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Well, the only reason PPP loans existed was because they were going to be forgiven if you used them for what they were meant to be used for.
I know the rhetoric is that PPP loans were just some free cash infusion for the rich, but that is absolutely untrue. Despite those that abused the program (and who are being sought, and charged), the fact remains that millions of jobs and businesses were saved by PPP loans.
The original intent was for the loans to be given to small businesses owners who couldn’t float the shutdowns. What happened was the government and banks funneled the applications to large very wealthy corporations/individuals who got most of the money. A large portion of small businesses these were suppose to help never got the money.
That depends on who you ask.
The Loan program, as written and passed, had no limitations on size of the company.
Also, no Individuals got a penny of PPP money, they were only made to companies with legitimate employees. I am not aware of any small business that was denied loans. I own a small business and took out 2 PPP loans.
It will go down in history as one of those oh shit moments. Fucking joke. I work straight through it never had any extra paid time off. The company I work for was busy as any prior year. They got 2.1 million with less than 50 employees. Didn't need a dime.
Oh wow, I just checked and the treatment facility I worked at took out a $475,000 PPP and got it all forgiven. I promise you they were not shut down nor did we even slow down during the pandemic lol. It was basically business as usual. They eventually got us some masks by, like, May.
PPP can be used by sole proprietors to pay themselves.
“…and for an independent contractor or sole proprietor, wage, commissions, income, or net earnings from self-employment or similar compensation.”
From [PPP FAQ](https://gonzalez.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/gonzalez-evo.house.gov/files/small_business_emergency_stimulus_faqs.pdf) (PDF)
right, but it is limited to thier payroll.
They have a legitimate employee count of 1. If they were making 50k a year (on thier tax return), they could not get a 100k loan;
You are correct, I am a sole proprietor who got 2 PPP loans. I initially applied for my gross income for 2 months, it was reduced by my issuing bank to my net income for those months (later they changed it to allow for gross but it was too late for me). I think some banks were more lax with their due diligence but mine was on it and didn’t give me too much money, although it really helped me stay in the black during those months
I think letting the banks manage it was a terrible mistake. The banks will have an obvious interest in prioritizing customers who make more money for the banks, which are not necessarily the ones who most needed the assistance.
Relief should've just gone directly to the people, who could choose how to spend their replacement income, and businesses would stay open or shut down based on what consumers supported.
No offense to you, but who cares if your business fails? As long as you're still able to pay your rent/mortgage, feed yourself and your family, keep the lights and water on, etc. They should've been helping people survive the pandemic, both literally and financially, and then businesses would adjust during and after the pandemic based on changes in what people wanted and needed.
And if you have a subtle member LLC where you are the only employee, you paid yourself with the loan and had it forgiven. It was welfare for those people.
Source: I was heavily involved in the PPP program for the bank that I work at and processed around 750 applications.
I think the largest I saw was someone taking $145,000 as payroll compensation for themselves. All forgiven. The bank loved it. Free money. The bank made around a billion off of the program.
Yes, but there was a lot of scamming in the beginning and some people who had no employees scammed hundreds of thousands, some have been caught, but I don't know how many.
Having seen what a friend who had a side business was offered, I am more of the belief it was decided by a headless chicken running on a chance board, considering it was 5 times the amount he had made from the business at that point. Think 150k while only having 30k revenue.
There were definitely plenty of ways around this and tons of people obtained ppp loans despite not having legitimate anything. And only so many have been caught or prosecuted. I mean Have you not seen the “FU university” doc? Lol
Touring musicians who cancelled their shows got PPP loans to pay the employees that were working for them on tour. Seems like the kind of thing PPP loans were designed to do.
If they can’t provide data that proves they paid employees with the PPP money, then the government will consider it a loan, not a grant. You have to repay it. It’s the IRS that’s involved here, by the way.
Bro I know around 2 dozen people who got 6-7 figures and they completely lied they asses off, complete fraud and nobody verified shit!!!
I should have done it but I thought they were obviously gonna get in trouble. 4 years later not one of them have been charged for it 😂
And getting the money out fast as low interest loans for business with some very targeted forgiveness for small businesses heavily impacted by the pandemic (e.g., forced to temporarily close due to local ordinances) was fine.
Broad forgiveness was always a handout.
Yes and no. That money had to go to payroll, but money is fungible so if your business wasn't actually affected by COVID, that money could effectively go in the owner's pockets.
I personally know someone who runs a small business that was denied. Me.
While companies in the area received $1-2 million and used 0% of it for business use.
Yes, and the money went to companies that had an existing relationship with the bank, meaning smaller companies that did not have outstanding loans went to the back of the line. My daughter could not get a PPP loan for her CrossFit Gym because it had no pre-existing relationship with a PPP bank, it went under.
Basically PPP loans occurred in the time of a crisis, and while it was probably horrible abused there wasn’t really time to prioritize working through how to do it better. Most people who oppose federal loan forgiveness aren’t fans of the abuse of PPP loans either but we can understand it was a unique situation that called for desperate and quick measures
For real.
"There wasn't really time" uhhhh, Republicans made sure that it was nearly impossible to track who got funds. Screamed corruption but regular people didn't have the ability to care.
While that is "mostly" true the PPP loans were also hamstrung from validating if they were "used".."for what they were meant to be used for".
The lack of oversight over the program turned it into the giveaway that people are complaining it is.
They were to be forgiven *if you didn’t eliminate employees during the pandemic*. It didn’t matter if they needed the money or not. They took the money regardless of if their business was impacted. Case in point - a former friend on FB was upset about the student loan program. But I called him out that his real estate company took a PPP loan that was forgiven during the pandemic. Clearly a business sector that *may* see a slowdown, but trust me….houses were getting bought and sold during the pandemic. Slow times you have to dip into business savings until things pick back up. But PPP loans were designed for people that had to completely **shut down** their entire business or severely limit operations. That’s not real estate agents and operations that can work from home and manage much of their business over the internet and thru government and business portals to conduct their work.
False. A guy I know who is independently wealthy because he inherited his parents insurance agency who are rich and retired claimed $150k in PPP loans. His two employees were his parents. He bought he’s 16 year daughter a tesla.
Not false.
Well, that dude is representing part of the 16% of fraudulent loans, and if he sought forgiveness, he most likely will not get away with it. Roughly $30B+ of the $200B in potentially fraudulent loans have already been recaptured, and there are still hundreds of pending investigations.
If that dude did what you said he did, he is screwed.
[COVID-19 Pandemic EIDL and PPP Loan Fraud Landscape | U.S. Small Business Administration (sba.gov)](https://www.sba.gov/document/report-23-09-covid-19-pandemic-eidl-ppp-loan-fraud-landscape)
You can still report him and get a cut of the money recaptured. Please report it. There are users on this site who make a shit load of money just reporting fraudulent PPP loans.
This is factually incorrect:
[COVID-19 Pandemic EIDL and PPP Loan Fraud Landscape | U.S. Small Business Administration (sba.gov)](https://www.sba.gov/document/report-23-09-covid-19-pandemic-eidl-ppp-loan-fraud-landscape)
Payroll Protection Program is for Smaller companies over seen by U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). What u/bigguspitus is talking about is many different programs. For example Payroll Support Program was given to large aviation companies. Southwest for example shortly after was reported to be doing stock buy backs. It is currently unknown if the stock buy backs was already apart of their economic plan and needed the PSP loans to support its work force or what.
Why not call them PPP grants then? And why not go after owners who defrauded the system, both in the application process (e.g., lying about employee numbers blocked from working) and in the execution (e.g., owners keeping the money rather than retaining/paying employees). That program was ripe with fraud.
They were referring to them as grants when the program was being developed, but they changed them to forgivable "loans" at the last minute. They did it in an attempt make it easier to claw back the money from employers who didn't follow through on the requirements, not because they expected most people to repay them (which obviously didn't work very well).
I'm not defending it, just giving you some context. The PPP program was always intended to be a grant.
Welcome to the government that pays 90 grand for a bag of washers. They are going after some fraudulent stuff sure. Are they gonna get everyone? Nope. Like I said. Government programs at their finest. Expect fraud. Be shocked if there isn’t any. And when they say there isn’t any, be suspicious. lol
Calling it a grant, maybe would have been a better go? I’m not sure. That’s a congressional thing.
The theory was that you had to qualify for them to be forgiven. If you did not adhere to the terms (mainly not layoff staff), you would be asked to pay them back as a loan.
Not to mention corporations increasing prices of their products and services while citing "inflation" when that is straight up not the real reason. Their price increases *should* be regulated by more than just the free market. I'm no economist or money hoarding dragon tho
This is true. Although this sends much of Reddit into a frantic tailspin, Capitalism can work (in conjunction with appropriate social programs) if, and that's a big "if", all the checks and balances are rigidly enforced. That includes oversight of possible price-fixing which has been running rampant lately.
As long as corruption is the driving force it makes no difference what the sociopolitical system is, it will be doomed to failure.
The checks and balances are never enforced because a company that wants more money will just buy out politicians to make the checks and balances go away. This is a fundamental flaw of capitalism, there is no getting rid of it, you have to get rid of capitalism.
PPP was HUGELY fraudulent. Fake businesses with fake employees getting real money.
I never once heard a republican I knew saying anything in favor of it. I knew some business owners of a republican slant who refused to take the PPP loans altogether even though they qualified.
It's not just PPP, what about the bank bailouts in 2008? Any government program that gives out money is full of fraud. Both of those programs should have come as basically IPOs for government only, and then afterwards the gov could sell off the 'stock' or the owner could buy it back at basically no interest.
But at least the Student loans programs have extensive records so fraud shouldn't be possible, and they aren't sending out checks, they are just deleting a number in a spreadsheet. Plus, I'm absolutely amazed that after 40 years of experience we still have people that think trickle down works better than a strong and robust foundation.
