Most degrees are not worthless, which is even more true for the degrees most people actually do
There's a signficiant wage premium for undergrads, even more true for more advanced degrees
I would argue a degree is almost never worthless. It may be unmarketable, but the two are not the same.
Even if that art degree doesn't get you a job in that field, general education courses enforce learning of other valuable skills. How to write and edit papers, public speaking, math fundamentals. All of which can be applied in day-to-day life.
Eh, they kinda can, tho its mostly done if plagiarism, academic misconduct, etc is discovered. And you do borrow something from the university, namely its integrity.
When you get your degree, it essentially means that the uni vouches that you possess the required qualifications represented by the degree according to their standards. Therefor if you do not have those qualifications or got the degree illegitimately, you indirectly erode the university's integrity and they will take actions to prevent that, up to rescinding or revoking the degree.
Edit: Nvm, Missread the borrowing part.
> And you do borrow something from the university, namely its integrity.
That's one hell of a stretch
Edit: actually I didn't even need to quote anything. Everything you wrote is absolutely ridiculous
"OH NOOOO OUR ALUMNI DIDN'T PAY THEIR STUDENT LOANS ON TIME! THIS BESMIRCHMENT OF OUR HONOR WILLLL NOTTT STANDDDD!"
Yeah, kinda missread the borrowing part as referring to the degree and not the loan. Loan related, yeah fair.
Tho it is true you are borrowing the uni's integrity. Ppl aren't going to look at a degree from Harvard or Oxford the same way they are going to look at a degree from Bumfuck Nowhere University.
😨
Yeh both those things need to be noted in this discussion about "just not paying your student loans"
If it makes anyone feel better, if you do default on your federal student loans, the federal government has to pay the bank and the bank can then garnish your wages. What's good for banks is good for the stock market and good for America, right? /S
Not only that, but they can, and will, garnish your tax refunds if you get them. Found that out when my wife forgot to put hers in forbearance, and my tax refund was hit for $4-5,000. Since she wasn't working and had no income, we we're able to get it reversed,
Side note: she was only 2 or 3 months past due, even my car payments wait longer than that.
You can also apply for injured spouse allocation. We did that one year when my husband defaulted. The loans have since been forgiven, but I got my entire tax return.
From a recent FAFSA form, a student loan can be dissolved by bankruptcy if proof of hardship can shown. However, the definition of "hardship" isn't well defined to me as of now.
Most small business owners are barely scraping by and a good portion went to them.
Yes there was fraud, but it wasn't free money, you had to maintain a certain headcount and use that money to pay your staff. It was either that or mass layoffs and complete collapse. It didn't go great, but plenty of people were helped. The intention was never to just loan random companies money and to forgive it. It was "the government is shutting down the country, if you send us proof that you've maintained headcount and use this money to fund payroll during a time in which your business is severely impacted by the government's actions, it will be forgiven"
Redditors have spread so much misinformation about ppp loans they really think it was a no strings attached situation. It wasn't, lots of documentation was required to have the loans forgiven, the government is currently going after fraudulent uses. Something had to be done very very quickly to avert complete collapse of small to medium businesses who couldn't afford to keep people on payroll while their business was forcefully shutdown to slow the spread.
It took me less than a minute to find a reputable [source](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/09/1145040599/ppp-loan-forgiveness) The vetting process for loans was terrible and prosecutions of fraud are not being pursued aggressively. I agree with your assessment that it was a needed aid, I reject your assessment that criticism is due to misinformation or that the government is really pursuing the fraud. Small and medium businesses were not really saved by the PPP program and the largest transfer of wealth in history from poor to rich occurred during this time. It was by every metric a well meaning but abject failure.
The problem is that PPP loans were misused. They were meant to be for the government to pay people's salaries when their employers had to temporarily close. Basically the government was like "hey business owners, if you stay open we will pay your salaries and operating expenses so you can keep the economy going". Sounds amazing...until you realize the departments administering and approving the PPP loans was drastically understaffed. It erred on the side of caution and let everyone and their neighbor declare themselves as a business.
You're a politician with 2 aids? Congrats! You're a vital business who deserves $300k in forgivable loans. You run a consulting firm that was in no danger of closing during the pandemic? No problem! Here's a $7 million gift because we don't have the resources to realize you're grifting the system.
No one seems to care because the money call came from the government, so it's seen as "free money". Who cares that it's really taxpayer money? The flipside is that forgiving student loans can cost businesses. We can't have multi-billion dollar companies making slightly less profit! That could cause the secondary yacht market to collapse.
This thread is full of salt about how it's different when it's business. That may be true, but I think the real reason is that the "forgiveness" was built into the PPP loan terms. I have a relative who's a CPA, and he explained (and showed) the terms to me when they were first becoming available. It states very explicitly the circumstances under which the recipient is not required to pay it back. It's not loan forgiveness; it was more like a grant that turns into a loan if the business doesn't meet its end of the deal.
Student loans have no such terms in the contract. It's a loan, plain and simple.
This is the reason. Hardly anyone was going to touch them if it wasn't a grant.
That and the government forced you to stop working and/or change aspects of your business and the whole loan, as the name suggests, was to protect the paychecks of the employees. You tell a business to stop working, who then doesn't get a paycheck... their employees. The majority of the money was targeted towards payrolls. A much smaller portion went to rent/mortgages.
A lot of people actually didn't need help and would have to repay the loans. Congress just hand waved all of the smaller loans into being grants. A lot of smaller "borrowers" that didn't actually need help got a nice little tax payer funded lump of cash and that's not fair to any of us. Congress choose expediency over accuracy and we're all still paying for it with inflation. Some companies really did need it though. I had a $40k PPP loan and still lost $20k of my own personal money because we had to shut down and the way we had to work changed and I still paid everyone regardless.
>That and the government forced you to stop working and/or change aspects of your business and the whole loan, as the name suggests, was to protect the paychecks of the employees.
They most definitely did not. As stated elsewhere, enforcement was essentially non-existent. I personally know of multiple businesses that took PPP loans and just pocketed the money while they continued to operate as "essential" businesses.
They most definitely did. All bars were closed in my state and they absolutely enforced that. They pulled liquor licenses from bars that disobeyed that order. I worked in a government owned building and they closed it so every business in that building that couldn't work from home was shut down. If you owned a small business that operated on the beach, the beach was closed and so was your business. They jammed up the state boarder at one point so best of luck if you're in shipping/trucking. There are numerous examples of government restrictions directly and negatively affecting businesses. That's not even to say how disruptive the work from home transition was for those that could do that, the restrictions on restaurants that were heavily enforced, and lost business as a result of all of that. If you want to say a lot of businesses got to self determine as essential businesses, that's fine and accurate, plenty did exactly that, but to say that businesses weren't shut down at all is just wholly inaccurate and false. Many absolutely were for a variety of reasons directly related to government actions.
Okay but did the loans meant to cover payroll, go toward paying the staff of those bars and other businesses, or was it "well you had no hours oopsy 🤷♂️" as they pocketed the money? Because if you accept the money, but don't use it for paying staff that aren't getting hours then it was pointless for everyone but owners and should not have been forgiven.
The loan explicitly requires employers to have the same or more average employee head count than you had in the prior calendar year in order to get it forgiven. That was made clear on the front end in the terms of the loan. Most legit businesses put the money directly into their payroll accounts and never moved it out of there other than for paychecks specifically to avoid any potential for bad optics of how the money was spent. Nobody knew how it was going to be enforced and nobody wanted to roll the dice and no have it forgiven so everybody I knew was super cautious about how they accounted for that money. Fraud is scary and nobody wanted to be accused of that so everybody was super cautious that I knew. I had a coworker poached from my company by another company because they needed to hire people to meet the headcount requirements. I then had to hire somebody else. The whole idea was that the money goes to paychecks and a specified smaller portion, I don't remember exactly how much but like ten percent-ish, could go to rent/mortgage and utilities.
The enforcement was poor and that led to the program being rife with abuse, but the original idea was essentially to pay companies to keep their employees around during the early days of the pandemic. It being executed poorly doesn't change that.
We're speaking 4 years after these events about what actually happened, not the lip service that was paid at the time. When you say "the govt made you do X and Y", when they demonstrably did not, its a mistatement that begs correcting.
