Sanders follows Warren's Lead - 'Bernie Sanders proposes canceling student debt for 45 million Americans'

[ProfessorDetective]

https://twitter.com/i/events/1143202574947930112

Okay, I don't care who is saying it, this time. This is a fantastic idea, period.

[Yukaphile]

Well, of course, because he's worried he might lose otherwise. And besides, Warren is the one with the ideas and plans he wishes he knew the details to.

[Robovski]

You don't need to forgive all the debt, you just have to remove the bankruptcy exemption.

[LittleRaven]

This is a fantastic idea, period.

I am...deeply skeptical.

It's not that I'm against reforming our education system. By all means, let's do that. But student loan forgiveness doesn't do anything to reform the system - it's just a staggering huge bailout. It doesn't stop any of the predatory lending that we currently see...quite the opposite - it encourages it, because you never know when they'll be another bailout, so load up on debt! It doesn't do anything to reign in current college prices - in fact, it just encourages them to go higher, because surely they'll be another bailout coming! It doesn't do anything to encourage students to make better choices...because hey, bailout!

You don't need to forgive all the debt, you just have to remove the bankruptcy exemption.

This is a better idea, although it will drastically change our education landscape almost overnight. (essentially, student loans will disappear for everyone that really needs them) But it does at least fundamentally address the problem.

[Mecha82]

While this sounds nice it doesn't really solve problem.

[Darth Wedgius]

If you want taxpayer money to go to universities at a rate entirely set by universities, without any other oversight, this is a wonderful idea. Otherwise it's like taking care of a vomiting patient by suppressing the vomit reflex; it'll remove a messy symptom, but the underlying problem continues unabated. University tuition inflation is far outpacing general economic inflation and has been for a very long time.

[ProfessorDetective]

Of course, debt forgiveness is just a stopgap until we can put these price-gouging universities in their place and start making higher education properly affordable for the masses who wish to partake.

If we can't just make tuitions free outright, then the next best option is to put an upper ceiling for who much cash universities can charge for tuition, which will also give the lenders fewer avenues to exploit our aspiring youngsters.

I also wouldn't mind this being done to the medical industry, as well, if we can't socialize our healthcare. Seriously, $20 for a dose of aspirin? What is even the sam hill?

[G-Man]

Any plan to forgive student loan debt that does not include a massive tax on college endowments is an idiotic idea.

Even removing the bankruptcy exemption won't change the fundamental problem as long as all of the loans come from, or are guaranteed by, the federal government; because bankruptcy will just mean shafting the taxpayers.

The schools must be made to pay.

#SeizeTheEndowments

[PerrySimm]

There's *already* such a tax. It's not really clear if it's actually tied to any major policy goal, though it has caused some minor headaches on a handful of campuses.

• The tax is 1.4%, which is probably too heavy given that endowments are designed to work off interest, which isn't much more than 2 or 3% in real terms. It may increase portfolio risk because the tax is static, but market returns are always variable.
• The tax doesn't apply on funds smaller than $500,000 per student. The tax is not phased in progressively - it's either 0% or 1.4%. So the incentive is actually to evade the tax with a paper forest of specially designed asset structures.
• It is a strong disincentive to letting universities build an endowment large enough to pay off their students' tuition. Only a couple actually even bother to try this in the first place, but the handful that do have scrambled for an exemption.
• An endowment tax is a sin tax on a public good. When people donate to an educational institution, that is a *good thing*. So why put up a roadblock?
• Even removing all $480 billion from college endowments could not resolve the full extent of the $1000+ billion student debt crisis.

A tax on endowments is this small, boutique thing. It can't actually solve the real, broad-based problems with the cost of worker training. Even if you confined yourself just to the student debt that ought to be discharged in bankruptcy, the math is off by 2 or more orders of magnitude.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I thought Sanders already had a cancel debt proposal.