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0 pointsTanjreeve4y ago0 comments

I think this is post hoc wrapping usury and massive information asymetry in 'some progressiver than thou' language.

- if it's about taxing some qualitative value of education then it should be a graduate tax applied equally to everyone with tertiary education. I'd be curious how politicans would manage policies on education and taxes on this value when they are paying it too

- if it's not about the qualitative value but about the income, then it should be an income tax.

- if it can't be discharged through normal procedures of bankruptcy and terms are rewritten by politicians then it's not 'just a loan' either.

In the absence of any of these then these are largely generation taxes in terms of how they fall.

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twoodfin4y ago

It’s really difficult to consider federal student loans as “usurious”. The interest rate is fixed well below market rates for similar unsecured loans. There are numerous income-based repayment & forgiveness schemes that for many borrowers will represent a negative effective interest rate. And no one has had to make any payments on these loans at all for almost two years.

It’s also not at all obvious to me how making such loans dischargeable in bankruptcy would actually help borrowers, other than creating a really nice dodge for recent graduates of Harvard Law.

TanjreeveOP4y ago

That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the system If it's relying on pandemic fiscal policy and/or patchworks of different schemes many operating on political whims to negate fundamental dysfunctional behaviour.

The argument for bringing student loans back into line with normal debt is less to do with poverty and more to do with not creating a system that incentivises racking up the price as much as possible and letting debt (and bailouts) patch up the difference when it all falls apart and the product doesn't actually fulfill any of its sales pitch and the price goes up far beyond what any reasonable income expectations can sustain.

If the system is fixed for graduates of Harvard law then I don't think that's skin off anyone elses teeth. Bankruptcy is not exactly an easy route into legal practice so I think you're being a bit fixated on a v small edge case.

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