Garnishee is a noun. Garnish is a verb.
I wonder if there’s a top percentage the DOE is allowed to take? I know that most states can take up to 55% for child support, and that’s draconian. It’s likely the law limits what DOE can do as well - but it might still be draconian.
America, have you tried taxing the people (and corporate people) that have money?
You’ll be able to pay your bills more easily, and nobody will be driven into poverty.
- note that people in poverty don’t contribute taxes or contribute much to the economy while costing more to serve, and you have numerous multi-billion dollar corporations paying zero or even negative taxes
(pro tip - you want fewer people in poverty)
I believe it’s capped at 15%, the same as the Income Based Repayment plan.
You don’t understand us AT ALL!
*slams door*
*cries into $275,643.20 pillow*
Creative is an adjective.
I’m sorry, but I have very little sympathy for people complaining about student debt. I double majored at a state school, worked, lived on ramen and hot dogs, rode a bike, didn’t go on spring break trips, didn’t go out partying. Managed to get a good paying job with negligible debt. Meanwhile, my classmates studied fun subjects, ate out, didn’t work, partied (hell, I made decent money from recycling their beer cans), vacationed, drove nice cars, and borrowed heavily to finance their lifestyle.
So cry me a river.
You want to talk about reducing the cost of education, by all means. Let’s go. You want to talk about idiots who borrowed too much money? Not interested.
I know it’s a little off topic but how the kids can’t even get the same rate that the you can get on a car.
Even a person with a borderline-sociopathic lack of sympathy for their fellow human beings should be concerned about the state of student debt in the United States. Because when your fellow citizens are struggling to get out from under mountains of debt that means they aren’t spending that money on cars, homes, vacations, or other things that make for a stable and productive economy.
People who are bad at budgeting aren’t a new phenomenon. The reason we’re seeing the huge increase in student debt is because the rules of the game have changed over the last generation. Solving this debt crisis is in your best interest too.
Let’s set it up so anyone can borrow up to $50,000 a year to buy cars.
And let’s set it up so those cars can’t be repo’d (just like a degree)
And let’s make John and Jane Taxpayer the backstop, so that the lenders don’t have to scrutinize the loans.
How long before the price of a nice little moderately equipped Toyota hits seventy-five large???
So what you’re arguing is that because you specifically struggled through immense and totally un-necessary hardships, that everyone else should be subjected to the same immense and totally un-necessary hardships…
Why?
Concern and sympathy are two different things. I’m concerned about the debt. That people can be so careless is very concerning. But debt relief itself can only feed the same cycle of poor decisions. Dumb decisions have to have negative consequences, or they keep being repeated.
That people make stupid financial decisions, then make an emotional appeal for relief stinks. I was careful, yet am being asked to help those who scorned me for being frugal. Pisses me off. Want to make a financial appeal, that’s cool. But it needs to be more than just rewarding bad behavior. Structured payments? Limited payments based on income? Fine. But there should also be limits on loans based on career path (i.e. French literature vs chemistry). And some sort of mechanism to cut out the expensive competition between colleges to offer the most deluxe experience.
“Poor me.” Screw that. “This is a problem.” Yeah, it is. Let’s fix it, not bandaid it. And those who got themselves in trouble are going to feel some pain. Turn out the lights on the pity party.
You’re framing this as a problem of students making bad financial decisions.
I submit that students today are no wiser or more foolish than students a generation ago. Again, the crux of the problem isn’t wth the students incurring debt. It’s the new rules governing said debt (along with their impact on the rising cost of education).
1 - Because TANSTAAFL
2 - Because my hardships were not unnecessary. They were a choice. A choice to avoid debt.
3 - Because others chose to defer hardship. And are now complaining.
I have 100% respect for those who borrowed money and are paying it back without complaint. That was their choice, and they are following it.
You want an education? It’s going to cost. Money, time, effort, sleep, a lot of things. Don’t go to college without knowing this.
And in some cases it costs an order of magnitude more than it did generations ago.
If you want a career that pays a decent wage you’re in “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” territory there.
Is that the way it needs to be?
I went to university (okay, 20 years ago, in the UK), and I didn’t have to pay fees (I even got a grant!).
Does society not benefit from having an educated populace? (and one not crippled by debt?) I was always told that I’d benefit from higher salaries from having a degree - so I’d pay back in additional income taxes the cost of the degree.
Why shouldn’t general taxation cover the cost of undergraduate degrees at state universities?
EDIT: I should also add that I don’t much like the idea of basing funding on the degree subject - that is basically just saying society shouldn’t support the arts, and I don’t want to live in that society (and I say that as an engineer).
Yes, it is bad decisions. The rules on discharging the debt changed (which I think was a bad change). But bad decisions are bad decisions. Holy cow! How hard is it to look at how much you would borrow vs what the job would pay? The math isn’t hard. Regardless of any other rules, that’s what it boils down to. All of this mess is the result of millions of individual decisions.
It’s the easy loans, seen an having no consequence, that is boosting the cost of education. Students want to go to the nice school, so schools spend money to be nice, so students pay (and borrow) more. If students would stop making “nice” more important than “affordable”, education wouldn’t be so expensive.
I’m all for making student loans debt discharged in bankruptcy. But maybe loans should then be based on prospects of paying it back. If students can’t judge their risk, then let someone with an accounting degree do it for them.
That’s more or less how public colleges and universities used to work here in California; they were tuition free until Reagan was elected governor. As a result California was the locale where a bunch of highly educated geeks founded Silicon Valley. If those same geeks had been saddled with crushing debt from the get-go then they probably wouldn’t have had the capital to get their homemade-computer companies off the ground.
“We Are Students Not Customers”
No-one is calling you customers.
For-profit universities and colleges are a very big part of the problem, with their deceptive sales techniques and high costs leading to students graduating with massive debt and no job prospects in their field with which to repay it.
Those students are not customers. The investors are the customers. They’re the ones who need to be kept satisfied. The students are just a resource.
Brilliantly, the Labour Party introduced tuition fees in the UK.
Although to be fair, I don’t doubt the Conservatives would have too.
