From the school of “I suffered through [x], so therefore everyone else should suffer, too, even if they don’t need to.”
There’s always going to be a cutoff point where someone has it harder or easier than those that came before. That’s just life. As long as the change wasn’t malicious, just feel good (or whatever is appropriate) for those that benefit from it.
I work in a highly contract-controlled industry, and when things improve there’s always a segment of the group that might be close to retirement or something and gets all pissed that they didn’t won’t realize the benefits of a change that will apply mostly to those that will have longer under the change. They’re the same ones that bitch that new employees didn’t suffer under whatever crappy work rules that might have existed before, too.
So yeah…people that paid off their loans, or guys that I work with that paid for some/all of their kid’s college, bitch about people catching a break on their loans. STFU and be happy that someone else caught a break.
I spent five figures paying mine off two years ago.
Still 100% support my tax dollars paying for people’s college. In fact, I’d love that instead of the nine wars my tax dollars are paying for instead.
The problem is colleges just will keep charging more because they know people will just keep getting them knowing the gov will cover it eventually. The fix isn’t to have the gov. Cover some loans, it should be to stop letting colleges be run like a private sector.
I’d settle for interest free loans tbh…
And then do it for personal homes, too.
The Australian model is also interesting. After your degree you pay a certain percentage of your income to your university for a decade or so. But only if you earn more than the average person.
This means a university gets more money when their students gets good job.
Other points about the Australian system:
- The cost of the university course is subsidised by the government. The government pays the majority of the cost, usually around 70-80%. For example, a Bachelor of Computer Science degree at the university I went to (Swinburne) is currently AU$9k/year (~US$5.8k) subsidised vs AU$39k/year (~US$25.4k) full price.
- The loans for the amount you have to pay are through the government and are interest free. They’re indexed for inflation once per year, but this is a much lower increase compared to interest from a bank loan.
- You only have to pay it off once you earn over $51k/year, like you said. Repayments start at 1% of income and are paid as part of your income tax return.
- They used to have a program where if you paid $500 or more of the loan upfront, you’d get a 10% discount (so e.g. if you paid $500, it’d reduce your loan balance by $550).
Note that this system only applies to citizens and permanent residents. International students still have to pay the full price. Having said that, Australian universities frequently advertise at college fairs in the USA, as even at the full price plus flights plus accomodation, studying in Australia can still end up cheaper than the USA, and Americans love Australia 🙂
Beating cancer builds character!
Can someone tell me what this comic is about?
IDK. Some cringe-lord wants free stuff and wants your taxes to pay for it. Something about cancer.
This also needs to go into the cancer he beat is dramaticly easier to overcome than cancer in the future.
“What do you mean? Just get a part time job. I waited tables and paid my way through college.”
“How much was your tuition?”
“$500 a semester. Why? How much is yours?”
“$19,000 a semester”
Yes exactly. They just don’t get it.
Where does the forgiveness come from? After paying for my education I now pay a bunch of taxes, I assume that’s what is paying for their education? So the cartoon should say, I just fought and beat cancer and now I need to go work on a cute. “They” cutting cancer is not the same.
This comic is based on pretty childish thinking. Repaying student loans isn’t a cure. It’s making everyone else pay the price (either through inflation, through rising education costs, or through direct tax later).
Second, cancer isn’t a choice–student loans are.
More accurately would be: I’m going to be so upset if I have to suffer even a little again to help everyone else make up for their bad decisions.
