Like, how much else is pretend, if the debt isn’t real?
December 8, 2020 1:59 PM Subscribe
Just getting started, but nice opener:
posted by MtDewd at 2:29 PM on December 8, 2020 [23 favorites]
we get it, there's no silver bullet.. but a massive global debt jubilee would cure a few ills at once
posted by elkevelvet at 2:46 PM on December 8, 2020 [15 favorites]
posted by elkevelvet at 2:46 PM on December 8, 2020 [15 favorites]
or as the article puts it beautifully:
In satisfyingly direct, literal, material terms, it would lift whole huge blocks of the population immediately out of negative household worth, without those individuals needing to spend one single additional second of their lives groveling or grinding or gig-working their way to an early grave. For once, it’s a proposal that says instead of pretending that second- or third-order effects of stimulus will pull vulnerable people out of dire circumstances, let’s just actually do that.posted by gwint at 2:48 PM on December 8, 2020 [37 favorites]
I love pieces that raise my IQ a fractional point or thereabouts.
These people know of what they speak (and/or they and I share the exact same appreciation of the topic, LOL)
Tuition for the University of California was a nominal $1300/yr for me starting out in the mid-80s, and had increased to $1500/yr 3 years later. ~30hr/week on-campus job covered all my expenses nicely.
Then the recession hit, and everything went to *
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:05 PM on December 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
These people know of what they speak (and/or they and I share the exact same appreciation of the topic, LOL)
Tuition for the University of California was a nominal $1300/yr for me starting out in the mid-80s, and had increased to $1500/yr 3 years later. ~30hr/week on-campus job covered all my expenses nicely.
Then the recession hit, and everything went to *
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:05 PM on December 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
The way we finance higher education is totally messed up. But there are varieties of loan forgiveness that are also totally messed up: People who went to college are generally much richer than those who didn't. Left-leaning economist Justin Wolfers called it the "Worst Idea Ever." And universal forgiveness would be quite regressive: "the average individual in the top earnings decile would receive $5,944 in forgiveness, while the average individual in the bottom earnings decile would receive $1,070 in forgiveness." However, income-driven repayment plans, under which payments are linked to income and remaining loans are forgiven after a specified period, would be much less regressive.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 3:10 PM on December 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 3:10 PM on December 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
one thing that made the housing bubble different from the student loan bubble was that housing is/was an order of magnitude bigger, injecting a new $100B/mo of hot money into people's pockets all over the economy, from Home Depot to all the crooks in the real estate sector, and the whole financial chain too (and billions of cash-out refis supporting consumer spending too!)
It was a helluva rush while we had it, and when it left it took six long years and trillions added to the national debt to just get back to that sweet 2008 peak
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:13 PM on December 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
It was a helluva rush while we had it, and when it left it took six long years and trillions added to the national debt to just get back to that sweet 2008 peak
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:13 PM on December 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
However, income-driven repayment plans, under which payments are linked to income and remaining loans are forgiven after a specified period, would be much less regressive.
Ah yes, the policy by which we tell people "Go into public service and we'll make it less ruinously expensive to you so long as you jump through these hoops (which we can change at any time)".
Let's see how that worked...
As of April 2020, out of 150,545 borrowers who applied, 2,215 borrowers qualified.
I suspect even a regressive universal plan would manage to do better than a ~1.5% success rate.
posted by CrystalDave at 3:25 PM on December 8, 2020 [39 favorites]
Ah yes, the policy by which we tell people "Go into public service and we'll make it less ruinously expensive to you so long as you jump through these hoops (which we can change at any time)".
Let's see how that worked...
As of April 2020, out of 150,545 borrowers who applied, 2,215 borrowers qualified.
I suspect even a regressive universal plan would manage to do better than a ~1.5% success rate.
posted by CrystalDave at 3:25 PM on December 8, 2020 [39 favorites]
It was a helluva rush while we had it, and when it left it took six long years and trillions added to the national debt to just get back to that sweet 2008 peak
We quadrupled the money supply with no inflation. How the hell did we do that? The money is just going to another zero on the bank accounts of Bezos, Musk, Gates, et al.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:32 PM on December 8, 2020 [7 favorites]
We quadrupled the money supply with no inflation. How the hell did we do that? The money is just going to another zero on the bank accounts of Bezos, Musk, Gates, et al.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:32 PM on December 8, 2020 [7 favorites]
Left-leaning economist Justin Wolfers called it the "Worst Idea Ever."
You say they're left-leaning, but that doesn't sound consistent with being a Freakonomics contributor, and nothing in that link has any evidence apart from “those kids don't deserve it, definitely aren't struggling and are actually well off anyway”, which doesn't read true to me.
posted by ambrosen at 3:38 PM on December 8, 2020 [17 favorites]
You say they're left-leaning, but that doesn't sound consistent with being a Freakonomics contributor, and nothing in that link has any evidence apart from “those kids don't deserve it, definitely aren't struggling and are actually well off anyway”, which doesn't read true to me.
posted by ambrosen at 3:38 PM on December 8, 2020 [17 favorites]
People who went to college are generally much richer than those who didn't. True, I guess, but (from the article):
posted by sir_patrick_o'veal at 3:44 PM on December 8, 2020 [12 favorites]
The other piece of this—and this is why I studied the racial wealth gap in relation to this—is white families have a much different ability to pay off debt. Not just because their credentials translate into a higher return on education, and not just because they’re more likely to be able to graduate, and all the other things that compound together, but because they’re more likely to receive an inheritance that allows them to pay off their loan, more likely to get a down payment handed to them by their family, so that they have more disposable income available, or to buy a house so that they have more money to throw at their student loan, because they’re not paying higher rent. There’s so many different specific effects of the racial wealth gap—which is still right around 10 white dollars for every single black dollar of wealth—that to some degree, people saying I paid off my debt and you can, too might really be saying, like, I have white wealth.I have a white family with white wealth that makes living through the 10 years of public service doable. I know a lot of my coworkers do not and it is a burden I can only imagine.
posted by sir_patrick_o'veal at 3:44 PM on December 8, 2020 [12 favorites]
Just for a minimal improvement, people could be allowed to include student debt in bankruptcy.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:55 PM on December 8, 2020 [31 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:55 PM on December 8, 2020 [31 favorites]
I suspect I agree with all of the author's conclusions. Making students pay for college is absurd, and, if you accept that's the only option, making student debt a special category that is treated differently from other debt in the US is even more absurd. Academia is fucked for women and men who aren't white and always has been.
But, reading this feels like pretending to politely carry on a conversation with a seat-mate on the bus who is suffering from delusions and saying things that don't make any sense. This is an incredibly long, rambling qualitative answer to a very short quantitative question. Show us the numbers!
Also, I'm not at all convinced that gender comes into this particular discussion. In my anecdotal experience at a highly selective research university, the women students are more likely to have rich parents. (Probably because poor girls have other commitments and less encouragement to take risks on long-term goals. Which is also a problem.
Also, also, holding up the education system of India as a goal is a surprising choice. There are fantastic educational institutions in India doing great work and hosting world-class scholars. There are also hundreds of thousands of recent undergrads in India who have, sadly, wasted their time on garbage degrees that nobody in the world will ever take seriously, because they haven't actually learned any skills. I agree that publicly funding universities is a very good idea. There are better examples.
posted by eotvos at 3:59 PM on December 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
But, reading this feels like pretending to politely carry on a conversation with a seat-mate on the bus who is suffering from delusions and saying things that don't make any sense. This is an incredibly long, rambling qualitative answer to a very short quantitative question. Show us the numbers!
Also, I'm not at all convinced that gender comes into this particular discussion. In my anecdotal experience at a highly selective research university, the women students are more likely to have rich parents. (Probably because poor girls have other commitments and less encouragement to take risks on long-term goals. Which is also a problem.
Also, also, holding up the education system of India as a goal is a surprising choice. There are fantastic educational institutions in India doing great work and hosting world-class scholars. There are also hundreds of thousands of recent undergrads in India who have, sadly, wasted their time on garbage degrees that nobody in the world will ever take seriously, because they haven't actually learned any skills. I agree that publicly funding universities is a very good idea. There are better examples.
posted by eotvos at 3:59 PM on December 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
This is starting to have the same putrid smell as the arguments about SSI. All sorts of qualifications and bureaucratic nonsense to make sure that the "wrong people" aren't helped.
