[yowlingcat]

I don't disagree with you, but I'll note that the non-dischargeable terms of medical and student loan debt in the USA essentially do that already, with the added caveat of not even incentivizing the note holder to get the borrower on their feet. Is this no better than that? I think it's moving in the right direction. It's capped, and while there's still the potential structural issue of middleman taking an unfairly sized cut, the incentive structure of "we don't make money unless our education helps you do so" seems like an order of magnitude better than the alternative.

[novok]

How is medical debt not dischargeable in bankruptcy?

[nrb]

It is, and I think it’s the chief cause of bankruptcy in the US.

[throwaway_law]

>I don't disagree with you, but I'll note that the non-dischargeable terms of medical and student loan debt in the USA essentially do that already

As a preliminary matter this is false...student loans are dischargable in bankruptcy, they are just treated differently than other debt. However, there is a reason everyone thinks student loans aren't dischargable and the myth persists...

>the incentive structure of "we don't make money unless our education helps you do so" seems like an order of magnitude better than the alternative.

Not when the real alternative is student loan forgiveness and free tuition moving forward. The issue is framing the problem as student loans for life or a financier owning a % of your labor for life, when there are other models.

[pmiller2]

Regarding student loans, yes, you are technically correct that they are dischargable in bankruptcy. However, the standard for federal student loans is that the borrower must be in a situation where there’s literally no hope of ever paying them back in order to qualify. This makes them _de facto_ nondischargable.

Private loans, IIRC, are dischargable with a lower standard, but it escapes me what the standard actually is.

[throwaway_law]

>This makes them _de facto_ nondischargable.

I have gotten student loans ($100k+) discharged for clients.

My experience is most people who say student loans are not dischargable have never gone through bankruptcy and have no idea what the process is to discharge regular debts nor student loans. This is true of even some lawyers, who are more than happy to take your fee, but don't know what they are actually doing.

[yowlingcat]

Student loan forgiveness would be great, as would be free tuition, but do you mean on a federal level? I'd love to see such a policy come to fruition.

[throwaway_law]

I don't want to make it about politics or a politician, but you can search for their campaign platform proposal for additional details. As far as I know there is only one candidate running on this platform of student loan forgiveness, so it should come up quickly in a search.

[yowlingcat]

It's great to have a presidential candidate that is running on this platform (and I think I know which one you're talking about), but I'm more interested in whether the broad coalition in congress exists, or whether it's being formed. There are a few members of congress I can think of, but not in remotely the size necessary to pull this off.

[throwaway_law]

>I'm more interested in whether the broad coalition in congress exists

Seeing as no "mainstream" political party candidate is running on this platform, I think the answer is no. Of course, I would probably say the same of any campaign issue any mainstream candidate is running on due current political climate of our 2 party system.

Whats interesting is if this candidate won the election, perhaps the 2 parties would have no choice but to concede the issue, if for nothing else to realign themselves with their own constituents and win back their votes. Then again maybe we can extend the market saying "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" to politics "political parties can remain irrational longer than you can vote."

[yowlingcat]

Glumly inclined to agree with the latter half of your analogy there, that "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" is to "political parties can remain irrational longer than you can vote." On the other hand, there's power in numbers, and I keep wondering if some kind of equivalent to crowdfunding will emerge for lobbying and/or local politics. So much of the visibility seems to be at the national level, but a ton of the clout in terms of how things get done occurs on the city, township, county and state level. On one hand, that makes it a combinatoric explosion of complexity, in that you have 1:N:N:N just to get up to the state level, but it also lowers the boundary towards critical mass significantly. What's interesting here is that it looks like this has already been happening; at least from my end, I saw a significant amount of this sort of activity in the 2018 midterms. To some, it looked a little bit like a referendum. My question is how much further is needed for the critical mass to be achieved? Is it predicated on a generational shift?

[pmiller2]

Vote for Bernie if you want these things to happen. We can literally discharge all existing student debt by rolling back Trump’s ridiculous tax cuts for the wealthy. Tuition can be funded the same way going forward.