re: #109 Mike Lamb

Additionally, how does that 15% carrying student debt rate as the single most common debt? Is there another common thread running through the other 85% that the federal gov’t could forgive for those folks? Would it have the same impact? Is there something wrong with grabbing the low hanging fruit?

What about the prospect of student loan debt discouraging kids from attending college or getting a post-graduate degree? What about student loan debt discouraging graduates from entering certain professions because the pay does not able them service their debt?

I also haven’t heard anyone framing student loan forgiveness as THE number one problem, so the whole thing feels like a straw man set up from the jump.

I don’t know if it’s the number one problem, but it does get support from people because student loan debt is known to force delay of other life decisions that promote investment, economic activity, and population growth (in no particular order): getting married, buying cars, homes, having kids, and investing for retirement. If you free up some percentage of student debt to reorient to those other goals, the thinking is that you’d get people spending and growing the economy rather than simply servicing debt.

The problem with this approach is that it misses the fundamental problem: student loan debt is a outgrowth of how education system values higher education, how we pay for it, and how government has unburdened itself particularly in state university systems of affordable higher education. Contain those costs, making it more affordable to go to college and having employers paying a proper wage.

If you consider all debt to be equal - debt is debt - then student loan interest is no more deserving of relief than any other kind, then allowing discharge via bankruptcy should be allowable too (since other kinds of debt can be discharged in bankruptcy).