Occupy Wall Street PROTESTERS Not Letting Up - Nationwide

Don't get me started on university degrees! Both our kids went, paid by us so they wouldn't start life in debt, and now our son does something completely unrelated to his university years, and our daughter is back in school for her masters which she needs to advance in the job she already has. This is a job she can and has learned on the job but still insists she has that paper to advance. Both are successful, but started needing that degree.
There are so many unnecessary classes they require, but there is no recourse but to take them. What can a kid do? They can rebel but then they don't get the degree, and as someone said, there is that education creep into most jobs. Even gas station attendants need to be well versed on the computer, and be able to communicate ideas. (things that should be covered in HS)

decided to delete this post as it was too harsh. sometimes my emotions get the best of me.

Not really sure where to start with that one, flowers. :)

First, I'm sorry for your husband's health problems. I hope that he is on the mend in every way.

Second, in the work that I do, I do make money and I do pay my debts. :) I don't need to work as an attorney to work and pay off debts. I've paid off 1/3 of my debts so far. This is actually more than most of my friends from law school, many of whom work as attorneys and some of whom do not.

Third, I had no intention of going into default, and explained the situation before. I believe that there is a situation of "fraudulent default" just as there are "fraudulent foreclosures." It is simply what happened to me, even though I was making payments and attempting to honor my debts. And, I pay the collection agency every month (and have since it went into default) and save up the rest to pay it off in one lump sum.

Forth, I agree with you that I was the one who made the decisions -- and that is what I was speaking to in the last post. The reality is that I have resented having to pay back the loans because I have resented myself for the decisions that I'd made. To eschew this personal resentment, I wanted the debt "away" without having to pay for it (even though I have continued to pay it from the beginning). So, I do admit that there is some hope that I would qualify for some form of debt forgiveness in the voraciousness of my opinion.

Fifth, I don't feel that I made the wrong decision in making the choice of work that I made. Most of my friends who are attorneys actually earn less than I do. They also are caught in the two-income trap (where all expenses are covered by two incomes, instead of one), which we have never gotten ourselves involved in. In the past, my husband's work supported us and mine was supplemental (paid off school debt, paid our emergency fund for home/car repairs). Today, my work supports us and DH's work is supplemental, but *I* still pay 100% of the student loan debt that I have. So, I certainly take responsibility for it.

Finally, if you separate out my emotional needs from the arguments around debt forgiveness -- and I know it's messed up and interwoven in previous posts -- there is still some precedent and jurisprudence around the benefits of debt forgiveness.

As I wrote before, the jurisprudence around it is in bankruptcy court -- which is something that I value even though I have no plans to actually file for bankruptcy. I believe it to be a healthy legal protection for our society. with this, another common form of debt forgiveness exists with student loans -- if you work for government or for other special needs/interest areas, then your debts are gone in 5 years. It's often stated as "we pay your loans for you!" But the reality is that taxpayers are not paying for this. Those debts are forgiven. Usually, it will only cover federal student loans, btw. So, forgiveness is a normal part of American jurisprudence and practice.

There is also precedent -- in long past and present -- for debt forgiveness of the masses. Economies do not collapse because of it, and usually thrive after such a scenario. I gave the example of modern Saudi Arabia's avoidance of Arab Spring by providing a package of aid to it's "common man" that included debt forgiveness, interest free loans, and several other elements. The country has not collapsed. Additionally, they completely forgave the debt for Iraq, which has also not caused them economic harm.

So, debt forgiveness is not new.

And debt forgiveness can be part of the economic stimulus plan. Even the new rules that Obama announced earlier this month (or October) have debt forgiveness in them, as well as much lower payments. This provides a lot of day-to-day economic relief for people, and has many benefits to the economy.

So long as people can step away from the intense moralizing around it (ie, shaming language like i felt in your post), then we might be able to study it for what it actually IS -- an economic and legal tool to help facilitate economic growth.

And, I believe it is a beneficial platform for this particular movement.

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Aside from all of that, forgiveness of my debt would not give me emotional forgiveness of myself. I have to find that on my own. That is a much greater debt than the one I have to pay the collection agency. It is much more intense. I am getting there. :) This thread has helped.

