[vorpalhex]

> People are buried in enough crippling debt...

I'm assuming you're speaking about college debt specifically, but people holding student loan debt are typically:

+ Higher class

+ Opted into taking the debt

+ Have enough income to not qualify for debt relief

+ 20% of that debt is held by people with graduate or doctoral degrees

It would take somewhere on the lines of $1 trillion dollars to cancel that debt (so that's money that can't be used for increasing healthcare, public utilities, issuing new student loans, etc). Oh and college prices would probably increase as a result - why worry about taking a loan if there's a chance the government is going to cancel it?

[phobosanomaly]

Why worry about giving people healthcare if they're just going to use it as an excuse to smoke, and drink, and eat chocolate bars all day?

Why worry about providing people with public utilities if they're just going to use it to waste electricity playing video games and leaving the living room lights on?

I understand your cynicism, but I believe we are trapped in a local minimum where people are stuck having taken out loans for an education their parents led them to believe would help them, but which turned out to be not so useful from an employment perspective.

I choose to believe that education from good, public institutions should be encouraged as much as possible, in as many different fields as people have interest in for the overall benefit and competitiveness of the country. But I don't believe that it should trap people in debt situations that then hamstring their ability to use that education in a creative, and entrepreneurial way.

We have to move everybody that is stuck now past the sticking point, and then, as you pointed out, find ways to eliminate people from getting stuck in the first place.

I kept it cheap by going to community college and transferring to a state school. Let's get that more normalized because I paid the same amount for my first two years of college what I then paid for one quarter at the university.

There are better ways of doing things, and there are institutions in place to facilitate a better way. We just have to move past this and tweak the system a bit.

[HexagonalKitten]

I'd be all for university debt cancellation if it was in the form of universities not getting paid. Because as you say, they provided a shitty product. And as a parent poster said, if they get paid they'll just keep or raise rates so this is the best way to correct the root problem as well.

But I'm against debt cancellation if it just means that we get to pay for their shitty schooling, and we both know this is what they're pushing for. Increasing the tax burden on those who didn't get loans and didn't go to fancy schools.

Why shouldn't they just be allowed to go bankrupt? Then people who made bad loans would suffer. And they wouldn't be able to buy TVs and other crap on credit for a few years which for this specific demographic, might be a lesson.

[phobosanomaly]

If it was that easy, everyone would do it.

[vorpalhex]

The issue isn't _really_ the students. Sure if suddenly all college students made aggressive financial choices we'd be better off, but really it's the more expensive universities themselves.

They know what kinds and amounts of student loans are available and they raise their prices based on that. If they can sell getting even more expensive student loans (knowing they have no risk and that you can't exactly get a refund on a degree..) then they'll keep raising prices.

And if all of these costs were resulting in the greatest workers ever who were geniuses in mathematics, maybe it'd be worth it right. Except generally it's not, these costs are going to administrators and fluff instead of things that help students or improve their outcomes.

[phobosanomaly]

I think it depends heavily on the system. For example, the Cal State system (largest public university system in the world) is pretty darn affordable if you're paying in-state tuition and commuting from home. Cal State San Bernardino doesn't have a whole lot of fluff. Just a bare-bones commuter school that gets the job done. Excellent value.

The UCs go up in price, but they're also literally world-class research institutions.

Let's focus on funneling more people through a community college/Cal State type system where they're graduating with a reasonable education that helps contribute to a well-educated and intelligent society, while not saddling people with monumental amounts of debt. And if they choose to continue their education and become specialists, they can go to grad school at a larger research university. I'm pretty sure that's what the CC/Cal State/UC system was originally intended to be. We've just sort of strayed from that path.