She’s in her second term as a Senator. Interesting timing that the idea occurred to her on the campaign trail, and she hasn’t proposed it as legislation in which there’d be a chance for an in depth analysis and debate, and consideration of alternatives. If I were cynical, I’d suspect that this is just a slogan rather than serious proposal.

Yeah, too bad mine aren't gonna be reimbursed.

What about the people that couldn't afford college and didn't want to go into debt for it? They got jobs, worked for what they have. Now they are going to have to pay for someone else's college education.?

Via Twitter:

"the top 25% of American households by income hold nearly half of all student debt—and the bottom 25% holds just a tenth of it. Canceling all student loans would deliver $5 to rich Americans for every $1 given to poorer families."

This is, in other words, exactly the sort of corruption the election of Donald Trump seemed destined to countermand.

He is, of course, oblivious.

America hates savers; it always has. Too small a constituency, and they make profligate spenders feel bad.

Are we going to be a country that coercively takes money from one voter -- maybe one who pinched pennies to attend an affordable but somewhat shitty college -- to give it to another: maybe one who went in big on student loans to attend a snazzy Ivy school and come out a wildly overqualified barista.

What do you mean "going to be?" We already are a country that robs Peter to pay Paul. And Peter's gettin' pissed.

That Faux-cahontas keeps referring to the impact student loan debit is having on "people of color" tells you why she waited until the presidential campaign trail to introduce this legislation. She's pandering for votes, not solving a problem.

And, finally, let's revisit this: AOC did not attend an Ivy League school. She graduated from Boston University with a degree in International Relations and a minor in Economics.

AOC spent the seven years after graduation as a waitress, bartender, and coffee barista before being elected to Congress. Apparently, despite graduating from a fairly prestigious non-Ivy school, she was unable to get a job in either of her fields of study.

Ivy League:

• Harvard
• Yale
• Brown
• Penn
• Dartmouth
• Princeton
• Cornell
• Columbia

The Ivy's Seven Sisters:

• Radcliffe
• Bryn Mawr
• Vassar
• Mt. Holyoke
• Wellesley
• Barnard
• Smith

@Conan: It's clear that everything she learned about Economics is wrong. Anyplace that would hire her as an economist should and probably would be going into bankruptcy.

As for International Relations, there's only one type that pays. She's pretty enough for that, but isn't honest enough to be a whore.

Well if it is, it's working. That would buy my vote. Itd be the first govt money grab in history to benefit me.

Conan Says:

"We already are a country that robs Peter to pay Paul. And Peter's gettin' pissed."

You are correct... the issue at hand is that not everyone agrees on who Peter is and who Paul is.

Folks under the age of 40 are going to be the largest voting block in 2020... and they are rather pissed off that they have been robbed and are continuing to be robbed.

The only difference is that they are being robbed in the future. They will need to pay for social security they will never receive to pay for the retirement of boomers who stole from the social security coffers to keep their taxes artificially low.

They will need to pay to clean up and remediate a toxic environment that previous generations neglected to keep their taxes artificially low and to increase corporate profits... that is also robbery.

If you are worried about college education expenses you are in for a rude awakening once the next generation takes over and tried to set things straight.

You seem extremely upset by the presence of just one 29 year old in congress... and that says volumes.

Go away, Artie.

"Are we going to be a country that coercively takes money from one voter ...to give it to another?"

Yeah, we are. In about ten years, most of the Boomer generation will have died off, and Millennials will constitute a majority of the eligible voters. They are going to vote for a jubilee. It's inevitable. The question is, what happens after that? What happens to our economy when a few trillion dollars in paper assets gets written off? Nobody knows. But we're probably going to find out. Fasten your seat belts.

I do feel for them, in a way. They were sold a bill of goods by their parents on the value of higher education in general. Said parents seem to not have realized what GenX discovered years ago: a Ph. D. in XYZ Studies is not a ticket to the executive suite; it's a ticket to fast food and call centers.

But GenX, most of us anyway, figured it out soon enough to avoid any major disasters. The Millennials, for whatever reason, didn't. The difference might be that GenX wasn't coddled as children; we had to grow up fast and figure things out for ourselves as we went. A lot of Millennials have never had to solve any kind of problem, because their parents always rushed in to fix it for them. And now they want the government to rush in and fix it for them.

