That's only 1.9% interest. Are you really paying that little?

I am, I have some at 0.65%

I got a discount after 48 months of payments, a discount for autopay, and some of the loans are from 2003-2005

Student loans? It's truly sickening to me that some people (you included) are paying 15-year-old loans on education.

As someone who chose a worse school and didn’t take out loans (and came from a family that had zero savings to help me), it’s sickening that people pretend there were no other options.

My total loan amount was ~30k for most my loans over 5 years. The initial loans were at 3.25% and whatever the perkins loan rate was, the later loans were at 6.8%, which was super ridiculous and I don’t think they stopped that rate until later. I preferentially paid off the 6.8% loans, the other loans are practically free money (interest rates below 2%) at this point so I pay the minimum.

The common rate for my mom's student loans are nearly 7%.

So are mine (edit: mine are 6.5%), but she has something like 140k in student loans, and I only had about 30k... so I've nearly paid mine off, she will never probably pay hers off.

That's debt bondage.

David Graeber's book Debt: The First 5000 Years has historical accounts of what happens when debt gets out of proportion.

Also, among the things I learned from Michael Lewis's Against The Rules podcast, which has an episode on student loans, that our modern consumer financing was enabled by overturning the historical ban on usury debt.

https://atrpodcast.com/episodes/the-seven-minute-rule-s1!1c9...

Depending on the type of loan, and when it was taken, the interest rates on student loans very greatly.

If you have some that were low interest due to timing or subsidizing (0% interest in some cases), it can make sense to pay the loans slowly and invest or save money instead.

So the age of the loans isn't a reliable predictor of their burden.

On my federal loans yes. This relief does nothing on my 6.5% interest private student loans.

How could the Federal government suspend evictions? Foreclosures, sure, but tenancy laws are typically state or local.

Make a temporary federal law that overrides local laws. The federal government can basically do anything it wants. It is only because it is so gracious that it lets states have any laws at all.

The federal government does have to at least make it seem like they are using a constitutional basis for law. Otherwise it could be nullified by a legal challenge, as it seems is happening with the ACA.

There's always a workaround. Use the 16th amendment: charge a stupidly huge tax for every eviction during the emergency period. Done.

That's a hard call to make. IIRC income and land taxes were each supposed to be temporary funding solutions for wars and such.

On the other hand Trump had the right idea eliminating bloat but he went about it in the worst way. That way we'd be less likely to end up with more permanent taxes if this drags on.

It seems to me that if the federal government requests this, states will follow. Hell, who wants to be the governor that said no if Trump suggests you suspend evictions.

I agree that the Supreme Court has basically torn up federalism, but technically rent is not interstate commerce.

there was a case where the USSC ruled that growing food on your own land for your own consumption was interstate commerce, and forced the farmer to stop. Never underestimate the ability of political justices to contort the Constitution.

The 10th Amendment specifically limits the federal government’s power.

There are a few federal tenancy laws currently. Presumably, they'd add another. Think the case would make it through SCOTUS before the emergency is over?

It doesn't need to make it through SCOTUS to be blocked. Just need one friendly federal judge.

The president has no authority to suspend evictions or provide mortgage relief.