The Democrats Head Scratching Plan to Forgive School Debts

I went to an affair recently in Rhode Island. I was speaking with this one young person who I’ll call Charlie who told me that he had been investing in real estate lately. I knew he didn’t have the income or background to have the money to do this so I asked him how he was doing it. He said he gets school loans and uses the proceeds to buy the properties. He said he can defer paying off the loans or schedule them out for many years so he has that ready money for his investments.

I’m not sure how that works – I thought the money one borrowed went to the schools – but apparently it doesn’t in all cases. Obviously Charlie is very happy about the Democrats who are planning to erase all his loan debt. It would have been as if Uncle Sam gave him money to buy investment properties. A nice deal if you can get it.

On second thought, where the real nice deal is found is for these big time real estate guys who all become billionaires using the breaks the Uncle Sam gives them in the tax code. We got a president who doesn’t pay taxes so I don’t want to be hard on this guy. He’s barely getting by with his little scam. You do have to laugh at the people complaining about government handouts who are quite content with the tax code the way it is.

As I said this guy is really hoping the Democrats wipe out his school loan. What you won’t hear from the Democrats who like to avoid the weeds of explaining to the people that these loans just don’t disappear is that someone is going to have to pay the lenders for giving them out. They propose that rather than the individual who voluntarily took the loan pay it off that the taxpayer should do it for him or her. When asked if that will raise taxes on the middle class they talk about fairness.

It’s not that the people didn’t benefit from the loans; after all they got an education by using them which others had to pay for. Perhaps some got caught up in scams but who is to blame for that? The taxpayer?

Why are these ideas being tossed about? Some suggest it will stimulate the economy which seems at this point to need little stimulus. The real reason behind it is that it’s a way to get votes from people like Charlie.

Aside from being a bad idea what makes it something bordering on the absurd is deciding what will it mean for the future students who want to borrow money to go to school. Are they going to have to pay back the loans that they take out for their schooling (or investing)?  If so, why  them and not those who came before them? Can you forgive past student loans but make future ones stick?

I suppose you can but then that makes the past forgiveness look a little stupid because those who are yet to take loans are going to be in the same predicament as those whose loans were paid off by the taxpayers so why for one and not the other.

On the other hand if the student loan forgiveness program will be for the past, the present and the future we are turning loans into grants – everyone gets to go to college for free. In effect we are making higher education free for everyone regardless of a person’s assets.

I suppose that’s the idea behind the proposal – universal free education through college -but no one wants to admit that because no one can figure out the cost of it. What amazes me though is that no one asks those who are proposing loan forgiveness what is going to happen in the future? Are future loans to be forgiven?  If so, how will they be paid. If not, why not?

15 Comments

  1. I think if he threw in Puerto Rico, Denmark would have jumped on it.

  2. When this Taliban deal is done Bonespurs will declare that he ended the longest war in our history. I hope someone points out that he dodged the second longest one.

  3. There should be a 24/7 corridor tape of Epstein’s cell-block. Anyone entering his cell would be on that tape. I’m thinking the hacks let his old cellie back into the house and the guy did Epstein with a rolled up piece of sheet. Easy to do, hard to get away with. I hope it all comes out in the wash.

  4. Wa-llahi! Pooling your financial aids check/ GI stipend with those of your undergrad droogies to buy ten elbows of kind bud is a fine old UW Madtown tradition. I know a lot of WI/Chi-town businesses that owe their existence to such high-jinks.

    • You do realize, I suspect, that no one on this blog gets your posts. Its like if I posted, “Eppie digs loyal tensors and can’t find pills to break his pox-laden silo.” Droogies? Really. A bit of the old ultra-violence creeping in. Its all chepooka to most.

      • Wa-llahi! No one really knows who all read this blog. Could be popular around the Hoover Building. Folks from Satanville peruse it from time to time. Even fabled Spartacus checks in once, and, a while. Fine author, that, Burgess. I liked the “Comedians, too.

        ” Ever seen a Quetzal in the wild?

        • “Ever seen a Quetzal in the wild?”

          Yes. I saw a pretty good number up in Monteverde in Costa Rica. The cloud forests are probably the only place they remain.

          Burgess was an amazing author. His ability to produce so much stemmed from his discipline of waking up every morning early and doing at least 1000 words of finished copy. Doesn’t sound like muck but that is 365,000 words a year, and he almost always went over the thousand words. I liked Earthly Powers but I think most on here would be disgusted by it. You and John King would be the exceptions.

          • There’s a population in the Cuchumantanes Cloud Range in Northwestern Guatemala. It’s a hard area to get to, and, even harder to hump. Not much by way of roads. Mostly horse trails, then, when it’s too steep, mule tracks. I haven’t been there since the early nineties. Perhaps, there’s roads, now.

            Anatole France, “Penguin Island”

  5. This is a complicated problem. The easy availability of student loans has given colleges the green light to routinely increase the cost of tuition and services like room and board. There’s simply no need to hold the line on expenses when the cost can be passed along to students in the form of bigger and bigger loans. It’s also worth noting that many of those feeling the pain are parents who have gone into hock for their children. And what are we to say to the students who have managed to pay off their loans when we talk about forgiveness?

    I think the first step is to radically reduce federal loan availability to for-profit colleges. (Seven of the 15 schools with the highest student default rate are barber or beauty schools.) Only for-profit schools who can demonstrate that a high percentage — let’s say 75 percent — of their graduates get jobs in their chosen field would be eligible to offer federal student loans.

    Much, much more to be done but that’s a very small beginning.

  6. College is only so expensive because the “free money” distorts its pricing. If loans were not guaranteed a lot of families would turn to vocational education or community colleges. The market would force private colleges, except the richly endowed elites, to cut costs.

  7. William M. Connolly

    Why not free trade schools? To equalize access to careers in carpentry and plumbing? Pay apprentices the same as licensed tradesmen. Stop discrimination against apprentices.
    Why not free memberships in YMCAs and other gyms, to make Americans equally healthy? Why not free food? To improve all Americans health equally? Why not free public transportation? Free automobiles? To make traveling more equitable? Why not free clothing? So students with free college tuition will feel comfortable among their more fashionably dressed peers? End clothing discrimination.
    Who cares who pays for it? Just print more money.
    Why not free money for everyone? One politician says guarantee every American $1,000 a month. Why not $10,000 a month, plus free college, free gyms, free health care, free food, free clothes, free transportation?

    Only then, when we get everything for free from Big Government, will we Americans truly be free, just like the folks in Cuba and Venezuela.

    No one has to pay when Government provides it for free.
    Why not require Government employees, including Academics, work for free? Think of the cost savings!

    • I’m surprised at you, Bill. You forgot the important one. Free Love!

    • Wa-lahi! What about poisoning proletarian fetuses with drugs and alcohol? That would stabilize the under-classes in society, providing clueless cretins with able hands to provide the labor to sustain the luxurious maintenance of the upper classes. Huxley dreamed it. All power to the dialectic!

      • “What about poisoning proletarian fetuses with drugs and alcohol?”

        Many proletarians do that without any assistance from anyone.

    • You have no problem spending on trillions on winless wars and the national security surveillance state do you?