Are we going to be a country that coercively takes money from one voter -- maybe one who pinched pennies to attend an affordable but somewhat shitty college -- to give it to another: maybe one who went in big on student loans to attend a snazzy Ivy school and come out a wildly overqualified barista.

Why not? We're already a country that coercively takes money from one voter — maybe one who chose not to have children or used birth control — to give it to another: maybe one who went in big on sexytimes and came out a wildly unqualified parent.

The difference might be that GenX wasn't coddled as children; we had to grow up fast and figure things out for ourselves as we went. A lot of Millennials have never had to solve any kind of problem, because their parents always rushed in to fix it for them. And now they want the government to rush in and fix it for them. ~ Cousin Dave at June 14, 2019 12:17 PM

The Millennials had Boomers for parents, as self-absorbed a generation as there ever was. Their children were not adults-in-training, but ornaments to be displayed for the glorification of the parents. So, teaching them took a back seat to putting them on display with "honor student" bumper stickers, participation trophies, etc.

GenX, itself an in-between generation, had an in-between generation as parents. My own parents were Silents - too old to be Boomers and too young to be the "greatest" generation. They grew up in the aftermath of the Great Depression and the midst of World War II - learning harsh lessons from wartime rationing and passed those lessons to their children.

It was interesting listening to my parents tell of their experiences growing up during World War II. My mother grew up in a major city, with food and gas rationing, learning to do without. My father grew up in a rural area where you always knew someone who could get you meat, eggs, dairy, or gasoline (farmers got extra).

"Am I too cynical to think that Elizabeth Warren's legislation to wipe out $50K in student loan debts might be a little bribie-poo to voters, and especially younger voters, who are still paying these off?"

Yes it is an obvious bribe. Warren isn't seeing much chance of success at the moment. She is currently in the throw everything at the wall and see what sticks mode. This was one such attempt.

So, if you signed up for a $50K loan to go to college, Warren would wipe it out.

But if you *didn't* go to college, and instead signed up for a $50K loan to start a business, then no writeoff for you.

Sounds pretty classist to me.

Uh, David, you DO get to wipe it out. You can declare bankruptcy, you can take it as a business loss, you have options, student loan debt is NOT eliminated by bankruptcy, so you're stuck with it forever.

//Are we going to be a country that coercively takes money from one voter -- maybe one who pinched pennies to attend an affordable but somewhat shitty college -- to give it to another//

PLEASE...tell me when we were NOT that country. At what point were we NOT doing this?

Last I checked, there wasn't a single solitary major corporation that wasn't taking some form of government benefits, and yet we still have people who are working not just one, but two full time jobs to make a living.

We've got people working jobs who are on food stamps and other programs because the job they're paying doesn't pay enough, jiggers with hours, or otherwise minimizes their expenses and passes the cost of their underpaid employees on to the public dole.

If a full time job and a college education should not provide for the ability to make a living, what the fuck should?!

What's more than that, the cost of the education which is a REQUIREMENT for even absurdly simple jobs, has gone up by over 260% since 1980 and ANY degree will require a myriad of courses that have NOTHING to do with the actual degree itself.

This is set against a CPI increase of 120% for all other goods. Is there a paper crisis I didn't hear about?

https://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-how-quickly-college-tuition-has-skyrocketed-since-1980-2015-7

Worse, the actual real wage change since that time for the average and below average workers ranges from 3% to 4% in around the same period of time.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

So we've got an entire generation who have been forced to attend college because it is required for things that can't even pay for the cost of the education itself, saddling them with debt that is the equivalent of a mortgage payment that they can NEVER get rid of even through bankruptcy, and then providing easy subsidizing of underpaying employers who pay wages so low that people have to work multiple jobs just to survive.

I'm sorry, call me fucking crazy, but anyone who says that is good or sustainable is out of their damn minds. Debt relief seems an entirely reasonable proposal from where I'm sitting. I'm 41 years old, a landlord, a father of three, I run a nonprofit organization dealing chiefly with microfinance, I work as a project manager and as a soldier, and in a good year I pull down a damn good living, and while there may be more optimal solutions, I don't see ANYBODY proposing any.