Whatever, this is just means testing by another name. Either give student loan debt relief or not. But don't do the same bullshit "But are you TRULY needy" that the Republicans do. They're already pulling the "Only rich liberals get these expensive college degrees, not real Americans like us!” line.
posted by happyroach at 4:08 PM on December 8, 2020 [36 favorites]
Whatever, this is just means testing by another name. Either give student loan debt relief or not. But don't do the same bullshit "But are you TRULY needy" that the Republicans do. They're already pulling the "Only rich liberals get these expensive college degrees, not real Americans like us!” line.
posted by happyroach at 4:08 PM on December 8, 2020 [36 favorites]
Show us the numbers!
Now sure exactly what numbers you're looking for, but here is the paper discussed in the article.
posted by gwint at 4:12 PM on December 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
Now sure exactly what numbers you're looking for, but here is the paper discussed in the article.
posted by gwint at 4:12 PM on December 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
> However, income-driven repayment plans, under which payments are linked to income and remaining loans are forgiven after a specified period, would be much less regressive.
Ah yes, the policy by which we tell people "Go into public service and we'll make it less ruinously expensive to you so long as you jump through these hoops (which we can change at any time)".
That's one way to do it.
Here in Australia, you can get an interest-free* HECS loan for university study fees. Once you start earning over a certain threshold (33,540 USD per year currently) a certain percentage of your earnings (from 1% up to 10% depending on how much you make) gets garnished to pay the loan back.
It's not perfect - there is no point after which it's forgiven to my knowledge - but there's a certain perverse security in knowing that if you never actually make any money you won't have to pay anything.
*Although it is indexed to inflation, so the actual interest rate is like 2%.
posted by solarion at 4:45 PM on December 8, 2020 [7 favorites]
Ah yes, the policy by which we tell people "Go into public service and we'll make it less ruinously expensive to you so long as you jump through these hoops (which we can change at any time)".
That's one way to do it.
Here in Australia, you can get an interest-free* HECS loan for university study fees. Once you start earning over a certain threshold (33,540 USD per year currently) a certain percentage of your earnings (from 1% up to 10% depending on how much you make) gets garnished to pay the loan back.
It's not perfect - there is no point after which it's forgiven to my knowledge - but there's a certain perverse security in knowing that if you never actually make any money you won't have to pay anything.
*Although it is indexed to inflation, so the actual interest rate is like 2%.
posted by solarion at 4:45 PM on December 8, 2020 [7 favorites]
HECS is now called HELP - and it is forgiven upon the debtor's death.
posted by pompomtom at 5:35 PM on December 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by pompomtom at 5:35 PM on December 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
(Also, I like the HECS/HELP approach. Obviously conservative governments fuck with it whenever they can, but it seems basically a sound approach. The threshold for repayment was originally set at the median income).
posted by pompomtom at 5:37 PM on December 8, 2020
posted by pompomtom at 5:37 PM on December 8, 2020
However, income-driven repayment plans, under which payments are linked to income and remaining loans are forgiven after a specified period, would be much less regressive.
So . . . basically how Stafford loans work now with PSLF? (Ah, I see CrystalDave alreasy made that observation)
posted by aspersioncast at 6:01 PM on December 8, 2020
So . . . basically how Stafford loans work now with PSLF? (Ah, I see CrystalDave alreasy made that observation)
posted by aspersioncast at 6:01 PM on December 8, 2020
I'd encourage everyone to check out Defector. It's obviously in the old Deadspin model of "swearing about sports" but they're also sneaking through some pretty great journalism like this. Chris Thompson (who wrote this, for example) has had some pretty fun science coverage/interviews based upon hurling himself into the bowels of a reactor and being unmade. The Defector book club had three women(!) discussing the new Beowulf translation. They just did a film article on a French-Italian arthouse film from 1973 with lots of fart jokes. Ray Ratto is a cranky old school sports columnist who is absolutely withering in his scorn for sports bullshit and you don't often see an artist like that at work anymore. Drew Margary, of course, always excellent. It has been well worth the cost of membership for me.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 6:01 PM on December 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 6:01 PM on December 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
Seconding Defector. The staff they managed to get back together write on a fascinating array of issues, many of which are only tangentially related to sports, if at all. Roth and Thompson are fantastic, and Ratto, who I'd honestly sort of tired of in the latter years of his newspaper column has new fire to his writing, and has clearly found a second wind.
That said, I'm still continually stunned that we charge so much for what is also seen as the basic requirement to be a functioning member of the workforce (which, in America, is the stand in for "society"). An educated populace is, quite simply, a good thing for a country, economy, or society. Skilled/educated members of the group can lift the group. As the article says,
It's the kind of thing that is sick and wrong, and needs people out in the street saying "this is sick, it's wrong, and it needs to end."
Then again, as has been shown over the last several elections, the higher a degree a person holds, the less likely they are to vote for Republican candidates. It's not exactly a shock, then, to see that the strongest arguments against making education more available, more equitable, are coming from the people who stand to lose when faced with a more educated society.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:57 PM on December 8, 2020 [10 favorites]
That said, I'm still continually stunned that we charge so much for what is also seen as the basic requirement to be a functioning member of the workforce (which, in America, is the stand in for "society"). An educated populace is, quite simply, a good thing for a country, economy, or society. Skilled/educated members of the group can lift the group. As the article says,
the idea of tying what we used to think of as public goods to personal responsibility, and taking things on yourself. So just like we’ve individualized things like healthcare, or what’s happened with public housing, or public education at the K-12 level, there’s kind of a similar shift from a system of funding public institutions of higher education at the state and federal level, to instead financing higher education through debt that a person takes on.It's a special kind of insane to take things that society can benefit from, then warp that into "In order to reap the rewards of being a member of this society, you must do this" then start charging so much for the gatekeeping that it, eventually, blocks the members who pursue it from ever being able to achieve that goal.
It's the kind of thing that is sick and wrong, and needs people out in the street saying "this is sick, it's wrong, and it needs to end."
Then again, as has been shown over the last several elections, the higher a degree a person holds, the less likely they are to vote for Republican candidates. It's not exactly a shock, then, to see that the strongest arguments against making education more available, more equitable, are coming from the people who stand to lose when faced with a more educated society.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:57 PM on December 8, 2020 [10 favorites]
The risk nature of debt is relevant. Forgiveness for some debts is much more regressive than others: forgiving housing or business loans would be far more regressive than student debts, because in those cases borrowers go into the arrangement on a basis of risk, and have material assets as the result, unlike the immaterial value of one's degree (or the networks of mates you make). If the value of your house goes up, or if your business succeeds, you win—as the direct result of the loan! There's no such thing as a speculative get-rich-quick student, though, there's no such person; and the creditor can't repossess your Masters and sell it to someone else. The debts are fundamentally different in nature.
Wolfers argues that universal forgiveness would be regressive, because it would tend to distribute more public money to people at the higher end of an income spectrum. True, as it's true of most public spending if taxes can't be raised to cover the cost. Start offsetting forgiveness with income tax and it gets very progressive very fast.
I also like the Australian HECS (now HELP) system, since I'm also its beneficiary, but it's doesn't really compare to the student debt system in the US, not just because it's so relatively tiny in scale and social effect, or because there's no creditor with a claim on one's assets, but also because it makes the Commonwealth Government financially responsible for all Australian universities in a way that Governments in the US (State or Federal) will never be. Better to think of HECS/HELP as a weird hangover of the 1980s in our tax system, turned into a kinky voucher arrangement, than an actual debt.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 8:38 PM on December 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
Wolfers argues that universal forgiveness would be regressive, because it would tend to distribute more public money to people at the higher end of an income spectrum. True, as it's true of most public spending if taxes can't be raised to cover the cost. Start offsetting forgiveness with income tax and it gets very progressive very fast.
I also like the Australian HECS (now HELP) system, since I'm also its beneficiary, but it's doesn't really compare to the student debt system in the US, not just because it's so relatively tiny in scale and social effect, or because there's no creditor with a claim on one's assets, but also because it makes the Commonwealth Government financially responsible for all Australian universities in a way that Governments in the US (State or Federal) will never be. Better to think of HECS/HELP as a weird hangover of the 1980s in our tax system, turned into a kinky voucher arrangement, than an actual debt.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 8:38 PM on December 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
So here's the deal about helping "undeserving" kids: rich parents can be abusive fucks. The parents are the ones controlling the money, but free college allows those kids an out, if they need it. And there was a discussion in Ask today about kids who could not access scholarship or grant funds because their parents weren't poor enough, even though said parents definitely couldn't pay out of pocket.