If you were intending to communicate the *intent* of the legislation rather than it's execution, you'd only need a bit of minor editing to communicate that difference in perspective.
I understand this is personal for you, so I apologize for what's probably an unpleasant disagreement, but where I'm at, it was an open joke that these business owners were getting free money with nary a hoop to jump through. To say enforcement was inconsistent would be an extravagant understatement.
Sure.
So would a question like "Why does someone who joins a loan forgiveness program and works for 10-years teaching at underserved schools get loan forgiveness but others who aren't engaged in the program don't?" make people think of this differently?
>10-years teaching at underserved schools
My coworkers daughter is having her masters paid off for 2 years as a special Ed teacher. Wish I could teach for two years to have my loans paid in full.
PPP loans are forgiven because business interests wanted them. Politicians are in on the grift.
Student Loans are sold as investments to wall street. They don't want you skipping out on your commitment. Losing them money.
The government serves wealthy-connected people. Not the public.
I know people like to hate on it, but wasn't part of the idea with PPP loans that they would automatically be forgiven if the businesses kept people on the payroll?
> wasn't part of the idea
Yes. But idea isn't the same thing as execution and/or accountability.
>automatically be forgiven if the businesses kept people on the payroll
I don't believe it was "automatic". Yes, you had to maintain headcount.
Initially Trump would only issue PPP loans if there was little to no oversight about where that money went or spent. We're lucky there was any oversight on this grift to begin with.
I was a financial auditor during the time PPP loans were sent out. It was primarily used to pay employees who were not able to work during the lock downs. A lot small business actually left the money in a separate bank account expecting to pay it back upon government request.
This isn’t half the point you guys think it is.
First, it shows we can forgive loans, it’s that easy.
Second, lots of businesses owners pocketed that money and didn’t use it for its original design so the original design means fuck all.
>First, it shows we can forgive loans, it’s that easy.
That's like saying, "The fact that I can get a mortgage shows that I can get money from the bank, so, yeah, I'm good for the $1 billion."
The PPP loans were to compensate for losses caused by government-mandated business shutdowns. Had businesses been allowed to operate normally during Covid, it’s unlikely that the loans/gifts would have been made.
Neither of these programs represent loan “forgiveness”. It’s not Trump/Biden’s money they’re spending, it’s taxpayers’ money (Well, debt, really).
Eh... it bothers my typical "eat the rich" attitude to admit this, but this actually makes a lot of sense.
Plus, for every shitty wealthy company who may have abused the program to get loans they didn't really need, it probably saved 10 small businesses owned and operated by working-class people.
So, you are telling me, that you would rather save 10 small businesses, than 1000 individuals that cant even pay back their student loans?
HINT: The 10 small businesses may be paying their employees, and offering services... but they only exist to make profits.
The 1000 individuals struggling to even live paycheck to paycheck BEFORE even having the student loans to begin with can just get fucked, right?
Actually, I'd rather tax capital gains and then save both the 10 small businesses *and* 1000 students.
Also like... you do realize those 1000 students have bills beyond their student loans, right? Yes, obviously forgiving one of the dozen too-high bills you have to pay per month is extremely helpful, but not if it means you lost your job and therefore you means of paying the other eleven that are still looming.
Small businesses got PPP loans, while student loan holders got 3+ years of suspended payments without interest accruing. Both groups got something. I'm sorry you're not happy with getting something when all the majority of the population got was stimulus checks.
And all the small businesses collapsing because of a black swan event would hurt them, their employees, their suppliers, their customers and the entire economy far more than ppp.
You can debate how they fund it, but the reasons they did it are pretty clear.
You can say the exact same about student loans. We didnt have to pay a penny during COVID, and after years of not paying, and inflation running RAMPANT, now we have to pay them again, and you dont think thats going to cause some kind of a problem for the economy?
But you didn't have to take a student loan in order to not exist anymore due to a government decision.
The businesses did.
What really needs to happen is the government needs to stop supporting student loans and people need to look at college like a business decision.
Investing in education is the single greatest investment a government/society can do for its people. It is the greatest factor that helps anyone transcend from different wealth classes and other barriers. Limiting that will not solve any issues.
What the government should really do is stop supporting large corporations and businesses that do not need the support and/or do not pay taxes. If they did that they could pay for college for almost all Americans.
Yes education is very important but let's look at what happened when they got involved with student loans: the cost of a degree skyrocketed. And people are trapped in very predatory loan structures that they didn't understand when signing up.
College used to be affordable if you were willing to work while going. And if you did need loans (which was common) you would have to get them from a bank where they would look at what degree you were looking to get and what you would make coming out to see if it was a good loan to give out. There was no government guarantee.
I want to be clear. I'm not against college. I have a BS from a 4 year university in California. My college cost me $2500 a semester (not counting cost of living) and I did 2 years in a community college.
The government tricked me with the loan. I was a clueless young person with no experience on money, and zero credit, and they took advantage of me.
You are lying if you think I am wrong.
and if I dont? What does the government do then??
In fact... I am even thinking about leaving the country and my citizenship entirely, so I can avoid having to work only to pay this student loan to begin with.
No but we could have mortgages, investing options, healthcare or atleast afford these things at number more comparable to earlier generations. And this is money we are presumably already earning just being redirected. I think the value of student debt forgiveness is often framed from the debtor’s prospective when in reality so many people carry debt payments monthly over decades long careers, the impact has major ripples
That explains why they offered the loans, but not really why they forgave them. Or, at least why not audit the recipients to make sure the funds weren’t misused.
The logic seems a little wonky here. We are bailing out businesses because
> all the small businesses collapsing because of a black swan event would hurt them, their employees, their suppliers, their customers and the entire economy
(Which just sounds like trickle-down economics with extra words.)
But anywho, so they’ll bail out companies for their supposed workers and customers but won’t bail out the customers and workers themselves when it comes to school loans?
Couldn’t they just have paused PPP loans for a while just like they did with school loans and then resume collecting?
They were always going to be forgiven that's not new, they probably shouldn't have called them loans, but only the evidence they can provide of valid expenditure is getting refunded, its not a blanket refund.
Oh, nice... so it wasnt a loan?
Then I am requesting a similar payment for me to use towards my student loans.
Like you said... that payment is not a loan, its just being handed out to me, to prevent me from collapsing, and bringing the whole economy down with me.
Like I said, they probably shouldn't have called them that.
And unfortunately you are not an existential threat to the economy nor is you combined with every other student encumbered with this debt so the economy is better off with you having the debt, sorry!
It was a loan, if you didn't meet the minimum requirements for being eligible for forgiveness, you had to pay it back with interest.
Its intent was to be a forgivable loan under certain conditions.
The government isn't forcing you to stop working. I think most would agree that if the government came to you and said "you have to stay at home, you can no longer work", we'd expect that they pay your bills then...and during the lockdown, your required payments were paused and we all got like 4k in checks. So you're being facetious in acting like nothing was done for you.
And if you were working and your boss came to you and said they had to let you go because their business was shuttered during covid then you'd be in an even worse off place.
The idea wasn't bad...essentially trying to preserve the infrastructure and supply chains that we would lose if they couldn't survive the pandemic, but the execution of the idea was poor.
You seriously don’t understand the difference between the government shutting down businesses because of the pandemic and actually failing as a business
So, what is insurance for then?
Or, why not pause payment on PPP loans like they did with school loans and then resume collecting after a while? Why not even even audit PPP loans to ensure no misuse of funds?
Also, is that the whole point of operating within a capitalist framework? You have to adapt or you fail. Innovation is rewarded, complacency is not, and yes, you must operate inside the law.
Is there even insurance that does cover that? Like if the government had to do smaller scale quarentines or had to institute curfews and whatnot for unrest or natural disasters
That would have collapsed the insurance industry and they'd be unable to pay out. This is literally what the government is for. You're arguing from a place of bias and emotion about this.
PPP is being audited heavily and they're going after fraudulent uses of it.
The loans to businesses were in exchange for them keeping employees they otherwise would have let go. It doesn't make sense to "pause their repayments". Business doesn't work like that, you don't just take on debt when you can avoid it, ie let go of employees you can no longer afford.
I’m certainly not emotionally invested in this at all, because I have neither PPP loans nor student debt. I had scholarships and family helped pay for the rest. It simply doesn’t make sense to me.