Absent any better ideas, FFS voting for a debt cancellation bill that covers what that generation demanded the younger one get in the first place, is entirely rational.

Now, I'm off to drive my pirate to work.

...student loan debt is NOT eliminated by bankruptcy, so you're stuck with it forever. ~ Robert at June 14, 2019 6:30 PM

Actually, student loan debt can be discharged in bankruptcy, but it's a very difficult process - much more difficult than discharging ordinary debts - so, for all practical purposes, it cannot be discharged.

To discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy, the courts use the Brunner Test. In order to satisfy Brunner you must meet all of the following three conditions:

• Poverty. Based upon your current income and expenses, you cannot maintain a minimal standard of living for yourself and your dependents if you are forced to repay your loans.
  
• Persisitence. Your current financial situation is likely to continue for a significant part of the repayment period.
  
• Good faith. You have made a good faith effort to repay your student loans.

In application by the courts, the Brunner test is difficult to pass.

Robert..."Uh, David, you DO get to wipe it out. You can declare bankruptcy, you can take it as a business loss, you have options, student loan debt is NOT eliminated by bankruptcy, so you're stuck with it forever."

Yeah, I know that. But personal bankruptcy is a hugely traumatic thing to most people..and many loans to small businesses *do* require a personal guarantee, even if the business is organized as a C-corp or an LLC or whatever.

As I understand the proposals by Warren and her ilk, they would allow student debt to be "forgiven" without bankruptcy. So the person who borrowed $50K for college would, under those proposals, be better off than the person who borrowed $50K for a business.

Also, Warren slammed "greedy student loan companies", but said nothing about greedy universities, who in many cases seriously misrepresented the value of the educations they were providing.

Robert..."Uh, David, you DO get to wipe it out. You can declare bankruptcy, you can take it as a business loss, you have options, student loan debt is NOT eliminated by bankruptcy, so you're stuck with it forever."

Yeah, I know that. But personal bankruptcy is a hugely traumatic thing to most people..and many loans to small businesses *do* require a personal guarantee, even if the business is organized as a C-corp or an LLC or whatever.

As I understand the proposals by Warren and her ilk, they would allow student debt to be "forgiven" without bankruptcy. So the person who borrowed $50K for college would, under those proposals, be better off than the person who borrowed $50K for a business.

Also, Warren slammed "greedy student loan companies", but said nothing about greedy universities, who in many cases seriously misrepresented the value of the educations they were providing.

> Go away, Artie.

I recognize this blend of exhausted resentment. I mean, you can't start the guy/gal from vowels & consonants all the way thru adult comprehension.

Robert..."Uh, David, you DO get to wipe it out. You can declare bankruptcy, you can take it as a business loss, you have options, student loan debt is NOT eliminated by bankruptcy, so you're stuck with it forever."

Yeah, I know that But personal bankruptcy is a pretty devastating event...(and business loans often require a personal guarantee, even if the business is incorporated.) Under the proposed Warren approach, if I understand it right, the college loans could get wiped out *without bankruptcy*.

Also: Warren talks about "greedy student loan companies", but has nothing to say about greedy universities irresponsibly overselling their product.

What's really funny is the only "greedy student loan companies" these days is the US federal government. Since 2010 they've driven pretty much all private groups out of the student loan market.

That's what I don't get, Ben. Also I got my EdM in 2005 and my interest rate was 2%, whereas my brother graduated a couple years later and it was like 8%, if the government controls it all why can't they give everyone the same deal?

Because they aren't organized NicoleK. A few weeks back congress called a bunch of bank CEOs to testify/talk about things. They got ambush questioned about student loans. To which the rather confused CEOs responded 'We do that anymore.' The congressmen trying for a gotcha moment didn't realize they had already driven everyone else out of the student loan business. There was no one left to blame but themselves.

If they don't even understand that they are the ones who issue the student debt they are complaining about are you surprised the system is mismanaged and opaque?