And truly rich people are going to pay extra to get their kid into a private Ivy regardless. They aren't accumulating debt.
Make college free, forgive the fucking debt.
posted by emjaybee at 9:29 PM on December 8, 2020 [27 favorites]
And truly rich people are going to pay extra to get their kid into a private Ivy regardless. They aren't accumulating debt.
Make college free, forgive the fucking debt.
posted by emjaybee at 9:29 PM on December 8, 2020 [27 favorites]
People who went to college are generally much richer than those who didn't.
Indeed. But that average is skewed by the fact that many very wealthy people go to college and pay (or their families pay) for everything, and graduate with no debt, and remain very wealthy afterwards. Meanwhile, it is also important to remember, as we are stereotyping "people who went to college", that a large percentage of student loan debt is held by people who didn't graduate, especially from for-profit colleges.
And at risk of derailing the thread into bitching about the GOP - it's also important to remember that the reason student loan debt forgiveness has become such a hot topic since the election is that theoretically, Biden could do it by executive order, without Congressional approval; student loans are the purview of the Secretary of Education and thus fall under the Executive Branch. (Not that Republicans in Congress won't try to fight this.) I mention this because I see a lot of people raising the "regressiveness" of forgiving student loan debt who seem to be comparing it to other, less-regressive forms of stimulus, but I've yet to see anyone argue that it would be more regressive, or worse for the economy, than just not having a stimulus at all and letting people continue to flounder. And if Mitch goddamn McConnell keeps control of the Senate, that's the likely alternative; if he wouldn't pass a decent relief bill under Trump he sure as hell has no incentive to pass anything under Biden.
That is the major failing of Wolfers' post: he seems to imagine that we are totally unconstrained by political realities and can give whatever money we want to whoever we want, targeted as neatly as we like, and thus student loan forgiveness is a worse stimulus than the one where we give direct cash payments to the poorest folks. That's true, but it'll be a cold day in hell that Mitch goddamn McConnell lets the latter happen. Hence Wolfers' misunderstanding of the rhetoric around student loan forgiveness (his point 5) - people compare it to bailouts for "corporations, millionaires, and billionaires" because we know how this shit usually goes.
posted by mstokes650 at 10:41 PM on December 8, 2020 [13 favorites]
Indeed. But that average is skewed by the fact that many very wealthy people go to college and pay (or their families pay) for everything, and graduate with no debt, and remain very wealthy afterwards. Meanwhile, it is also important to remember, as we are stereotyping "people who went to college", that a large percentage of student loan debt is held by people who didn't graduate, especially from for-profit colleges.
And at risk of derailing the thread into bitching about the GOP - it's also important to remember that the reason student loan debt forgiveness has become such a hot topic since the election is that theoretically, Biden could do it by executive order, without Congressional approval; student loans are the purview of the Secretary of Education and thus fall under the Executive Branch. (Not that Republicans in Congress won't try to fight this.) I mention this because I see a lot of people raising the "regressiveness" of forgiving student loan debt who seem to be comparing it to other, less-regressive forms of stimulus, but I've yet to see anyone argue that it would be more regressive, or worse for the economy, than just not having a stimulus at all and letting people continue to flounder. And if Mitch goddamn McConnell keeps control of the Senate, that's the likely alternative; if he wouldn't pass a decent relief bill under Trump he sure as hell has no incentive to pass anything under Biden.
That is the major failing of Wolfers' post: he seems to imagine that we are totally unconstrained by political realities and can give whatever money we want to whoever we want, targeted as neatly as we like, and thus student loan forgiveness is a worse stimulus than the one where we give direct cash payments to the poorest folks. That's true, but it'll be a cold day in hell that Mitch goddamn McConnell lets the latter happen. Hence Wolfers' misunderstanding of the rhetoric around student loan forgiveness (his point 5) - people compare it to bailouts for "corporations, millionaires, and billionaires" because we know how this shit usually goes.
posted by mstokes650 at 10:41 PM on December 8, 2020 [13 favorites]
Just for a minimal improvement, people could be allowed to include student debt in bankruptcy.
I understand the principle, and kinda agree with it, but I seriously wonder: what stops someone from declaring bankruptcy the day after graduation? You're in amazing levels of debt, and have no assets and no job, this is like a gimme, right?
posted by pwnguin at 11:16 PM on December 8, 2020
I understand the principle, and kinda agree with it, but I seriously wonder: what stops someone from declaring bankruptcy the day after graduation? You're in amazing levels of debt, and have no assets and no job, this is like a gimme, right?
posted by pwnguin at 11:16 PM on December 8, 2020
The majority of people aren't actually out to screw others over, and if your circumstances haven't changed from what was expected when you took out the loan then the bankruptcy can be refused and considered attempted fraud. For new college grads, if the bankruptcy succeeds it will also fuck their credit for 10 years, affecting their ability to get a credit card, car loan, apartment, and jobs involving money or high levels of trust.
posted by bashing rocks together at 12:23 AM on December 9, 2020 [11 favorites]
posted by bashing rocks together at 12:23 AM on December 9, 2020 [11 favorites]
bashing rocks together, Exactly-- bankruptcy carries a cost to people who declare it.
And I want the universities who engaged in fraudulent promises about the value of their degrees to *pay*.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:47 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
And I want the universities who engaged in fraudulent promises about the value of their degrees to *pay*.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:47 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
When I met my partner, she was struggling with debt, pretty much all of it student debt. She was looking at a payout time of her mid-forties, and it constantly weighed on her mind. When we combined our households and I sold my small house to move into hers, one thing I insisted we do was use the proceeds to pay her student debt off completely, rather than some other choice, like put it on the mortgage instead. I still think it's one of the single best things I've done to help our relationship. It made a major difference to her anxiety level and sense of personal control.
It probably wouldn't have mattered much financially if we had just put the balance on the mortgage instead, and possibly would have been better invested for the downpayment on the house we both hoped for later on. But removing the mental burden of that debt that she had been under for so long was a no-brainer top priority, one I was very glad to be able to lift from her. Money certainly can buy freedom from care.
posted by bonehead at 5:38 AM on December 9, 2020 [16 favorites]
It probably wouldn't have mattered much financially if we had just put the balance on the mortgage instead, and possibly would have been better invested for the downpayment on the house we both hoped for later on. But removing the mental burden of that debt that she had been under for so long was a no-brainer top priority, one I was very glad to be able to lift from her. Money certainly can buy freedom from care.
posted by bonehead at 5:38 AM on December 9, 2020 [16 favorites]
college must be state-funded, not student-funded.
firstly, because a college-educated populace is a public good. secondly, because without the financial burden of educational debt students might take majors that capital disapproves of. this is important! if the only people who can participate in artistic production, criticism, and philosophy are the rich, our art, criticism, and philosophy will forever be designed to address the concerns of the rich and to flatter the rich. but thirdly, and most significantly, because state-funded college – ideally with room and board also provided by the state – would keep a significant fraction of the potential workforce out of the workforce for four to five additional years. by reducing the number of people competing for jobs at any one time, universal state-funded college would thereby increase the bargaining power of labor.
the reason we don’t have state-funded college isn’t because we don’t have the money for it. it’s because capital views all of the items in the previous paragraph as a threat to capital, because all of the items in the previous paragraph really are a threat to capital.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:03 AM on December 9, 2020 [17 favorites]
firstly, because a college-educated populace is a public good. secondly, because without the financial burden of educational debt students might take majors that capital disapproves of. this is important! if the only people who can participate in artistic production, criticism, and philosophy are the rich, our art, criticism, and philosophy will forever be designed to address the concerns of the rich and to flatter the rich. but thirdly, and most significantly, because state-funded college – ideally with room and board also provided by the state – would keep a significant fraction of the potential workforce out of the workforce for four to five additional years. by reducing the number of people competing for jobs at any one time, universal state-funded college would thereby increase the bargaining power of labor.
the reason we don’t have state-funded college isn’t because we don’t have the money for it. it’s because capital views all of the items in the previous paragraph as a threat to capital, because all of the items in the previous paragraph really are a threat to capital.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:03 AM on December 9, 2020 [17 favorites]
Ugh I'm white and my parents are white and even if they ever did have any money (which I'm not sure they did), there are so many factors to when / how parents can / do choose to contribute to their kids' educational expenses. Legitimately my parents did not want to contribute a dime to my college fund. There are four children, I was the third, and my parents maybe blew any money they had trying to force my stoner brother to get through college even though it wasn't in the cards for him at all. He dropped out and has been working in a factory for 20 years. No shame, that's just who he is. There are so many complicating factors, like, the government and schools shouldn't assume that parents act in the best interest of their children or even love them. My mom stole all of my childhood birthday check money that my grandmother sent me while she said to "save it for college!" And there was nothing there when I went to school. Honestly, I know I can't be an exception. A LOT of parents work in their OWN best interests, which means saving/ spending their own money which they worked to earn on THEMSELVES, and treating their kids like a legal obligation and financial deficit until age 18 when they're able to officially give them the ol' boot.