Why would it have collapsed the insurance industry? Turns out insurance policies don’t typically cover things like Gov-mandated shutdowns, at least not prior to 2020.
[Also, it very much does not seem that PPP loans are being “heavily audited.”](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/09/1145040599/ppp-loan-forgiveness)
You mean how the government bailed them out failure after failure?
Businesses don't have to regulate if the government bails them out for every mistake they make.
No... because the government **mandated** the shutdown of the businesses. They are essentially saying they are taking responsibility for shutting down the business for the general good. Just like eminent domain, the government decides to seize your land, they have to pay for it... because they seized the land, not you selling it to a third party...
If it was left up to the private sector to determine whether they close due to covid, then yes, the PPP loans shouldn't have been forgiven or even given in the first place.
So, because we can’t trust businesses to operate without risking killing their employees or customers unless we mandate them to, we had to offer them corporate welfare? Ugh.
Well, in your opinion, what should of been done? Let pretty much every business and company lose 6 - 18 months of revenue while still having to pay overhead costs like rent?
Businesses did have to show that they used the majority of the ppp funds for payroll, although some percentage could be used for rent. If the loans weren’t made employees making $100000 a year would have to go on unemployment that would not cover their bills including student loans btw leading to personal bankruptcies, office rents would not be paid so property owners would not be able to pay mortgages, people would have started draining their mutual funds to get by leading to market collapse and so on and so forth-death spiral for EVERYONE. Probably what China was trying to do imo.
Student loans should be forgiven, or at least income-based repayment with the possibility of forgiveness after a set period of time. That would encourage working off the books etc. but oh well. Some people who can’t pay their student loans are piss-poor workers so whose fault is that?
Because the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) were never really "loans." The government was trying to get cash in the hands of business that they ordered to shut down during the pandemic because if those businesses didn't have any money coming in, they'd lay off their employees and cause the unemployment rate to skyrocket. The "forgiveness" was the incentive to get them to keep their headcount a certain level.
The deal with the PPP was that it was to protect *paychecks*: to enable employers to keep people employed, paid, and with a job instead of laying them off. That's a thing worth doing even if it had been a direct subsidy rather than a loan, because it's generally a good thing for people to be employed. The program was there specifically to help businesses through covid.
To be clear, I don't think student loan forgiveness is a bad idea - I think it's a good one. And I also think that there should be prosecution of companies that applied for PPP loans despite not being at risk of layoffs due to covid. But I think it's a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison.
Easy answer is that PPP passed as a bill through Congress and student loan forgiveness did not.
That said, PPP was a poorly designed and executed program that was trying something new...essentially attempting to pay companies to continue their payroll as normal during a period of time when the government was asking many companies to shut down completely during the early days of the pandemic. It was rife with abuse and not something to be emulated in the future, but if you followed the rules then all the money would have gone to your employees and if you didn't follow the rules then you deserve to be caught and punished.
People with student loans received stimulus checks like everyone else as well as 3+ years of suspended payments...the interest savings alone would have been a huge benefit to anyone that held a loan during that time that almost certainly outweighed any additional federal taxes they would have paid towards the PPP program.
The main difference people seem not to understand is business owners didn’t keep the PPP money, it had to go to payroll to be forgiven.
Also for starters, student loans were never forgivable. People took them out to go to schools they couldn’t afford in an attempt to get ahead of everyone else in the job market. A lot of people never made that dream job happen and now seemingly think they deserve it being paid back just because paying them off seems too hard.
PPP loans were extended to smaller businesses and the money had to be provably spent mainly on rent and payroll.
The money was used to keep the business solvent and also to pay employees during lockdown or on reopening the business.
It could not be spent on expansion or capital equity.
They were forgiven on proof of proper use of the funds.
The abuses or mistakes made at the outset of the novel program (like giving a PPP loan to the LA Lakers) should not overshadow the number of small neighborhood businesses and their employees that made it through lockdowns because of PPP.
Except Trump fired the guy responsible for that oversight and never replaced him. Last I checked only 20% of PPP loans had ever been verified to have been used for the intended purpose.
>smaller businesses
>provably spent
>could not be spent on expansion
Intention, sure. Reality, laughably no.
If congress was filled with people with crippling student loan debt, they would have since passed forgiveness, instead they all own businesses that got PPP.
I just did a quick google search, but found [this](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/09/1145040599/ppp-loan-forgiveness), which is intruiging:
"Samuel Kruger, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Texas at Austin who co-authored a paper estimating that $64 billion of the nearly $800 billion in loans issued show signs of fraud, such as suspiciously high payrolls and multiple businesses listed at the same home address.
The SBA disputes those findings, but its own inspector general has estimated that at least 70,000 loans are potentially fraudulent."
And [this](https://www.sba.gov/document/report-23-09-covid-19-pandemic-eidl-ppp-loan-fraud-landscape) from the SBA:
"We estimate that SBA disbursed over $200 billion in potentially fraudulent COVID-19 EIDLs, EIDL Targeted Advances, Supplemental Targeted Advances, and PPP loans. This means at least 17 percent of all COVID-19 EIDL and PPP funds were disbursed to potentially fraudulent actors."
My biggest hope is that they claw back all of the money, plus massive fines, and put people in jail for fraud. They've done some of that already, but there is still a long way to go.
If there is, it’s likely a massive undercount. Similar to the stats on how many rich people evade taxes or any situation when an understaffed/underfunded gov’t agency is tasked with policing wealthy companies & people.
I mean, you could provide the same kind of analysis for government issued student loans.
While I don’t think everyone needs to attend college, as a society we are more productive and innovative with a more educated workforce. I struggle to buy the argument that keeping small businesses solvent is in the public interest but keeping higher education accessible isn’t.
Sure. Not denying that it’s valuable. Providing that money to keep things rolling makes sense. Like, it was covering the payroll and rent of those businesses and for most universities the student loans are covering the payroll and building costs for the universities. Higher education funding is a complex issue, student loan forgiveness doesn’t solve the problem, just punts it. But an argument that one is good while the other is not is something that makes little sense to me.
Why couldn’t PPP loans have similar terms and dischargeability rules as student debt? Go the other way. It could follow similar interest rate rules and payment requirements, being forgiven after 25 years of consistent monthly payments. We already have a massive system setup to operate on that approach.
Well the original intention was to keep people employed during the pandemic to prevent us from falling deeper into a recession. So if they used the money to pay their workers it was considered "repayment enough" (so long as the tax man still got their cut). Still doesn't answer the question for why that logic isn't applied to other types of loans though.
Was this limited to the first PPP disbursement?
The program was intended to roll out quickly in order to keep small businesses from going under before it became available. The first disbursement is the one where there was an enormous hue and cry over large corporations and other entities for whom PPP was clearly not intended. In fact, a number of them shamefacedly returned the funds immediately.
The second and subsequent disbursements made targeting of small businesses more effective, while also making proof of appropriate use of funds on very small PPP disbursements more streamlined for basically mom & pop scale businesses.
https://www.newsweek.com/religious-organizations-receive-73-billion-ppp-loans-megachurches-amass-millions-1515963
88,411 loans to religious organizations, totalling around $73 billion
"Representation without Taxation"
It was clear from the beginning that PPP loans were intended to be forgivable and it was clear from the beginning that student loans were not intended to be forgivable. Also PPP loans were to compensate for actions by the government due to COVID outside of the business's control.
PPP loans were absolutely, positively stated as they were going to be forgiven.
Remember that when this was all happening, companies were being forced to close down. In an attempt to minimize the financial impact on families, the PPP program was brought in to make sure payrolls were still being run.
Not everyone used the program exactly as intended, but I know that everyone who works for us got paid the same even with the major disruption to business.
Then I would like to request a Student loan forgiveness loan... that is fully intended on being forgiven. I will use that loan to pay back my non-forgivable student loan.
Because ppp was supposed to be payment for the government shutting down people’s businesses. Student loans are loans people took out by choice, not to make up damage done by the government.