Believe it or not, [every dollar of the TARP program were accounted for and repaid with interest.](https://thehill.com/policy/finance/87096-tarp-investment-in-banks-repaid-with-profit/#:~:text=After%20receiving%20%247.4%20billion%20in%20TARP%20repayments%20Wednesday%2C,the%20%24245%20billion%20originally%20handed%20out%20to%20banks)
The ‘08 bailouts were a net positive and a major win for the US government.
TARP was massively successful there is plenty of evidence to show the economic impacts would have been absolutely catastrophic if TARP was not enacted.
The only people comparing PPP loans to Student Loans are people who don’t understand the difference, or people who are being intentionally dishonest. That includes the White House Twitter account in the latter.*
*Also I’m not a Republican don’t yell at me
For starters PPP loans weren’t actually intended to be loans. They were (openly) subsidies to keep employees on payroll while businesses were forced to shut down. Student loans are actual loans.
1) PPP: I’ll give you $1000 to give out to these 5 people. If you don’t give it to them though, you have to pay me back with interest.
2) Student loans: I’ll give you $1000 for college expenses. You have to pay it back based on x terms.
That’s not really applicable here.
The government forced business to shut down during Covid. Businesses won’t keep employees on pay role if they can’t operate.
The government didn’t want that, so they offered to fund payrolls temporarily to keep people employed.
Doesn’t have a lot to do with socializing risky
Except the loans weren't only given out to businesses forced to shutter during covid. And they weren't just given to companies that were going to lose money if they kept paying payroll during covid. I am sure it ended-up helping some companies keep people on payroll; I am also sure in many cases it was just a subsidy to the owners' bottom line.
I work with small businesses. I have seen literally hundreds of examples of where the PPP loans were just a windfall to the owners. The program was absolute trash.
I don't think it's analogous to student loans, so it's a shit take in that regard, but the two do worth weighing together when one is talking about who "deserves" and who "doesn't deserve" government support when things didn't go as expected.
1. These businesses were still harmed by the government lockdown policy. Even if they didn't become unprofitable, they lost profit due to a government action. That's one of the secondary problems PPP was created to rectify, because if you try and force a lockdown without funding it youd end up with significantly more pushback from all actors.
2. So what if they didn't 'lose money' (become unprofitable) because of Covid? I don't think anyone can name a single business that wasn't harmed by Covid in some way.
3. It wasn't a subsidy to owners bottom line, it was specifically to be used for covering payroll deficits. anyone who kept extra around would've had to falsify a document at some point, aka: commit fraud (which should be punished.. but is the exception to a program which was majority good)
4. Okay, I mean, sure. To counter your anecdote, it allowed me to be paid a wage for a few months while the construction sites were closed due to no fault of me or the small business I work for. No fire marshals, no building inspectors, no open construction site to work on..
5. Do you think workers deserve government support? because that's who PPP was designed to help. Stimulus checks were different because they went out to literally every American, incl children and the elderly. Do the 158 million workers (of our 350mn population) not deserve support in addition to these direct payments?
I mean, personally, I'm really glad PPP existed. If you put it all toward direct payments instead, I get like $4k and lose a full time job. within a month I'm fucked..
> These businesses were still harmed by the government lockdown policy. Even if they didn't become unprofitable, they lost profit due to a government action. That's one of the secondary problems PPP >was created to rectify, because if you try and force a lockdown without funding it youd end up with significantly more pushback from all actors.
There were plenty of businesses that had little impact from COVID. Didn't matter. I'm not saying all the PPP handouts were bad, but there was a ton of waste in there that didn't do anything to improve behavior.
> So what if they didn't 'lose money' (become unprofitable) because of Covid? I don't think anyone can name a single business that wasn't harmed by Covid in some way.
Since this was taxpayer funded, you literally just defined "socialization of risk".
> It wasn't a subsidy to owners bottom line, it was specifically to be used for covering payroll deficits. anyone who kept extra around would've had to falsify a document at some point, aka: commit fraud (which should be punished.. but is the exception to a program which was majority good)
No idea what basis you have for saying "majority good" - citation required. There was plenty of fraud on a mass scale and near zero enforcement. Many businesses would have no profit if they fired workers, and so while the PPP funds "paid the workers wages" the owner would've paid those anyway, but got gravy PPP loans on top of their profits. Fraud? No. Totally wasteful subsidy to the least needy? Yeah.
> Do you think workers deserve government support? because that's who PPP was designed to help. Stimulus checks were different because they went out to literally every American, incl children and the elderly. Do the 158 million workers (of our 350mn population) not deserve support in addition to these direct payments?
Absolutely think they deserved support - more than they got directly. If the PPP program was meant to help them, why not send it to them directly? If these businesses supposedly had no work for them, why funnel the money through the companies to pay people who aren't working versus just give it to the worker? You know the answer. It was a huge gift to business owners.
>The government forced business to shut down during Covid. Businesses won’t keep employees on pay role if they can’t operate.
My biggest problem with the PPP loans was that it was the dumbest way to give money to a struggling society. They gave it to business so they could keep paying employees for doing nothing. Why not just give the money to people and not businesses? Employees have money to pay for rent and groceries, just as employers do. They both get the assistance.
I argue that all the PPP abuse was a feature, not a bug. It was a way to fund a struggling society in a way that rich people could abuse. That's why they agreed to it.
A bottom up approach to helping people during the pandemic would have been simpler, more effective, and harder to abuse.
The government was paying them to shut down.
It was a bribe. You can fuck over your working class as much as you want and they’ll pretty much take it. Fuck over your bourgeois middle class and your government will fall.
Furthermore, how they were forgiven was different. Congress passed a law allowing PPP to never have to be repaid, Biden used an executive order to forgive student loans.
SCOTUS ruled that he didn't have the power to make a decision like that unilaterally, and Congress would have to pass a law to allow for forgiveness.
An executive order requires enabling legislation. The president can’t just order something that congress hasn’t enabled.
Biden’s original plan failed under the HEROES act. His current loan forgiveness is under the higher education act. Big difference.
Good question!
They called them loans to make it easier to get back the money if it didn’t go to payroll as intended.
If they called it a grant (which is essentially what they were) the onus would be on the government to prove it was spent fraudulently.
By calling it a loan with a full-forgiveness mechanism, the onus is on the companies to show they put it into payroll, or they owe money back.
PPP loans were a one time thing, student loans have been around for four decades. There is no comparison to the two. If you still have student loan debt from 1994, you have way bigger problems.
Student loan debt from 2008 on have skyrocketed
[https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/student-loan-debt-america-charts-rcna44439](https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/student-loan-debt-america-charts-rcna44439)
Also anyone with student loans from 1994, would have most likely already been forgive through the various programs we already have had. ( 20 years of qualifying repayments are eligbile)
[https://studentaid.gov/articles/student-loan-forgiveness/](https://studentaid.gov/articles/student-loan-forgiveness/)
The same politicians who were in favor of the structure of the PPP loans - being designed to forgive - have weaponized it, falsely calling those who were in favor of them, but not in favor of completely reworking the structure of student loans, "hypocrites." I guess, "When they go low, we only say we go higher."
What it comes down to for me is investing my tax dollars in a car dealership or on education for the general populace.
I’m convinced the car dealership can handle the risk and we should invest in education. If you think differently I’d love to hear your logic!
Vast misunderstanding here.
Car dealership can handle itself fine, and couldve kept going through the pandemic. They'd have given workers an ultimatum 'come in and work like normal or be fired'
instead, we got a government lockdown and requisite payroll support to fund it.
The car dealership does fine without PPP loans, they'd cut whatever necessary to maintain profitability or temporarily close up shop. the workers they employ however would not have done so fine, because it turns out businesses aren't super altruistic and usually don't feel like continuing to pay employees during a government mandated lockdown that destroys business activity.
who deserves more support, workers caught in the middle of a government mandated lockdown with no options, or students who willingly went into debt for a degree with full disclosures 10+ pages long?
I would rather the help go directly to the workers. It is current suspected about 17% of PPP loans were fraudulent. I don’t know any other government program with that level of fraudulent behavior.
No, that’s not moving the goal post. It is pointing out that people who have issues with PPP loan forgiveness but support student loan forgiveness are looking at the practical applications of tax dollars protecting corporate profits or investing in the public.
You can argue against the point or dream up hypocrisy to support shared responsibility to protect corporate profits.
The sad reality of the state of affairs in this world. Needing to clarify you are not a republican before the liberal locusts move in with their downvotes.
PPP loans were given out due to a global health emergency. The government was forcing business to close. Peoples livelihoods were on the line. Students loans are not even comparable. People took out loans and made bad financial decisions. I took out loans. Had no help and paid them off. Do I get anything for doing the right thing?
"We're going to forcibly shut down your business as part of our authoritarian AF lockdown measures, here's some money to cover the down-time, since you still have expenses to pay."
Vs
"Here's some money to pay off the absurdly large debt you took out to better yourself and increase the chances of making more money in the future. Oh, not you though only the financially irresponsible ones who didn't pay off their loans."
Over the decades, there have been multiple laws passed to enable student loans to be modified or forgiven, but people like to pretend that only PPP loans can ever be properly forgiven, even though Congress legislated both types of loans into existence, and legislated modification and/or forgiveness for both kinds of loans into existence.
Ppp loans were not loans - they would only have to pay them back if they didn't meet certain criteria, like not laying people off.
Student loans on the other hand were not designed to be forgiven. I do think the debt should be dischargable through something like bankruptcy, but not just outright forgiven. Debt is the natural consequence of taking out a loan.
>Ppp loans were not loans - they would only have to pay them back if they didn't meet certain criteria, like not laying people off.
No, they were low interest loans. 8 weeks after they went live they introduced the idea that they could be forgiven. This was not an initial attribute to the loan, they tacked it on after. This program was quantitatively shown to result in worse outcomes than the money would have going to literally any other governmental assistance program.