(Well, my mom gave me $20 once. Don't spend it all in one place!)
The whole system needs to be revamped. It's wildly unfair for all parties involved. I did get some merit scholarships, but that's because I had some merits. Not all kids who do want and deserve an education have so-called "merits" or special abilities they can hinge future bucks on. Not all kids discover their grit or hidden piano playing talent or interest in obscure coins or love of data analysis before the age of 18, and many may only do so as adults much later in life. So, no education for them! The less supported you are early on (regardless of all other factors!) the less support you get later on as well. Bananas.
posted by erattacorrige at 6:39 AM on December 9, 2020 [7 favorites]
(Well, my mom gave me $20 once. Don't spend it all in one place!)
The whole system needs to be revamped. It's wildly unfair for all parties involved. I did get some merit scholarships, but that's because I had some merits. Not all kids who do want and deserve an education have so-called "merits" or special abilities they can hinge future bucks on. Not all kids discover their grit or hidden piano playing talent or interest in obscure coins or love of data analysis before the age of 18, and many may only do so as adults much later in life. So, no education for them! The less supported you are early on (regardless of all other factors!) the less support you get later on as well. Bananas.
posted by erattacorrige at 6:39 AM on December 9, 2020 [7 favorites]
PS most people on food stamps (EBT card holders) are white and not that many people, statistically, hold bachelor's degrees. So it's all a sham, a sham I tell you! Most people aren't wealthy.
PPS I gained acceptance to and graduated from a school that Lori Louglin attempted to bribe her kids' way into, so that feels pretty good for me. #fairsystem,eh?
posted by erattacorrige at 6:48 AM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
PPS I gained acceptance to and graduated from a school that Lori Louglin attempted to bribe her kids' way into, so that feels pretty good for me. #fairsystem,eh?
posted by erattacorrige at 6:48 AM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
Conceptually, I don't see why everyone needs to go to college. I think we could effectively provide the critical thinking skills needed for effective participation in a democratic society by doing a better job at primary and secondary education. It seems like a better investment than sending an ever-increasing percentage of society to four-year sleep-away camp for credential acquisition. Something like 50% of young people will get an associates or bachelor's degree, and another 10-15% will get some sort of post-secondary education. But how many people are there for an education rather than a stamp? This is a hugely unproductive use of time and money, and it exists primarily because we haven't made any effort as a society to put the brakes on credentialism and make sure that smart, ambitious people have a socially acceptable gateway to a decent living other than a traditional four-year university.
18-year olds who hate school but nonetheless sign up for $100,000 of debt to attend four more years of school are obviously not to blame--rather, it's policy makers who treat higher education as a universally and unambiguously worthwhile process, and don't seem open to anything other than more people attending. And with that system in place, of course parents, high school guidance counselors, etc. are going to keep pushing kids into school (and debt), because that's the safest, best route to being able to earn a living. But it's hard for me to believe that so many people think that the problem is the route costs too much for students, rather than it's just the route is itself not great.
Blanket forgiveness just strikes me as a signal to schools (especially for-profit schools) to keep building up, a way to reassure them that we're not going to mess with their supply of well-funded customers. I'd love to see some form of forgiveness that went along with new policies limiting for-profit schools' access to federal loans, and at least the beginnings of a movement away from universal tertiary education, with those resources to be directed toward better primary and secondary education.
posted by skewed at 7:29 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
18-year olds who hate school but nonetheless sign up for $100,000 of debt to attend four more years of school are obviously not to blame--rather, it's policy makers who treat higher education as a universally and unambiguously worthwhile process, and don't seem open to anything other than more people attending. And with that system in place, of course parents, high school guidance counselors, etc. are going to keep pushing kids into school (and debt), because that's the safest, best route to being able to earn a living. But it's hard for me to believe that so many people think that the problem is the route costs too much for students, rather than it's just the route is itself not great.
Blanket forgiveness just strikes me as a signal to schools (especially for-profit schools) to keep building up, a way to reassure them that we're not going to mess with their supply of well-funded customers. I'd love to see some form of forgiveness that went along with new policies limiting for-profit schools' access to federal loans, and at least the beginnings of a movement away from universal tertiary education, with those resources to be directed toward better primary and secondary education.
posted by skewed at 7:29 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
I'd say I agree with the jist of the article, but find every fact presented incorrect, and that much of the first few paragraphs (wave pool, building, climbing wall) come off as irrelevant grousing not terribly different than conservatives complaining about how much poor people have (they aren't poor they have mobile phones and television!). Dang college kids with their wave pools!
The paragraph about credentialism even contradicts the one before it, that people should be able to go to college and major in whatever. How is majoring in things that salary-wise don't support an advanced degree not 'credentialism'? (They should - credenitalism isn't among the problems that we should prioritize solving).
Also, it's good she stopped talking about the 'size' of the derivatives market, because she doesn't understand what the number 'a quadrillion' actually represents. It's not wrong, but it's not at all correct either, or an accurate representation of any kind of problem, any more than adding up the value of every lottery ticket assuming they are all winners, or adding the value of your life insurance payout to your income and declaring yourself a millionaire.
Just for a minimal improvement, people could be allowed to include student debt in bankruptcy.
Or charge no interest. Pick one. Interest is payment for risk of default [and some time value of money], if there is no risk of default, there is no interest. If the government wants paid for time value of money, fine, then the inflation rate is an appropriate interest rate (less than 2%) and tax payers should be paid back for that as well when they do quarterly taxes, if they get a refund.
Contrary to Heyward Mongroot, the stuff about the 'housing bubble' is also incorrect as there was no housing bubble (do we not have an article here at least once a month about lack of housing? some bubble). Even if you think the housing bubble was real, then if you agree with the legislative outcomes of that, then you agree that people with bad credit scores should not be allowed to purchase housing (or I guess it's corollary college in this article), that data about the terrible outcomes of minorities and the general rust belt is an acceptable casualty of remedying the 'housing bubble', and I'd hope you'd admit that since houses are way more expensive now in most places, it didn't even solve the 'bubble'.
My opinion -leave all the grousing and comparatives out of this argument, and just make it about the cost of college and debt.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:12 AM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
The paragraph about credentialism even contradicts the one before it, that people should be able to go to college and major in whatever. How is majoring in things that salary-wise don't support an advanced degree not 'credentialism'? (They should - credenitalism isn't among the problems that we should prioritize solving).
Also, it's good she stopped talking about the 'size' of the derivatives market, because she doesn't understand what the number 'a quadrillion' actually represents. It's not wrong, but it's not at all correct either, or an accurate representation of any kind of problem, any more than adding up the value of every lottery ticket assuming they are all winners, or adding the value of your life insurance payout to your income and declaring yourself a millionaire.
Just for a minimal improvement, people could be allowed to include student debt in bankruptcy.
Or charge no interest. Pick one. Interest is payment for risk of default [and some time value of money], if there is no risk of default, there is no interest. If the government wants paid for time value of money, fine, then the inflation rate is an appropriate interest rate (less than 2%) and tax payers should be paid back for that as well when they do quarterly taxes, if they get a refund.
