Taxes and whatnot account for 50% of her salary. She does need to save for retirement and one must include more than just the federal income tax rate to calculate how much is taken out in taxes. There's FICA, state taxes, and state sales taxes and property taxes. There is also rent, food. She can not save put 50% of her salary toward her student loans. That said, she can pay it off relatively quickly.

However, after 4 years undergrad, 4 years med school, and 4 years of residency it's time to live, no? What's the point of it all if you don't actually make enough to live a little until you are 40? A way better system would be to just provide for higher education and not burden people with debt. Instead a large salary is needed to pay the large debt but the large salary is permanent and the debt is not. Save a lot more money buy just properly funding higher education.

Well, debt free at 40 leaves still 25-30 years of a pretty good career, no?

The downside of govt just paying for it is you'll get a lot more people who really aren't committed to the profession and it taxes everyone else - it's not free, it's done through higher taxes on everyone else.

It doesn't have to involve higher taxes on everyone else. We spend well over a trillion dollars a year on national defense/spying. Also, we spend way higher per capita on healthcare than any national healthcare system and those systems generally include paying for medical school. Thus the evidence is that it will involve less money spent. Perhaps there would be a tax reduction as a result.

This is such a good comment. you have no idea how representative it is in terms of the current student debt crisis.

The difference is that most students make nowhere near that much money as doctors do.

The comment that they reply with is "when am I going to enjoy my life"

This results in large portion of students being highly levered and betting that salaries will steadily increase in the future.

This will not end well.