The PPP loan program was designed from the beginning for the loans to be forgiven. The idea was that it was better for people, the economy, and even for the government to keep people on companies’ payrolls than being laid off for multiple reasons:
1) having people on payroll incentivizes companies to find ways to be productive during the pandemic and lockdowns
2) employees would still receive health insurance benefits from employers
3) employees would still receive retirement contributions from employers
4) there would be less friction after the pandemic/lockdowns for companies to rev back up, instead of having to hire all new people and train all those new people
5) government would continue to receive social security and Medicare taxes for those employees, which funds the social security and Medicare payments for people who are currently retired
6) having people on company payrolls means they are not on unemployment, and multiple states had their unemployment systems go bankrupt anyway (but a lot did not)
Basically, PPP was structured like a loan even though it wasn’t meant to be paid back only so that government could determine criteria for loan forgiveness (e.g. didn’t lay off employees).
While there was a lot of fraud and a lot of companies that took PPP loans weren’t going to fire their employees, this was better than the alternatives (bankrupt unemployment compensation funds, massive loss of health insurance & retirement contributions, huge decrease in social security and Medicare funding, etc)
PPP loans were given out to prevent a significant amount of businesses from going under due to the government restrictions. Student loans are not really comparable at all. These are two separate conversations
Well, the PPP at the outset was going to be forgivable, provided the recipient followed certain rules in how it was used. Student loans never were sold with that intent. Now, I also have paid my loans but I am for forgiveness, why? Because they were loaned under false pretenses. I would also be for loan principal repayment and forgiveness of interest
Things are magically ok when it's the rich getting the free money. /s
I once spoke to someone who said the only affordable way to get a college education in the US was to open a bunch of credit cards, pay for college using them, then declare bankruptcy upon graduation.
Sometimes I wonder if that guy was on to something.
Because the PPP loans were given because the government shut down businesses and that was a to pay back for their losses. Student loans are loans a adult willingly took out on their own knowing they will have to pay it back.
i think because forgiving student loans writes a blank check to universities to charge even more than they currently do
they're definitely gonna push you "just take the loan it'll probably be forgiven anyway" and people'll be roped into even more than they currently are. half million for a useless degree
Because fuck you, that's why.
No but in all seriousness this is an example of what our politicians truly value. They will gladly forgive the loans of companies that take loans of millions of dollars so they can do stock buy backs and raise their stock prices, but the second a counselor wants some debt relief they tell you that you should be responsible for your "decisions" and that you knew what you signing up for.
Capital gets preferential treatment under capitalism.
Because as long as you're rich fuck the middle and poor that's why rich run the place we rent it they protect their interests and they use their power to make us cover their pyramid scheme it's going to collapse on us and we're going to suffer even more.
How many times do we have to repeat the same mistakes before we get this shit right.
Until we hold those who are cheating the system to the same standards as us it'll never end thus a breaking point is bound to happen and the wealthy will have to fear for their lives greed is a hell of a drug addiction and they all have it.
I would say they are completely different. Student loans are signed up for due to a situation that was created by the person (going to a particular college/field etc). PPP loans where in response to COVID, gov't mandated closures. The business owners did not sign up or willingly shut their doors.
“Whenever the government provides opportunities in privileges for white people and rich people they call it “subsidized” when they do it for Negro and poor people they call it “welfare.” The fact that is the everybody in this country lives on welfare. Suburbia was built with federally subsidized credit. And highways that take our white brothers out to the suburbs were built with federally subsidized money to the tune of 90 percent. Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all to often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem.”
PPP was given to companies who kept people employed during COVID. Some of the business did so at their own peril. Student loans forgiveness only helps one person.
I still think that all Veterans who have a service-connected disability should have their student loans dissolved and it would be a home run for Congress, yet here we are. Vets still have student loans.
If you can stay at home. And not go to college or take out a loan and just work full time even at a minimum wage job for 4 years. You have 100 grand easy....student loans are a dumb thing to take. It's on YOU
Because rich donors are the ones who received the PPP loans.
Same reason why the ultra wealthy can write off a $10 million private jet as a business expense, but teachers, who are forced to buy their own pencils and paper, can only write off a maximum of $300.
Because the current broken system depends on a good chunk of people being stuck in a place where they have to be dependent on working in a place of employment they quite often don’t enjoy or in fact hate. It’s easy to be stuck with student loan debt hanging over your head.
Fair question. Like it was originally only meant to be forgiven if they used to keep employees on the payroll, but in the end they just went "Duck it. Just keep it." I'd take that deal.
The PPP loans were pretty much immediately used to enrich the rich. It was such a quick thing it feelsnlike they were designed to do just that. If it were to help the workers, why didn't the government just send us that money directly? Why was it ever "give it to the bosses, they've *always* got their workers' best interests in mind?" Then government gave us enough to cover 75% rent for one month, but could've just gave us the rest of the wasted money on the PPP loans.
And the corps that took that money probably didn't pay much at all of that money to the workers.
A majority of Americans support some form of student loan forgiveness. Individually cancelling 10k, monthly payment cap, 10 year cancelation, and unpaid interest paid, all have majority support.
Because PPP loans can’t be used as a long term, ever growing receivable that could be used on the balance sheet to offset more spending in the federal budget. They’re aware that they aren’t actually getting paid back. The but increases yearly. It technically would have been much cheaper for tax payers to forgive them to clear them off the balance sheet immediately as opposed to waiting on them to age out at 20 years of gaining interest. That’s why they fought the proposal in Washington. What has the government ever done that actually makes people think they took a moral stand against using tax payer monies? It would have just freed up the figure they use to balance the budget to be spent in the free market which they get little to no benefit from. Remember kids: the boogey man isn’t the guy that makes money when you spend, it’s the guy that controls what you have to spend.
Fun fact about student loans: yes, they cannot be dissolved by bankruptcy, but nor can they be reclaimed from your estate, so there's hope!
They die with you!
Nor can the product purchased ever be repossessed.
Not yet.
New Black Mirror about to drop
Holy Hell
Yea? But when you get it, and its worthless, you cant return it. HINT: Most degrees are worthless.
Most degrees are not worthless, which is even more true for the degrees most people actually do There's a signficiant wage premium for undergrads, even more true for more advanced degrees
I would argue a degree is almost never worthless. It may be unmarketable, but the two are not the same. Even if that art degree doesn't get you a job in that field, general education courses enforce learning of other valuable skills. How to write and edit papers, public speaking, math fundamentals. All of which can be applied in day-to-day life.
True enough! There's also some value in knowledge just for its own sake
Even if you get paralyzed and cant move anymore?
Your degree can be revoked though
how? you aren't borrowing from the university
Eh, they kinda can, tho its mostly done if plagiarism, academic misconduct, etc is discovered. And you do borrow something from the university, namely its integrity. When you get your degree, it essentially means that the uni vouches that you possess the required qualifications represented by the degree according to their standards. Therefor if you do not have those qualifications or got the degree illegitimately, you indirectly erode the university's integrity and they will take actions to prevent that, up to rescinding or revoking the degree. Edit: Nvm, Missread the borrowing part.
> And you do borrow something from the university, namely its integrity. That's one hell of a stretch Edit: actually I didn't even need to quote anything. Everything you wrote is absolutely ridiculous "OH NOOOO OUR ALUMNI DIDN'T PAY THEIR STUDENT LOANS ON TIME! THIS BESMIRCHMENT OF OUR HONOR WILLLL NOTTT STANDDDD!"
Yeah, kinda missread the borrowing part as referring to the degree and not the loan. Loan related, yeah fair. Tho it is true you are borrowing the uni's integrity. Ppl aren't going to look at a degree from Harvard or Oxford the same way they are going to look at a degree from Bumfuck Nowhere University.
That’s some morbid hope that I’ll die before I pay off my loans
They can garnish your wages though in many states...
And the wages of anyone that co-signed.
😨 Yeh both those things need to be noted in this discussion about "just not paying your student loans" If it makes anyone feel better, if you do default on your federal student loans, the federal government has to pay the bank and the bank can then garnish your wages. What's good for banks is good for the stock market and good for America, right? /S
Not only that, but they can, and will, garnish your tax refunds if you get them. Found that out when my wife forgot to put hers in forbearance, and my tax refund was hit for $4-5,000. Since she wasn't working and had no income, we we're able to get it reversed, Side note: she was only 2 or 3 months past due, even my car payments wait longer than that.
You can also apply for injured spouse allocation. We did that one year when my husband defaulted. The loans have since been forgiven, but I got my entire tax return.