Contrary to Heyward Mongroot, the stuff about the 'housing bubble' is also incorrect as there was no housing bubble (do we not have an article here at least once a month about lack of housing? some bubble). Even if you think the housing bubble was real, then if you agree with the legislative outcomes of that, then you agree that people with bad credit scores should not be allowed to purchase housing (or I guess it's corollary college in this article), that data about the terrible outcomes of minorities and the general rust belt is an acceptable casualty of remedying the 'housing bubble', and I'd hope you'd admit that since houses are way more expensive now in most places, it didn't even solve the 'bubble'.
My opinion -leave all the grousing and comparatives out of this argument, and just make it about the cost of college and debt.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:12 AM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
> This is a hugely unproductive use of time and money, and it exists primarily because we haven't made any effort as a society to put the brakes on credentialism and make sure that smart, ambitious people have a socially acceptable gateway to a decent living other than a traditional four-year university.
some scattered points:
four-year sleep-away camp* with a focus on knowledge acquisition is a worthwhile use of the genuinely awesome years from 18 to 23. participation in the workforce is not a worthwhile use of the genuinely awesome years from 18 to 23. if the state is potentially useful for anything (citation needed, i know), it's potentially useful for providing those who live within it with worthwhile uses of the genuinely awesome years from 18 to 23, instead of making people waste those years providing service to capital.
state-funded college for all, and state-funded trade school after college for those who want to learn a trade after college.
note, though, that most people attending college don't live on campus. it's easy to lose track of that, since there's such a focus in our media on elite schools where many of the students live in dorms.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 8:31 AM on December 9, 2020 [13 favorites]
some scattered points:
- productivity is a measure of rate of exploitation.
- smart ambitious people are not the only people who deserve a decent living
- college is valuable in and of itself, regardless of whatever credentials it grants
four-year sleep-away camp* with a focus on knowledge acquisition is a worthwhile use of the genuinely awesome years from 18 to 23. participation in the workforce is not a worthwhile use of the genuinely awesome years from 18 to 23. if the state is potentially useful for anything (citation needed, i know), it's potentially useful for providing those who live within it with worthwhile uses of the genuinely awesome years from 18 to 23, instead of making people waste those years providing service to capital.
state-funded college for all, and state-funded trade school after college for those who want to learn a trade after college.
note, though, that most people attending college don't live on campus. it's easy to lose track of that, since there's such a focus in our media on elite schools where many of the students live in dorms.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 8:31 AM on December 9, 2020 [13 favorites]
productivity is a measure of rate of exploitation.
Sorry not to meet your jargon standard--substitute "worthwhile", as you did, and it changes nothing. It's not intrinsically the most worthwhile way to spend four years for most people.
smart ambitious people are not the only people who deserve a decent living
I resent the implication that what I wrote suggests otherwise. People are driven to college by and large not because they want to develop their intellect, but because in the U.S., we don't have any other safe mechanisms for people without social capital to have a good chance at a comfortable standard of living, and because we've made not going to college taboo--you're supposed to go unless you absolutely can't hack it, and if you don't go, you're not supposed to expect anything better than borderline poverty. That sucks for people who would really rather be doing something else, which absent the credentialism and social pressures, I think a lot of people would. Look at the drop-out rates, certainly they could be reduced with more/better help for students who want to be there but have problems making it work, but that's not all of them by a long shot. There are really quite a lot of people who just don't like school. Right now, a lot of them just stick it out for the diploma, or to avoid the social stigma of being a drop-out. That's not a productive/worthwhile use of their time.
college is valuable in and of itself, regardless of whatever credentials it grants
It's only intrinsically valuable to those who actually value the education. Create a system where you can spend those years hanging out on your own terms without taking a hit on your social status or future standard of living, see how many people still sign up. Reading and talking about books is great, I just don't think it's really what 60-70% of people actually want to do with the first four years of their adulthood. Education is intrinsically valuable to a democratic society as well, but as I said in my previous post, I think the educational resources necessary to create those good citizens is better spent on primary and secondary school.
posted by skewed at 9:17 AM on December 9, 2020 [4 favorites]
Sorry not to meet your jargon standard--substitute "worthwhile", as you did, and it changes nothing. It's not intrinsically the most worthwhile way to spend four years for most people.
smart ambitious people are not the only people who deserve a decent living
I resent the implication that what I wrote suggests otherwise. People are driven to college by and large not because they want to develop their intellect, but because in the U.S., we don't have any other safe mechanisms for people without social capital to have a good chance at a comfortable standard of living, and because we've made not going to college taboo--you're supposed to go unless you absolutely can't hack it, and if you don't go, you're not supposed to expect anything better than borderline poverty. That sucks for people who would really rather be doing something else, which absent the credentialism and social pressures, I think a lot of people would. Look at the drop-out rates, certainly they could be reduced with more/better help for students who want to be there but have problems making it work, but that's not all of them by a long shot. There are really quite a lot of people who just don't like school. Right now, a lot of them just stick it out for the diploma, or to avoid the social stigma of being a drop-out. That's not a productive/worthwhile use of their time.
college is valuable in and of itself, regardless of whatever credentials it grants
It's only intrinsically valuable to those who actually value the education. Create a system where you can spend those years hanging out on your own terms without taking a hit on your social status or future standard of living, see how many people still sign up. Reading and talking about books is great, I just don't think it's really what 60-70% of people actually want to do with the first four years of their adulthood. Education is intrinsically valuable to a democratic society as well, but as I said in my previous post, I think the educational resources necessary to create those good citizens is better spent on primary and secondary school.
posted by skewed at 9:17 AM on December 9, 2020 [4 favorites]
So here's the deal about helping "undeserving" kids: rich parents can be abusive fucks. The parents are the ones controlling the money, but free college allows those kids an out, if they need it.
Allow me to put a face on this: my parents were sufficiently bad about, well, anything I wanted that didn't suit my mother's ideas of what I ought to be that I attended the University of Georgia solely because tuition was free to me to do so.* My mother's ideas of who and what I should be did not, for example, include any gender presentation I have ever found comfortable to inhabit without my skin absolutely crawling, nor many of the careers I might have liked to pursue, and I was pretty sure I wanted post-grad education and absolutely could not imagine dealing with not just the loans from undergrad but also any grad loans. My parents routinely threatened to withdraw money from me and control me through money through my adolescence right up until, uh, actually I think the last time they tried something like that was about a year ago, and maybe only because I've been only patchily in contact since.
They have the money to do it, too: they were heavily encouraging me to go to a higher-status but vastly more expensive private school throughout high school, and they did in fact pay outright for my younger sister eighteen-months-younger-than-me's out of state University of Virginia tuition and are now paying for my youngest sister (newly eighteen) to remotely attend Duke. My parents went from "1%, upper middle class but not bizarrely so" to "frankly, obscenely wealthy" while I was in college, and they have never been shy about on the one hand trying to control other people's lives with money they can dangle and on the other hand complaining that no one cares about them except for that money and aren't everyone else just users, really, who don't deserve what they have?
So I went to UGA pretty much entirely because I figured that it took away a massive source of leverage away from my parents when it came to controlling me and who I hung around with and what I did, and it let me maintain enough economic independence that I could afford to figure out who I actually was and also what kind of appearance didn't make my skin crawl like beetles were running amok under it all the fucking time. I was absolutely correct about this. I cannot express to you how correct I was about it emphatically enough.
I might still be the same person if I hadn't had that opportunity, if I had to choose between toeing my mothers' line and achieving the career goals I dreamed about because I had no hope at all of having any kind of long term interpersonal ones in my early twenties. I might not. I have been able to afford to do a lot of things that I hope have helped folks who didn't grow up with the advantages my parents' wealth did bring me, which I can do because I was able to slip that leash. Maybe I would still have done them if I hadn't. Maybe I would have let the bitterness delude me into thinking I have earned a lot of things I didn't, because I was so much less happy. It's hard to know what might have been, but I'm glad I was able to escape.
I actually do have considerable tuition debt now, because I have been unlucky during grad school, and I was putting my partner (who had absolutely none of the class advantages I did) through immigration and then, later, going back to school. I certainly wouldn't complain about having it paid for, but if someone offered to pay it off tomorrow for me and only me, I would turn it down. My debt right now is the kind that you get when you make some rough choices and you take the consequences for it. But I know a lot of people right now who have this kind of student debt with way worse outcomes--mental breakdown from parental abuse midway through the degree, no degree to show for it, and crippling debt for years, that's one story. I can think of others. And I would, if I could, give them the same freedom I had for undergrad: the freedom to make something for yourself, to make an education and maybe a place to stand, which no one can take away from you later.
