In think maybe I’m calculating IBR wrong because under the new formulation I would get way less. Assumed: 76k a year salary with 52k loan 76k-32k (250% poverty line) = 44k ibr value 44k*.05/12=183$ a month. So slightly less than the interest on the loan. And that’s assuming that you didn’t bake in all your housing and other expenses into the loan to get it up well over 100k since ibr has you capped at 180/month
'k, 5%. Let's fucking shoot the moon. Highest room and board is NYU. Tuition is $58k a year. This poor sucka gonna average $34k a year. We're at $304k for that lesbian dance study degree or WTFever but keep in mind - there just aren't that many slots open for this kind of profligate waste. About a hundred undergrads at any given time. $58k plus $18k x 4 = $304k. 120 payments of $3209 gets you free! Or wait, $34k is $3400 is $141/mo is a mere $17k to the government! Holy shit! Those freeloaders are getting away with like $290k! Soon the world will be covered in lesbian dance majors, eager to make Starbucks wages and bilking the government of our hard-earned tax dollars! Sacramento paid $8m for this. That's about 27 Titsch grads. Who pay taxes, drink Starbucks and shop Amazon. A Titsch grad is also about three Excalibur rounds, about four Javelin missiles. A Titsch undergrad education, under the new 5% rules, would pay for about 78 inches of the Bridge to Nowhere or about 19 1/2" of Seattle's light rail expansion. So - is the world suddenly going to be aflood in profligate dance majors? Or do the arts just fucking cost money? You can't draw a normal distribution without drawing extremes. Are there programs that are going to get a boost from loan forgiveness? Undoubtedly. But right now, this hypothetical lesbian dance major at NYU is going from a 15% cap to a 5% cap and a 30-year repayment schedule to a 10% repayment schedule. The government was never seeing their money anyway (maximum payment on that loan was $166k). Enrollment was already down. Here, try this one on for size: I know of two midwifery schools closing. Why? nobody wants to pay the $200k tuition for an average salary of $49k a year. Know what that means? 3 birth centers are closing because they can't hire midwives. Know what that means for the state? It means about 300 fewer births at a cost of $4500, and 300 more births at a cost of $18k, because there aren't six midwives. That's a direct cost to the state Medicaid system of $4m per year for a tuition cost of $1.2m. There's a real "ZOMFG SOMEONE BESIDES ME IS GETTING LARGESSE" about all this student loan bullshit and I'm here to say - your selfishness is showing. Any fucking society with plans to last through the next election subsidizes something and if it isn't you, congratulations, that means your job is tedious enough that you have to get paid directly.