I am sorry if you felt attacked, and as I said I do applaud you for paying off your debt.
Reading all the posts about debt forgiveness just confuses me unless there is a major medical problem or job loss through no fault of your own. I just cannot see it because somewhere along the line someone will lose money. If the banks lose money people lose their jobs.

But I guess right now my perspective is probably off, so I apologize.

No worries, flowers, i assumed that the communication may not have been clear because of your circumstances.

I don't think the perspective is necessarily "off" but other than a "moral argument" about personal responsibility, no one (not just you) seems able to discuss the issues around debt forgiveness in general, and in particular, around student loans.

If we take the personal out of it, i.e., normal everyday folks, then the moral argument becomes more ambiguous.

It's one thing to say "Iraq owes Saudi Arabia money! Iraq should take personal responsibility!" But for some reason, Saudi Arabia decided that Iraq didn't need to take personal responsibility. Why would they do this?

I've also seen claims that if debts are forgiven, it will cause economic collapse/hardship. The forgiveness of debt in the Iraq/SA situation was BILLIONS of dollars. Saudi Arabia is doing ok. Iraq is doing much better now that the debt is cleared off it's list. Please explain who is feeling the hardship and how? And if it's Saudi Arabia feeling the hardship, why would they forgive the debt of their own volition in the first place?

Companies, btw, play the same game. ANd the same game is played between companies and the government as well. And with bankruptcy court (and the number 1 and 2 reasons for going are job loss and medical -- nationally speaking), the government is negotiating or ordering companies as to what they will get, restructuring and/or discharging debt for an individual. Please explain to me how this leads these companies -- which often show profit margins -- into ruin.

Likewise, Saudi Arabia -- as part of it's economic stimulus AND to avoid Arab Spring -- chose to include debt forgiveness, interest free loans, and several other elements to the package for the common person in SA. This was also a multi-billion dollar plan. Why would they do this if forgiving the debts of the common man is so ruinous?

Perhaps, you can still argue that it's morally ruinous -- but economically? socially? politically?

No one has been able to assert how. They only assert "you take the debt, you pay it." --- a moral argument. I agree with this moral argument in principle. But, I also see the benefits of wide-spread debt forgiveness in a situation like now, the situation in which we find ourselves at this moment in history. A situation that is not as bad as SA, but pretty darn close, as demonstrated by this movement of "immoral young people."

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Perhaps, you can still argue that it's morally ruinous -- but economically? socially? politically?

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Well as for housing I don't know what additional debt forgiveness anyone would need. You can ALREADY WALK AWAY from a mortgage . It won't hurt anything but your credit score (oh boo hoo, it has some consequences). If you think that we should somehow via the taxpayers pay off everyones mortgage, well how is this doing anything but screwing over the renters in this country (unless they somehow get a free house thrown into the deal too)? Still I'd rather bail the homeowners than the banks if it came to that.

Student loans are more tricky than mortgages as you can't walk away from them or even get out of them via bankruptcy (plus I do feel more sympathy for that crowd than the homeowners crowd, just because they are SO YOUNG when they made that choice). They weren't necessarily in their mid 20s or even 30s when they made the decision like homeowners, they were maybe 18. So maybe some slack should be cut. But a wholesale paying off of everyones student loan? Do you know that 75% of the country doesn't even have college degrees. So that 75% should entirely pay off the student loans of some maybe 5% of college students who got deep into debt (not all college students, not those who went decades ago of course, but also not some who use the public college system or don't take out debt beyond their probable future earning capacity to pay).

The problem with a protest of college grads is it is already in some way a protest of the priviledged (granted that they did indeed get screwed on college loans). Now this doesn't seem unseemly if their protest is the priviledged protesting broad social issues: banks having made out like bandits with taxpayer dollars, or insufficient financial regulation, or protests in solidarity with the non-priviledged such as say hotel maids that are striking (now that is NOT a priviledged group!), or protests against the XL pipeline, or heck even the whole economic system if they want, in terms of it's broad outcomes. But if it's purely about their own debt, I'm not sure it's really going to garner that much sympathy from say those working as maids who would have liked nothing more than the chance to have gone to college maybe.