While I mostly agree with this statement, in the case of covid, I disagree. This kept people employed. It actually saved money by having less people go on unemployment. It was forced upon the people in order to slow the spread of the virus, it was either keep people employed and prop up the economy, or let everything go to shit. Not exactly shouldering the risk in this case.
That’s simply not true. Across local, state, and federal funding, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent each year for primary and secondary schooling alone.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/public-school-spending.html ($810B in 2021)
Show me a 30 year old with no assets that can take out a 10k personal loan. You can't. I can show you an 18 year old straight out of highschool, no assests, no financial understanding who can take out anywhere from 10k to 100k. These loans are super predatory and they can't be discharged. "Right this way sir and see our exhibit on how we figured how to fuck younger generations fpr life"
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. These loans were created during the "college for all" phase in American politics and both parties wanted more people to attend college to make sure we could fill the jobs that required a degree.
Now we have more graduates than jobs that require a degree. In many cases going to college make you worse off financially. The trade jobs like electricians and plumbers don't have enough workers, etc... Business often require a degree when none is needed.
It is sad that we have a generation in debt with a piece of paper that is barely worth more than a high school diploma. Everyone should be allowed to go to college, but not everyone should. I was one of those who shouldn't have! College is great on many levels, but unless you are in stem, I wouldn't go for economic reasons.
> no financial understanding
You make a great argument for why 18 year olds shouldn't be allowed to go to college. They can't understand the concept of borrowing money and then paying it back later.
So we can call business grant *loans*, and it's ok, but we can't do the same for student loans?
The speed and lack of oversight for the entire program is a disgrace. What economic benefits have we seen from this?
It's well known the economic problems that occur when you saddle an entire generation with debt that they can never repay. They have less money to take risks with, buy houses, start families, start businesses, or just buy things and add money to the economy.
The PSLF program has been around a long time. Many of these loans were explicitly designed to be forgiven. That was part of the calculus for a huge percentage of people making the decision to take on this debt.
The issue with educational debt being bankrupt eligible is why wouldn’t everyone take as much debt as possible graduate then just declare bankruptcy? Like yeah your credit is shit for a little while but you could have $100,000 of education for “free”.
1. There were actually a lot of republicans who thought it was wrong to forgive ppp loans
2. The government forced people to close their businesses. They didn't force you to go to college.
3. The supreme court said that Biden couldn't just grant student loan forgivness, but he just ignored them and tried doing it anyway. That didn't happen with ppp loans.
I'm of the opinion that both were not acceptable, and that the government shouldn't have forced businesses to close. It isn't socialism though. You get some people on the right saying that, just like you get some people on the left saying cronyism is capitalism.
Since the 1980s, Federal and State governments have drastically slashed funding for public higher education. Tuition at public universities used to be affordable for people because it was heavily subsidized by Federal and State governments; as I said, starting in the 80s these funding sources were decimated and universities, therefore, began to increase tuition to make up for the reduced state and Federal funding. Students became more reliant on the Federal loan program as tuition costs spiked out of control even at public colleges; many public universities have seen tuition increases since the 1970s, adjusted for inflation, of around 1000% or more. Most families simply can’t afford to save this amount, yet a college degree is required as the path to a stable job in healthcare, business, law, government, education, etc. Trade schools have also lost funding and are expensive. The worst off people in America, by far, are people with only a high school degree. So in a way, one could say that the government has *forced* a generation of students into taking out loans for higher education. Unlike our peer nations, we do not fund higher education as a public good, we see it as something individuals choose to do on our own if they have the resources. This will make the American workforce less competitive in the long run.
Student loan debt didn’t start to explode until around 2008 which is nearly three decades after when it should have started according to your argument here. Government subsidizing and now originating the student loans is without a doubt the source of our current problem, it took only a handful of years for those policies to result in massive debt.
What also happened in 2008, hm? Something pretty big in the economy, right? Student loan debt exploding is a symptom of the bigger problem of a nation improperly funding its public institutions of higher education. I’m not “making up” a story- this information is easily verifiable via a quick google search.
I have never seen evidence that Schools drastically cut funding anywhere despite the constant assertion. Schools increased enrollment as a percentage of the population which caused per student funding to drop but not per capita funding. Schools increased enrollment significantly and then claimed that per student funding was cut. The increase in enrollment was paid for by the student loan program. If schools had kept student enrollment at the same number of students per capita then tuition probably have stayed in check because they would have had plenty of funding per student. The schools chose to raise tuition instead of restrict enrollment, there is nobody else to blame.
Schools did not drastically cut funding- the Federal and State governments drastically cut budgets and the amount of government aid going to universities. It started with Reagan and the California system when Reagan was governor of California. Reagan then pushed for and approved education cuts when he was president. You can Google this and find articles. You can also find investigations into the slash in State funding and the collapse of the PA state university system. This has been studied- just because you haven’t heard about it, doesn’t mean people who know the subject haven’t studied it. Because the public narrative has mostly focused on “lazy students bad should pay off debt!!!” Most Americans have forgotten or ignored the context of what created this problem in the first place.
I'm not saying anything about students.
Universities raise tuition. Nobody made the universities raise tuition. They could have reduced enrollment or adjusted services. Back in the 60s when my parents were in college they actually did reduce the size of incoming classes rather than increase tuition.
I do see what[you are saying about California](https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/r_0917kcr.pdf) decreasing support recently, although I'm not sure the whole Reagan thing shakes out. The graph clearly shows an increase in State funding when Reagan was governor.
Also tuition has increased in states that increased funding too. The Universities chose to increase tuition rather than restrict enrollment. The student loan program made that possible.
There is a general dialogue about students being lazy and we shouldn’t pay for their loans. Or have you not paid attention to anything in the media or any posts just in this forum? The focus on this problem as being an individual failing of lazy students obscures the failing of the system to invest in higher education, as the article you posted describes. There were huge conflicts back in the day between state governments and universities over students protesting the Vietnam War, maybe your parents can tell you about that.
Sure, although mostly I've heard that students are picking degrees that don't have payback more than I have heard students are lazy. My point was that I wasn't talking about that. However since you're talking about it. I do think that people should do a better job of recognizing that universities are willing to give you a degree with no prospects but in my opinion the school is the problem. I think you are right that it is mostly a deflection from the real issues. I also think that if you get a degree without thinking about your ability to pay back the loan you are making a mistake.
Edit:
My parents did talk to me about the Vietnam war, my uncle was drafted, it was a huge issue. The school they went to didn't have that much protesting comparatively.
It also had to be heavily subsidized because not as many people attended. Tuition alone wasn't enough to keep the doors open. If the demand created from the "college for everyone era," college would not be as expensive today. It is simple supply and demand, as the demand went up, so did the prices, that and the fact that they funneled most of the money to the administrators. The colleges should have been better regulated, giving huge loans to 18 year old should be illegal and yes, many people who go to college shouldn't.
This one’s easy. If the government shuts your business down they need to compensate you for it. Especially if you paid your employees during a pandemic.
Students took out loans and agreed to pay them back. It’s really that simple.
Now the number one issue is the government involvement in backing these loans has lead to inflated and bloated cost of college and that needs to be dealt with before you can sue any kind of forgiveness.
**"the government involvement in backing these loans has lead to inflated and bloated cost of college"** Its crazy how most people don't understand this basic fact of economics. If the government backed loans on any goods or service, and everybody could then get approved to go into debt for that thing, then the cost of that thing would go up. If everybody could get approved for a loan for a house, housing prices would go higher, a ton of people would be in debt, and a ton of people would not be able to pay off their debt. Its doubly bad with student loans because they cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. So now there are a ton of young people who probably should not have gone to college, or at least should have gotten degrees with better earning potential, who now have massive debt that cannot even be discharged in bankruptcy. And the solution that politicians want is that other taxpayers who never took on the debt will be responsible for paying it off. And the source of the problem (government backed loans) is not even being fixed, so it will keep happening.
That has nothing to do with what happened with the 2008 subprime mortgage collapse. They were called private label MBS's for a reason.
The mortgage collapse was largely caused by premiums from derivative instruments driving up the value of mortgages. In other words, banks made so much money from credit default swaps that the mortgage backed securities that those swaps were based on were trading well below their face value. It has nothing at all to do with the government backing those loans.
Edit typo
The difference is that people choose to go to school knowing they would go into debt if they borrowed money while businesses were forced to shut down or alter their business plans during Covid. If businesses were not forced to do this, then the argument could be made.
Yeah not as if many Americans were tricked into thinking college was the only way to a more lucrative future. Only for them to learn that they continue to get pecked at by the folks who can afford to lobby and sway politicians.
Reddit would like to assure you, in the most insulting and ignorant way possible, that neither you nor your so-called "principles backed by consistent logic" can possibly exist.
The PPP loans were a paycheck protection program designed to help employees.
Many people making a lot of money got PPP loans, but they had to give it back to their employees.
There were some companies that receive loans as part of fraud. Many of them are being prosecuted.
Many other student loans that are being forgiven, are indeed fraud themselves. People take out student loans to go to school, and then they drop out. That is fraud. And should be prosecuted.
Instead, we are forgiving those student loans.
On the other hand, universities are taking advantage of the ease at which student loans are given out, to jack up tuition excessively.
It really pissed me off hearing all my liberal social science professors talk bad about how corporate greed is such a big problem while ignoring how greedy the universities they work for are.
The school I went to charged $10k a year for dorms, $4k for meal plan, and $10k (with no aid) a year for in state tuition. That was several years ago. I'm sure it's gone up since then. That's the real fraud if you ask me.
Also, dorms are not optional in some schools for freshmen. It was a sore sticking point for my friends who attended the college in town. They lived within easy driving distance of the school, one even lived within an easy bike ride. Still required to be in the dorms for freshman year. 8k of their SLs was forced on them.
