What do you mean? People who don’t pay their student loans face all kinds of negative consequences from being unable to buy a home / car due to credit dings, tax refund garnishment & wage garnishment on top of fees & interest

If you believe there's a meaningful likelihood of that happening any time soon, then sure, you might consider stopping payments for some short period of time to see if it plays out. But that's hardly what I would call "a crazy system where a graduate is a fool to pay back the education loans."

I don’t understand your point. if you’re saying it would be wise to take advantage of current 0% interest and/or deferment policies to pay as little as possible until it’s clearer whether or not any kind of loan forgiveness will happen, then sure. not paying at all is really not an option over the long term.

I am not optimistic that Biden will attempt to use executive powers to make any broad student loan cancelations.

From a legislative standpoint, Biden is not likely to sign any more bills into law other than military & police power / budget expansion and some occasional filler.

Why would someone be a fool to pay? Biden was previously advocating for only $10k which doesn't cover the median federal student loan amount. $50k may not even happen. Right now you can pay down some of the principle at 0% interest in case your loans aren't forgiven.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/you-c...

It's much more complicated than calling people "fools" for paying.

TBH the program is a disaster and it's really, really disappointing that the loans won't just simply be forgiven. I personally know many people held back from economic participation because of federal student loans. Even if you want to be all bs moralistic about the responsibility of paying debts back, from an economic perspective the loans should be forgiven.

If you pay back your loans responsibly, and another doesn't and gets their balance forgiven, who's the fool?

> all bs moralistic about the responsibility of paying debts back

It's dishonorable to not pay back money you borrowed. I'm sure if you loaned someone money, and they said "bs" when you expected repayment, you'd be very put out.

P.S. I've had people who've stolen money from me contact me years later wanting to do business together. I don't understand modern morality, or how they'd imagine I'd ever work with them again.

I think the basic disconnect you're running into here is that for many people the government-backed educational loan establishment is not "someone" worthy of any moral consideration, but rather just a poorly-constructed piece of political machinery that only exists because of the failings of the government in regards to public education.

Every person with a loan got it of their own free will and signed a contract asserting of their own free will that they were going to pay it back.

The fact that the promise was made to the taxpayers doesn't make it honorable to break one's word.

It's also a major insult to every person who worked hard and paid back their loan.

This forgiveness program is a classic "moral hazard".

There's another disconnect here: you're treating contracts as a moral imperative, rather than as a civil agreement with failure clauses to be rationally considered. The government does the latter; why should an individual who makes a contract with the government treat it differently?

What part of the contract says: "if you don't want to pay back the loan, no problem, we'll just forgive it!" ?

I've never heard of a loan contract that says that.

> If you pay back your loans responsibly, and another doesn't and gets their balance forgiven, who's the fool?

Neither?

What was the purpose of paying back the loan? I think it's foolish to give away large sums of money for no effect.

You mean pay them at all or pay more than minimum payments? I believe the latter but I don’t understand the former (maybe you’re talking about the covid deferments?).