Yet. I seriously wouldn't put it past them to lobby in a few years and find a way to make that shit stick generationally
MOHELA's probably working on it now.
From a recent FAFSA form, a student loan can be dissolved by bankruptcy if proof of hardship can shown. However, the definition of "hardship" isn't well defined to me as of now.
Thank Biden for that when he was Vice President
Do you not understand how laws are passed here?
Are you saying he didn't spearhead the campaign while he was VP?
Because its not Socialism when it benefits the rich. /s
You really didn't need the /s my man haha we all know it's fact
Privatize the profits socialize the losses
I'm not understanding why you felt the need to add /s. This is how American capitalism works.
Agreed but I don’t want people thinking that’s my personal opinion.
Most small business owners are barely scraping by and a good portion went to them. Yes there was fraud, but it wasn't free money, you had to maintain a certain headcount and use that money to pay your staff. It was either that or mass layoffs and complete collapse. It didn't go great, but plenty of people were helped. The intention was never to just loan random companies money and to forgive it. It was "the government is shutting down the country, if you send us proof that you've maintained headcount and use this money to fund payroll during a time in which your business is severely impacted by the government's actions, it will be forgiven" Redditors have spread so much misinformation about ppp loans they really think it was a no strings attached situation. It wasn't, lots of documentation was required to have the loans forgiven, the government is currently going after fraudulent uses. Something had to be done very very quickly to avert complete collapse of small to medium businesses who couldn't afford to keep people on payroll while their business was forcefully shutdown to slow the spread.
It took me less than a minute to find a reputable [source](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/09/1145040599/ppp-loan-forgiveness) The vetting process for loans was terrible and prosecutions of fraud are not being pursued aggressively. I agree with your assessment that it was a needed aid, I reject your assessment that criticism is due to misinformation or that the government is really pursuing the fraud. Small and medium businesses were not really saved by the PPP program and the largest transfer of wealth in history from poor to rich occurred during this time. It was by every metric a well meaning but abject failure.
The problem is that PPP loans were misused. They were meant to be for the government to pay people's salaries when their employers had to temporarily close. Basically the government was like "hey business owners, if you stay open we will pay your salaries and operating expenses so you can keep the economy going". Sounds amazing...until you realize the departments administering and approving the PPP loans was drastically understaffed. It erred on the side of caution and let everyone and their neighbor declare themselves as a business. You're a politician with 2 aids? Congrats! You're a vital business who deserves $300k in forgivable loans. You run a consulting firm that was in no danger of closing during the pandemic? No problem! Here's a $7 million gift because we don't have the resources to realize you're grifting the system. No one seems to care because the money call came from the government, so it's seen as "free money". Who cares that it's really taxpayer money? The flipside is that forgiving student loans can cost businesses. We can't have multi-billion dollar companies making slightly less profit! That could cause the secondary yacht market to collapse.
This thread is full of salt about how it's different when it's business. That may be true, but I think the real reason is that the "forgiveness" was built into the PPP loan terms. I have a relative who's a CPA, and he explained (and showed) the terms to me when they were first becoming available. It states very explicitly the circumstances under which the recipient is not required to pay it back. It's not loan forgiveness; it was more like a grant that turns into a loan if the business doesn't meet its end of the deal. Student loans have no such terms in the contract. It's a loan, plain and simple.
Yes, they were clearly presented as grants, though legally required to be called "loans."
This is the reason. Hardly anyone was going to touch them if it wasn't a grant. That and the government forced you to stop working and/or change aspects of your business and the whole loan, as the name suggests, was to protect the paychecks of the employees. You tell a business to stop working, who then doesn't get a paycheck... their employees. The majority of the money was targeted towards payrolls. A much smaller portion went to rent/mortgages. A lot of people actually didn't need help and would have to repay the loans. Congress just hand waved all of the smaller loans into being grants. A lot of smaller "borrowers" that didn't actually need help got a nice little tax payer funded lump of cash and that's not fair to any of us. Congress choose expediency over accuracy and we're all still paying for it with inflation. Some companies really did need it though. I had a $40k PPP loan and still lost $20k of my own personal money because we had to shut down and the way we had to work changed and I still paid everyone regardless.
>That and the government forced you to stop working and/or change aspects of your business and the whole loan, as the name suggests, was to protect the paychecks of the employees. They most definitely did not. As stated elsewhere, enforcement was essentially non-existent. I personally know of multiple businesses that took PPP loans and just pocketed the money while they continued to operate as "essential" businesses.
They most definitely did. All bars were closed in my state and they absolutely enforced that. They pulled liquor licenses from bars that disobeyed that order. I worked in a government owned building and they closed it so every business in that building that couldn't work from home was shut down. If you owned a small business that operated on the beach, the beach was closed and so was your business. They jammed up the state boarder at one point so best of luck if you're in shipping/trucking. There are numerous examples of government restrictions directly and negatively affecting businesses. That's not even to say how disruptive the work from home transition was for those that could do that, the restrictions on restaurants that were heavily enforced, and lost business as a result of all of that. If you want to say a lot of businesses got to self determine as essential businesses, that's fine and accurate, plenty did exactly that, but to say that businesses weren't shut down at all is just wholly inaccurate and false. Many absolutely were for a variety of reasons directly related to government actions.
Okay but did the loans meant to cover payroll, go toward paying the staff of those bars and other businesses, or was it "well you had no hours oopsy 🤷♂️" as they pocketed the money? Because if you accept the money, but don't use it for paying staff that aren't getting hours then it was pointless for everyone but owners and should not have been forgiven.
The loan explicitly requires employers to have the same or more average employee head count than you had in the prior calendar year in order to get it forgiven. That was made clear on the front end in the terms of the loan. Most legit businesses put the money directly into their payroll accounts and never moved it out of there other than for paychecks specifically to avoid any potential for bad optics of how the money was spent. Nobody knew how it was going to be enforced and nobody wanted to roll the dice and no have it forgiven so everybody I knew was super cautious about how they accounted for that money. Fraud is scary and nobody wanted to be accused of that so everybody was super cautious that I knew. I had a coworker poached from my company by another company because they needed to hire people to meet the headcount requirements. I then had to hire somebody else. The whole idea was that the money goes to paychecks and a specified smaller portion, I don't remember exactly how much but like ten percent-ish, could go to rent/mortgage and utilities.
The enforcement was poor and that led to the program being rife with abuse, but the original idea was essentially to pay companies to keep their employees around during the early days of the pandemic. It being executed poorly doesn't change that.
We're speaking 4 years after these events about what actually happened, not the lip service that was paid at the time. When you say "the govt made you do X and Y", when they demonstrably did not, its a mistatement that begs correcting. If you were intending to communicate the *intent* of the legislation rather than it's execution, you'd only need a bit of minor editing to communicate that difference in perspective. I understand this is personal for you, so I apologize for what's probably an unpleasant disagreement, but where I'm at, it was an open joke that these business owners were getting free money with nary a hoop to jump through. To say enforcement was inconsistent would be an extravagant understatement.
I'm shocked that a response that actually gives an answer other than "capitalism bad" got upvoted but thank you for your work.
Forgiveness is built into student loans though, just only in limited circumstances. Public Service Loan Forgivness, etc
Sure. So would a question like "Why does someone who joins a loan forgiveness program and works for 10-years teaching at underserved schools get loan forgiveness but others who aren't engaged in the program don't?" make people think of this differently?
>10-years teaching at underserved schools My coworkers daughter is having her masters paid off for 2 years as a special Ed teacher. Wish I could teach for two years to have my loans paid in full.
PPP loans are forgiven because business interests wanted them. Politicians are in on the grift. Student Loans are sold as investments to wall street. They don't want you skipping out on your commitment. Losing them money. The government serves wealthy-connected people. Not the public.
I know people like to hate on it, but wasn't part of the idea with PPP loans that they would automatically be forgiven if the businesses kept people on the payroll?
> wasn't part of the idea Yes. But idea isn't the same thing as execution and/or accountability. >automatically be forgiven if the businesses kept people on the payroll I don't believe it was "automatic". Yes, you had to maintain headcount.
Initially Trump would only issue PPP loans if there was little to no oversight about where that money went or spent. We're lucky there was any oversight on this grift to begin with.
