Student loan payments to be deducted from Social Security!

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by John Bear, Dec 8, 2005.

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  1. dcv

    dcv New Member

    I think they should repossess his education. :)
     
  2. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I have no knowledge of this case, but I'm willing to bet that it's more complicated than that.

    When I used to do that kind of work, we were unable to touch social security. That was true across the board, simply on principle. My guess is that this decision wasn't a heartless decision to throw a 67 year old out into the street, it was a technical legal question about whether SS funds are immune from garnishment. They court seems to have unanimously agreed that they are not.

    That doesn't mean SS must be garnished in every single case or that the courts can't be petitioned to moderate or even halt the withheld payments if they are too great a financial burden. Courts aren't going to deprive an elderly gentleman of his basic food, shelter and transportation.

    But lots of people who are receiving social security retirement benefits are doing just fine. In their cases, I see nothing wrong with the federal government recouping the debt that it is owed from the money that it is paying out each month, provided that nobody is driven into poverty in the process.

    If people owned real estate, we typically just placed liens on their property and waited to collect when it was sold. But it's amazing how sucessfully some big-time debters hide their assets.
     
  3. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    BillDayson:

    EUWWWW! It sounds like you worked for (gasp!) the Internal Revenue Service!

    Of course, you are quite correct; there's bound to be more to it than we've heard. And the folks who have posted here suggesting that this guy went a LONG time without addressing his student loan debt are right, too.
     
  4. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    Child support enforcement.
     
  5. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Oh. Okay. I withdraw the "EUWWWW!"

    I have to. My wife works for child support enforcement.
     
  6. lspahn

    lspahn New Member


    The only problem with that is that if the just "write off" more debt then there is a greater risk to issue future loan, that means higher rate for the borrower, in this case my kids. So once again we end up transfer debt from a person who refuses to pay to someone who pays there bills. This is a classic conservative grip and it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth.....

    I am not totally unsympathic to a guy who got heart disease and cant work. i would think debt to the govt would be the first to be forgiven, BUT i guess the question is when did he become disabled. If he had 20 years of working and now he is sick and cant work but never paid before that is unacceptable. If he was sick out of school then i would cut the guy a break. Unfortunatly like mandatory minimum it treat different situations the same.
     
  7. DTechBA

    DTechBA New Member

    Hmmm.

    We garnish SS for child support all the time....
     
  8. jtuck004

    jtuck004 New Member

    Dear disabled student loan debtor

    Put the student loans on your credit card.

    Wait 6 months, because cash advances near the deadline for your bankruptcy can cause the petition to be disallowed.

    File Bankruptcy

    I realize this does you no good right now, but perhaps it will help someone (like my sister's kid). There is something immoral about shifting the debt to credit card companies that make nearly as much clear profit as oil companies, and when I think of it, I will stop suggesting this.

    John, I wish the Philosopher King <love that moniker> would just declare all tuition suspended. We could go to war against "ill effects on the economy", "no Adult left behind", something , and fund it that way.

    Now if I could just figure out whether I want to go to Baker, Northcentral, or perhaps Upper Iowa for an MBA...

    Thank You all for your postings
     
  9. The government-- having been hosed to the tune of 80 grand-- responds not by seizing personal property or real property, not by sending guys to break limbs, not by dispatching black helicopters filled with black-suited dudes to rappel through his windows, but by offsetting a different Federal payment for a hundred bucks a month.


    Where can I sign up for this deal?
     
  10. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

  11. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Maybe if they're actually interested in filling the position (rather than just complaining about being unable to fill the position), they should follow the law of the market: raise the price that they're willing to pay for said position.
     
  12. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Just pay more!

    Oh, absolutely! Remember, please, that I got a VERY cheap law degree. I have profited mightily from the situation as I've described it.

    But it's the TAXPAYER who ends up paying the higher salaries. We're talking about public employment, here.

    Look, here's a source of median salaries for new associates and new public employee lawyers:

    www.nalp.org/content/index.php?pid=147

    Note, please, that salaries for new associates run two to three TIMES what is being offered by government.

    Now the comparison is not quite that straightforward. Public employment has some obvious, and some not-so-obvious, advantages over private firm practice. Nevertheless, when you owe $100k for your degree alone, money can trump all other considerations.

    Do you really WANT the taxpayer to have to match, or even APPROACH, salaries like that? For brand new lawyers?
     
  13. sisterc

    sisterc New Member

    Why not pay more? After all, MOST of the time, you get what you pay for. And that could explain a lot.

