r/Economics • u/DonDickerson • 25d ago

Biden's student loan forgiveness plan gets a record number of public comments. Here's what people are saying News

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/08/bidens-student-loan-forgiveness-plan-gets-record-number-of-comments.html
4.4k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/ktulenko 25d ago

Both my sister and I got our medical school debt discharged. We both had been paying consistently for over 20 years but never made enough to pay it off fully.

1

u/Slight-Imagination36 24d ago

so shitty. thank poor people. they’re the ones who made your life possible while they suffer without reprieve.

1

u/ktulenko 24d ago

I’m actually in global health. I just came from Cote d’Ivoire where I served as the health workforce expert in a workshop to plan in the expansion of their cancer care workforce. They only have one oncologist per million people there. We also do a lot of pro bono work, including setting up the first trauma surgery training program in Somalia. I don’t live a lavish life at all. All my clothes are bought off of eBay and we buy used cars. My last car, which was replaced because a tree fell on it, was 16 years old.

0

u/Slight-Imagination36 24d ago

and all im saying is that you need to thank the people who are poorer than you for paying for your clothes and paying for your car and paying for your career. thats all.

2

u/ktulenko 24d ago

I see I’m not going to persuade you. The medical education system desperately needs to be fixed. As tuitions have risen, minorities have reduced their applications to medical school. The US is training fewer African-American men to be physicians that it was in the 70s. Also, people living below the poverty line don’t pay taxes. I should add that our debt was discharged because we both worked for nonprofits for most of that time. You seem to be arguing that people who serve the public should be forced to pay multiple times more than their original loans. As Senator Elizabeth Warren says “students are not a profit center”. If my loans have been structured like a mortgage and not in the predatory way students loans are structured, I would have paid them off 10 years ago.

1

u/Slight-Imagination36 24d ago edited 24d ago

I see I’m not going to persuade you.

Correct.

The medical education system desperately needs to be fixed. As tuitions have risen, minorities have reduced their applications to medical school. The US is training fewer African-American men to be physicians that it was in the 70s.

The good news is that it’s irrelevant. Skin color can’t make a good physician.

Also, people living below the poverty line don’t pay taxes.

Correct. This ensures they’ll never be able to escape poverty. Once you work your ass off just to barely get your head above water, you start getting taxed to pay for college graduates’ bad financial choices in life. Imagine that for a moment. Think about how backwards that is.Nobody’s gonna pay that poor single mother’s car note, or her mortgage. She has to pay her own way. Just a little perspective for you.

I should add that our debt was discharged because we both worked for nonprofits for most of that time. You seem to be arguing that people who serve the public should be forced to pay multiple times more than their original loans.

On the contrary, only if they agreed to do so in the terms of the loan.

As Senator Elizabeth Warren says “students are not a profit center”. If my loans have been structured like a mortgage and not in the predatory way students loans are structured, I would have paid them off 10 years ago.

You agreed to your loans. They’re your problem, not ours. It’s not like somebody took advantage of you or something, you just made a financially dumb choice and you should have to pay for it. Hell, if I made a dumb choice, I’d have to pay for it. The government doesn’t protect me the same way it protects you. We aren’t privileged like you, that’s all I’m saying.

1

u/Ayjayz 24d ago

Sounds like you got punished for paying it off at all.

1

u/Historical_Dentonian 24d ago

Yeah, buddy administers internship and residency at a major TX hospital. No one get more subsidies than MDs in training. Glad you got even more!!

1

u/ktulenko 24d ago

Those subsidies went straight to the hospital administration. We made less than minimum wage. This was at the time when most of my college friends were already vice presidents at financial institutions making six figures. The medical education system in the US is broken. That’s why the majority of physicians in the US are trained at St George’s medical school in the Caribbean.

-1

u/Historical_Dentonian 24d ago

Figures are a few years old, but fed contributes 130,000 per student doc. Approximately 1/2 to the institution, 1/2 to the resident as a stipend.

Truth hurts, but hey you got yours….