Was it also sponsored by the "I want my kids to have a better life than me" crew who then complains about kids having it too easy these days?
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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I want them to have it better and easier. But an easier life, not just an easy childhood that doesn't prepare them for their inevitable crushing adulthood.
I want the opposite tbh, kids just don't appreciate it. Send them to the mines first, and then give them an easy adulthood.
As a Gen-X, if I was a kid these days I'd be pissed too. It seems as much grief as they're given by adults, they understand early on they've been given the worst hand.
Our gen made such a big deal about being cynical, yet life ended up being SO MUCH WORSE than even we imagined. Although it does show we were right to be cynical.
Ya, m gut tells me teenagers are much more aware of just how bad it is because of their generation's social media. I was pretty unaware at that age. I think there was a bit of a shift in societal values and the youth reflect it more as well.
It has also steadily been getting worse and we keep telling them they are the ones who are going to get seriously shafted compared to the rest of us. That probably doesn't help.
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And what a righteous 15 years of uneducated adulthood it'll be before they die of black lung.
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I mean I sold 4 years of my life to the military to not have to take loans out, so I get the gut reaction
The main cause of the student loan issue is the commodification of education. Everyone wanted to go to college and at first it was optional but then as more people did it it became a requirement, then they realized they can charge more and more for education that is worse and worse because a good chunk of people dont actually want to learn / be there. They're just there for the paper that'll let them get jobs and not be unemployed, or even just to say that they went.
I look around and people are playing damn Pokémon Showdown in class, there was that one scandal of an influencer girl who was the daughter of someone important that bought her admission to Stanford(?) and would stream literally about how she didn't care about education she just wanted the college experience.
Hot take: Not everyone should be going to college, High School should just prepare people better. Even if we forgive all loans right now it doesn't fix the issue. Instead of your problem it will just be your kids' problem
While I agree in theory, I'm not really sure there's much that can be done in practice. The genie is out of the bottle here: jobs want the paper, so people get the paper, leading to jobs expecting people to have the paper. An employer is unlikely to deliberately "lower their standards" (in their view) if the pool of potential employees with a degree is large enough for their needs already. Since you can't legislate that employers are not allowed to require a degree, and you can't expect people to not get a degree and sacrifice their own potential future to break that cycle, we're kind of at an impasse.
That's why the only way forward that anyone's figured out so far is government funded higher education.
Edit:typos
There is a lot that can be done in practice. One, employers are asking for degrees because they can. If you lower the number of graduates and they can't get them without higher pay, they will stop. Two, you could put a price on the degree, e.g. higher minimum wage for positions requiring a degree to make employers pay for the extra education.
So the higher minimum wage is already a thing in some countries (e.g. Germany, where degrees are also mostly free) and there is still the trend of many more ppl. studying.
In general, our world is getting more complicated and we live longer. So i dont really see the problem of more education?
More education is a balance of costs and benefits. There is no harm in even a supermarket cashier having a collage degree. God knows our democracies could use more educated voters. But in many professions, it is not worth the cost. The same knowledge could be gained by a few months of on the job training. If employers are really willing to pay more for those degrees like in Germany than that is fine. But I am pretty sure in some places, people are asking for degrees not because they are needed (worth the cost), but because people with degrees are available cheaply.
After all, if the degrees were worth their price to employers, and the employers paid for them adequately, student loans wouldn't be an issue.
It also reinforces the class system. 'elite' employers won't even look at you if you don't come from an ivy or a top 5/10 school.
and there are fewer and fewer of these 'elite' jobs to go around, hence the paranoia among the upper middle classes that their children will have zero future if they don't get into an ivy.
I agree, but there is things we can move towards, but some are more... radical solutions.
I think the Swiss do something where after a certain point in the education pipeline (Age 16?) they decide either university or vocational school.
I think the ratio is 20-80.
If the decision is made for you (via being evaluated by the institutions in charge of the students) it definitely would be filled with bribes and scandals where the rich try to subvert it.
But if that wasn't a problem I think it would definitely help university degrees "matter" again and it would be more feasible to make free for those who pursue it.
Again this requires a whole restructuring-- and would not see results for atleast a generation-- and red-lining would potentially have very visible effects on this depending on how its done.
Trades are a good option, but how long before plumbing drones are crawling through the sewers?
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The goverment paying off student loans is like bucketing water out of your boat and ignoring the hole. Like sure, its gonna keep some people afloat for a little longer but the issue hasn't really been addressed, the problem is still there and the cycle remains a perpetual shit storm. The cost of education is preposterous, the people taking these loans dont have jobs to support paying it back, and most of them are too young to have the experience informing them of what a monumental undertaking paying it back will be. If they tried to get the same loan for a house or business they would be denied. There are so many issues to tackle but paying off the loans rewards the groups who created the problem in the first place. It incentivizes them to continue the foul play and prey upon vulnerable youth. Without some systematic reform accompanying the loan payoffs to ensure this doesn't continue we will end up in the same situation over and over again.
