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I don’t completely buy your argument that if the government forgives a $180,000 loan that it’s money from the Federal Reserve that covers it and thus inflates the economy by $180k. Like if you wanted $100 for food and I gave it to you and I decided to forgive it. I don’t consider it paying myself $100 to account for it. I view it more “I gave up the opportunity to make $100”. Remind me of that joke about two economist in the forest.

That's because you're not the federal reserve, and no money was added in that transaction. Also, in this example, you are out 100 dollars. Whether you forgive it or not, the money came from you, and now that's money you don't have. Your example is actually 1-to-1 with my first example (where Sallie Mae gets screwed over), but scaled down. If America decides on your behalf that the debt is forgiven, then America is now $100 in debt to you that it has to immediately repay.

Maybe you missed this part of my comment, but that's why i mentioned how important it is that it's billions of dollars. Sallie Mae would never accept that billion of dollars just came out of their pocket without their consent. It has to be regenerated.

So, if you give a friend $100, and the government forgives it without committing an obvious crime against you. then you and your friend now have a total of $200 even tho you started with $100.

It's also partly why I started talking about the historical component. If you study how these things played out in history, this shouldn't surprise you or give any doubt. Generating more currency has been standard practice in so many corrupt governments, and it always leads to further economic trouble. It shouldn't surprise you to find out that if the people who can generate money need to pay billions of dollars they'll just generate it.

How is the government nefarious for forgiving loans? You claim it’s about gaining greater control over the populous. However your own argument is forgiving loans would basically cause inflation to go up. Causing people to buy and save less. Hurting businesses in the process. Possibly causing a recession or even worse a depression.

I'm sorry, I feel like you need to read my comment again. I think you're missing a lot of what I'm saying. You mentioned you were tired, were you just skimming my comment? Genuinely, not throwing shade.

What you are describing is exactly what I was describing. We are in agreement here, the general populace all lose, private businesses lose, it's bad for the economy, it's bad for the people. So, everybody loses, at least, assuming people have good intentions, right? So, the only people who are potential winners, are those who see advantage in people's misfortune. Does that make sense? I'm saying the only people who find this to be advantageous are those who are nefarious in nature, because to find advantage in people's misfortune is nefarious.

As for control, consider this. If you make $100,000, you get to decide what to do with it. If someone loans you $100,000, you have to play by their rules. Furthermore, if you're so in debt and the economy is weak, you would have to rely on what they're willing to loan you money for to maintain liquidity and stay afloat. The more that the government and public corporations decide what to fund, the more they're controlling you.

Historically, governments have their most control when populations are fat and happy. Most civil unrest are in uncertain times, such as recessions and depressions. If anything it’s more nefarious for the government to keep the loans and jack up the interest rates where people have no ability to pay it off and can’t bankrupt out of it.

This is an interesting way to look at it. The problem I see with it, is that the times that people are most fat and happy, are when they were most free (least controlled). I mean, you're kinda not wrong, but also totally are? I'll try to explain, you're right that a happier population is generally more compliant and effective - but that's not the same thing as control. I repeat: Stability of the nation, effectiveness of the people, and compliance to the state's wishes, are not synonymous with controlling the population.

Let's look at some historical examples again.

• I talked about Caesar and Diocletian before, so I'll use their eras as an example again. Caesar lived in a period of time where the people were generally wealthy and well fed, and the senate was both still in power, and highly incentivized to veto legislation that restricts freedoms of the people. Free trade prospered, the people were happy (generally), and the population was growing. Caesar's veterans were loyal followers, that believed in him, his abilities, and his promises almost as much as they feared him. Diocletian, however, ruled over a period of decline in population and economy, and yet the power of the state grew exponentially. His control over the people was massive, in fact, this is one of the first historical examples of wide scale price fixing by the state. People lost so much freedom under Diocletian that historians tend to call it the beginning of Feudalism - plebeian rights began to much more resemble those of medieval peasants.

• A more concise example from Rome that illustrates control, is when the early Republic forgave debts if you provided labor to the state. "We paid your debt, now you have to work for us to make it worth it".

• Maybe consider what the word totalitarian means to you in more recent history. A state that controls everything within it. What states have been totalitarian in the past? We don't typically correlate "totalitarianism" with a fat, happy, and compliant population, but it's the epitome of "control". Stalin's Soviet State had total control over his population. The most control is total control, and total control is totalitarianism. I don't know about you, but when I think totalitarianism, I think people like Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Kim Jung-Il... All of these people exert(ed) maximum control over their people, and it came at the cost of the people every time.

Plus I think it’s rich to give upset at people for making dumb choices before going to the place that makes them smart enough to realize how dumb they there.

I never suggested I was upset at students who made bad choices. I said we need a cultural shift that discourages young students from seeing it as a default choice. Where did you get that I was upset at them for that? I think it's tragic that society guides them towards such as risky choice - I'm specifically not putting blame on them and suggesting something that has nothing to do with their personal choice. How could you think I was mad at them

This was the last sentence in my first comment, please read it again: "as long as you know that it comes from a place of genuine concern for everyone including students with debt".

I really appreciate the conversation, I appreciate that you took the time to type your thoughts out when sleep was calling you, but I do take issue with unfavorable assumptions like this, especially when I can see it coming a mile away and try really hard to nip it in the bud but it just doesn't seem to work. I appreciate you but please don't ever do that to me anymore.

Anyways, sorry for the long comment again, let me just try and get back to a point of agreement. I'm okay with 0 interest loans for students, but that's also a service that I think is worth paying for. The circumstance I laid out before, where some interest is paid so the loaner can profit, while the student still pays less in total for school, does seem like an ideal case, but I don't see a need for the education department of the state to profit, so maybe state given loans could be 0 interest? For private loans, the best case is for the individual to establish an interest rate and cap that's reasonable for them (this can and does already happen sometimes). But, if you want to treat student like a protected class (probably warranted these days), establishing an interest cap by law for student loans specifically might be a good idea.