It's not the only change we could make to improve the massive class disparities in this world. We need to make a lot of changes. But I think it's probably a good step to make, and there seems to be enough political will to make this one happen without necessarily dealing with Congress first. And forgiving even a portion of that debt would free up so many more people to think about maybe paying some of that shit forward.
*(Georgia has this amazing program called the HOPE Scholarship, where for Georgia residents, if you can keep a 3.0 GPA, any state college in Georgia you can get into gives you free tuition. They will also give you $3000 towards any private school in Georgia. It's funded by the lottery, which is its own brand of problematic, and really it should be free to everyone without the grade limit, but everyone should have access to something like it.)
posted by sciatrix at 9:19 AM on December 9, 2020 [11 favorites]
Allow me to put a face on this: my parents were sufficiently bad about, well, anything I wanted that didn't suit my mother's ideas of what I ought to be that I attended the University of Georgia solely because tuition was free to me to do so.* My mother's ideas of who and what I should be did not, for example, include any gender presentation I have ever found comfortable to inhabit without my skin absolutely crawling, nor many of the careers I might have liked to pursue, and I was pretty sure I wanted post-grad education and absolutely could not imagine dealing with not just the loans from undergrad but also any grad loans. My parents routinely threatened to withdraw money from me and control me through money through my adolescence right up until, uh, actually I think the last time they tried something like that was about a year ago, and maybe only because I've been only patchily in contact since.
They have the money to do it, too: they were heavily encouraging me to go to a higher-status but vastly more expensive private school throughout high school, and they did in fact pay outright for my younger sister eighteen-months-younger-than-me's out of state University of Virginia tuition and are now paying for my youngest sister (newly eighteen) to remotely attend Duke. My parents went from "1%, upper middle class but not bizarrely so" to "frankly, obscenely wealthy" while I was in college, and they have never been shy about on the one hand trying to control other people's lives with money they can dangle and on the other hand complaining that no one cares about them except for that money and aren't everyone else just users, really, who don't deserve what they have?
So I went to UGA pretty much entirely because I figured that it took away a massive source of leverage away from my parents when it came to controlling me and who I hung around with and what I did, and it let me maintain enough economic independence that I could afford to figure out who I actually was and also what kind of appearance didn't make my skin crawl like beetles were running amok under it all the fucking time. I was absolutely correct about this. I cannot express to you how correct I was about it emphatically enough.
I might still be the same person if I hadn't had that opportunity, if I had to choose between toeing my mothers' line and achieving the career goals I dreamed about because I had no hope at all of having any kind of long term interpersonal ones in my early twenties. I might not. I have been able to afford to do a lot of things that I hope have helped folks who didn't grow up with the advantages my parents' wealth did bring me, which I can do because I was able to slip that leash. Maybe I would still have done them if I hadn't. Maybe I would have let the bitterness delude me into thinking I have earned a lot of things I didn't, because I was so much less happy. It's hard to know what might have been, but I'm glad I was able to escape.
I actually do have considerable tuition debt now, because I have been unlucky during grad school, and I was putting my partner (who had absolutely none of the class advantages I did) through immigration and then, later, going back to school. I certainly wouldn't complain about having it paid for, but if someone offered to pay it off tomorrow for me and only me, I would turn it down. My debt right now is the kind that you get when you make some rough choices and you take the consequences for it. But I know a lot of people right now who have this kind of student debt with way worse outcomes--mental breakdown from parental abuse midway through the degree, no degree to show for it, and crippling debt for years, that's one story. I can think of others. And I would, if I could, give them the same freedom I had for undergrad: the freedom to make something for yourself, to make an education and maybe a place to stand, which no one can take away from you later.
It's not the only change we could make to improve the massive class disparities in this world. We need to make a lot of changes. But I think it's probably a good step to make, and there seems to be enough political will to make this one happen without necessarily dealing with Congress first. And forgiving even a portion of that debt would free up so many more people to think about maybe paying some of that shit forward.
*(Georgia has this amazing program called the HOPE Scholarship, where for Georgia residents, if you can keep a 3.0 GPA, any state college in Georgia you can get into gives you free tuition. They will also give you $3000 towards any private school in Georgia. It's funded by the lottery, which is its own brand of problematic, and really it should be free to everyone without the grade limit, but everyone should have access to something like it.)
posted by sciatrix at 9:19 AM on December 9, 2020 [11 favorites]
Blanket forgiveness just strikes me as a signal to schools (especially for-profit schools) to keep building up, a way to reassure them that we're not going to mess with their supply of well-funded customers.
Right which is why the whole entire system needs a re-boot, not just "higher" education. We can't fix one piece of a broken system in capitalism and hope that the rest of capitalism follows. Class warfare needs resolution. Merit-based (biased according to the trend of the hour) scholarships etc are tricky.
At the very least, we should be regulating universities the same way we regulate anything else (read: everything is regulated poorly). But still, there needs to be come kind of system in place to prevent cost-inflation. Education should not be seen as a "consumer product", bc it's fucken NOT, the same way that Health isn't a consumer product, yet we have a consumed-based market built around healthcare.
posted by erattacorrige at 10:09 AM on December 9, 2020 [4 favorites]
Right which is why the whole entire system needs a re-boot, not just "higher" education. We can't fix one piece of a broken system in capitalism and hope that the rest of capitalism follows. Class warfare needs resolution. Merit-based (biased according to the trend of the hour) scholarships etc are tricky.
At the very least, we should be regulating universities the same way we regulate anything else (read: everything is regulated poorly). But still, there needs to be come kind of system in place to prevent cost-inflation. Education should not be seen as a "consumer product", bc it's fucken NOT, the same way that Health isn't a consumer product, yet we have a consumed-based market built around healthcare.
posted by erattacorrige at 10:09 AM on December 9, 2020 [4 favorites]
honestly i think we need to normalize the idea of dealing with onerous student loans by skipping the country and never coming back. if the united states starts experiencing meaningful amounts of brain drain, that would give it incentive to unfuck its systems.
(aw, who am i kidding? if the u.s. started experiencing damage from emigration, it’d just do like east germany and put up a wall.)
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 10:10 PM on December 9, 2020
(aw, who am i kidding? if the u.s. started experiencing damage from emigration, it’d just do like east germany and put up a wall.)
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 10:10 PM on December 9, 2020
Where ought that brain drain to go? That's my (genuine) question: the population size of the US is such that you can bleed off quite a lot of people before it's big enough to even begin to notice. Consider for example the number of draft dodgers post Vietnam who did that exact thing and left to Canada, accepting they could never return--that number was big enough to affect Canadian society, but I am not convinced American society ever felt it. You would need orders of magnitude higher of migration to feel it, and that would probably create backlash to American immigrants on the same level as usually happens in the US over waves of immigrants, even highly educated ones. Immigration disrupts community and families, too, unless whole families choose to go, and that means that the cost is incredibly high for most of the people who might consider doing it, and families are likely to pressure children seeking to leave against doing so.
I just don't see enough of that happening to even begin to normalize it in the US, and certainly not without sparking backlash in any country that sees large waves of American immigrants en masse. We are big enough that waves of immigrants outwards are enough to seriously disrupt most other nations, and I can hardly expect the people already living there to accept that without objecting.
posted by sciatrix at 5:24 AM on December 10, 2020
I just don't see enough of that happening to even begin to normalize it in the US, and certainly not without sparking backlash in any country that sees large waves of American immigrants en masse. We are big enough that waves of immigrants outwards are enough to seriously disrupt most other nations, and I can hardly expect the people already living there to accept that without objecting.
posted by sciatrix at 5:24 AM on December 10, 2020
yeah, sigh, there really is nowhere for americans to escape to in large enough numbers to make a difference. nevertheless, it would be wonderful if "go to college, in your senior year apply to jobs everywhere from ho chi minh city to helsinki, never come back" wasn't just a thing that weirdos did, but instead was one of the standard tools used by americans to handle odious student loan debts.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:11 AM on December 10, 2020
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:11 AM on December 10, 2020
I wish more people knew that was actually an option though. Most of us Americans, I think probably as product of being so isolated as compared to the density of countries in Europe and Asia, dont really see opportunities beyond our borders.
