Elizabeth Warren Wants to Lower Student Loans to .75%

why is the United States in such a precarious debt situation again?



you would hope that would be an education in of itself for anyone, but I guess that's the value of institutionalization of education.

 

Fat cat professors like millionaire Liz Warren get rich while students are forced to take out more debt to pay her millionaire salary. Instead of lowering tuition, she wants to manipulate interest rates to encourage students to keep borrowing.

 

Banks are NOT the only reason we have debt.

Poor gov't spending is the reason most Americans don't trust lawmakers to pass new legislation, because they are worried how much they overspent and what future costs (pork) will be that they are unaware of.

 

One of the few times you call somebody a "fat cat" and you're referring to professors. Sheesh.

 

wait a second

Are you saying people would rather expand credit rather than come up with public policy solutions?

so...instead of charging taxes for proper healthcare, you have 50% of credit card bankruptcies being medically driven?

instead of having anti-poverty initiatives, you give usurious rates to the poor so they don't complain, and the rich profit off of financial ignorance?

I think your anger is directed at the wrong type of fat cats (especially amusing if you consider a professor on a professor's salary a fat cat).

she happens to be in the party that wants to reduce tuition as well.

 

maybe, maybe no

 

If you can't afford to go to college without taking out huge loans, how about you don't go to college?

Seriously, we need to abandon the idea that cramming a bachelor's liberal arts education down everyone's throat is a good idea like we're seeing here. Education is good, but it isn't an implicit good - there are real opportunity costs to get oneself educated, which we continually forget because no one wants to declare that education is a bad thing at times.

 

I always laugh my ass off when somebody brings up the free education in Sweden

they pay for that through higher taxes

 

This is a bad idea because it artificially creates a barrier for the poor, particularly as college tuitions go up. Plenty of brilliant poor kids would not benefit from a degree that, presumably, some less-worthy rich kid is allowed to obtain.

I agree that the college degree is being oversold nowadays...but that's not the fault of poor kids either.

 

First of all, jigging the system towards more STEM education isn't that hard, even if you value liberal arts as low as you seem to do for whatever reason. You would have no argumentation against encouraging more STEM education (I would hope not, otherwise you've gone off the deep end).

Second, your opportunity cost of not getting an education grows less and less relevant as youth unemployment craters upwards and parents are forced to pay companies for the privilege of having young minds working for them. That's due to societal priorities being the assignment of capital to bankers as opposed to the "dimwits" you guys are charading for trying to make themselves and their country better.

that focus on bankers has worked out VERY well for the country, don't you think?

 

"Education costs money, but then again, ignorance costs more."

let me know if you're willing to pile your tax money into people who fraudulently rip people out of their houses with robo-foreclosures, or people who are trying to better themselves with education.

 

Where is the liberal arts coming from? They are welcome to acheive whatever degree they choose to receive.

My wife shouldn't complete her nursing degree because we need loans?

My parents shouldn't have taken loans out, because becoming an Engineer and CPA were just a waste of time.

 

Engineers, CPAs, and nursing are examples of degrees where there is a very clear possibility of being able to repay it. Most engineers under the current system can repay the loans at the current interest rate without major difficulty, that isn't who Warren's targeting with this. Warren's targeting the idiot WGS people who go to college to discover themselves, which you can do perfectly well without spending huge amounts of money.

And Northside, I'm a liberal arts major myself. But it's precisely because I am one that I know the very serious dangers of taking one if you're not prepared and don't have help.

 

I don't think they will do anything for debt slavery except maybe make the whole thing worse. The genesis of our college debt problem is not and has never been the interest, it's the principal. Even 6.8% is a reasonable interest rate, especially considering most recipients can't demonstrate any creditworthiness.

I don't have a problem with throwing some (or a lot) of dollars in to make sure we have a highly educated populace. But the wide availablity of credit for education provides perverse incentives for the college system to spend foolishly and pass the exorbitant costs to the students who are insufficiently educated on money matters, not experienced enough to be wise, and are more or less captive by our economic system anyway.

Now, a low interest rate won't make the problem much worse, but it certainly won't make it better. It doesn't address the problem of the tuition itself being too fat. And if we guarantee easy credit to feed the industry (and I think we should do something like that to make sure college education is widely available), we need something else to control the costs. Low interest rates leave me uninspired.

 

Engineers, CPAs and Nurses could be buying houses and starting practices to help economy rather than needlessly filling the pockets of bankers.

 

But why not lower their cost?

What if somebody tried, but failed to make it?

What if it took a year or so to find a job, and your loans are just accruing interest?

This is about lowering the total cost of education for those that can't afford it today.

 

I agree, but I don't think it will encourage or discourage student debt either way, but it would likely increase tuition.