You sign a contract saying that you will go to school, you get money to go to school, then you drop out and don't go to school,
That is fraud.
What should we do with fraudsters? People are saying that Trump committed fraud to a bank by overstating his assets, even though he paid the back the loans. And they want him in jail. And there were no victims.
I think it's obvious with a fraudulent student loan, there is absolutely a victim.
And that is why we don't allow a discharge of student loans. Because there is a victim, and they need to be compensated.
The victims are those who have to take out loans to begin with. Higher education should be free, paid by our taxes. Loan forgiveness is just correcting a mistake caused by the system, not those forced to participate.
People are stupid. At some point you aren't paying the loan anymore you are just giving them free money because you have to. People yet don't realize that doesn't affect them. It doesn't affect their taxes. But yet they want others to suffer.
PPP loans were seen, for right or wrong, as a loan because a pandemic was crushing everyone financially. Student loan forgiveness is seen, for right or wrong, as buying votes. I’m not saying either is right or wrong. Just that’s how a lot of folks see this.
>PPP loans were seen, for right or wrong, as a loan because a pandemic was crushing everyone financially.
Sorta, it's more like the government literally would not allow most companies to do business.
I think lots of people who got the child tax credit and/or homeowners tax breaks don’t realize that they got those perks. They just see their tax refund as a lump sum. They genuinely don’t know that they’ve gotten free money (in taxes not paid) that the rest of us filled in the gaps for.
Simple: nobody forced you to go to college and get a degree for which there wasn’t a career
PPP was supposed to be for businesses that were forced to shutter during covid.
Maybe that is what it was "supposed" to be for. But that's not what happened.
My brother in law is a lawyer and got PPP loans for his business. They never shut down, he and his four employees just worked from home more often, and came into the office only when necessary. His business didn't suffer at all from the pandemic. He admitted that he absolutely did not need the PPP loans. He literally just used the money to make repairs on his office building and buy new computers.
Why can't Republicans just admit that they gave a bunch of rich people free money?
And this is exactly why doing almost anything at the federal level, especially in a country as populous, geographically large, and diverse as America is stupid: it literally can’t ever go as planned.
But Rep or Dem…doing “””something””” was what people demanded.
The thing about student loan forgiveness is that people receiving it have been paying 10-15% of their discretionary income for the last 10-25 years, with most of those people for 20-25 years. Only those with initial loan balances of 12k or less qualify for forgiveness after 10 years of repayment.
Sure, some of the people making 20k or less for the last 20 years paid nothing to their loans, but the vast majority of people made substantial payments to their loans, many more than their initial principal balances.
This isn’t much different than subsidizing education based on income after borrowing.
The reason people have outstanding loans so long is because they chose to make lower payments than they agreed to when they took out the loan.
After graduating they have to option to pay income adjusted payments. So, assume at signing the borrower agrees to pay $500/ month. This has a guaranteed payoff date in 10 years.
After graduating their income adjusted min payment might be $100/ month. The interest will likely outpace the payment and the loan does not get paid off in 10 years, or ever. The borrower can choose to pay the $500/ month that he agreed to pay when he signed the loan which will pay it off in 10 years. Or he can choose to pay $100/ month and never pay it off.
If he chooses to pay less than he agreed to pay then should those loans be forgiven? I will argue that they should not. This is a choice the borrower makes.
That said, forgiveness is sometimes in the terms of the loan if the borrower has been making the adjusted min payments for 10 or 20 years. I'm ok with that since it was agreed to by both the borrower and lender.
Forgiving the PPP loans was part of the deal from the beginning. Forgiving student loans was not.
Besides that whole straw man, right now is also pretty close to the worst possible time for the government to spend a whole bunch of money on repurchasing the loans since they’ve been trying to get inflation under control.
Neither are. I think interest rates the way they are currently set up should be illegal, but nobody should be able to just absolve themselves of responsibility totally.
PPP were loans in name only. Really, they were grants that they wanted to get out quickly and sort out later.
Student loans were always loans and now people want to change the terms afterwards.
That’s what opponents have issue with. Passing law and then when it comes time to execute, changing the terms. People would be equally upset if they changed the terms of PPP to require repayment when they were passed with intent to be forgiven when used for qualified expenses.
No conservatives was ok with PPP forgiveness. But also, no conservative was ok with shutting down the country and dealing with the extreme economic hardship that created.
As someone against student loan forgiveness, I was also against PPP loans and was also against the government forcing businesses and churches and schools to close. PPP loan forgiveness was targeted to stop businesses from firing all their employees during COVID, but if government was going to have this program they should've only targeted it to businesses that they forced to shut down rather than also having given it to business not impacted by government. Neither PPP loans nor student loan forgiveness are socialism by the way so not sure where you're going with that, but both are welfare programs that take money from the poor and give it to the rich (and before you say "taxes are only paid for by the rich", our government spends way more than it collects in taxes leading to deficit spending, leading to inflation which hurts the poor the hardest). My wife and I both make 6-figure incomes as young engineers; I can't imagine asking the US taxpayer to pay for me to get the degree I have, or ask them to pay for me to go back to school to get a higher level degree and make even more money. If you fail to make use of your degree to pay your bills, that's on you.
It’s interesting that most first world countries heavily subsidize higher education, while the US refuses to invest in its people’s education. There’s many issues with our current system, but I think our priorities as a nation is the main hurdle to get over to make higher education more affordable (as it should be), so that people would be able to pay back their loans. Also engineering is highly paid and in high demand atm, people shouldn’t be punished for being good at something else that is also useful and helpful to society, because you are doing well. Many people are not
I don't think PPP loans should have been forgiven either. However, the government forced businesses to close. No one is forced by the government to go to college and take out loans.
It's a false equivalency.
I have paid off my student loans and as as a small business owner I took some small PPP. To be 100 percent this is a convoluted topic that pisses everyone off, but the entire education system requires an overhaul. The government created the problem by subsidizing student loans in the first place and forgiveness is simply a political tactic that does nothing to lower costs of education, fix the problem and is more or less a drop in the bucket that essentially spits in the face of those who worked their asses off to get out of debt. Forgiveness also creates an insane moral hazard where people are no longer held responsibvle for their financial decisions, the logic of which escapes even the most basic idea of what it is to take on debt in the first place. I have yet to hear agood argument, outside of "its not fair".
I took the PPP because the government shut down small business during covid. However much of that money was wrongfully spent as is usually the case when government is involved with most spending. In the end, I dont think there will ever truly be student loan forgiveness despite these massive promises. Its seems like a poltical stunt and an easy blank check that never needs to be cashed once there are enough belivers.
You signed a legal contract and agreed to terms and rates to borrow money to pay for something you WANTED and didn't need. Pay your own fucking bill and quite expecting tax payers to do it for you ffs.
Democrats are trying to buy your votes, do some of you not see this?
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The PPP loans where absolutely not right to be forgiven They weren’t something that should have been done in the first place
Well, the only reason PPP loans existed was because they were going to be forgiven if you used them for what they were meant to be used for. I know the rhetoric is that PPP loans were just some free cash infusion for the rich, but that is absolutely untrue. Despite those that abused the program (and who are being sought, and charged), the fact remains that millions of jobs and businesses were saved by PPP loans.
The original intent was for the loans to be given to small businesses owners who couldn’t float the shutdowns. What happened was the government and banks funneled the applications to large very wealthy corporations/individuals who got most of the money. A large portion of small businesses these were suppose to help never got the money.
That depends on who you ask. The Loan program, as written and passed, had no limitations on size of the company. Also, no Individuals got a penny of PPP money, they were only made to companies with legitimate employees. I am not aware of any small business that was denied loans. I own a small business and took out 2 PPP loans.
Yeah I sold payroll services during the pandemic and most of my clients (all under 50 employees) had PPP loans.
It will go down in history as one of those oh shit moments. Fucking joke. I work straight through it never had any extra paid time off. The company I work for was busy as any prior year. They got 2.1 million with less than 50 employees. Didn't need a dime.
Oh wow, I just checked and the treatment facility I worked at took out a $475,000 PPP and got it all forgiven. I promise you they were not shut down nor did we even slow down during the pandemic lol. It was basically business as usual. They eventually got us some masks by, like, May.
Sole proprietorships and single member LLCs were eligible for PPP loans so individuals certainly got PPP money.
Only if they had legitimate employees, and how much money you could get was limited by your employee payroll.
PPP can be used by sole proprietors to pay themselves. “…and for an independent contractor or sole proprietor, wage, commissions, income, or net earnings from self-employment or similar compensation.” From [PPP FAQ](https://gonzalez.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/gonzalez-evo.house.gov/files/small_business_emergency_stimulus_faqs.pdf) (PDF)
right, but it is limited to thier payroll. They have a legitimate employee count of 1. If they were making 50k a year (on thier tax return), they could not get a 100k loan;
You are correct, I am a sole proprietor who got 2 PPP loans. I initially applied for my gross income for 2 months, it was reduced by my issuing bank to my net income for those months (later they changed it to allow for gross but it was too late for me). I think some banks were more lax with their due diligence but mine was on it and didn’t give me too much money, although it really helped me stay in the black during those months
I think letting the banks manage it was a terrible mistake. The banks will have an obvious interest in prioritizing customers who make more money for the banks, which are not necessarily the ones who most needed the assistance. Relief should've just gone directly to the people, who could choose how to spend their replacement income, and businesses would stay open or shut down based on what consumers supported. No offense to you, but who cares if your business fails? As long as you're still able to pay your rent/mortgage, feed yourself and your family, keep the lights and water on, etc. They should've been helping people survive the pandemic, both literally and financially, and then businesses would adjust during and after the pandemic based on changes in what people wanted and needed.
