Who pays for forgiven school loans?

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
#39

Well, Steve, I suppose if you want to avoid debt bad enough while carrying a full course load, one does this:

  1. Have a part-time job on the RTVMP (Radio TV Motion Picture) Department between classes. reviewing and repairing( splicing, etc.) 16MM films that were sent to high schools in my state. Boring as hell, but it paid ok. Also ran the projectors for the campus “Free Flicks” at night.

2.Work at a drycleaners as everything from cashier to wash-shirts person, to pressing to whatever needed doing.

  1. Because of my performance at #2, talked the dry cleaner owner into providing a beat-up old van so I could start a fraternity/sorority dry cleaning/washing pick-up/delivery service. I had to “sell” each fraternity/sorority on my exclusive service. (They didn’t all accept; heck one guy “adopted” my idea and became competition).

  2. Study late at night/weekends.

  3. Average sleep about 6 hours/night; 8 on weekends.

If one wants something bad enough…and has the motivation to make it happen, the odds of it happening go way up! :wink:

Cheers!
Murph

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#40

My wife posted this today.
https://twitter.com/AndiFerguson1/status/1562819319049756672…
What's actually unfair about college loans:

In 1972, I could pay my tuition at a private university working 14 hours/wk at minimum wage ($1200/yr & $1.60/hr).

In 2022, a student needs to work 101 hours/wk at minimum wage to cover tuition at the same school ($40K/yr & $7.65/hr)

This is for a small liberal arts college in Indiana.

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#41

Well, Steve, I suppose if you want to avoid debt bad enough while carrying a full course load, one does this:

The times they are a-changing though. At my alma mater, yearly tuition and fees are now $10,000/year ($5K per semester). If you have a part time job, working say 20 hours a week @ $10/hour (which is higher than the minimum wage in that state, so good for a college job) during the school year and full time during the summer you’ll earn about $13,000.

That leaves around $250/month to live on. Oh, and also out of that amount you have to buy books and pay lab fees. You can have a strong desire, but the numbers don’t work anymore.

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#42

That leaves around $250/month to live on. Oh, and also out of that amount you have to buy books and pay lab fees. You can have a strong desire, but the numbers don’t work anymore.

+++++++++++++

I made them work for me. I,at times, worked full time and went part time for school while saving $$, to go back to full time. Cycled my way through a 4 year degree in 6+ years and 4 years for a graduate degree. Granted, it is more difficult now as college costs have way outstripped wage increases from 50 years ago.

YR

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#43

1. Have a part-time job on the RTVMP (Radio TV Motion Picture) Department between classes. reviewing and repairing( splicing, etc.) 16MM films that were sent to high schools in my state. Boring as hell, but it paid ok. Also ran the projectors for the campus “Free Flicks” at night.

I don’t know what Whatsamatta U payed for such work in the 70s. You might care to ring up Tim Allen, as he was a DJ on the student radio station at Whatsamatta U the same time I was there.

transferring to Western Michigan University in 1974.[6] At Western Michigan, Allen worked at the student radio station WIDR. In 1976 he received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications, specializing in radio and television production, with a split minor in philosophy and design.

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

B movie icon Bruce Campbell was also at Whatsamatta U at the same time as I, iirc late 76/early 77, before dropping out to devote his life to making bad movies.

Campbell would go on to attend Western Michigan University while he continued to work on his acting career.

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

2.Work at a drycleaners as everything from cashier to wash-shirts person, to pressing to whatever needed doing.

At what pay rate? I made $1.75/hr at the bowling alley. Made about 50% above minimum at RS, because their commission structure at that time made it possible to make decent commission.

3. Because of my performance at #2,

Because of my job performance, I always became the “JCs” favorite person to call in on a moment’s notice. Some of those “part time” weeks at the bowling alley came close to 40 hours. The bowling alley “JC” liked to call me at 5:45, wanting me to come in at 6:00, and work past midnight, with no concern for how much homework I had to do, nor whether I had an early class in the morning. RS not only paid better, but the store closed at 9:00, so I could salvage something of the evening for the other things I had to do.

