Trump rolls back protections for people in default on student loans

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

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Washington Post

"muh populism"

[pbrower2a]

Trump economics: capitalism at its cruelest, with elite rights and non-elite responsibilities to those elites. 

The great populist would turn people into serfs in all but name. Bring back debt-bondage!

[Associate Justice PiT]

I have no doubt that it is horrible, but never forget that the status quo is pushing tens of thousands in usurious, unsecured, and non-dischargeable loans on adolescents, most of whom will never complete the degrees that they start.

     I thought the same seeing the thread, that the current state of affairs is far from being a humanitarian success. Making it worse is hardly something I can get behind, but it was really bad long before Trump took office.

[Torie]

It seems almost like a scam. Provide loans to those where there is a high risk of default, and then punish them, and punish them some more,  for defaulting.  It's a particular good scam, since these loans typically are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Next stop down this yellow brick road is debtor's prison, or alternatively using the Mafia as the enforcement organization.  

[pbrower2a]

That's how debt bondage, which turns free people and their descendants into serfs for all practical purposes, begins. Induce someone to buy something expensive but of dubious value on credit... and then squeeze the debtor with increasingly-harsh terms of repayment until the debtor has nothing to pledge but the labor of himself and his offspring in perpetuity.

We are going to be in for very tough times. Those of us who want a benign government are going to need to find ways to get around it and the crony capitalists that President Trumps considers the key to creating some super-prosperity for a few while everyone else is ground into serfdom.

[Xing]

Hey, anything that pisses off those awfel librul millennial snowflakes is good.

[The_Doctor]

Underrated story here that underscores how stupid the Trump Administration is. Why undermine efforts to make student loans easier to repay when all that money then goes into the economy instead of debt collectors?

The Trump WH doesn't and traditional Republican White Houses don't get that it's the small things that'll add up to big changes. And consequently the better you ace the small stuff like this the better your political coalition is.

Anyway expect this storyline to have a bigger impact down the road. The debt bubble only increases ...

[pbrower2a]

Underrated story here that underscores how stupid the Trump Administration is. Why undermine efforts to make student loans easier to repay when all that money then goes into the economy instead of debt collectors?

The Trump WH doesn't and traditional Republican White Houses don't get that it's the small things that'll add up to big changes. And consequently the better you ace the small stuff like this the better your political coalition is.

Anyway expect this storyline to have a bigger impact down the road. The debt bubble only increases ...

It also can discourage potential students from taking necessary and appropriate risks for starting out in life. The 'pound of flesh' that a creditor demands as collateral is a good reason for youth deciding to stay in the parental abode indefinitely and hold on for dear life to jobs in retail and food service. Ideally those jobs are stopgaps  that people give up for something with a real paycheck. Such is not good for economic growth.

Maybe the best path is for bright kids to take short-term, low-cost, low-yield vocational schooling that teaches them how to do hairdressing, bartending, auto body repair, or the like so that they can work their way through college and not be heavily in debt.  Truth be told, 23-year-old kids who have gone straight through K-12 schooling and then college are not ready to lead much of anything no matter how brilliant except in authoritarian settings such as fast food or the military.

[dead0man]

Maybe the best path is for bright kids to take short-term, low-cost, low-yield vocational schooling that teaches them how to do hairdressing, bartending, auto body repair, or the like so that they can work their way through college and not be heavily in debt.

that's always been the case.  The people with those stories always seem to be better off as adults too.  The adults that cooked up the idea of student loans that you can't get rid of and then sold them to our youth are worse than Hitler.  And everybody that knows this and continues encouraging our young people to go this route are worse.  The entire industry of High School guidance counselors and other authority figures telling kids the only "good" thing you can do after school is MORE SCHOOL! is horrible and should be done away with.  Especially to smart kids that aren't good at doing school.  In my anecdotal experience it does seem to be getting better. 

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most of them are not good enough for the military.

also, fast food robots don't care about BAs in the films of Kurosawa.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

also, fast food robots don't care about BAs in the films of Kurosawa.

Hey, people with BAs in the films of Kurosawa are some of the best people! (Although I was more of an Ozu guy myself.)

[publicunofficial]

"Students? They voted against me bigly! Don't waste money on them."

[The_Doctor]

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Pretty much. This is why we need serious student loan reform that makes them low interest rate, and subject to stringent federal oversight. Why? Because college and vocational training pay for themselves many times over in an economy that has more people with better skills.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

In the UK we had a lot of talk about a "graduate tax", which would basically replace loans with a levy on the income of graduates:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_tax

The main concern would be that it could cause people to work abroad, but America's worldwide taxation might make this less of a concern.

[pbrower2a]

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Pretty much. This is why we need serious student loan reform that makes them low interest rate, and subject to stringent federal oversight. Why? Because college and vocational training pay for themselves many times over in an economy that has more people with better skills.

We also need to cull out the educational institutions that deliver a sick joke of an education. I am reminded of the infamous Corinthian Colleges (one of comparatively few big corporations to go under while Barack Obama was President) that attracted people with little suitability for college to sign up for a student loan, had classes easy to complete so long met the mandated co-payment, and gave a vocational diploma practically worthless. Employers did not want graduates of such schools. It was a lucrative business until the Obama Administration took away the ability to sign people up for student loans if the students had high default rates.

What was happening? The schools were spending huge amounts of their revenue on marketing (At the other end, Harvard doesn't have to sell itself) instead of on teaching, educational materials, etc. The schools advertised heavily on daytime reality TV -- the sorts of shows in which  some 'stud' is told "You are the father!", chairs might fly on stage, or there might be a simulated courtroom. Real college students and high school students on the college track watch little TV -- especially daytime TV, let alone the worst bilge on television.  Prospective and current college students aren't loners.

First-rate colleges make few promises of vocational success upon graduation. The object is to make the student a more competent participant in society, and that is usually good enough. Graduate from Harvard and you might join the fast track of the financial world; graduate from MIT and you will join the technical fast track. Attend and graduate from Mediocre State University and you might get a teaching credential. But even some low-end vocational schools can teach a trade at modest cost. There's nothing wrong with being a barber, is there?

Bad schools that charge like an expensive university and give a bad vocational education deserved to go under.  Educational institutions that cheat their students fail when the funds dry up. In the more usual customer-directed businesses, that simply means that the customers do not spend enough there.

It is better that we pay higher taxes and get better futures than overspend on clothes and consumer gadgets.