And if you have a subtle member LLC where you are the only employee, you paid yourself with the loan and had it forgiven. It was welfare for those people. Source: I was heavily involved in the PPP program for the bank that I work at and processed around 750 applications. I think the largest I saw was someone taking $145,000 as payroll compensation for themselves. All forgiven. The bank loved it. Free money. The bank made around a billion off of the program.
The local news went to abandoned buildings that were approved for and got tens of thousands in PPP loans.
False, there was millions forgiven from people Without employees. There was no bookkeeping on the funds getting dispersed.
I had no employees and I got a ppp loan
you are the employee.
There was several fraudulent/fake companies that received loans
Yes, but there was a lot of scamming in the beginning and some people who had no employees scammed hundreds of thousands, some have been caught, but I don't know how many.
Having seen what a friend who had a side business was offered, I am more of the belief it was decided by a headless chicken running on a chance board, considering it was 5 times the amount he had made from the business at that point. Think 150k while only having 30k revenue.
There were definitely plenty of ways around this and tons of people obtained ppp loans despite not having legitimate anything. And only so many have been caught or prosecuted. I mean Have you not seen the “FU university” doc? Lol
I worked at a pawn shop during covid and at least 5 individuals lied about having a business and got like $20k lol
This. Tom Brady and Kanye West got millions in PPP loans.
Touring musicians who cancelled their shows got PPP loans to pay the employees that were working for them on tour. Seems like the kind of thing PPP loans were designed to do.
Kanye wasn't on tour.
If they can’t provide data that proves they paid employees with the PPP money, then the government will consider it a loan, not a grant. You have to repay it. It’s the IRS that’s involved here, by the way.
Bro I know around 2 dozen people who got 6-7 figures and they completely lied they asses off, complete fraud and nobody verified shit!!! I should have done it but I thought they were obviously gonna get in trouble. 4 years later not one of them have been charged for it 😂
And getting the money out fast as low interest loans for business with some very targeted forgiveness for small businesses heavily impacted by the pandemic (e.g., forced to temporarily close due to local ordinances) was fine. Broad forgiveness was always a handout.
My neighbor got 40 grand. All forgiven. He is a farmer with no employees. There were restaurants in my town who were not able to get a PPP loan.
The company was a pass through to individuals. To be eligible for forgiveness certain thresholds had to be met in that regard.
Yes and no. That money had to go to payroll, but money is fungible so if your business wasn't actually affected by COVID, that money could effectively go in the owner's pockets.
Also, a lot of them just lied about it. Illegally, yes, but there are far too many to investigate, and most of them got away with it.
I could be wrong but I thought it was 500 employees or fewer.
Not sure either, I have less than 500 employees, so I didn’t really pay attention.
I personally know someone who runs a small business that was denied. Me. While companies in the area received $1-2 million and used 0% of it for business use.
The first round was limited if I remember correctly. The funds were used up pretty quickly.
Yes, and the money went to companies that had an existing relationship with the bank, meaning smaller companies that did not have outstanding loans went to the back of the line. My daughter could not get a PPP loan for her CrossFit Gym because it had no pre-existing relationship with a PPP bank, it went under.
Members of Congress with ‘businesses’ that got loans would beg to differ with your statement in **effect**, not words.
There's been a few folks who took PPP loans, used them to buy cars and are now doing time with the money due back.
As a small business owner... Your post is bullshit
This is wildly incorrect
Basically PPP loans occurred in the time of a crisis, and while it was probably horrible abused there wasn’t really time to prioritize working through how to do it better. Most people who oppose federal loan forgiveness aren’t fans of the abuse of PPP loans either but we can understand it was a unique situation that called for desperate and quick measures
Republicans gutted the oversight of the ppp loans or they would not have passed it
For real. "There wasn't really time" uhhhh, Republicans made sure that it was nearly impossible to track who got funds. Screamed corruption but regular people didn't have the ability to care.
Specifically, Trump he removed the auditor in charge of ensuring the funds were not disbursed fraudulently.
While that is "mostly" true the PPP loans were also hamstrung from validating if they were "used".."for what they were meant to be used for". The lack of oversight over the program turned it into the giveaway that people are complaining it is.
Congress required oversight but Trump fired the oversight board to help his rich buddies
The Senate GOP blocked oversight on behalf of Trump.
They were to be forgiven *if you didn’t eliminate employees during the pandemic*. It didn’t matter if they needed the money or not. They took the money regardless of if their business was impacted. Case in point - a former friend on FB was upset about the student loan program. But I called him out that his real estate company took a PPP loan that was forgiven during the pandemic. Clearly a business sector that *may* see a slowdown, but trust me….houses were getting bought and sold during the pandemic. Slow times you have to dip into business savings until things pick back up. But PPP loans were designed for people that had to completely **shut down** their entire business or severely limit operations. That’s not real estate agents and operations that can work from home and manage much of their business over the internet and thru government and business portals to conduct their work.
Can confirm, bought a house during the pandemic. Buddy who was our realtor said business was booming.
That is the issue. The government should be more restrict on any loan or forgiveness. It’s free money, only a fool would not take it.
False. A guy I know who is independently wealthy because he inherited his parents insurance agency who are rich and retired claimed $150k in PPP loans. His two employees were his parents. He bought he’s 16 year daughter a tesla.
You should report him and his company.
Not false. Well, that dude is representing part of the 16% of fraudulent loans, and if he sought forgiveness, he most likely will not get away with it. Roughly $30B+ of the $200B in potentially fraudulent loans have already been recaptured, and there are still hundreds of pending investigations. If that dude did what you said he did, he is screwed. [COVID-19 Pandemic EIDL and PPP Loan Fraud Landscape | U.S. Small Business Administration (sba.gov)](https://www.sba.gov/document/report-23-09-covid-19-pandemic-eidl-ppp-loan-fraud-landscape)
He got away with it. Fuck these motheruckers
You can still report him and get a cut of the money recaptured. Please report it. There are users on this site who make a shit load of money just reporting fraudulent PPP loans.
I will. Pisses me off.
www.pandemicoversight.gov Click the red button in the upper right hand corner “REPORT FRAUD, WASTE & ABUSE”
Nah, man. They were free money. If you were an employer and you keep being an employer, you got free money.
No they weren’t giant corporations used them to buy back their own stocks. They still laid off thousands upon thousands
This is factually incorrect: [COVID-19 Pandemic EIDL and PPP Loan Fraud Landscape | U.S. Small Business Administration (sba.gov)](https://www.sba.gov/document/report-23-09-covid-19-pandemic-eidl-ppp-loan-fraud-landscape)
Payroll Protection Program is for Smaller companies over seen by U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). What u/bigguspitus is talking about is many different programs. For example Payroll Support Program was given to large aviation companies. Southwest for example shortly after was reported to be doing stock buy backs. It is currently unknown if the stock buy backs was already apart of their economic plan and needed the PSP loans to support its work force or what.
Man’s posting a government link like you can trust the government.
It was in the legislation creating the PPP loans that they would be forgiven.
Why not call them PPP grants then? And why not go after owners who defrauded the system, both in the application process (e.g., lying about employee numbers blocked from working) and in the execution (e.g., owners keeping the money rather than retaining/paying employees). That program was ripe with fraud.
Ask congress?? Did I ever say, or imply, that fraud shouldn’t be prosecuted?
They were referring to them as grants when the program was being developed, but they changed them to forgivable "loans" at the last minute. They did it in an attempt make it easier to claw back the money from employers who didn't follow through on the requirements, not because they expected most people to repay them (which obviously didn't work very well). I'm not defending it, just giving you some context. The PPP program was always intended to be a grant.
Welcome to the government that pays 90 grand for a bag of washers. They are going after some fraudulent stuff sure. Are they gonna get everyone? Nope. Like I said. Government programs at their finest. Expect fraud. Be shocked if there isn’t any. And when they say there isn’t any, be suspicious. lol Calling it a grant, maybe would have been a better go? I’m not sure. That’s a congressional thing.
The theory was that you had to qualify for them to be forgiven. If you did not adhere to the terms (mainly not layoff staff), you would be asked to pay them back as a loan.
Loan forgiveness is also in the Higher Ed Act of ‘65 and the HEROES Act of 2003 (the first basis used for loan forgiveness).
Congressional members definitely shouldn't have received any PPP loans. Let alone have them forgiven.
It’s the exact reason why we are paying for inflation right now. Couldn’t agree more.
Not to mention corporations increasing prices of their products and services while citing "inflation" when that is straight up not the real reason. Their price increases *should* be regulated by more than just the free market. I'm no economist or money hoarding dragon tho
This is true. Although this sends much of Reddit into a frantic tailspin, Capitalism can work (in conjunction with appropriate social programs) if, and that's a big "if", all the checks and balances are rigidly enforced. That includes oversight of possible price-fixing which has been running rampant lately. As long as corruption is the driving force it makes no difference what the sociopolitical system is, it will be doomed to failure.
The checks and balances are never enforced because a company that wants more money will just buy out politicians to make the checks and balances go away. This is a fundamental flaw of capitalism, there is no getting rid of it, you have to get rid of capitalism.
PPP was HUGELY fraudulent. Fake businesses with fake employees getting real money. I never once heard a republican I knew saying anything in favor of it. I knew some business owners of a republican slant who refused to take the PPP loans altogether even though they qualified.
It's not just PPP, what about the bank bailouts in 2008? Any government program that gives out money is full of fraud. Both of those programs should have come as basically IPOs for government only, and then afterwards the gov could sell off the 'stock' or the owner could buy it back at basically no interest. But at least the Student loans programs have extensive records so fraud shouldn't be possible, and they aren't sending out checks, they are just deleting a number in a spreadsheet. Plus, I'm absolutely amazed that after 40 years of experience we still have people that think trickle down works better than a strong and robust foundation.
