Should Wall Street pay off student debt

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(07-03-2019, 12:24 AM)bfine32 Wrote: 1. When someone quotes part of a post instead of all of it that's when you realize they have no legitimate response and you're just playing chess with a pigeon

2. I'm unsure why you asked the questions then answered them.

But my answer to each is yes. 

responsible
 adjective

re·spon·si·ble | \ ri-ˈspän(t)-sə-bəl [url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/responsible?pronunciation&lang=en_us&dir=r&file=respon06][/url] \
Definition of responsible



2a: able to answer for one's conduct and obligations 

I quoted your entire post. Do you need a definition of "entire"? The whole ***** thing. Go ahead. Check.

I answered the questions I asked because you never do. So I just saved everyone two pages of more BS trying to get you to answer them.

Ah, so everyone who took the early retirement option the Army offered instead of completing 20 full years is irresponsible? That's stupid. Accepting an option the Army offers you isn't irresponsible. It's just a choice. And choosing an option the Army gives you doesn't make you irresponsible.

[*bfine32*]

(07-03-2019, 12:43 AM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: I quoted your entire post. Do you need a definition of "entire"?  The whole ***** thing. Go ahead. Check.

I answered the questions I asked because you never do. So I just saved everyone two pages of more BS trying to get you to answer them.

Ah, so everyone who took the early retirement option the Army offered instead of completing 20 full years is irresponsible? That's stupid. Accepting an option the Army offers you isn't irresponsible. It's just a choice.  And choosing an option the Army gives you doesn't make you  irresponsible.

Early retirement from the Military comes at a cost and anyone that assumed that cost instead of expecting others to pay the difference is responsible. If anyone took early retirement and then advocated for equal benefits for those that did not who be. Hell, I retired at 20 instead of the mandatory 30 but I don't expect to receive the same percentage those that stayed until 30 receive.

I have 0 issue with anyone that took out a college loan. 

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(07-03-2019, 12:34 AM)bfine32 Wrote: Let's try this:

Do you think student debt should be forgiven?

Let's bring the discussion back to Sander's proposal in the OP; the federal government paying off student loans (in addition to paying tuition for college and trade schools) with a tax on Wall Street. To me, that's not unlike the property tax I pay to fund public K-12 schools. Something you support. In order to support Sander's plan I would need to see data on its impact. If that tax turns out it would improve the struggles of the middle class working man to pay for his kids to go to college or trade schools which will improve their life long earning potential, quality of life, and reduce the number of families receiving government assistance and it mainly just decrease the profits to shareholders of the corporations that have been screwing over the middle class and don't want to pay taxes by shifting the HQs overseas, exported jobs overseas, imported cheaper foreign workers, cut benefits, and maintained stagnant wages while increase executive's pay and benefits out of proportion to the workers who keep them in business; then hell yeah, I would support it. If the proposed tax had a deleterious effect on the middle class then I wouldn't support it.

But, since I used more than one monosyllabic word in my answer, I'll just assume that's too nuanced for you and await more BS.

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(07-03-2019, 12:50 AM)bfine32 Wrote: Early retirement from the Military comes at a cost and anyone that assumed that cost instead of expecting others to pay the difference is responsible. If anyone took early retirement and then advocated for equal benefits for those that did not who be. Hell, I retired at 20 instead of the mandatory 30 but I don't expect to receive the same percentage those that stayed until 30 receive.

I have 0 issue with anyone that took out a college loan. 

Opting out of a contract is opting out of a contract whether it is year 3 or year 18. And choosing to opt out doesn't make someone irresponsible like you mistakenly claimed.

If some has been paying their student loans in good faith and the government offered to forgive their loans based upon Sander's proposal or something similar and they accepted-doesn't make them irresponsible, either. Hell, if I had a shit load of student debt and the government offered to pay off my loans it would be irresponsible of me towards my family not to accept that offer. ("Golly, honey, I know having our student loans forgiven would have allowed us to fully fund our 401K and our Roth and non-Roth IRAs so we don't become a burden to our kids or need government assistance when we're too old or sick to work, but some guy in Kentucky doesn't think that would be responsible.")