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:38 AM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:38 AM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
I think it kinda misses part of the problem with student debt, it isn't the corporate desired "brains" that are being over-burdened, but those who aren't able to find employment with pay sufficient to cover their debt payments. There's no reason for the people who get the big bucks to go, since that's the whole allure of US style capitalism and why people come here, the people who are looking to escape debt are those whose degrees, or lack thereof if they didn't graduate, aren't getting job offers. I'm sure some of them would be thrilled with a nice gig overseas if they got paid.
(I do know a handful of people who went overseas to teach and liked it, but that isn't a path to riches, save for that of the experiences they accrue.)
posted by gusottertrout at 7:36 AM on December 10, 2020
(I do know a handful of people who went overseas to teach and liked it, but that isn't a path to riches, save for that of the experiences they accrue.)
posted by gusottertrout at 7:36 AM on December 10, 2020
On the alleged regressive nature of the policy: the devil is in the details of what the limits are and how much means testing is done, but this Jacobin piece makes a convincing case that even a blanket cancellation of all student debt could be accurately described as progressive:
The key insight here is that progressive vs. regressive is generally about percentages, not the raw number of dollars going to different income levels. Of course more of the money is going to the rich! They had the wherewithal to borrow more in the first place, knowing they could easily pay it back! Calling cancellation regressive relies on the same bizarro logic flat-taxers use when they say that the super wealthy are already being taxed fairly or too much because they pay the most in total dollars to the treasury.
So the point here, to the extent that we should even worry at all about how precisely we target aid in a scenario where economic suffering is so pervasive, is that even without means testing, the bang for the buck in terms of helping "the right people" -- people who genuinely need help -- is massive.
The fundamental question we all need to ask here is "if not this, then what?" As mstokes650's excellent comment points out, this is one of a very small number of levers Biden can pull without a McConnell veto. (And let's not fool ourselves into thinking that the Senate is going to be embracing Scandinavian social democratic policy if a Democratic sweep in Georgia shifts the Senate's median vote from Susan Collins to Joe Manchin.) If someone thinks that some other group besides student loan borrowers deserves the relief more, then the burden is on them to show a politically viable path toward helping that group, or their protests about inadequate progressivity are somewhere between virtue signaling and concern trolling on the sincerity scale.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:14 PM on December 10, 2020 [3 favorites]
Research shows student-debt cancellation can be both progressive, benefiting lower-income groups, and regressive, disproportionately helping wealthier ones. In dollar terms, most student debt is owed by upper-income households. The top 40% of families by income owe slightly more than half of all student debt, according to Federal Reserve data.Oopsie, that's actually from the Wall Street Journal, not Jacobin.
Canceling all student debt would be akin to giving the top 10% of households by income $78 billion, or an average of $6,000 per household, while giving $12 billion to the bottom 10%, an average of $1,100 per household, according to research by economists at the University of Chicago. The researchers estimated all borrowers’ future student-loan payments and converted them to today’s dollars.
Still, the smaller payout to lower income households is likely to have a bigger impact on their finances. Households with student debt tend to have the least amount of wealth—the value of all assets minus debt. Many borrowers are in their 20s and 30s and haven’t built up wealth yet. Another reason, researchers say, is that debt is undermining their ability to save and invest. Many poor families who lack savings must borrow more than wealthier ones to pay for college costs.
The key insight here is that progressive vs. regressive is generally about percentages, not the raw number of dollars going to different income levels. Of course more of the money is going to the rich! They had the wherewithal to borrow more in the first place, knowing they could easily pay it back! Calling cancellation regressive relies on the same bizarro logic flat-taxers use when they say that the super wealthy are already being taxed fairly or too much because they pay the most in total dollars to the treasury.
So the point here, to the extent that we should even worry at all about how precisely we target aid in a scenario where economic suffering is so pervasive, is that even without means testing, the bang for the buck in terms of helping "the right people" -- people who genuinely need help -- is massive.
The fundamental question we all need to ask here is "if not this, then what?" As mstokes650's excellent comment points out, this is one of a very small number of levers Biden can pull without a McConnell veto. (And let's not fool ourselves into thinking that the Senate is going to be embracing Scandinavian social democratic policy if a Democratic sweep in Georgia shifts the Senate's median vote from Susan Collins to Joe Manchin.) If someone thinks that some other group besides student loan borrowers deserves the relief more, then the burden is on them to show a politically viable path toward helping that group, or their protests about inadequate progressivity are somewhere between virtue signaling and concern trolling on the sincerity scale.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:14 PM on December 10, 2020 [3 favorites]
Means testing adds a layer of friction to the process, which means the people who most need debt forgiveness won't get it because they don't have the time or energy to jump through the hoops. i don't know how many people here have ever had to apply for means tested benefits, or have had friends who did, but it's not easy. It's even harder at the end of a long shift at a service job. Not to mention, means testing itself requires a huge bureaucracy and accompanied IT infrastructure spend.
One finance concept for measuring debt loads is the debt service coverage ratio. As toncycpsu mentioned above the smaller payouts to lower income households have a bigger impact. This is because they have less income, so small numerical amounts of debt can still give them a smaller debt coverage ratio (operating income available/interest and principle payments) than a higher earning household with more debt in absolute dollar terms.
Here's a simplified example. If Bob has student loan payments of $1,000/month but his post-tax monthly income is $10,000, his debt coverage ratio is 10,000/1,000 = 10. But if David has $500 a month in student loan payments but only makes $2,000 a month post tax, his debt coverage ratio is 2,000/500 =4.
Sure, in a student loan forgiveness scenario, Bob gets more money. But the money that David gets is going to have a higher impact on his cashflow, given his lower debt coverage ratio.
posted by wuwei at 10:32 PM on December 10, 2020 [6 favorites]
One finance concept for measuring debt loads is the debt service coverage ratio. As toncycpsu mentioned above the smaller payouts to lower income households have a bigger impact. This is because they have less income, so small numerical amounts of debt can still give them a smaller debt coverage ratio (operating income available/interest and principle payments) than a higher earning household with more debt in absolute dollar terms.
Here's a simplified example. If Bob has student loan payments of $1,000/month but his post-tax monthly income is $10,000, his debt coverage ratio is 10,000/1,000 = 10. But if David has $500 a month in student loan payments but only makes $2,000 a month post tax, his debt coverage ratio is 2,000/500 =4.
Sure, in a student loan forgiveness scenario, Bob gets more money. But the money that David gets is going to have a higher impact on his cashflow, given his lower debt coverage ratio.
posted by wuwei at 10:32 PM on December 10, 2020 [6 favorites]
Canceling all student debt would be akin to giving the top 10% of households by income $78 billion, or an average of $6,000 per household, while giving $12 billion to the bottom 10%, an average of $1,100 per household, according to research by economists at the University of Chicago.
Again though, that's households of those who went to college in the first place, which I suspect is most of the top 10% but not the majority of the bottom 90%, as roughly 55% of people have no degree at all. So it's more likely to benefit readers of the Wall Street Journal than it is those most in need.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:38 PM on December 10, 2020
Again though, that's households of those who went to college in the first place, which I suspect is most of the top 10% but not the majority of the bottom 90%, as roughly 55% of people have no degree at all. So it's more likely to benefit readers of the Wall Street Journal than it is those most in need.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:38 PM on December 10, 2020
Student loan debt includes trade schools. I had friends 20 years ago who went to mechanics school, and they took out loans to do it. Pretty common for phlebotomy and hair dressing etc as well, and also the kids who go to a couple semester of junior college and drop out. Those are the folks who are most negatively affected given, as I said, the debt coverage ratios.
posted by wuwei at 10:49 PM on December 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by wuwei at 10:49 PM on December 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
> Again though, that's households of those who went to college in the first place, which I suspect is most of the top 10% but not the majority of the bottom 90%, as roughly 55% of people have no degree at all. So it's more likely to benefit readers of the Wall Street Journal than it is those most in need.
