[majormajor]

> The current culture telling everyone to go to expensive private colleges, then bitching that they're burdened with loans and not pay them, is pretty toxic.

These values aren't pushed by the same people.

The people telling everyone to go to college and take out the loans are the people enriched by the status quo.

The people telling everyone that this is bullshit are the ones who aren't. The people saying the latter are specifically trying to counter the former. There's no single monoculture that's pushing both ideas at the same time.

And pushing debt forgiveness as a policy to support is a pretty good step, in my mind, towards changing the incentives for the folks who are pushing and profiting the loans...

[ralusek]

Debt forgiveness punishes people who worked their ass off to pay their loans off. Every single person who took out a student loan consented to the terms of the loan. Why is it okay to just mindlessly take out a life ruining amount of money to pursue a degree in something of absolutely no marketable value to society? Why are taxpayers suddenly encouraging the continued subsidization of educations which have been proven to have been valueless to society? In fact, I would argue that the majority of these valueless educations are actually worse than valueless, they're ideologically indoctrinating with a divisive and destructive set of principles.

Stop federally backing loans, change the culture to move away from defacto bachelor's degree, and reign in the absurd admissions for public universities. It is not morally justifiable to suddenly foist the collective horrible decision making of a generation onto the larger society.

If we're really at the point where people are incapable of providing real market value to society, we need to talk about UBI. What we shouldn't be talking about is financially incentivizing behavior that is not desirable.

[bancars]

> Debt forgiveness punishes people who worked their ass off to pay their loans off.

So we should just continue burdening people into the poorhouse (or worse)? I feel for everyone burdened by ridiculous student loans (I am one of those people), but I would gladly take on everyone else’s debt forever if it meant people could have their education and be debt-free. Should we talk about my friends who have to decide if they pay their rent or their student loans every month? Does your righteous indignation do anything to help them? “I suffered so you have to suffer too” is toxic; it’s basically frat hazing.

As for why it’s okay to take out a ruinous loan, I was 17, and I didn’t fucking know any better. Everyone told us to go to college or else we’d wind up destitute. And they were partially right, at least if you managed to get a “profitable” degree. My high school-educated friends have shitty service jobs and alcohol addiction now. I have loans, and I’d rather not, but at least I have any hope for a future. That’s more than I can say for a lot of my other friends.

> It is not morally justifiable to suddenly foist the collective horrible decision making of a generation onto the larger society.

That would be the Baby Boomers, right? Because I’m pretty sure they (and their parents) are the ones who all voted to end state funding for universities. They also voted for politicians with ties to the financial industry, so conveniently the same people making it necessary to take out loans are also shareholders of large financial institutions.

No, what’s morally indefensible is bankrupting someone for getting an education, and then berating them for making a bad decision when they were 17, a decision practically guaranteed by a rigged system. What’s also morally indefensible are the attitudes that this is someone their faults, because at the end of the day, we all still have student loans, and no amount of your pedestal-sitting is going to change that.

[shados]

> that this is someone (I assume somehow) their faults

They certainly don't take zero blame, especially if it happened in the last decade. The student debt crisis has been front and center for a while now. If in the last few years someone did that, and they don't know any better, they're seriously living under a rock.

The system should change, and Im not even against forgiving debts because it might just be straight up better to do for society, but saying the people who take on those loans and sign at the bottom have zero responsibility? They turn 18 long before they're completely crushed with the debts, and if I was to tell an 18 years old that they can't make decisions they're responsible for, I'd get an earful.

[girvo]

It’s about incentives. We were told in no uncertain terms that as a 17 year old making this life changing decision: do it, or be poor forever.

Now. I personally didn’t listen properly, dropped out after two years and did something else. But I don’t blame those who didn’t. Everything in modern middle class society and schooling was based around it.

So focusing on the individuals responsibility above and beyond that of the broken system that we have no choice but to join seems, well, cruel to me — even if I did personally follow your advice.

[girvo]

Treating degrees as only being useful if they teach a direct marketable skill is a shame, I think, but with how expensive it is now I understand why there’s a push towards it.