Dude, the Army had three retirement plans based upon BASD while you were in. Which meant someone's military service was worth more or less than another soldier's based solely on when they joined. Everyone in the military right now will receive less retirement pay than you. So FTA and the politicians.

[GMDino]

Once again let me add that the government already has loan forgiveness programs used to help those, and encourage people, who go into the public services workforce.  They recognize that you will not make big money but that the work you do is important so they help with your loans.

Unfortunately this administration has put the brakes on the programs and is looking to eliminate them completely.

[Aquapod770]

(07-02-2019, 05:46 PM)Dill Wrote: Regarding #1, I have heard Tom Shilue, Rush and other conservative pundits make this claim, framing rising tuition as a government created problem. (It's called "the Bennett hypothesis" first articulated by Reagan's secretary of ed. back in '87.) Like you, they make the same analogy to a for-profit business, as if college administrators looking for a profit respond to a market of increasing money supply. And (they say) that's why tuition rises at private schools as well. On their view, freely flowing government money and irresponsible students are the problem, not Republican legislatures shifting previously socialized costs back on students.

If you and they are correct, and I am wrong that state disinvestment is the primary driver of tuition cost in private universities, then you should be able to find data which support your claim in the form of longtitudinal correlation between tuition increases and loan availability.  Conversely, you should not find a correlation between state defunding and tuition increases.  Do you agree that is how we each would establish our claims? Have you checked this out?

(I add that the dynamic is very different for for-profit schools, which do respond directly to money supply, and to which accrue the lion's share of loan defaults; also, I am not claiming that ready availability loans could play no role in rising tuition--just that it is not THE primary driver, or even secondary.)

Regarding #2, until 2010, most student loans were made  by private lenders, just guaranteed by the gov. Predatory lending has driven the shift from private lending to federal (the afore-mentioned default rate at for-profit institutions being one reason for the shift). Since many of those previous loans are still outstanding, I am curious as to where you got the ascription of 7.63% of outstanding loans to private lenders. From the US Dept of Ed. website? 

In any case, the vast majority of students still don't borrow at all. 

The central problem for all, borrower or non-borrower, is still too high and rising tuition. It is the cause of other problems like high student debt, and to get control of that you have to get control of rising tuition. And you do that by shifting costs back to the state--i.e. socializing the cost.

Yes I have. 

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Bennett_Hypothesis_Paper_Final-1.pdf

Keep in mind that correlation doesn't equal causation. Which unfortunately is the problem with a lot of observational research. Both things can be a factor in rising higher education costs, but to ignore evidence of either is purposely ignorant. And yes, the effect is seen more in for-profit schools, as is to be expected. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Even administrators at "non-profit" schools do their best to raise profits. 

State funding for public education has been cut. Largely in the last decade. Funding fell by about 7 billion since 2008, and certainly has contributed to increased tuition prices. As you can see on the graph in page 2 of my link the problem started well before that. Cuts to state funding have only exacerbated the problem, not been the direct cause. 

[*bfine32*]

(07-03-2019, 01:49 AM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: Opting out of a contract is opting out of a contract whether it is year 3 or year 18. And choosing to opt out doesn't make someone irresponsible like you mistakenly claimed.

If some has been paying their student loans in good faith and the government offered to forgive their loans based upon Sander's proposal or something similar and they accepted-doesn't make them irresponsible, either. Hell, if I had a shit load of student debt and the government offered to pay off my loans it would be irresponsible of me towards my family not to accept that offer. ("Golly, honey, I know having our student loans forgiven would have allowed us to fully fund our 401K and our Roth and non-Roth IRAs so we don't become a burden to our kids or need government assistance when we're too old or sick to work, but some guy in Kentucky doesn't think that would be responsible.")