    I would much rather our government concentrate on cutting costs for things like that often cited overpriced hammer instead of trying to buy top-rate services at bargain-basement prices.
     
  14. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Alright, but you should remember also that there is a huge public sector demand that is NOT government, everything from so-called poverty law through indigent defense through civil rights defense and domestic violence cases...

    Much of this work is funded through non profit groups. These provide desparately needed services to people who cannot afford to pay or pay very much. Without these groups, access to the Courts by those who aren't reasonably well off will be severely restricted.

    Even if the taxpayer is willing to pay higher salaries to public employees (like ME :)), what about this other group of public sector lawyers?

    I am not even TALKING about medicine, here, where the need is even MORE acute.

    No. Society NEEDS to invest in students in order to assure that these students turn into professionals whose services are available to all.
     
  15. DTechBA

    DTechBA New Member

    But we're back to an old argument...

    But then we are back to the discussion we had a while back about why an education has costs so much these days. I do not think the government should be in a position where they pay whatever the schools think we should pay. The cost at many if not most schools has far outpaced inflation. Salaries will either rise or people will refuse to enter the too expensive programs until schools offer aid or lower the tuition.

    In general, business has become more efficient whereas academia seems to becoming less efficient. I know it is not a simple comparison but you see where it goes....
     
  16. Mr. Engineer

    Mr. Engineer member

    Good call by the Supremes. You take out a loan, you pay it back. It should be that simple. With student loans deferrals are easy - but at some point, you need to pay it back. Perhaps for those who refuse their committments, the degrees ought to be cancelled, licenses forfeited, etc. Or, make it a crime to default.

    This man had a lifetime to pay back the loan. I know some people who are paying as little at $50 a month on very large loans. Sure - it may take a lifetime, but you didn't have to take the money.

    Higher education is not a right, it is a prividge. Treat it as such.
     
  17. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    DTechBA,

    Yes. You are right. There needs to be a distinction drawn between State schools and private schools. The State should not be in the business of subsidizing private schools who charge whatever they want.

    On the OTHER hand (there's ALWAYS another hand) paying inflated salaries to State lawyers IS a form of subsidy because the salaries reflect the cost of the education and not necessarily the reasonable value of the services rendered.

    You know, in the longest of runs, it might make no difference either way. Either the State pays the lawyer more because it must or the State subsidizes the school and pays the lawyer less because it can.

    Either way, the ordinary citizen pays.

    And pays.

    And pays.
     
  18. sisterc

    sisterc New Member

    Nosborne48,

    One way those issues could be addressed is by forgiving student loans for those attorneys and physicians, much the same way teachers' loans are forgiven in many (if not all) states if they teach in the state for a number of years. Go where the public needs you for X amount of time, and the public will finance your education. Fair enough. It seems to me that some, maybe many--not all--of these defaulters want to have their cake and eat it too. And at taxpayer expense.

    I have no problem with funding education in certain instances, but I do have a problem with people who think they should be able to dump their mistakes on the rest of us no questions asked and nothing required in return. And I'm not talking about the guy who has some unforseeable tragedy occur that absolutely prevents repayment. However, I believe it is rare that a person cannot in some way repay his debt. While I don't think he should go without food and shelter to do it, I also don't have a problem with it being a little painful.

    Hey, I'm a softie, and more than once I've given til it hurt. But that's my choice. I don't want to be legislated into doing it. No matter how generous we'd like to be, as individuals or as a country, we can only do so much. For a lot of reasons, we SHOULD only do so much.
     
  19. jtuck004

    jtuck004 New Member

    I do have a problem with people who think they should be able to dump their mistakes on the rest of us no questions asked and nothing required in return.

    I couldn't agree more. Would that apply to our current government, even going back a few generations <g>?

    Leave the poor guy, and those in the same boat, alone with their little pittance of a disability payment. We waste so much, especially and including human resources. Frankly, I know he is going to spend every penny of that money in for profit stores, and I would just as soon he spent it for groceries or medicine as paying it to the government. Once someone's total income drops below the poverty line, those loans ought to go into forebearance, and not come out till the person's income increases.

    If that wouldn't work, maybe the college education wasn't all it was cracked up to be anyway.
     
  20. se94583

    se94583 New Member

    It is interesting how the group seems to dump ALL the reasponsibility on the student. Considering the majority here are pursuing vanity degrees.

    But reverting to the real worls, What about institutions mirroring their tuition increases to the Title IV limits? No culpubality there?

    What about students, who faced with either living a life working at Burger King or taking a shot at a real life, sign these draconian agreements????

    And do we, as a society, want to hound disabled geezers for 90 dollars a month???
     

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