study: plurality of student loan relief going to 750k Americans who earn 312,000/year

Democrats hate ordinary working class people. How anyone in flyover country or who works a blue collar job can vote for these ghouls is beyond me.

"Biden dem" votes.

Once upon a time, you could discharge loans through bankruptcy, but lawyers and doctors started to take advantage of that process

Averages can be manipulated by a few super large income levels. I would prefer to see the median household income.

But Trump and covid.

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That has to be a typo. With a household income that high, carrying student loans for a 20 year term is a nuisance.

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Brookings article that looks at a couple of things stemming from a popular story from ‘18 where an orthodontist racked up >$1MM in debt but:

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Income-based repayment plans cap borrower’s payments at 10 percent of their discretionary income (adjusted gross income minus 150 percent of the poverty line—$37,650 for a family of four) and forgive any remaining balance after 25 years.

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So there’s an entire population of professionals (MD, DO, PT, OT, NP, DDS, OD, PharmD, JS) who take out $40-60K/y for the duration of professional school (and many who did the same in undergrad). In particular, the MD/DO bunch have a unique situation:
They graduate with a Year 1 Earning Potential of around $50-60K. It basically doesn’t change through Year 3 (there’s an exception that’s practically not worth talking about), and many ride this out through 6-7 years. At that point, they’re accustomed to $200-400K in debt and paying based on some of these repayment program rules. There are a number of ways they go, though, mainly PSLF lately, which is different than what’s going on here, but this was an option for many who were bad at math: they learned what they made, what would be taken, and that it would eventually go away. It ballooned the whole time. It doesn’t make good financial sense, but instead of tackling debt or living on less than they make, they have a “how much a month?” mindset and get in these extreme scenarios (according to the link, in ‘18 there were about 100 folks with over a million in debt. Averages skew to outliers to some extent).


To be very fair, these programs have little to do with the current administration (with the exception of him being around in the Senate when the laws were written). It’s disappointing to see all the “proposed student loan debt relief” mix the finances insane “FORGIVE IT ALL” ideas with the programs that have been in place for a long time (PSLF started in ‘07, the concept of income-driven repayments has been around since the 70s, though I am too lazy and not well-enough versed to spout off when their current iterations with forgiveness went into effect). It would be nice to see it broken down as to which program is forgiving how much vs what’s being proposed in addition to decades-old programs (which doesn’t suggest that the current programs necessarily should stand as is, but to saddle Biden for IDR and PSLF payments is just simply mischaracterization of an older problem. Calling on him to fix it would be entirely appropriate, though, but I’m a pretty firm believer in, “what you promised has to ride out, but you don’t have to promise it to the next crew.”
In other words, I can’t think of a logic that would permit pulling these programs away today without honoring them for the next 10-20 years to those who entered them that wouldn’t also lay the footwork for the government to say, “Hm. Roth accounts. Those look pretty taxable at withdrawal.”

If you make 312k a year and are still paying loans at 20 years, you probably should have done some things differently.

In theory they should have buckled down and paid that off sooner. But I guess they’re smarter than me since they’ve now had it erased.

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That has to be a typo. With a household income that high, carrying student loans for a 20 year term is a nuisance.

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Not when it’s on auto pay and interest rates of less than 2%.