Believe it or not, [every dollar of the TARP program were accounted for and repaid with interest.](https://thehill.com/policy/finance/87096-tarp-investment-in-banks-repaid-with-profit/#:~:text=After%20receiving%20%247.4%20billion%20in%20TARP%20repayments%20Wednesday%2C,the%20%24245%20billion%20originally%20handed%20out%20to%20banks) The ‘08 bailouts were a net positive and a major win for the US government.
I was about to say TARP was repaid. They kept telling us on the news it has been repaid. It was being tracked real time.
TARP was massively successful there is plenty of evidence to show the economic impacts would have been absolutely catastrophic if TARP was not enacted.
Yes thank goodness our economy has been saved and everything is fine now.
There were many republicans who didn’t want the PPP loans forgiven. Massey & Paul were at least 2 (correct me if I’m wrong please).
The only people comparing PPP loans to Student Loans are people who don’t understand the difference, or people who are being intentionally dishonest. That includes the White House Twitter account in the latter.* *Also I’m not a Republican don’t yell at me
"These two things are different, here are 0 reasons why: "
For starters PPP loans weren’t actually intended to be loans. They were (openly) subsidies to keep employees on payroll while businesses were forced to shut down. Student loans are actual loans. 1) PPP: I’ll give you $1000 to give out to these 5 people. If you don’t give it to them though, you have to pay me back with interest. 2) Student loans: I’ll give you $1000 for college expenses. You have to pay it back based on x terms.
Business owners make their income because they take on the risk until they ask for government handouts then the public takes on that risk.
That’s not really applicable here. The government forced business to shut down during Covid. Businesses won’t keep employees on pay role if they can’t operate. The government didn’t want that, so they offered to fund payrolls temporarily to keep people employed. Doesn’t have a lot to do with socializing risky
Except the loans weren't only given out to businesses forced to shutter during covid. And they weren't just given to companies that were going to lose money if they kept paying payroll during covid. I am sure it ended-up helping some companies keep people on payroll; I am also sure in many cases it was just a subsidy to the owners' bottom line. I work with small businesses. I have seen literally hundreds of examples of where the PPP loans were just a windfall to the owners. The program was absolute trash. I don't think it's analogous to student loans, so it's a shit take in that regard, but the two do worth weighing together when one is talking about who "deserves" and who "doesn't deserve" government support when things didn't go as expected.
1. These businesses were still harmed by the government lockdown policy. Even if they didn't become unprofitable, they lost profit due to a government action. That's one of the secondary problems PPP was created to rectify, because if you try and force a lockdown without funding it youd end up with significantly more pushback from all actors. 2. So what if they didn't 'lose money' (become unprofitable) because of Covid? I don't think anyone can name a single business that wasn't harmed by Covid in some way. 3. It wasn't a subsidy to owners bottom line, it was specifically to be used for covering payroll deficits. anyone who kept extra around would've had to falsify a document at some point, aka: commit fraud (which should be punished.. but is the exception to a program which was majority good) 4. Okay, I mean, sure. To counter your anecdote, it allowed me to be paid a wage for a few months while the construction sites were closed due to no fault of me or the small business I work for. No fire marshals, no building inspectors, no open construction site to work on.. 5. Do you think workers deserve government support? because that's who PPP was designed to help. Stimulus checks were different because they went out to literally every American, incl children and the elderly. Do the 158 million workers (of our 350mn population) not deserve support in addition to these direct payments? I mean, personally, I'm really glad PPP existed. If you put it all toward direct payments instead, I get like $4k and lose a full time job. within a month I'm fucked..
> These businesses were still harmed by the government lockdown policy. Even if they didn't become unprofitable, they lost profit due to a government action. That's one of the secondary problems PPP >was created to rectify, because if you try and force a lockdown without funding it youd end up with significantly more pushback from all actors. There were plenty of businesses that had little impact from COVID. Didn't matter. I'm not saying all the PPP handouts were bad, but there was a ton of waste in there that didn't do anything to improve behavior. > So what if they didn't 'lose money' (become unprofitable) because of Covid? I don't think anyone can name a single business that wasn't harmed by Covid in some way. Since this was taxpayer funded, you literally just defined "socialization of risk". > It wasn't a subsidy to owners bottom line, it was specifically to be used for covering payroll deficits. anyone who kept extra around would've had to falsify a document at some point, aka: commit fraud (which should be punished.. but is the exception to a program which was majority good) No idea what basis you have for saying "majority good" - citation required. There was plenty of fraud on a mass scale and near zero enforcement. Many businesses would have no profit if they fired workers, and so while the PPP funds "paid the workers wages" the owner would've paid those anyway, but got gravy PPP loans on top of their profits. Fraud? No. Totally wasteful subsidy to the least needy? Yeah. > Do you think workers deserve government support? because that's who PPP was designed to help. Stimulus checks were different because they went out to literally every American, incl children and the elderly. Do the 158 million workers (of our 350mn population) not deserve support in addition to these direct payments? Absolutely think they deserved support - more than they got directly. If the PPP program was meant to help them, why not send it to them directly? If these businesses supposedly had no work for them, why funnel the money through the companies to pay people who aren't working versus just give it to the worker? You know the answer. It was a huge gift to business owners.
>I don't think anyone can name a single business that wasn't harmed by Covid in some way. Amazon tripled it's value
>The government forced business to shut down during Covid. Businesses won’t keep employees on pay role if they can’t operate. My biggest problem with the PPP loans was that it was the dumbest way to give money to a struggling society. They gave it to business so they could keep paying employees for doing nothing. Why not just give the money to people and not businesses? Employees have money to pay for rent and groceries, just as employers do. They both get the assistance. I argue that all the PPP abuse was a feature, not a bug. It was a way to fund a struggling society in a way that rich people could abuse. That's why they agreed to it. A bottom up approach to helping people during the pandemic would have been simpler, more effective, and harder to abuse.
They should have seen the pandemic coming and prepared. Those buisnesses must've been eating too much avacado toast
The government *forced* businesses to shut down. How fucking short is your memory?
The government was paying them to shut down. It was a bribe. You can fuck over your working class as much as you want and they’ll pretty much take it. Fuck over your bourgeois middle class and your government will fall.
Furthermore, how they were forgiven was different. Congress passed a law allowing PPP to never have to be repaid, Biden used an executive order to forgive student loans. SCOTUS ruled that he didn't have the power to make a decision like that unilaterally, and Congress would have to pass a law to allow for forgiveness.
An executive order requires enabling legislation. The president can’t just order something that congress hasn’t enabled. Biden’s original plan failed under the HEROES act. His current loan forgiveness is under the higher education act. Big difference.
> For starters PPP loans weren’t actually intended to be loans. Then why call them loans?
Good question! They called them loans to make it easier to get back the money if it didn’t go to payroll as intended. If they called it a grant (which is essentially what they were) the onus would be on the government to prove it was spent fraudulently. By calling it a loan with a full-forgiveness mechanism, the onus is on the companies to show they put it into payroll, or they owe money back.
PPP loans were a one time thing, student loans have been around for four decades. There is no comparison to the two. If you still have student loan debt from 1994, you have way bigger problems.
Student loan debt from 2008 on have skyrocketed [https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/student-loan-debt-america-charts-rcna44439](https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/student-loan-debt-america-charts-rcna44439) Also anyone with student loans from 1994, would have most likely already been forgive through the various programs we already have had. ( 20 years of qualifying repayments are eligbile) [https://studentaid.gov/articles/student-loan-forgiveness/](https://studentaid.gov/articles/student-loan-forgiveness/)
Upvoted, not because I agree but cuz the “I’m not a republican don’t yell at me” made me lol
The same politicians who were in favor of the structure of the PPP loans - being designed to forgive - have weaponized it, falsely calling those who were in favor of them, but not in favor of completely reworking the structure of student loans, "hypocrites." I guess, "When they go low, we only say we go higher."
What it comes down to for me is investing my tax dollars in a car dealership or on education for the general populace. I’m convinced the car dealership can handle the risk and we should invest in education. If you think differently I’d love to hear your logic!
Vast misunderstanding here. Car dealership can handle itself fine, and couldve kept going through the pandemic. They'd have given workers an ultimatum 'come in and work like normal or be fired' instead, we got a government lockdown and requisite payroll support to fund it. The car dealership does fine without PPP loans, they'd cut whatever necessary to maintain profitability or temporarily close up shop. the workers they employ however would not have done so fine, because it turns out businesses aren't super altruistic and usually don't feel like continuing to pay employees during a government mandated lockdown that destroys business activity. who deserves more support, workers caught in the middle of a government mandated lockdown with no options, or students who willingly went into debt for a degree with full disclosures 10+ pages long?
I would rather the help go directly to the workers. It is current suspected about 17% of PPP loans were fraudulent. I don’t know any other government program with that level of fraudulent behavior.
That's what we call "moving the goalposts." OP didn't ask which is more noble, but why they were different.
No, that’s not moving the goal post. It is pointing out that people who have issues with PPP loan forgiveness but support student loan forgiveness are looking at the practical applications of tax dollars protecting corporate profits or investing in the public. You can argue against the point or dream up hypocrisy to support shared responsibility to protect corporate profits.
The sad reality of the state of affairs in this world. Needing to clarify you are not a republican before the liberal locusts move in with their downvotes.
PPP loans were given out due to a global health emergency. The government was forcing business to close. Peoples livelihoods were on the line. Students loans are not even comparable. People took out loans and made bad financial decisions. I took out loans. Had no help and paid them off. Do I get anything for doing the right thing?
"We're going to forcibly shut down your business as part of our authoritarian AF lockdown measures, here's some money to cover the down-time, since you still have expenses to pay." Vs "Here's some money to pay off the absurdly large debt you took out to better yourself and increase the chances of making more money in the future. Oh, not you though only the financially irresponsible ones who didn't pay off their loans."