Dude, the Army had three retirement plans based upon BASD while you were in. Which meant someone's military service was worth more or less than another soldier's based solely on when they joined. Everyone in the military right now will receive less retirement pay than you. So FTA and the politicians.

I can see how using the term irresponsible has a negative connotation and it is a word I should not have used. It was used to contrast them from others who paid as they went or sacrificed time/energy to obtain a scholarship. However, anybody that currently has Student Debt and is advocating for the Government to forgive that debt are trying to get out of an agreement that he/she entered freely and is 100% responsible for.

By law when you join the Army you incur an 8 year commitment. This 8 years can be served on active duty, reserves, or inactive. Anyone who removes themselves from that commitment violated their contract. One of the most common is 4 and 4-4 years active, four years in the reserves. Someone who separates after their initial 8 year agreement. And is not the same as asking others to take care of your debt for you.

As to the retirement plans. As long as you entered/reenlisted with the understanding of your eligibility I see no issue, but that's a totally different matter.

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(07-03-2019, 11:13 AM)bfine32 Wrote: I can see how using the term irresponsible has a negative connotation and it is a word I should not have used. It was used to contrast them from others who paid as they went or sacrificed time/energy to obtain a scholarship. However, anybody that currently has Student Debt and is advocating for the Government to forgive that debt are trying to get out of an agreement that he/she entered freely and is 100% responsible for.

We're discussing Bernie Sander's proposal. I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume Bernie doesn't have any student loan debt. But, if he does the problem is worse than I thought.

When I went to college the first time I had an athletic scholarship, an academic scholarship, about $20K from my grandfather's life insurance, I worked a job, and I still had to take a year off between my junior and senior year to save up to finish my final year.

When I went to PA school I was divorced and paying child support on an E-6's pay. I had a car the MPs threaten to tow because they thought it was an abandoned vehicle and the AC didn't work and the driver's window was broken so I couldn't lower it to even get at breeze in TX, I rented a room in a stranger's house because it was cheaper than an apartment, and I donated plasma twice a week which gave me about $250 a month for beer money. Getting a second job was out of the question because 1) the commander would never approve it and 2) there was no time because I was in class between 07:30-16:30 five days a week followed by dinner, gym, and studying until bedtime and I didn't sleep three nights a week because I stayed up all night studying for a test.

By the time the Army medically seperated me without retirement I was 38 and I have unti roughly age 67 to build my retirement. I'm doing better than 80% of the country financially. To quote Trump, "That's sad."

I have no problem trying to figure out a way to make this easier for others.

Quote:By law when you join the Army you incur an 8 year commitment. This 8 years can be served on active duty, reserves, or inactive. Anyone who removes themselves from that commitment violated their contract. One of the most common is 4 and 4-4 years active, four years in the reserves. Someone who separates after their initial 8 year agreement. And is not the same as asking others to take care of your debt for you.

Look, you're the one who introduced forgiving the service commitments for ROTC cadets, not me. You're the one who suggested they were irresponsible for accepting an option offered by the military, not me. And Bernie Sanders' proposal isn't all about irresponsible liberal college kids asking you to take care of their debt for them despite your attempts to frame it that way. It's really about what can we do to try solve the problem of ever increasing tuition (aka capitalism at work) so the next generation isn't paying student loans for two decades after they graduate. And part of it involves loan forgiveness paid for by a tax on Wall Street transactions that neither of us knows how or if it will affect you. It was difficult for a poor kid like me to go to school and it's even more difficult now. I interact with nursing students weekly and the tuition they pay at for profit schools for an associates degree to become a CNA is obscene. And our Secretary of Education is making it easier for for-profit schools to further take advantage of students rather than protecting the students from the for-profit schools.

Quote:As to the retirement plans. As long as you entered/reenlisted with the understanding of your eligibility I see no issue, but that's a totally different matter.

