      Because Republicans will fight so that the rich can get richer by getting handed free money, and Republican will fight so that the working class has to pay back every cent.

      • holland@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Please remember that the Dems are doing this too. Neither party is our friend here.

        • Cleverdawny
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          1 year ago

          The opposite is the truth. If Republicans were as supportive of student debt reform as Democrats were, we would have a major reform bill of some form passed and signed. Maybe it wouldn’t be cancellation, but interest free student loans would probably be a thing.

          Democrats may disagree and aren’t universally behind cancellation, but didn’t have enough votes by themselves anyways to make anything happen. Biden tried to enact his personal proposal through executive order, but that got shut down by Republican justices.

          So. No. It’s not a both parties thing. It’s one sided. And if you aren’t willing to tell the truth about that, then I have to wonder about your motivations and what you seek to do.

          • holland@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Dems aren’t your friends but the GOP is fascist and we don’t vote for fascists ever. So slag off with the slander.

            You can work with people who aren’t your friends towards some goals. You can’t ever work with fascists who want you dead.

    • Chriskmee
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      1 year ago

      Well one big difference is that PPP loans were a one time thing, they are gone now and not coming back for a very long time.

      If you paid off all student loans today, there would be more tomorrow, and every day after that. If we do it once, we basically have to keep doing it until school is completely paid for and student loans are no longer a thing.

      Forgiving student loans just has a much bigger and longer lasting financial obligation than one time PPP loans.

      • Fraylor
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        1 year ago

        It didn’t seem to be an issue when previous generations went to college essentially for free.

        • nednobbins
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          1 year ago

          The problem is that we never bothered to create a system where free education would actually work.

          Producers always like to sell their goods for as much as they can get. Normally, a consumer looks at a product, decides if it’s worth the price and then either buys it or doesn’t. If prices are too high, producers are forced to lower them to stay in business.

          The current system essentially created a 3 way business transaction that guarantees runaway education costs.

          The universities provide a service. It’s really hard to determine the value of that service since there isn’t a liquid market for “an education” or “a Harvard degree” that you can easily look up.

          The government then says they’ll cover a percentage of that cost. This is a bit tricky. A normal subsidy is effectively a paying a fraction of the cost. Once you introduce loan forgiveness, either as a frequent or guaranteed event, that fraction effectively goes to 100%.

          The student is getting a degree of unknown value but since they don’t have to pay (at least not the whole thing) they’ll just agree to the purchase, even if they don’t personally think the good is worth as much as the provider is charging. There’s no reason to if someone is picking up the bill.

          The universities see that their price elasticity of demand (how much their sales suffer when they overcharge) is essentially 0. That means they can raise them with impunity. The end result is that Universities can essentially help themselves to large government grants without any requirement to show the public how we benefit from those grants.

          If we consider education to be a public good then we should treat it as such. That would mean that we cancel the student loan program, get rid of tax subsidies for educational institutions and just have the federal government create a competing educational system. Take the money we’re spending on outsourcing education to the private sector and add to it. For the system to work it would need to attract top tier professors and that means good research facilities and salaries. It’s not a complicated idea but it would be a massive undertaking.

          As a bonus we’d get some great initialisms. The federal universities would obviously be the FU system. State campuses might have names like FUNY and FUCA.

          And yes, the point of such a system is that it would be paid entirely by taxes and would be free to students.