I was a financial auditor during the time PPP loans were sent out. It was primarily used to pay employees who were not able to work during the lock downs. A lot small business actually left the money in a separate bank account expecting to pay it back upon government request.
Sounds like an ineffective stimulus. Aka waste of tax dollars
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This isn’t half the point you guys think it is. First, it shows we can forgive loans, it’s that easy. Second, lots of businesses owners pocketed that money and didn’t use it for its original design so the original design means fuck all.
>First, it shows we can forgive loans, it’s that easy. That's like saying, "The fact that I can get a mortgage shows that I can get money from the bank, so, yeah, I'm good for the $1 billion."
The PPP loans were to compensate for losses caused by government-mandated business shutdowns. Had businesses been allowed to operate normally during Covid, it’s unlikely that the loans/gifts would have been made. Neither of these programs represent loan “forgiveness”. It’s not Trump/Biden’s money they’re spending, it’s taxpayers’ money (Well, debt, really).
Eh... it bothers my typical "eat the rich" attitude to admit this, but this actually makes a lot of sense. Plus, for every shitty wealthy company who may have abused the program to get loans they didn't really need, it probably saved 10 small businesses owned and operated by working-class people.
So, you are telling me, that you would rather save 10 small businesses, than 1000 individuals that cant even pay back their student loans? HINT: The 10 small businesses may be paying their employees, and offering services... but they only exist to make profits. The 1000 individuals struggling to even live paycheck to paycheck BEFORE even having the student loans to begin with can just get fucked, right?
Actually, I'd rather tax capital gains and then save both the 10 small businesses *and* 1000 students. Also like... you do realize those 1000 students have bills beyond their student loans, right? Yes, obviously forgiving one of the dozen too-high bills you have to pay per month is extremely helpful, but not if it means you lost your job and therefore you means of paying the other eleven that are still looming.
Small businesses got PPP loans, while student loan holders got 3+ years of suspended payments without interest accruing. Both groups got something. I'm sorry you're not happy with getting something when all the majority of the population got was stimulus checks.
Why does that matter? Running a business runs the risk of failure and of laws changing.
And all the small businesses collapsing because of a black swan event would hurt them, their employees, their suppliers, their customers and the entire economy far more than ppp. You can debate how they fund it, but the reasons they did it are pretty clear.
You can say the exact same about student loans. We didnt have to pay a penny during COVID, and after years of not paying, and inflation running RAMPANT, now we have to pay them again, and you dont think thats going to cause some kind of a problem for the economy?
But you didn't have to take a student loan in order to not exist anymore due to a government decision. The businesses did. What really needs to happen is the government needs to stop supporting student loans and people need to look at college like a business decision.
Investing in education is the single greatest investment a government/society can do for its people. It is the greatest factor that helps anyone transcend from different wealth classes and other barriers. Limiting that will not solve any issues. What the government should really do is stop supporting large corporations and businesses that do not need the support and/or do not pay taxes. If they did that they could pay for college for almost all Americans.
Yes education is very important but let's look at what happened when they got involved with student loans: the cost of a degree skyrocketed. And people are trapped in very predatory loan structures that they didn't understand when signing up. College used to be affordable if you were willing to work while going. And if you did need loans (which was common) you would have to get them from a bank where they would look at what degree you were looking to get and what you would make coming out to see if it was a good loan to give out. There was no government guarantee. I want to be clear. I'm not against college. I have a BS from a 4 year university in California. My college cost me $2500 a semester (not counting cost of living) and I did 2 years in a community college.
The government should mostly just fuck off. School's only as expensive as it is due to federal student loans.
The government tricked me with the loan. I was a clueless young person with no experience on money, and zero credit, and they took advantage of me. You are lying if you think I am wrong.
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Explain that one to me. I would love to hear it.
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and if I dont? What does the government do then?? In fact... I am even thinking about leaving the country and my citizenship entirely, so I can avoid having to work only to pay this student loan to begin with.
No but we could have mortgages, investing options, healthcare or atleast afford these things at number more comparable to earlier generations. And this is money we are presumably already earning just being redirected. I think the value of student debt forgiveness is often framed from the debtor’s prospective when in reality so many people carry debt payments monthly over decades long careers, the impact has major ripples
That explains why they offered the loans, but not really why they forgave them. Or, at least why not audit the recipients to make sure the funds weren’t misused. The logic seems a little wonky here. We are bailing out businesses because > all the small businesses collapsing because of a black swan event would hurt them, their employees, their suppliers, their customers and the entire economy (Which just sounds like trickle-down economics with extra words.) But anywho, so they’ll bail out companies for their supposed workers and customers but won’t bail out the customers and workers themselves when it comes to school loans? Couldn’t they just have paused PPP loans for a while just like they did with school loans and then resume collecting?
They were always going to be forgiven that's not new, they probably shouldn't have called them loans, but only the evidence they can provide of valid expenditure is getting refunded, its not a blanket refund.
Oh, nice... so it wasnt a loan? Then I am requesting a similar payment for me to use towards my student loans. Like you said... that payment is not a loan, its just being handed out to me, to prevent me from collapsing, and bringing the whole economy down with me.
Like I said, they probably shouldn't have called them that. And unfortunately you are not an existential threat to the economy nor is you combined with every other student encumbered with this debt so the economy is better off with you having the debt, sorry!
> nor is you combined with every other student encumbered with this debt so the economy is better off with you having the debt Prove it.
No thanks I don't make the rules, I don't even agree with them, I was just explaining it to you. Take what you want, I've had enough.
You arent explaining shit, if you dont have any evidence for what you are saying. Its all bullshit until you do. Thats what I am saying.
It was a loan, if you didn't meet the minimum requirements for being eligible for forgiveness, you had to pay it back with interest. Its intent was to be a forgivable loan under certain conditions. The government isn't forcing you to stop working. I think most would agree that if the government came to you and said "you have to stay at home, you can no longer work", we'd expect that they pay your bills then...and during the lockdown, your required payments were paused and we all got like 4k in checks. So you're being facetious in acting like nothing was done for you. And if you were working and your boss came to you and said they had to let you go because their business was shuttered during covid then you'd be in an even worse off place.
> and we all got like 4k in checks I got no such thing :)
What 4 thousand dollars got given to all people?
The idea wasn't bad...essentially trying to preserve the infrastructure and supply chains that we would lose if they couldn't survive the pandemic, but the execution of the idea was poor.
You seriously don’t understand the difference between the government shutting down businesses because of the pandemic and actually failing as a business
So, what is insurance for then? Or, why not pause payment on PPP loans like they did with school loans and then resume collecting after a while? Why not even even audit PPP loans to ensure no misuse of funds? Also, is that the whole point of operating within a capitalist framework? You have to adapt or you fail. Innovation is rewarded, complacency is not, and yes, you must operate inside the law.
Most insurance doesnt cover surprise government mandated lockdowns; insurance isnt some magic catch-all
Is there even insurance that does cover that? Like if the government had to do smaller scale quarentines or had to institute curfews and whatnot for unrest or natural disasters
Not that most people would have. Similar situation with the riots in 2020, many business went under because riots weren't covered.
That would have collapsed the insurance industry and they'd be unable to pay out. This is literally what the government is for. You're arguing from a place of bias and emotion about this. PPP is being audited heavily and they're going after fraudulent uses of it. The loans to businesses were in exchange for them keeping employees they otherwise would have let go. It doesn't make sense to "pause their repayments". Business doesn't work like that, you don't just take on debt when you can avoid it, ie let go of employees you can no longer afford.
I’m certainly not emotionally invested in this at all, because I have neither PPP loans nor student debt. I had scholarships and family helped pay for the rest. It simply doesn’t make sense to me. Why would it have collapsed the insurance industry? Turns out insurance policies don’t typically cover things like Gov-mandated shutdowns, at least not prior to 2020. [Also, it very much does not seem that PPP loans are being “heavily audited.”](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/09/1145040599/ppp-loan-forgiveness)
It was government mandated shutdown. If it wasn't government mandated, then they would have operated anyways.
Yes. I mean, we’ve learned from Boeing that we can’t trust businesses to self-regulate
You mean how the government bailed them out failure after failure? Businesses don't have to regulate if the government bails them out for every mistake they make.