While I fully agree the issue is the underlying problem... that is some All Lives Matter shit.
Because basically anyone who brings that up as an excuse to not wipe the slate clean are in that same "We need to think really hard about how we do this and not do anything for another 30 years". Same as most "Banning guns won't stop gun violence" people. It is a bad faith argument that boils down to insisting that the perfect MUST be the enemy of the good.
Im not saying we shouldn't pay off the loans or delay doing so. I'm saying that alone will not solve the problem. We must do both. I never hear discussion on that second part. Ignoring it is foolish.
And yes, the snails pace at which reform would occur is infuriating. It shouldn't take 30 years because some asshats will continue to argue in the nature of "how dare we hurt these businesses?!" while people continue to suffer. It sucks that it likely will, but if we dont start now it will never happen instead of eventually.
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Way too many jobs require degrees to apply as well. Yeah, if you're a doctor, scientist, engineer, or other specialist that really does require advanced education, you need that level of education.
But I'm hiring a new permit tech to process contractor registrations, take permit payments, and answer the phone. It's ludicrous that the city wants them to have a degree in "Public Administration, Fiance, Construction Science, or a related field."
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I totally agree with this. If someone is opposed to student loan forgiveness because they had to pay theirs off, that person sucks. But if that person thinks maybe they should get a portion of their payments back too, and not as part of opposition, then I am sympathetic.
if that person thinks maybe they should get a portion of their payments back too
I think every one of them assumes they will never get a cent of that money back. They do live in America, after all, the land of "fuck you; got mine."
Change the legislation to give every living person back every cent they ever paid towards student loans, and many opinions would change.
The Republican party would still be completely against it though, so we'd still have millions of boot lickers out there arguing to hurt their own financial situation in order to please their superiors.
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For me, I do kind of think that if someone paid and then forgiveness happened, they ought to be at least partially compensated if they have any history of being low income. They could have put their loan payments into something else but they didn't so they'd kind of end up screwed over by their slavishly responsible bill paying.
That said: its stupid to not want broad student loan forgiveness because the student loan crisis is literally damaging the economy. Its hurting everyone, even people who already paid their loans off.
Pretty much. It would be more broadly acceptable if it was like 'if you had student loans in the past decade you get a $5000 tax credit'. Maybe more if your reported income for the past 10 years was below a certain threshold.
That would benefit everyone, including those who paid off their loans and they could then tax that money from the tax credit and spend it elsewhere.
This type of thing was huge beneficial for child care too. The Child Care Tax Credits during the pandemic were a huge benefit and halved the child poverty rate. It's sheer stupidity they were cancelled.
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Do we all think loan forgiveness is the cure for student loans?
Not at all, but loan forgiveness wasn't mentioned in the comic. It's just putting a bandaid on a capitalized educational system that should not be for making money but rather a societal investment into our betterment. Id keep my loans I have left and vote for free education any day of the week if we had the option. (Of course I wouldn't say no to both) But I think some people were trying to use loan forgiveness to breach the doors of free education.
You don't need to cure cancer, you need to be able to prevent it in the first place.
Ofc this is following the metaphor, for actual cancer you need both.
For student loans you need to fix the system, higher education in Europe is free, but it really isn't, you pay for your education over your lifetime by earning more money with your higher education and thus paying more in taxes and social security.
Ofc it's not a perfect system, but much better than having young idiots be purposely exposed to predatory lending.
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That mindset sure is a great way to make sure nothing ever gets better for anyone.
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I paid off my student loans at the beginning of this month. it took me 16 years and like $65,000, right? If someone else comes in behind me, goes through the same shit that I went through, and then gets their loan forgiven or paid off in a couple of years?
Then I'm happy for them. Good for them, their life is gonna be so much easier without that burden over their head, and happier people means I get to live in a happier society, which means that I get to be happier too.
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What happened to all that student loan vote-for-me-again (or so it felt for a European, IMO) relief stuff in the end?
The Supreme Court put a stop to it in 2023. Biden v. Nebraska, one of the many recent 6-3 decisions.
After first establishing that at least Missouri had Article III standing to challenge the debt forgiveness program, Roberts held that the statutory grant of authority to the Secretary of Education to "waive or modify" loan terms could not be extended to the student loan forgiveness program, and that debt cancellation of this scale required clear congressional authorization and fell under the major questions doctrine.
If only those same six judges were as willing to (properly, IMO) limit Presidential authority now that their guy is in office...
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Dude.
Fuck cancer, AND fuck people that have that logic about school loans or anything else.
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I cant believe how many time I have to say "just because I was hungry yesterday doesn't mean you sould starve tomorrow." That line was fundamental in my upbringing, it's so simple and do correct and now,no one understands this very basic concept for children
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Plot twist, he actually beat up every single kid in the paediatric cancer ward at his local hospital.
"If they cure cancer after I beat the shit out of it, I'll have to beat it up again and possibly kill it this time. Who the fuck cured the twat of the injuries I gave him anyway? I thought we hated cancer?"
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