this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

But the point is more that you can find less 'noble' examples of people in massive debt, which may alter opinions on the subject.

Oh fuck right off with that shit and stop deepthroating the fucking toes.

What the fuck makes you the arbiter on who is "noble"? Why the fuck do you even want to qualify who is in "good" debt? What is "bad" student loan debt, in your omnipotent opinion?

Millennials, who are coming into their forties now, were told for the first half of their life that they will never amount to anything more than a poor [insert dirty demeaning job here] if they don't get a good education from a premium school.

Shit I remember applying for colleges and most of the "good" schools were well into 6-digits a year. I graduated HS 22 years ago.

And then we come out on the other side and there's a fucking recession waiting for us.

And then we are entering a jobs market that's oversaturated with college degrees, and with wages and career earning potential below those uneducated dirty demeaning jobs we were threatened with.

The system was rigged against us before we were born and you're sitting there with the boot in your mouth ankles-deep. Fuck off.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

So your college degree seems to have been poor quality, as your approach to discussing a topic is to just insult the other person to try and make your point. You're also conflating your personal experience, from the sound of things, with the framing I was referencing in the article. Pointing out that the article is highlighting an extreme example of an outlier, who works in a field that most people find 'more respectable', is a valid criticism of the article's bias. The article would read a lot differently if it was someone who'd gone to an ivy league school to get an arts degree, went into debt for $500k doing so, and now works as a Starbucks barista struggling to make payments. The way the article is structured is intended to cause people to get triggered and be all out-ragey, without properly engaging with the subject / thinking about what's going on, the issues, and potential tweaks to make things work.

The article does include a reference to the 'average' debt level of ~40k, for people that took out student loans. But it doesn't comment on how those "average" students debt servicing amounts are changing due to the changes in policy. It references via secondary links a more regular example, one where the person is just 2-3x more in debt than average -- where a woman comments that her payments are going from $250 to $900.

One of the 'horror' stories we hear out of the American system, is that people will be paying these amounts for decades and decades, without chipping away at the principle. Not a surprise, if your payments are less than the monthly interest costs -- and if she's paying just $250 out of a payment that 'should' be $900 on a 10 year term, she isn't covering the interest at all. If they're allowed to take out loans from regular FIs, they could theoretically get that down to around $450-500 by extending the amortization out to 25 years and adding options for over payments if they want to get out of debt faster. You could get that even lower, if you have a guarantor (ex. Parent) or other security behind the loan to reduce the interest rate further -- with that setup, you get a monthly payment of like.... $250. A more practical middle ground. Yes, it'd potentially increase the payments, but it'd also remove the common complaint of not being able to get ahead on principle payments.

And again, that referenced example is one where someone's gone into twice as much debt as the average person who uses that system. The average person, based on the numbers in the article, is looking at a payment of about $400 after the change, from the look of it. A difficult, yet far more manageable change than putting out there that people are suddenly seeing a 10x increase up to $5000, which is the 'shock and outrage' approach taken in the article.

I don't think anyone from a more sane country is looking at the American system and thinking its 'good'. In another response, I noted that here in Canada, from what I recall at least, we cap our tuition amounts for Canadian citizens / undergrads -- so its far less common to hear of people going into massive debt to get degrees from local universities. Doing so aims to place the 'pressure' on Universities to figure out how to fund their operations. Many ended up relying on foreign student income, where tuition isn't capped. Even with some restrictions, universities still have massive endowment funds, so they aren't 'hurting' for money at the institutional level -- for example the University of BC is sitting on about $3billion in its fund. Putting pressure on the Universities/institutions to give students a fair shake, is more practical in my view than saying the government should cover student loan debts / interest issues. I mean, if the Universities "fraudulently sold degrees that they claimed would get you 6 figures", shouldn't they be the ones holding the bag -- not the government / regular tax payers?

You say you graduated HS 22 years ago. It may be time to act more like an adult, and treat other people/discussions with some decorum.

*just an edit to add in, that if you watch the clip of the lady with the 5k payment... she openly admits that, while complaining about the increase, they're aiming to put in about $7k/month to get it all paid off in 5 years, while still having more left over for 'prioritizing other investments too'. So, the article's 'outrage' increase, is one where the person clearly got a really high paying job out of it, and isn't exactly 'hurting'. So they earn way more than enough to cover their debts -- and are essentially 1%'rs who were getting subsidized by the government by thousands of dollars per month.