Also if debt is totally written off who pays for it? Serious question, who pays? The banks for having made the loans in the first place? For having given an 100k loan to a philsosophy major? That would make some sense. But my understanding is they made those loans knowing they had an implicit government backing. So I'm thinking it is the taxpayers that pay. And what is done about college loans in the future? If you just write off the loans and keep making loans, are you just going to write off them in the future again? I mean if we wrote off all loans and got rid of all college loans forevermore, that might be ok (just got the federal government entirely out of the college loan business). But if we write them off and keep making them and the taxpayers are paying, you have a silly system in which you in effect have implicit public funding of education and people take out loans that they never intend to pay and basically the whole thing is dishonest on some level and appeals mostly to the dishonest. I'd rather just have OPEN explicitly PUBLICALLY funded education, rather than publically funded education through the backdoor. It is far more honest, transparent, and straightforward, there is just a social agreement to fund education and everyone knows they can take advantage of it if they choose. Now there are reasons I have preferred this done on the state level, federal control of this will have some very serious downsides I think, but if the states can't fund education and can't raise taxes to do so, and ran up a whole bunch of other unnecessary obligations in addition (and this is CA right now), then I don't know.

The question of access to everyone is interesting. In my mind private institutions can accept or reject anyone they want, but if you take public money or are fully publicly funded then you should have open doors. If you have much tougher requirements to STAY in school rather than just to get there it might weed out a lot of young people who either won't benefit from the experience. Some combination of things including grades and performance in areas other than pure academics could be looked at to establish eligibility. I don't think we should look solely to grades because there are a lot of people in the world with extremely valuable skill sets that don't happen to do so well at taking tests. Anyway, the idea is to try to get the universities filled with people who really want to be there instead of those with nothing else to do.

Wonder what they will do with loans for college that were co signed? A friend is sweating bullets as her son is defaulting on his....he simply cant pay them (why she co signed i have no idea, crazy!). Some of them are private loans. Not sure what will happen with those. Her son was unemployed for a long time and just now got a job. Lower paying that what he was expecting.........arent they always.

The question of "who pays" is really valid.

The reality in situations of debt forgiveness is that the creditor pays. They hold the risks of the debt, so they are the one risking not getting paid in a situation of debt forgiveness.

In the case of bankruptcy courts, for example, when a debt is discharged (forgiven), the court and government is not paying the debt. taxpayers are not involved. It is the creditors who 'pay' for the debt.

So, in the case of student loans, consumer debt, etc -- it's the banks making the loans (and in particular, very risky loans based on government incentives, low interest rates, and whatever other causes exist, as well as acting to make a profit in their own and their shareholder's interests) who end up "paying for" the debt. Not taxpayers.

The big question comes in at the stimulus and bail-out packages. Taxpayers do pay for that, of course. The question is -- what does it pay for? It keeps banks afloat -- they give themselves bonuses and record high profits.

To be sure, the SA stimulus package that includes debt forgiveness and debt relief in general to the public does have rules around who qualifies. not everyone will, and it's questionable whether co-signed ones would.

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for your friend's son, i would recommend talking to an accountant about his options before he goes into default. Once it's in default, the whole situation is tough. If he can consolidate and/or restructure, that would be the best option, and usually you can do this without a co-signer. This would relieve your friend of her responsibility in the debt, and since he has a job, the restructuring may be designed around what he can pay (even though he's getting paid less than expected).

also, he may be able to take on part time work (particularly retail) in the holiday season. my husband usually had to work longer hours over the holiday, and as a salaried person he couldn't get away from it, so I would often do some extra holiday work (in addition to my normal work) to bring in a little extra cash for our family. It's a good way to just create a little buffer. And if he's lucky, he might be able t continue with part-time work in addition to his job.

My husband also did consulting work (he's a writer/editor) on the side of his regular work on nights/weekends, and so we were able to bring in a little more income that way. YOu'll be surprised at what you can find part time to help cover the various expenses.