The case for canceling all student debt

I'm not talking opinion (which is all you have). I'm referring to net economic gain. Those whinging about free education are simply ignorant of those gains.

 

wow how much did obamas ransom payment cost again? We could have used that to help pay for this.

 

so then the lib commie elites have to force yet another welfare program down their throats at gunpoint to overcome their ignorance?

 

Your idiotic language is irrelevant. Social benefits is, after all, a simple reference to supply and demand. I'd of course also factor in the human capital model and refer to equity gains (and how that has knock-on efficiency gains, given the increased likelihood of gifted child fully gaining from education investments)

 

In the UK this simply isn't an issue. You only start to repay at the point when your income is high enough.

 

Untruth after untruth with this chap! The payment kicks in with relatively low income and the interest rate considerably exceeds any sensible level.

 

It would increase the federal debt by $1.4 TRILLION, unless you cut expenditures by $1.4 TRILLION.

 

you mean to an old world authoritarian who still has no concept of freedom or individual liberty? Still haven't figured out what makes America great have you?

 

I'm not the one demanding an enforced reduction in well-being, that's you dear boy.

 

wrong of course. supply and demand refers to a free market situation wherein free individuals engage in voluntary peaceful transactions. Your social benefit situation refers to libcommies with guns forcing yet another crippling welfare program down people's throats

 

so, soviet well being increases when liberals with guns impose yet another crippling welfare program on free people?

Did you know we defeated the European monarchy long ago and we look even less favorably on your new Marxist monarchy after it slowly killed 120 million innocent souls.

 

Do you think its sensible to rant about the Soviets when the discussion is about supply and demand? Why are you so insistent on ignoring basic economics?

 

If they come cut my lawn and shovel my drive, while I earn the money to pay the taxes to cover their mistakes, I'll think about it

 

You clearly don't understand supply and demand. If positive externalities exist then we know underinvestment occurs. In simple terms, mutually beneficial exchange is exhausted where marginal social benefits (demand plus externalities) equal marginal costs (supply)

 

The case for canceling all student debt seems to be identical to the case for canceling the the Federal Student loan program.

 

Why not instead pay off the mortgages and car payments of working people?

 

If people are having difficulty repaying the student loans perhaps they should have been identified as incapable of benefiting from a college education and denied the loan and admission in the first place.

 

That's pretty much what I asked in post #12, but government tends to dwell on providing to those who do not work or pay their debts by reassigning responsibility to those who do work and pay their debts.
It's basically a case of 'free' or 'freedom' where politicians have found that voters of both wealth extremes can be more easily swayed by the former than they are by the latter.

 

You demonstrate the difference with your example: education is an investment who benefits aren't confined to the recipient. It's easy to ensure funding of education through progressive taxation

 

As with the higher education charge here, it's nothing other than a cunning government 'stealth tax', except it's exploiting the kids now rather than later. It was always a flawed idea, and if it were to be cancelled, thereby proving it was indeed a bad initiative, then morally all those kids who are repaying it, or will have to repay it when they begin work, have a right to stop the payments. That's why May has opted for 'a year's review period', knowing she'll be gone by then.

 

May's 'I didn't realise voting for a massive increase in fees would lead to such high levels of debt' was spectacular in showing how rational policy making has been bypassed for some time...

 

That's certainly false. A great number of people benefit from the building and maintenance of houses and motor vehicles - far more than from someone with a degree in sociology or medieval studies. In addition, the money they would save would then be used for purchasing that provides then for more jobs and output.

Society better benefits from a young person serving in the military, fixing cars, doing plumbing and the 1001 other jobs they do than students sitting in a class watching the time to get ready to go party and get drunk and high that night. While there are serious students, a great number are not and do not pursue studies of any economic or social value to themselves or anyone. Rather, it is an excuse to not work and not grow up, for which college years are just partying years.

A year or so ago the PM of Japan said the government should ONLY finance college educations in SPECIFIC FIELDS the government determines means a societal need. In this, he said the government should finance NO studies in the humanities and liberal arts. ALL education on the government tab should ONLY be for education that provides a clear and direct advantage and use to society. Anyone who wants other classes has to pay for it themselves. I agree.

 

In my many years of working for the IRS, I taught taxation to many students. Over those years I found that my best students were always those with liberal arts backgrounds. As students and practitioners of tax accounting they were vastly superior to those with accounting and business backgrounds.

My collegiate background is in liberal arts, not business or accounting. In those years above I was acknowledged by agency managers as one of the best practitioners working for the government and I have the awards to prove it.

 

It doesn't create positive externalities. You gain nothing from me using my car tomorrow (if anything you lose out, given pollution). Education, however, is a completely different kettle of fish. Human capital generates growth effects which, independent of the investment decision, we benefit from. It is, at the very least, a merit good. A car isn't. It is a consumer good (with a level of fetishism)

The benefit from what they do is understood through mutually beneficial exchange: giving up leisure for wage; giving a wage in return of marginal productivity. Now we know that process won't work efficiently (e.g. worker underpayment is the norm, such that inefficient unemployment occurs), but it is standard exchange analysis.

And that would also be silly. The gains from education are extensive and cannot be understood within 'specific fields'. The effort to suggest otherwise has effectively reflected abuse of human capital theory (where rates of return are wrongly used to show value). Another negative effect of neoliberalism I'm afraid!

 

You're offering nothing but rant again. Positive externalities continue to be a mere reference to supply and demand theory.