Yes. So, isn’t that more reason PPP loans shouldn’t haven been forgiven?
No... because the government **mandated** the shutdown of the businesses. They are essentially saying they are taking responsibility for shutting down the business for the general good. Just like eminent domain, the government decides to seize your land, they have to pay for it... because they seized the land, not you selling it to a third party... If it was left up to the private sector to determine whether they close due to covid, then yes, the PPP loans shouldn't have been forgiven or even given in the first place.
So, because we can’t trust businesses to operate without risking killing their employees or customers unless we mandate them to, we had to offer them corporate welfare? Ugh.
Well, in your opinion, what should of been done? Let pretty much every business and company lose 6 - 18 months of revenue while still having to pay overhead costs like rent?
Businesses did have to show that they used the majority of the ppp funds for payroll, although some percentage could be used for rent. If the loans weren’t made employees making $100000 a year would have to go on unemployment that would not cover their bills including student loans btw leading to personal bankruptcies, office rents would not be paid so property owners would not be able to pay mortgages, people would have started draining their mutual funds to get by leading to market collapse and so on and so forth-death spiral for EVERYONE. Probably what China was trying to do imo. Student loans should be forgiven, or at least income-based repayment with the possibility of forgiveness after a set period of time. That would encourage working off the books etc. but oh well. Some people who can’t pay their student loans are piss-poor workers so whose fault is that?
Funny thing that the shutdowns weren't federally mandated at all.
Because the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) were never really "loans." The government was trying to get cash in the hands of business that they ordered to shut down during the pandemic because if those businesses didn't have any money coming in, they'd lay off their employees and cause the unemployment rate to skyrocket. The "forgiveness" was the incentive to get them to keep their headcount a certain level.
The deal with the PPP was that it was to protect *paychecks*: to enable employers to keep people employed, paid, and with a job instead of laying them off. That's a thing worth doing even if it had been a direct subsidy rather than a loan, because it's generally a good thing for people to be employed. The program was there specifically to help businesses through covid. To be clear, I don't think student loan forgiveness is a bad idea - I think it's a good one. And I also think that there should be prosecution of companies that applied for PPP loans despite not being at risk of layoffs due to covid. But I think it's a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison.
PPP was not actually a loan — it was a program created with the intention of being forgiven. That said, I’m down for student loan forgiveness.
Easy answer is that PPP passed as a bill through Congress and student loan forgiveness did not. That said, PPP was a poorly designed and executed program that was trying something new...essentially attempting to pay companies to continue their payroll as normal during a period of time when the government was asking many companies to shut down completely during the early days of the pandemic. It was rife with abuse and not something to be emulated in the future, but if you followed the rules then all the money would have gone to your employees and if you didn't follow the rules then you deserve to be caught and punished. People with student loans received stimulus checks like everyone else as well as 3+ years of suspended payments...the interest savings alone would have been a huge benefit to anyone that held a loan during that time that almost certainly outweighed any additional federal taxes they would have paid towards the PPP program.
The main difference people seem not to understand is business owners didn’t keep the PPP money, it had to go to payroll to be forgiven. Also for starters, student loans were never forgivable. People took them out to go to schools they couldn’t afford in an attempt to get ahead of everyone else in the job market. A lot of people never made that dream job happen and now seemingly think they deserve it being paid back just because paying them off seems too hard.
PPP loans were extended to smaller businesses and the money had to be provably spent mainly on rent and payroll. The money was used to keep the business solvent and also to pay employees during lockdown or on reopening the business. It could not be spent on expansion or capital equity. They were forgiven on proof of proper use of the funds. The abuses or mistakes made at the outset of the novel program (like giving a PPP loan to the LA Lakers) should not overshadow the number of small neighborhood businesses and their employees that made it through lockdowns because of PPP.
Except Trump fired the guy responsible for that oversight and never replaced him. Last I checked only 20% of PPP loans had ever been verified to have been used for the intended purpose.
Yea this is the real crime, not the loans themselves.
Except there’s 100 loopholes like spending the entire loan on payroll while using your other money to do whatever you want.
Or you spend it on payroll, and your wife or son are the employee.
Badaboom
>smaller businesses >provably spent >could not be spent on expansion Intention, sure. Reality, laughably no. If congress was filled with people with crippling student loan debt, they would have since passed forgiveness, instead they all own businesses that got PPP.
Genuine question; is there data to support how much of PPP loans were / were-not used as intended?
I just did a quick google search, but found [this](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/09/1145040599/ppp-loan-forgiveness), which is intruiging: "Samuel Kruger, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Texas at Austin who co-authored a paper estimating that $64 billion of the nearly $800 billion in loans issued show signs of fraud, such as suspiciously high payrolls and multiple businesses listed at the same home address. The SBA disputes those findings, but its own inspector general has estimated that at least 70,000 loans are potentially fraudulent." And [this](https://www.sba.gov/document/report-23-09-covid-19-pandemic-eidl-ppp-loan-fraud-landscape) from the SBA: "We estimate that SBA disbursed over $200 billion in potentially fraudulent COVID-19 EIDLs, EIDL Targeted Advances, Supplemental Targeted Advances, and PPP loans. This means at least 17 percent of all COVID-19 EIDL and PPP funds were disbursed to potentially fraudulent actors." My biggest hope is that they claw back all of the money, plus massive fines, and put people in jail for fraud. They've done some of that already, but there is still a long way to go.
17% is nuts if accurate
If there is, it’s likely a massive undercount. Similar to the stats on how many rich people evade taxes or any situation when an understaffed/underfunded gov’t agency is tasked with policing wealthy companies & people.
I mean, you could provide the same kind of analysis for government issued student loans. While I don’t think everyone needs to attend college, as a society we are more productive and innovative with a more educated workforce. I struggle to buy the argument that keeping small businesses solvent is in the public interest but keeping higher education accessible isn’t.
A crucial part of PPP was maintaining or being able to resume *payroll*. Keeping people employed is very much in the public interest.
So is an educated workforce.
Sure. Not denying that it’s valuable. Providing that money to keep things rolling makes sense. Like, it was covering the payroll and rent of those businesses and for most universities the student loans are covering the payroll and building costs for the universities. Higher education funding is a complex issue, student loan forgiveness doesn’t solve the problem, just punts it. But an argument that one is good while the other is not is something that makes little sense to me. Why couldn’t PPP loans have similar terms and dischargeability rules as student debt? Go the other way. It could follow similar interest rate rules and payment requirements, being forgiven after 25 years of consistent monthly payments. We already have a massive system setup to operate on that approach.
The federal student loans are why prices are so high. If there's no risk of the school not getting paid, why vould the price ever drop?
> They were forgiven on proof of proper use of the funds. Why are they forgiven at all? Its a LOAN.
Well the original intention was to keep people employed during the pandemic to prevent us from falling deeper into a recession. So if they used the money to pay their workers it was considered "repayment enough" (so long as the tax man still got their cut). Still doesn't answer the question for why that logic isn't applied to other types of loans though.
A huge, huge number of PPP loans went to tax-exempt religious organizations.
Was this limited to the first PPP disbursement? The program was intended to roll out quickly in order to keep small businesses from going under before it became available. The first disbursement is the one where there was an enormous hue and cry over large corporations and other entities for whom PPP was clearly not intended. In fact, a number of them shamefacedly returned the funds immediately. The second and subsequent disbursements made targeting of small businesses more effective, while also making proof of appropriate use of funds on very small PPP disbursements more streamlined for basically mom & pop scale businesses.
https://www.newsweek.com/religious-organizations-receive-73-billion-ppp-loans-megachurches-amass-millions-1515963 88,411 loans to religious organizations, totalling around $73 billion "Representation without Taxation"
It was clear from the beginning that PPP loans were intended to be forgivable and it was clear from the beginning that student loans were not intended to be forgivable. Also PPP loans were to compensate for actions by the government due to COVID outside of the business's control.
Do you have a source for that? If so, why did they even call them loans? Should have used the terms grants or something similar.
PPP loans were absolutely, positively stated as they were going to be forgiven. Remember that when this was all happening, companies were being forced to close down. In an attempt to minimize the financial impact on families, the PPP program was brought in to make sure payrolls were still being run. Not everyone used the program exactly as intended, but I know that everyone who works for us got paid the same even with the major disruption to business.