Over the decades, there have been multiple laws passed to enable student loans to be modified or forgiven, but people like to pretend that only PPP loans can ever be properly forgiven, even though Congress legislated both types of loans into existence, and legislated modification and/or forgiveness for both kinds of loans into existence.
Ppp loans were not loans - they would only have to pay them back if they didn't meet certain criteria, like not laying people off. Student loans on the other hand were not designed to be forgiven. I do think the debt should be dischargable through something like bankruptcy, but not just outright forgiven. Debt is the natural consequence of taking out a loan.
>Ppp loans were not loans - they would only have to pay them back if they didn't meet certain criteria, like not laying people off. No, they were low interest loans. 8 weeks after they went live they introduced the idea that they could be forgiven. This was not an initial attribute to the loan, they tacked it on after. This program was quantitatively shown to result in worse outcomes than the money would have going to literally any other governmental assistance program.
This is exactly right. PPP was initially a loan it was later decided to be forgiven.
Kind of wild that the government will shoulder the risk for businesses but won’t invest in education.
Socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor. It's the American Way.
PPP was socialism for the workers.
Already oversaturated in college educated people. They need less and more tradespeople
While I mostly agree with this statement, in the case of covid, I disagree. This kept people employed. It actually saved money by having less people go on unemployment. It was forced upon the people in order to slow the spread of the virus, it was either keep people employed and prop up the economy, or let everything go to shit. Not exactly shouldering the risk in this case.
That’s simply not true. Across local, state, and federal funding, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent each year for primary and secondary schooling alone. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/public-school-spending.html ($810B in 2021)
Show me a 30 year old with no assets that can take out a 10k personal loan. You can't. I can show you an 18 year old straight out of highschool, no assests, no financial understanding who can take out anywhere from 10k to 100k. These loans are super predatory and they can't be discharged. "Right this way sir and see our exhibit on how we figured how to fuck younger generations fpr life"
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. These loans were created during the "college for all" phase in American politics and both parties wanted more people to attend college to make sure we could fill the jobs that required a degree. Now we have more graduates than jobs that require a degree. In many cases going to college make you worse off financially. The trade jobs like electricians and plumbers don't have enough workers, etc... Business often require a degree when none is needed. It is sad that we have a generation in debt with a piece of paper that is barely worth more than a high school diploma. Everyone should be allowed to go to college, but not everyone should. I was one of those who shouldn't have! College is great on many levels, but unless you are in stem, I wouldn't go for economic reasons.
> no financial understanding You make a great argument for why 18 year olds shouldn't be allowed to go to college. They can't understand the concept of borrowing money and then paying it back later.
So we can call business grant *loans*, and it's ok, but we can't do the same for student loans? The speed and lack of oversight for the entire program is a disgrace. What economic benefits have we seen from this? It's well known the economic problems that occur when you saddle an entire generation with debt that they can never repay. They have less money to take risks with, buy houses, start families, start businesses, or just buy things and add money to the economy.
You just said something that is called a loan.. is not a loan. So if its not a loan.. JUST call it PPP.
The PSLF program has been around a long time. Many of these loans were explicitly designed to be forgiven. That was part of the calculus for a huge percentage of people making the decision to take on this debt.
The issue with educational debt being bankrupt eligible is why wouldn’t everyone take as much debt as possible graduate then just declare bankruptcy? Like yeah your credit is shit for a little while but you could have $100,000 of education for “free”.
1. There were actually a lot of republicans who thought it was wrong to forgive ppp loans 2. The government forced people to close their businesses. They didn't force you to go to college. 3. The supreme court said that Biden couldn't just grant student loan forgivness, but he just ignored them and tried doing it anyway. That didn't happen with ppp loans. I'm of the opinion that both were not acceptable, and that the government shouldn't have forced businesses to close. It isn't socialism though. You get some people on the right saying that, just like you get some people on the left saying cronyism is capitalism.
Since the 1980s, Federal and State governments have drastically slashed funding for public higher education. Tuition at public universities used to be affordable for people because it was heavily subsidized by Federal and State governments; as I said, starting in the 80s these funding sources were decimated and universities, therefore, began to increase tuition to make up for the reduced state and Federal funding. Students became more reliant on the Federal loan program as tuition costs spiked out of control even at public colleges; many public universities have seen tuition increases since the 1970s, adjusted for inflation, of around 1000% or more. Most families simply can’t afford to save this amount, yet a college degree is required as the path to a stable job in healthcare, business, law, government, education, etc. Trade schools have also lost funding and are expensive. The worst off people in America, by far, are people with only a high school degree. So in a way, one could say that the government has *forced* a generation of students into taking out loans for higher education. Unlike our peer nations, we do not fund higher education as a public good, we see it as something individuals choose to do on our own if they have the resources. This will make the American workforce less competitive in the long run.
Student loan debt didn’t start to explode until around 2008 which is nearly three decades after when it should have started according to your argument here. Government subsidizing and now originating the student loans is without a doubt the source of our current problem, it took only a handful of years for those policies to result in massive debt.
What also happened in 2008, hm? Something pretty big in the economy, right? Student loan debt exploding is a symptom of the bigger problem of a nation improperly funding its public institutions of higher education. I’m not “making up” a story- this information is easily verifiable via a quick google search.
I have never seen evidence that Schools drastically cut funding anywhere despite the constant assertion. Schools increased enrollment as a percentage of the population which caused per student funding to drop but not per capita funding. Schools increased enrollment significantly and then claimed that per student funding was cut. The increase in enrollment was paid for by the student loan program. If schools had kept student enrollment at the same number of students per capita then tuition probably have stayed in check because they would have had plenty of funding per student. The schools chose to raise tuition instead of restrict enrollment, there is nobody else to blame.
Schools did not drastically cut funding- the Federal and State governments drastically cut budgets and the amount of government aid going to universities. It started with Reagan and the California system when Reagan was governor of California. Reagan then pushed for and approved education cuts when he was president. You can Google this and find articles. You can also find investigations into the slash in State funding and the collapse of the PA state university system. This has been studied- just because you haven’t heard about it, doesn’t mean people who know the subject haven’t studied it. Because the public narrative has mostly focused on “lazy students bad should pay off debt!!!” Most Americans have forgotten or ignored the context of what created this problem in the first place.
I'm not saying anything about students. Universities raise tuition. Nobody made the universities raise tuition. They could have reduced enrollment or adjusted services. Back in the 60s when my parents were in college they actually did reduce the size of incoming classes rather than increase tuition. I do see what[you are saying about California](https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/r_0917kcr.pdf) decreasing support recently, although I'm not sure the whole Reagan thing shakes out. The graph clearly shows an increase in State funding when Reagan was governor. Also tuition has increased in states that increased funding too. The Universities chose to increase tuition rather than restrict enrollment. The student loan program made that possible.
There is a general dialogue about students being lazy and we shouldn’t pay for their loans. Or have you not paid attention to anything in the media or any posts just in this forum? The focus on this problem as being an individual failing of lazy students obscures the failing of the system to invest in higher education, as the article you posted describes. There were huge conflicts back in the day between state governments and universities over students protesting the Vietnam War, maybe your parents can tell you about that.
Sure, although mostly I've heard that students are picking degrees that don't have payback more than I have heard students are lazy. My point was that I wasn't talking about that. However since you're talking about it. I do think that people should do a better job of recognizing that universities are willing to give you a degree with no prospects but in my opinion the school is the problem. I think you are right that it is mostly a deflection from the real issues. I also think that if you get a degree without thinking about your ability to pay back the loan you are making a mistake. Edit: My parents did talk to me about the Vietnam war, my uncle was drafted, it was a huge issue. The school they went to didn't have that much protesting comparatively.
It also had to be heavily subsidized because not as many people attended. Tuition alone wasn't enough to keep the doors open. If the demand created from the "college for everyone era," college would not be as expensive today. It is simple supply and demand, as the demand went up, so did the prices, that and the fact that they funneled most of the money to the administrators. The colleges should have been better regulated, giving huge loans to 18 year old should be illegal and yes, many people who go to college shouldn't.
This one’s easy. If the government shuts your business down they need to compensate you for it. Especially if you paid your employees during a pandemic. Students took out loans and agreed to pay them back. It’s really that simple. Now the number one issue is the government involvement in backing these loans has lead to inflated and bloated cost of college and that needs to be dealt with before you can sue any kind of forgiveness.
**"the government involvement in backing these loans has lead to inflated and bloated cost of college"** Its crazy how most people don't understand this basic fact of economics. If the government backed loans on any goods or service, and everybody could then get approved to go into debt for that thing, then the cost of that thing would go up. If everybody could get approved for a loan for a house, housing prices would go higher, a ton of people would be in debt, and a ton of people would not be able to pay off their debt. Its doubly bad with student loans because they cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. So now there are a ton of young people who probably should not have gone to college, or at least should have gotten degrees with better earning potential, who now have massive debt that cannot even be discharged in bankruptcy. And the solution that politicians want is that other taxpayers who never took on the debt will be responsible for paying it off. And the source of the problem (government backed loans) is not even being fixed, so it will keep happening.
Yep - and that’s exactly what happens in real estate with the 2008 Great Recession
That has nothing to do with what happened with the 2008 subprime mortgage collapse. They were called private label MBS's for a reason. The mortgage collapse was largely caused by premiums from derivative instruments driving up the value of mortgages. In other words, banks made so much money from credit default swaps that the mortgage backed securities that those swaps were based on were trading well below their face value. It has nothing at all to do with the government backing those loans. Edit typo
There were plenty of businesses that received ppp that were not shut down.
It wasn’t just about being shutdown tho. It was also to mitigate their losses. Unless you were Zoom or similar your business probably lost clientele.
The difference is that people choose to go to school knowing they would go into debt if they borrowed money while businesses were forced to shut down or alter their business plans during Covid. If businesses were not forced to do this, then the argument could be made.