> If someone thinks that some other group besides student loan borrowers deserves the relief more, then the burden is on them to show a politically viable path toward helping that group, or their protests about inadequate progressivity are somewhere between virtue signaling and concern trolling on the sincerity scale.
posted by tonycpsu at 5:30 AM on December 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
> If someone thinks that some other group besides student loan borrowers deserves the relief more, then the burden is on them to show a politically viable path toward helping that group, or their protests about inadequate progressivity are somewhere between virtue signaling and concern trolling on the sincerity scale.
posted by tonycpsu at 5:30 AM on December 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
I like the example of the coronavirus. Like, it would be good to have more people who can think about concepts like exponential growth and public health, beyond their own personal interest! And that’s a type of thing you’d learn at college, in those “useless” degrees! So you’d have this numeracy that’s not calculus but gets you to think beyond yourself. It’s a public benefit, for everybody, to have more people in those positions, and taking jobs as nurses and doctors and teachers. These aren’t useless things!
Part of the problem is the expectation that relatively simple concepts like exponential growth are something to teach in tertiary education. That being said, all this has to be assessed within the world of what Biden can actually do. Can he fix American primary and secondary education so that people come out of it educated without needing another four years? That'd be great, but not by himself he can't.
Can he make tuition free? Nope, not by executive order.
Could he spend this money on direct cash transfers, earned income tax credit, building more public housing, expanding medicare? All those things would help the poorest more but it's very clear that he cannot do any of those things with a Republican senate and many of them are also not possible even in a 50-50 senate.
So this imperfect thing is a thing he can do. If you want to tweak it to make it more progressive, increase the amount forgiven for people who didn't finish their degrees and for people who have been paying the longest who are likely going to skew poorer than the total debt pool. Of course you could make it taxable income but only for the highest tax bands, but again, that is not something the president can do.
Income based repayment works fine in Australia and the UK and is effectively a combination of a graduate tax and public subsidy (since the loans are retired at a certain point, at least in the UK) but again - not something that Joe Biden can do *and* it doesn't have the same effect on stimulus.
posted by atrazine at 5:35 AM on December 11, 2020 [2 favorites]
Part of the problem is the expectation that relatively simple concepts like exponential growth are something to teach in tertiary education. That being said, all this has to be assessed within the world of what Biden can actually do. Can he fix American primary and secondary education so that people come out of it educated without needing another four years? That'd be great, but not by himself he can't.
Can he make tuition free? Nope, not by executive order.
Could he spend this money on direct cash transfers, earned income tax credit, building more public housing, expanding medicare? All those things would help the poorest more but it's very clear that he cannot do any of those things with a Republican senate and many of them are also not possible even in a 50-50 senate.
So this imperfect thing is a thing he can do. If you want to tweak it to make it more progressive, increase the amount forgiven for people who didn't finish their degrees and for people who have been paying the longest who are likely going to skew poorer than the total debt pool. Of course you could make it taxable income but only for the highest tax bands, but again, that is not something the president can do.
Income based repayment works fine in Australia and the UK and is effectively a combination of a graduate tax and public subsidy (since the loans are retired at a certain point, at least in the UK) but again - not something that Joe Biden can do *and* it doesn't have the same effect on stimulus.
posted by atrazine at 5:35 AM on December 11, 2020 [2 favorites]
If someone thinks that some other group besides student loan borrowers deserves the relief more, then the burden is on them to show a politically viable path toward helping that group, or their protests about inadequate progressivity are somewhere between virtue signaling and concern trolling on the sincerity scale.
The "politically viable" line is a nice touch, leaves it so you can decide what qualifies or not, as if even the outlined idea for debt forgiveness can be said to be "politically viable" at this point when the Republicans could still hold the Senate.
posted by gusottertrout at 6:11 AM on December 11, 2020
The "politically viable" line is a nice touch, leaves it so you can decide what qualifies or not, as if even the outlined idea for debt forgiveness can be said to be "politically viable" at this point when the Republicans could still hold the Senate.
posted by gusottertrout at 6:11 AM on December 11, 2020
> The "politically viable" line is a nice touch, leaves it so you can decide what qualifies or not, as if even the outlined idea for debt forgiveness can be said to be "politically viable" at this point when the Republicans could still hold the Senate.
Wait, have you somehow managed to miss the fact that Biden can cancel the debt without any new legislation?
posted by tonycpsu at 7:11 AM on December 11, 2020 [2 favorites]
Wait, have you somehow managed to miss the fact that Biden can cancel the debt without any new legislation?
posted by tonycpsu at 7:11 AM on December 11, 2020 [2 favorites]
He might be able to do it, and may well even try, but it's not a certainty and I'll wait to see how that plays out after inevitable challenges to the authority from Republicans if they retain the Senate.
If he does and succeeds, whatever plan he goes with, either the one he ran on forgiving some debt in certain circumstances, public service, 20 years of regular debt payments, and some such, or total forgiveness, will have a cost of its own on any other legislation and the political divide between degree holders and the rest of the public. It'll be a nice meaty bone to the Democratic base, which is something different than the welfare of the general public, as much as we might like to pretend otherwise sometimes.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:10 AM on December 11, 2020
If he does and succeeds, whatever plan he goes with, either the one he ran on forgiving some debt in certain circumstances, public service, 20 years of regular debt payments, and some such, or total forgiveness, will have a cost of its own on any other legislation and the political divide between degree holders and the rest of the public. It'll be a nice meaty bone to the Democratic base, which is something different than the welfare of the general public, as much as we might like to pretend otherwise sometimes.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:10 AM on December 11, 2020
A third of borrowers never complete their degree, making your conflation of borrowers with "degree holders" highly suspect.
Setting that aside, the idea that Republicans are good faith partners who would have totally worked with Democrats if Biden hadn't canceled some student debt is one that's so divorced from reality that it doesn't merit further engagement. Obama spent two years fighting for Republican ACA votes using all of the political capital he could marshal after winning in a landslide victory, and he never got a single vote. The only things that are going to pass are things that Republicans want or things that they can't stop. When you have something in the latter category, you don't pass on it just to hope you earn brownie points with a bunch of nihilists.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:36 AM on December 11, 2020 [8 favorites]
Setting that aside, the idea that Republicans are good faith partners who would have totally worked with Democrats if Biden hadn't canceled some student debt is one that's so divorced from reality that it doesn't merit further engagement. Obama spent two years fighting for Republican ACA votes using all of the political capital he could marshal after winning in a landslide victory, and he never got a single vote. The only things that are going to pass are things that Republicans want or things that they can't stop. When you have something in the latter category, you don't pass on it just to hope you earn brownie points with a bunch of nihilists.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:36 AM on December 11, 2020 [8 favorites]
That's a odd read of my comment, as I never said any such thing about Republicans, only suggested that Biden will be making a political calculation about what is "possible" for his presidency in terms of what he hopes to do. Going all in on total debt forgiveness will have a much greater potential cost than a more limited version, he may or may not weigh that as part of his decision on what he hopes to accomplish overall. The amount of political capital he has to expend to achieve his goals shapes their outcome. But as it seems like you prefer casting those with even minor disagreements as concern trolls or worse rather than try to discuss things, I'll leave you to your righteous certainty and not waste time trying for a discussion.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:58 AM on December 11, 2020
posted by gusottertrout at 8:58 AM on December 11, 2020
> That's a odd read of my comment, as I never said any such thing about Republicans, only suggested that Biden will be making a political calculation about what is "possible" for his presidency in terms of what he hopes to do.
Political calculation implies the existence of a counterparty who will extract a price for the action he takes. If the GOP is not that counterparty, who is? Biden wouldn't be negotiating with congressional Democrats, as they have already come out in favor of a debt cancellation proposal. There are two parties. One wants this, the other doesn't.
If you were making some argument other than the obvious one, then it's on you to make that clear, not me to assume good faith on the part of someone who whistled right past the fact that this can be done without Congress while misleadingly labeling the population that will be helped by such an intervention as "degree holders" and "Wall Street Journal readers".
posted by tonycpsu at 9:27 AM on December 11, 2020 [5 favorites]
Political calculation implies the existence of a counterparty who will extract a price for the action he takes. If the GOP is not that counterparty, who is? Biden wouldn't be negotiating with congressional Democrats, as they have already come out in favor of a debt cancellation proposal. There are two parties. One wants this, the other doesn't.
If you were making some argument other than the obvious one, then it's on you to make that clear, not me to assume good faith on the part of someone who whistled right past the fact that this can be done without Congress while misleadingly labeling the population that will be helped by such an intervention as "degree holders" and "Wall Street Journal readers".
posted by tonycpsu at 9:27 AM on December 11, 2020 [5 favorites]
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