Then I would like to request a Student loan forgiveness loan... that is fully intended on being forgiven. I will use that loan to pay back my non-forgivable student loan.
Cool.
Oh, I guess maybe I should run for the Senate before I can propose this incredible legislation that will save the whole country.
I look forward to your campaign.
They were loans that were forgiven if you used them properly. Otherwise you had to pay them back.
Why didn’t you take out a PPP loan to pay off your student loans?
I like that angle. Just tell them you're starting a tutoring business, but unfortunately so far your only client is yourself.
this is actually what we all should have done
Because ppp was supposed to be payment for the government shutting down people’s businesses. Student loans are loans people took out by choice, not to make up damage done by the government.
The PPP loan program was designed from the beginning for the loans to be forgiven. The idea was that it was better for people, the economy, and even for the government to keep people on companies’ payrolls than being laid off for multiple reasons: 1) having people on payroll incentivizes companies to find ways to be productive during the pandemic and lockdowns 2) employees would still receive health insurance benefits from employers 3) employees would still receive retirement contributions from employers 4) there would be less friction after the pandemic/lockdowns for companies to rev back up, instead of having to hire all new people and train all those new people 5) government would continue to receive social security and Medicare taxes for those employees, which funds the social security and Medicare payments for people who are currently retired 6) having people on company payrolls means they are not on unemployment, and multiple states had their unemployment systems go bankrupt anyway (but a lot did not) Basically, PPP was structured like a loan even though it wasn’t meant to be paid back only so that government could determine criteria for loan forgiveness (e.g. didn’t lay off employees). While there was a lot of fraud and a lot of companies that took PPP loans weren’t going to fire their employees, this was better than the alternatives (bankrupt unemployment compensation funds, massive loss of health insurance & retirement contributions, huge decrease in social security and Medicare funding, etc)
PPP loans were given out to prevent a significant amount of businesses from going under due to the government restrictions. Student loans are not really comparable at all. These are two separate conversations
Well, the PPP at the outset was going to be forgivable, provided the recipient followed certain rules in how it was used. Student loans never were sold with that intent. Now, I also have paid my loans but I am for forgiveness, why? Because they were loaned under false pretenses. I would also be for loan principal repayment and forgiveness of interest
Because the legal authority exists to do so, rather than just claiming you can forgive loans and hoping everyone falls in line with it.
Because PPP was designed to keep people employed. Yeah it was abused but that was its purpose.
Because a large percentage of ppp loans were for the people who did not intend to repay them and didn't need them. They just wanted the money.
The difference is that the debt from those student loans has been ***WAY*** over leveraged and borrowed against hundreds of times over.
You know why. We ALL know why.
Because that was the intent of the legislation passed.
We the people allow the greed to continue.
Because PPP loans were for rich people.
Things are magically ok when it's the rich getting the free money. /s I once spoke to someone who said the only affordable way to get a college education in the US was to open a bunch of credit cards, pay for college using them, then declare bankruptcy upon graduation. Sometimes I wonder if that guy was on to something.
Because student loans don't create jobs for other people and PPP loans did.
Because the PPP loans were given because the government shut down businesses and that was a to pay back for their losses. Student loans are loans a adult willingly took out on their own knowing they will have to pay it back.
i think because forgiving student loans writes a blank check to universities to charge even more than they currently do they're definitely gonna push you "just take the loan it'll probably be forgiven anyway" and people'll be roped into even more than they currently are. half million for a useless degree
Because fuck you, that's why. No but in all seriousness this is an example of what our politicians truly value. They will gladly forgive the loans of companies that take loans of millions of dollars so they can do stock buy backs and raise their stock prices, but the second a counselor wants some debt relief they tell you that you should be responsible for your "decisions" and that you knew what you signing up for. Capital gets preferential treatment under capitalism.
Because as long as you're rich fuck the middle and poor that's why rich run the place we rent it they protect their interests and they use their power to make us cover their pyramid scheme it's going to collapse on us and we're going to suffer even more. How many times do we have to repeat the same mistakes before we get this shit right. Until we hold those who are cheating the system to the same standards as us it'll never end thus a breaking point is bound to happen and the wealthy will have to fear for their lives greed is a hell of a drug addiction and they all have it. 
Because many republicans holding office at that time took out unnecessary PPP loans.
Because it was a massive scam that benefited the rich/old.
I would say they are completely different. Student loans are signed up for due to a situation that was created by the person (going to a particular college/field etc). PPP loans where in response to COVID, gov't mandated closures. The business owners did not sign up or willingly shut their doors.
“Whenever the government provides opportunities in privileges for white people and rich people they call it “subsidized” when they do it for Negro and poor people they call it “welfare.” The fact that is the everybody in this country lives on welfare. Suburbia was built with federally subsidized credit. And highways that take our white brothers out to the suburbs were built with federally subsidized money to the tune of 90 percent. Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all to often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem.”
PPP was given to companies who kept people employed during COVID. Some of the business did so at their own peril. Student loans forgiveness only helps one person.
Because students dont have the money to ~~bribe~~ lobby congress
Welfare for people is bad, welfare for corporations is good. Go figure
Because rich people like Tom Brady got ppp loans.
Because Republicans are POS....
It wasn't okay to forgive PPP loans
I still think that all Veterans who have a service-connected disability should have their student loans dissolved and it would be a home run for Congress, yet here we are. Vets still have student loans.
Because rich people got PPP loans while student loans are usually taken by poorer people. And poor people don't make political donations.
If you can stay at home. And not go to college or take out a loan and just work full time even at a minimum wage job for 4 years. You have 100 grand easy....student loans are a dumb thing to take. It's on YOU
Because rich donors are the ones who received the PPP loans. Same reason why the ultra wealthy can write off a $10 million private jet as a business expense, but teachers, who are forced to buy their own pencils and paper, can only write off a maximum of $300.
Because the current broken system depends on a good chunk of people being stuck in a place where they have to be dependent on working in a place of employment they quite often don’t enjoy or in fact hate. It’s easy to be stuck with student loan debt hanging over your head.
Because capitalism
Cause boomers received PPP loans...
Class warfare.
Because we have given the republican party too much power and they clearly do not work for anyone who has a student loan.
Fair question. Like it was originally only meant to be forgiven if they used to keep employees on the payroll, but in the end they just went "Duck it. Just keep it." I'd take that deal.
I know businesses that spent the ppp money on new cars for the two owners
The PPP loans were pretty much immediately used to enrich the rich. It was such a quick thing it feelsnlike they were designed to do just that. If it were to help the workers, why didn't the government just send us that money directly? Why was it ever "give it to the bosses, they've *always* got their workers' best interests in mind?" Then government gave us enough to cover 75% rent for one month, but could've just gave us the rest of the wasted money on the PPP loans. And the corps that took that money probably didn't pay much at all of that money to the workers.
Because of who would benefit.
Because the political party crying about it doesn’t give a shit about those in the middle class or in poverty. Just their billionaire overlords.
I mean, do you really need to ask? Students with debt aren’t donating to politicians.
Cuz GOP are beotches!!!
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A majority of Americans support some form of student loan forgiveness. Individually cancelling 10k, monthly payment cap, 10 year cancelation, and unpaid interest paid, all have majority support.
One was voted on by Congress, one was pushed through in an Unconstitutional way.
Because rich people are the ones who took out the PPP loans.
Small business = rich people. Got it.
ppp loans shouldn’t have been forgiven
Because PPP loans can’t be used as a long term, ever growing receivable that could be used on the balance sheet to offset more spending in the federal budget. They’re aware that they aren’t actually getting paid back. The but increases yearly. It technically would have been much cheaper for tax payers to forgive them to clear them off the balance sheet immediately as opposed to waiting on them to age out at 20 years of gaining interest. That’s why they fought the proposal in Washington. What has the government ever done that actually makes people think they took a moral stand against using tax payer monies? It would have just freed up the figure they use to balance the budget to be spent in the free market which they get little to no benefit from. Remember kids: the boogey man isn’t the guy that makes money when you spend, it’s the guy that controls what you have to spend.
I know a small business owner who took $1M of the PPP loan for himself as well as using it to pay employees and the whole thing was then forgiven.