4. Study late at night/weekends.

As I said, I lived at home, because it was expedient. Mom had to go to work in the morning, so things got shut down at 11:30, regardless whether I had homework to do.

Steve

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#44

For me, undergrad tuition was about $250 a semester and UIUC, a trivial thing for my folks to help with. Grad school, at Harvard, was a bit more interesting since I started a few months after the administration drastically cut back funding for grad students as well as removing the student deferment for grad students. The latter was an interesting issue since I should have been deferred, but my father was the consulting physician for my draft board and recused himself, so interesting events followed, including the Surgeon General … whom I knew because of his history of being #2 to my father … like I said, an interesting story.

Grad school tuition was $2000 a semester for two years, then $0. Because of the cutoff of funding for NIH and such funding,… prior to which every grad student in Anthro was supported by a federal funding … Harvard stepped forward to help fill in the gaps. I was a problem because I started in January … another story … so all that money had been given that year and the next fall I was considered 2nd year and thus lower priority. But, they came up with teaching fellowships before long and, I had initially outside summer and part time school year employment as primary developer for a remote education support start up and then a combination of computer consultant in the department and preparator/conservator of the Osteology lab. All of which was modest income by current standards, but something like 4-10X what other grad students got from other jobs. And, note that after 2 years, the tuition was $0.

Not at all like today in terms of cost and earning potential.

#45

That leaves around $250/month to live on.

Well, I figured $10/hr, 20hrs/wk for 32 weeks, plus $10/hr, 40hrs/wk, for 20 weeks, gross $14,400

Social Security taxes $1,101.60

Income tax $1522.50

Net: $11,775.90/yr. Less tuition of $10K/yr, that leaves $147.99/month for school supplies, food, and housing.

Steve

#46

Income tax $1522.50

That is assuming someone contrives to take you as a dependent, so you can’t take the personal deduction.

The personal deduction for 2022 is $12,950, so federal income tax would be $145.00, leaving a net of $13,153.40, or $262.78/month net of $10K of tuition.

Plus state income tax, depending on state.

Steve

#47

Add to your list of the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan, the Interstate Highway system that facilitates the movement of goods and people with vastly more flexibility than railroads. The FAA that facilitates the movement of air traffic.

think of it this way…we had balanced budgets more often and closer to balanced budgets a lot of the time…

WHY?

Because we had very high real GDP growth.

Supply side econ…in other words being cheap…cuts the real GDP growth badly and ups the deficits. In the process those defending supply side econ have the audacity to say the debt is wrong but keep creating the debt.

Meanwhile we have the poor rich. Sad lot of people. We are never caring enough of the poor rich. s

Seriously lets build our nation for everyone. Lets stop the penny wise pound foolish nonsense. We all know what it is.

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#48

How about those who worked two jobs while in school…and carried a full academic load so they could graduate in 4 years… so that they would not have any debt?

Murph,

The point is there will always be a cost for the student of going to college. But it should not be as high as that person paid. Lets have a heart.

Economics can have a heart not just sheer greed for the rich. In this part of the cycle there is a lot for the wealthy in having a heart. So lets get on with demand side econ and stop sinking our nation.

#49

5. Average sleep about 6 hours/night; 8 on weekends.

Murph!!!

My job is bigger than yours!!

#50

In 1982 a friend of mine at the University of Houston bought a $30k house across from campus and installed three roommates. When he graduated the mortgage was paid. He sold the house. Paid off his student loans. He walked away with money in his pocket. His only work was tearing out a few carpets and painting the interior. It paid him nicely to be in college.

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#51

Jeff,

That is the point!

The $10k and $20k amounts are balanced against inflationary forces. I am saying that because the FED, the Admin, the CBO do study that carefully.

The objections are full of crap. Total crap. We have to stop holding our nation back by arguing sheer crap for the poor rich folks. The arguments are holding back the wealthy as well. The arguments are fooling a lot of people who think the world is against them when it is not.