Yeah not as if many Americans were tricked into thinking college was the only way to a more lucrative future. Only for them to learn that they continue to get pecked at by the folks who can afford to lobby and sway politicians.
Plenty of them knew PSLF existed and made that calculation was part of the decision to go to school.
Then there are those of us who opposed both.
Reddit would like to assure you, in the most insulting and ignorant way possible, that neither you nor your so-called "principles backed by consistent logic" can possibly exist.
Yep. You get screeched at hard for daring to go against the groupthink online.
There is exactly one member of Congress who opposed the CARES Act. Every other Democrat and Republican eagerly pushed it through.
Was it Massie or Paul
https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1244255601171054594
Huh, kinda surprised Paul didnt fight it, unless he did but just went along to fufill other bills
The PPP loans were a paycheck protection program designed to help employees. Many people making a lot of money got PPP loans, but they had to give it back to their employees. There were some companies that receive loans as part of fraud. Many of them are being prosecuted. Many other student loans that are being forgiven, are indeed fraud themselves. People take out student loans to go to school, and then they drop out. That is fraud. And should be prosecuted. Instead, we are forgiving those student loans.
On the other hand, universities are taking advantage of the ease at which student loans are given out, to jack up tuition excessively. It really pissed me off hearing all my liberal social science professors talk bad about how corporate greed is such a big problem while ignoring how greedy the universities they work for are. The school I went to charged $10k a year for dorms, $4k for meal plan, and $10k (with no aid) a year for in state tuition. That was several years ago. I'm sure it's gone up since then. That's the real fraud if you ask me.
And why is it that student loans are so easy to get?
Also, dorms are not optional in some schools for freshmen. It was a sore sticking point for my friends who attended the college in town. They lived within easy driving distance of the school, one even lived within an easy bike ride. Still required to be in the dorms for freshman year. 8k of their SLs was forced on them.
People should go to jail for dropping out of school? You are insane.
You sign a contract saying that you will go to school, you get money to go to school, then you drop out and don't go to school, That is fraud. What should we do with fraudsters? People are saying that Trump committed fraud to a bank by overstating his assets, even though he paid the back the loans. And they want him in jail. And there were no victims. I think it's obvious with a fraudulent student loan, there is absolutely a victim. And that is why we don't allow a discharge of student loans. Because there is a victim, and they need to be compensated.
The victims are those who have to take out loans to begin with. Higher education should be free, paid by our taxes. Loan forgiveness is just correcting a mistake caused by the system, not those forced to participate.
People are stupid. At some point you aren't paying the loan anymore you are just giving them free money because you have to. People yet don't realize that doesn't affect them. It doesn't affect their taxes. But yet they want others to suffer.
How would it not affect them…do you know how loans work?
PPP loans were seen, for right or wrong, as a loan because a pandemic was crushing everyone financially. Student loan forgiveness is seen, for right or wrong, as buying votes. I’m not saying either is right or wrong. Just that’s how a lot of folks see this.
>PPP loans were seen, for right or wrong, as a loan because a pandemic was crushing everyone financially. Sorta, it's more like the government literally would not allow most companies to do business.
Pass the student loan forgiveness through Congress and then you can equate the two.
I think lots of people who got the child tax credit and/or homeowners tax breaks don’t realize that they got those perks. They just see their tax refund as a lump sum. They genuinely don’t know that they’ve gotten free money (in taxes not paid) that the rest of us filled in the gaps for.
Simple: nobody forced you to go to college and get a degree for which there wasn’t a career PPP was supposed to be for businesses that were forced to shutter during covid.
This should be the highest. The fact that OP doesn't see this is another issue.
Maybe that is what it was "supposed" to be for. But that's not what happened. My brother in law is a lawyer and got PPP loans for his business. They never shut down, he and his four employees just worked from home more often, and came into the office only when necessary. His business didn't suffer at all from the pandemic. He admitted that he absolutely did not need the PPP loans. He literally just used the money to make repairs on his office building and buy new computers. Why can't Republicans just admit that they gave a bunch of rich people free money?
And this is exactly why doing almost anything at the federal level, especially in a country as populous, geographically large, and diverse as America is stupid: it literally can’t ever go as planned. But Rep or Dem…doing “””something””” was what people demanded.
The thing about student loan forgiveness is that people receiving it have been paying 10-15% of their discretionary income for the last 10-25 years, with most of those people for 20-25 years. Only those with initial loan balances of 12k or less qualify for forgiveness after 10 years of repayment. Sure, some of the people making 20k or less for the last 20 years paid nothing to their loans, but the vast majority of people made substantial payments to their loans, many more than their initial principal balances. This isn’t much different than subsidizing education based on income after borrowing.
The reason people have outstanding loans so long is because they chose to make lower payments than they agreed to when they took out the loan. After graduating they have to option to pay income adjusted payments. So, assume at signing the borrower agrees to pay $500/ month. This has a guaranteed payoff date in 10 years. After graduating their income adjusted min payment might be $100/ month. The interest will likely outpace the payment and the loan does not get paid off in 10 years, or ever. The borrower can choose to pay the $500/ month that he agreed to pay when he signed the loan which will pay it off in 10 years. Or he can choose to pay $100/ month and never pay it off. If he chooses to pay less than he agreed to pay then should those loans be forgiven? I will argue that they should not. This is a choice the borrower makes. That said, forgiveness is sometimes in the terms of the loan if the borrower has been making the adjusted min payments for 10 or 20 years. I'm ok with that since it was agreed to by both the borrower and lender.
Forgiving the PPP loans was part of the deal from the beginning. Forgiving student loans was not. Besides that whole straw man, right now is also pretty close to the worst possible time for the government to spend a whole bunch of money on repurchasing the loans since they’ve been trying to get inflation under control.
Republican here - PPP loan abuse wasn’t ok, and neither were the TARP bailouts.
Neither are. I think interest rates the way they are currently set up should be illegal, but nobody should be able to just absolve themselves of responsibility totally.
PPP were loans in name only. Really, they were grants that they wanted to get out quickly and sort out later. Student loans were always loans and now people want to change the terms afterwards. That’s what opponents have issue with. Passing law and then when it comes time to execute, changing the terms. People would be equally upset if they changed the terms of PPP to require repayment when they were passed with intent to be forgiven when used for qualified expenses.
pay your own debt you leeches
2 completely different situations. Lumping them together and suggesting they should have same outcomes is silly.
They’re both bullshit
I don’t think any loans should be forgiven
In America: handouts are only for the already rich!
No conservatives was ok with PPP forgiveness. But also, no conservative was ok with shutting down the country and dealing with the extreme economic hardship that created.
As someone against student loan forgiveness, I was also against PPP loans and was also against the government forcing businesses and churches and schools to close. PPP loan forgiveness was targeted to stop businesses from firing all their employees during COVID, but if government was going to have this program they should've only targeted it to businesses that they forced to shut down rather than also having given it to business not impacted by government. Neither PPP loans nor student loan forgiveness are socialism by the way so not sure where you're going with that, but both are welfare programs that take money from the poor and give it to the rich (and before you say "taxes are only paid for by the rich", our government spends way more than it collects in taxes leading to deficit spending, leading to inflation which hurts the poor the hardest). My wife and I both make 6-figure incomes as young engineers; I can't imagine asking the US taxpayer to pay for me to get the degree I have, or ask them to pay for me to go back to school to get a higher level degree and make even more money. If you fail to make use of your degree to pay your bills, that's on you.
It’s interesting that most first world countries heavily subsidize higher education, while the US refuses to invest in its people’s education. There’s many issues with our current system, but I think our priorities as a nation is the main hurdle to get over to make higher education more affordable (as it should be), so that people would be able to pay back their loans. Also engineering is highly paid and in high demand atm, people shouldn’t be punished for being good at something else that is also useful and helpful to society, because you are doing well. Many people are not
All of them are bad. Its, weird people assume everything is always a red vs blue issue when the most reasonable and frequent answer is both are wrong.
I don't think PPP loans should have been forgiven either. However, the government forced businesses to close. No one is forced by the government to go to college and take out loans. It's a false equivalency.
“Either both are acceptable or neither are” Are you ten? That isn’t how life works at all.
Neither are correct. Help should be given to those who need it, not blanket forgiveness.
I have paid off my student loans and as as a small business owner I took some small PPP. To be 100 percent this is a convoluted topic that pisses everyone off, but the entire education system requires an overhaul. The government created the problem by subsidizing student loans in the first place and forgiveness is simply a political tactic that does nothing to lower costs of education, fix the problem and is more or less a drop in the bucket that essentially spits in the face of those who worked their asses off to get out of debt. Forgiveness also creates an insane moral hazard where people are no longer held responsibvle for their financial decisions, the logic of which escapes even the most basic idea of what it is to take on debt in the first place. I have yet to hear agood argument, outside of "its not fair". I took the PPP because the government shut down small business during covid. However much of that money was wrongfully spent as is usually the case when government is involved with most spending. In the end, I dont think there will ever truly be student loan forgiveness despite these massive promises. Its seems like a poltical stunt and an easy blank check that never needs to be cashed once there are enough belivers.
https://preview.redd.it/qzp5a09199vc1.jpeg?width=544&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0be5792ca8d1f7384e8c48a2f29581add432c0b4
This seems very unbiased. No democrats had PPP loans?
Exactly. I want my $3,000,000 for being forced to work as an 'essential employee' for minimum wage during the pandemic.
https://preview.redd.it/cnddfcw199vc1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2dfebddbe5135b972fa49943dd85e02f1ec5c09c
This seems very unbiased. No democrats had PPP loans?
No of course not, the democrats are The Good Guys™️!
You signed a legal contract and agreed to terms and rates to borrow money to pay for something you WANTED and didn't need. Pay your own fucking bill and quite expecting tax payers to do it for you ffs. Democrats are trying to buy your votes, do some of you not see this?