There seems to be a real disconnect in the comments section about student loan debt forgiveness, especially from you older folks, so I'll try to explain to you why us Millennials, with degrees or without them think it's a pretty nice idea, and why we generally think the economic attitudes of all the older Boomers are a big problem.
1) We have been dealing with strong inflation most of our working lives. In most major cities/urban areas, the increase in housing costs and health insurance has dwarfed wage increases for most of our careers. In housing in particular, there is a real shortage of affordable housing almost everywhere, which means even for people who can afford it, it can be hard to find something to buy period. Or at least something under $600,000.
2) The wage gap between college grads and non-college grads continues to grow, pushing more and more people into college to keep up with cost of living.
3) The wage gap within college grads continues to grow. Highly-paid college professions (finance, lawyers, doctors, etc.) and making more and more while lower-paid professions (teaching) are flat or losing money. This deters college grads from taking those jobs, and combined with 1), you are effectively losing money every year teaching.
4) Not everyone who has student loan debt graduated, for a variety of reasons. The lowest-hanging fruit for loan forgiveness are the predatory for-profits that went bankrupt.
5) "But it would just be a handout". Well, so is:
- the mortgage interest deduction
- the local property tax deduction
- the first $250,000 income tax exemption on the sale of your home
All those policies drive up cost of living for all of us. And I say that as a homeowner.
6) Student loan deduction is the only real cost of living reduction a lot of people will experience anytime soon. At least until the current housing bubble pops, if it ever does.
7) You'll probably notice a lot of problems I've described are a lot bigger than student loans, and you're absolutely right. But we're not going to find solutions for them at the national level, are we?
Would like to add 8) many of us feel like there's a straw sticking out of our backs that our elders use for handouts they like, while going nuts about the immorality of any they don't. The out-of-control national debt is almost entirely related to Social Security and Medicare, with military spending making up the rest of the problem. I am not going to get those. They're for baby boomers and the green xers who are lucky enough to get in before the bottom drops out. It might behoove people to look at the social spending they get, consider the spending they've spend decades cutting, and ask themselves if they *really* want to live in a country where we don't do handouts.
There seems to be a real disconnect in the comments section about student loan debt forgiveness, especially from you older folks, so I'll try to explain to you why us Millennials, with degrees or without them think it's a pretty nice idea, and why we generally think the economic attitudes of all the older Boomers are a big problem.
1) We have been dealing with strong inflation most of our working lives. In most major cities/urban areas, the increase in housing costs and health insurance has dwarfed wage increases for most of our careers. In housing in particular, there is a real shortage of affordable housing almost everywhere, which means even for people who can afford it, it can be hard to find something to buy period. Or at least something under $600,000.
2) The wage gap between college grads and non-college grads continues to grow, pushing more and more people into college to keep up with cost of living.
3) The wage gap within college grads continues to grow. Highly-paid college professions (finance, lawyers, doctors, etc.) and making more and more while lower-paid professions (teaching) are flat or losing money. This deters college grads from taking those jobs, and combined with 1), you are effectively losing money every year teaching.
4) Not everyone who has student loan debt graduated, for a variety of reasons. The lowest-hanging fruit for loan forgiveness are the predatory for-profits that went bankrupt.
5) "But it would just be a handout". Well, so is:
- the mortgage interest deduction
- the local property tax deduction
- the first $250,000 income tax exemption on the sale of your home
All those policies drive up cost of living for all of us. And I say that as a homeowner.
6) Student loan deduction is the only real cost of living reduction a lot of people will experience anytime soon. At least until the current housing bubble pops, if it ever does.
7) You'll probably notice a lot of problems I've described are a lot bigger than student loans, and you're absolutely right. But we're not going to find solutions for them at the national level, are we?
Would like to add 8) many of us feel like there's a straw sticking out of our backs that our elders use for handouts they like, while going nuts about the immorality of any they don't. The out-of-control national debt is almost entirely related to Social Security and Medicare, with military spending making up the rest of the problem. I am not going to get those. They're for baby boomers and the green xers who are lucky enough to get in before the bottom drops out. It might behoove people to look at the social spending they get, consider the spending they've spend decades cutting, and ask themselves if they *really* want to live in a country where we don't do handouts.