You're the one who brought the issue of Sanders' proposal is unworkable because of the inherent unfairness. Yet, the military's retirement systems are inherently unfair to soldiers who retired with the same TIS/TIG based upon their BASD. And you have no problem with the military's inherent unfairness.

I know with 100% certainty you were completely unaware there was more than one retirement plan in effect when you joined because your recruiter never explained it.

[Dill]

(07-03-2019, 09:44 AM)Aquapod770 Wrote: Yes I have. 

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Bennett_Hypothesis_Paper_Final-1.pdf

Keep in mind that correlation doesn't equal causation. Which unfortunately is the problem with a lot of observational research. Both things can be a factor in rising higher education costs, but to ignore evidence of either is purposely ignorant. And yes, the effect is seen more in for-profit schools, as is to be expected. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Even administrators at "non-profit" schools do their best to raise profits. 

State funding for public education has been cut. Largely in the last decade. Funding fell by about 7 billion since 2008, and certainly has contributed to increased tuition prices. As you can see on the graph in page 2 of my link the problem started well before that. Cuts to state funding have only exacerbated the problem, not been the direct cause. 

Good link and a good post, Aqua. Sorry I am a little late responding. 

A couple of quick points: 

1. Cuts in state funding began back in the 60s, with CA under Reagan leading the way. Remember they had NO TUITION and then gradually introduced it to reduce taxes. That was a STATED goal, and it was expected that TUITION would make up the difference, especially at the level of junior colleges. Other states followed this model, especially in the '80s when Reagan became president. The tactic of voting in tax cuts one year, which would force budget cuts one or two years later, spread from state to state, also, in the public's mind, diminishing responsibility for the cuts when they had to be made "by law." There is no correlation between these cuts and government insured loans that I can see,  but there is a direct correlation between them and rising tuition.  In state after state we can find decade long studies which describe the match between funding cuts and rising tuition.  Here, for example, you can see how the rising tuition clearly made up the state-funding deficit in Kentucky from 1999-2015.
https://kypolicy.org/house-budget-make-college-affordable-kentuckians/.  There is a similar graph for national trends: https://budgetandpolicy.org/schmudget/cuts-to-higher-education-lead-to-increases-in-tuition/

2. I read your link pretty closely over the weekend. It has a wonderful bibliography too, in one sense. But in another sense not, by which I mean it mostly ignores the funding-tuition correlation, focusing primarily on the Bennett hypothesis. Did you follow Robinson's argument? If find it curious that, with her Martin Center colleagues, she does so much work to legitimate one factor of cost increase while ignoring the more direct one. The centerpiece of her case seems to be the Cellini and Goldin paper on FOR-profit institutions, in which the relation between loans and tuition price is not under serious dispute. Next in importance seems to be McPherson and Shapiro (1991). But that book, I think, uncovers yet another, and more serious problem, namely what happens when colleges have to "compete" for students by updating accommodations and attractions (like spas and gyms). That too, I would say, is driven by increasing reliance on market forces which follow disinvestment. That seven studies out of 27 found no correlation, and many others found little, or limited, seems not a tremendous obstacle for the BH, in her view. And she proposes responsible seeming recommendations about how to handle loans and grants going forward--nothing about tuition increases, though.

Some important research seems to be missing as well, e.g. Douglas Webber's "State Divestment and Tuition at Public Institutions (2017), which estimates the "pass through" rate of budget cuts at public institutions--the ration of tuition increase to every thousand dollars of state cuts. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775717303618.

Also there is Mitchel, Leachman and Masterson's "A Lost Decade in Higher Education Funding: State Cuts Have Driven up Tuition and Reduced Quality" published by Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/2017_higher_ed_8-22-17_final.pdf

Assuming you are still interested in this issue, what do you make of this lack of reference to the most prominent alternative (though not necessarily exclusive) explanation for rising tuition?