Blue collar workers and people who paid for their loans etc…those folks need a better faster growing economy. Within the limits of what will be a responsible already declared 2% inflation rate.

We need to get out with demand side economics for everyone.

#52

We need to get out(ON) with demand side economics for everyone.

Another gaff sue me if that makes an idiotic point.

#53

Goofy:"Who paid for the GI bill? I ask because that turned out to be the deal of the millennium. It turned an unemployed middle class into the most productive group of people in the history of the world.

The GI bill, I would note, was not promised to anyone ahead of time, nobody signed up because the Army was offering a free ride to college when you got back from the war. The benefit was offered after-the-fact, and it was enormously successful."

Very few went to ‘college’ on the GI Bill after WW2. Veterans came home, got married, had jobs waiting for them as women exited the work force in droves. Not many wanted to spend 4 years at college away from family - wanted KIDS and a house and a car - and a trade.

Most went to trade schools on the GI bill. HVAC, electrician certification, TV/radio repair, private pilot license, auto mechanics. A lot turned their military training into an occupation with some additional training. The military churned out hundreds of thousands of people with training in plumbing, construction, basic electronics, radio repair, radar, etc.

Later veterans in the 80s and 90s and beyond used their ‘benefits’ to partially offset college. Not a good a deal as after WW2. You just earned so many credits a year.

When I went to college in the 60s, there was one, just one, out of 600 freshman, who was there on the GI bill. A Korean war veteran.

t

#54

Post will likely be pulled for politics, but this is the problem:

And Jeff’s post follows up with a bunch of politicians complaining about the unfairness of people paying off other people’s debt, even though they personally had debt forgiven by the gov’t.

I am so tired of this argument. Bills need to be a good thing on their face, not just good relative to the hypocrisy of those arguing against them.

The problem is paying off someone’s debt, because it does not address the root cause of the problem, which is the cost of schools. Further it demonstrates to the nation that your signature on debt is reversible. Nanny Sam will take care of you if you vote for her. No need to think hard about living within your means, because the gov’t will bail you out.

IMO, in the VERY least, people should be responsible for paying off their principal in full. There needs to be some accountability for taking out the debt in the first place.

Think outside of the box to reach your goals if you are not made of money. I started up a cleaning business and got paid $15/hour to clean houses back in the '80s, (vs min wage of $3.50/hour,) and $10/hour to tutor Chemistry, because no one else wanted or could do those jobs. The only reason I took out loans was because my ex insisted I max them out. Of course they came in handy when he threatened to go after part of my salary when we divorced because HE put me through school. Shut up pretty quickly when I pointed out my loan balance and tax returns. Loans came with me.

IP

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#55

IMO, in the VERY least, people should be responsible for paying off their principal in full. There needs to be some accountability for taking out the debt in the first place.

butButBUT, that would “burden” the “JCs”, like the PE group I have mentioned before, who bought the profitable Art Van furniture store chain, looted it, and dumped it into bankruptcy, stiffing all the other stake holders, in the space of only three years. Then the stores were bought out of liquidation by another PE group that ran up a pile of debts, sucked all the money out, then dumped the company into BK, stiffing the other stakeholders again.

Bankruptcy isn’t failure in Shinyland. It’s a business strategy. If you made “JCs” pay their debts, the howl they would send up would be earsplitting.

Steve

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#56

butButBUT, that would “burden” the "JCs…

And the problem with that is? Well thought out business strategies?

IP

#57

The military churned out hundreds of thousands of people with training in plumbing, construction, basic electronics, radio repair, radar, etc.

Later veterans in the 80s and 90s and beyond used their ‘benefits’ to partially offset college.

Tru dat!

Desert (me too) Dave

#58

The problem is paying off someone’s debt, because it does not address the root cause of the problem, which is the cost of schools.

In econ that is not the problem. That is not the cause. That is not the solution.

The problem is how big the pie is and how fast the pie is growing. The faster the real GDP grows the relatively more affordable our costs as a nation are. Relieving students of their debt grows the GDP faster while doing the right thing.

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