The Viral Economy

[malchior]

Canada asks Republicans to stop egging them on

Canada’s public safety minister said Monday that U.S. officials should stay out of his country’s domestic affairs, joining other Canadian leaders in pushing back against prominent Republicans who offered support for the protests of COVID-19 restrictions that have besieged downtown Ottawa for more than a week.

...

Protesters have said they will not leave until all vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. They also called for the removal of Trudeau’s government, though it is responsible for few of the restrictive measures, most of which were put in place by provincial governments.

Prominent Republicans including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton complained after crowdfunding site GoFundMe said it would refund the vast majority of the millions of dollars raised by demonstrators.

The site said it cut off funding for protest organizers after determining that their efforts violated the site’s terms of service by engaging in unlawful activity. Ontario Provincial Premier Doug Ford has called the protest an occupation.

In response, Paxton tweeted: “Patriotic Texans donated to Canadian truckers’ worthy cause.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said on Fox News that “government doesn’t have the right to force you to comply to their arbitrary mandates” and said “God bless” the convoy participants, whom he sought to characterize as not only defending freedoms in Canada but protecting the wider world.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino shot back: “It is certainly not the concern of the Texas attorney general as to how we in Canada go about our daily lives in accordance with the rule of law.”

“We need to be vigilant about potential foreign interference … Whatever statements may have been made by some foreign official are neither here nor there. We’re Canadian. We have our own set of laws. We will follow them,” Mendicino said.

[LawBeefaroni]

Inflation appears to be at a 40 year high. I mean non-inflation, of course.

Consumer prices in January surged more than expected over the past 12 months, indicating a worsening outlook for inflation and cementing the likelihood of substantial interest rate hikes this year.

The consumer price index, which measures the costs of dozens of everyday consumer goods, rose 7.5% compared to a year ago, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

[malchior]

Europe is wrestling with the same problem (they reported out a headline 5.1% for the same period) which sort of dispels the money printing theory we hear from the a lot of the seldom right Chicago economists. Both our economies (markets really) are dealing with the same beast. Supply chains with persistent shortages of raw and finished materials, energy prices, and everything in between having trouble making it to market with dollars/euros chasing scarce supply.

I read some economists wondering if an interest rate hike would do much other than hit the economy over the head and do more harm than good. It is an "interesting" set of problems to sort out to say the least. It is why I think the Fed has been resistant to move because they don't know if they are going to help/hurt or if they need to let the market keep working through what might end up being a fairly major reorganization.

[Kraken]

Dems are going to get thumped in November over the economy. Growth is booming and employment grew at a historic rate in Biden's first year. But those are statistics. What voters experience is sharply rising prices, chronic shortages, and sketchy services due to labor shortages.

[LawBeefaroni]

Stimmy time!

[malchior]

Dems are going to get thumped in November over the economy. Growth is booming and employment grew at a historic rate in Biden's first year. But those are statistics. What voters experience is sharply rising prices, chronic shortages, and sketchy services due to labor shortages.

That could cool by summer but I still think the mood against Biden goes well beyond this - as mentioned in the Biden thread. We might have learned something valuable that'll probably be lost in mix. You can't force all economic recoveries. We might in retrospect come to understand that well-meaning support can cause harm. I don't think we really understood our structural weaknesses like the hollowing out of our advanced technology manufacturing base and years of stretching supply chains from here to China. Though some of it was just people pivoting hard from services to hard goods in the midst of a pandemic damaged labor shortage. Sprinkle on to that we aren't a culture with the patience to figure things out the right way. We want it FIXED NOW. Hard lessons. Too bad the lesson might include autocracy and heaps of politically driven violence.

[Carpet_pissr]

I think it's pitchforks time. Whose idea was JIT? That person should be pilloried.

[malchior]

I think it's pitchforks time. Whose idea was JIT? That person should be pilloried.

Damn you Toyota and Demings!

[Isgrimnur]

NBC News

Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency on Friday and said he'll use all government resources to end a two-week protest by Canadian truckers over Covid-19 rules. And hours later, a judge ordered protesters at the Ambassador Bridge over the U.S.-Canadian border to leave.

Ford said the trucker protest amounts to a "siege" of downtown Ottawa and the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Windsor and Detroit.

"It’s an illegal occupation," Ford told reporters. "This is no longer a protest."

After the judge's order, police warned that anyone blocking streets or helping to block streets could be arrested. It was not immediately clear when or if law enforcement officers would be sent in to remove the demonstrators.

Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz of the Ontario Superior Court said during a virtual hearing that the order would be effective at 7 p.m. to give protesters time to leave.

[LordMortis]

(Only they aren't due the courtesy they are getting)

[LawBeefaroni]

US Freedom Convoy may target Superbowl.

The Department of Homeland Security says it has received reports that truck drivers who are protesting vaccine mandates will block roads in major cities in the coming weeks. The protests could potentially affect the Super Bowl in Los Angeles on Sunday and the State of the Union address in Washington, D.C., on March 1, according to an internal memo from DHS obtained by NPR.

....

On Feb. 6, officials found a flyer posted online that said "Shut Down the Super Bowl," with details of a "medical freedom demonstration" near SoFi Stadium on the day of the game, Feb. 13. The flyer also mentioned a truck convoy.

Anyone who participates in this is a gullible pawn who will get completely hung out to dry.

[Jaymann]

Now you're messing with Sasquatch!

[Isgrimnur]

CNN

President Joe Biden announced Wednesday he is extending the pause on student loan payments until May 1.

The payments, which were set to restart on February 1, have been paused since the beginning of the pandemic. Biden pointed to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis in the country as the reason for the extension.

CBS News

The Biden administration announced an extension of the federal student loan payment pause Wednesday, delaying the repayment of student loans until August 31. The payment pause was previously slated to end May 1.

[LordMortis]

But if the pandemic is over and it's job seekers market, in what world is delaying payments until election time anything other than trying to buy the young worker vote? I've really hit the old and cranky portion of life. The idea that youth are hiring in with more concessions at higher wages and better benefits than they have since I can remember, fine but the idea college loans are too punitive only after you chose to take them for 4 or 8 or more years is my hill to die on, I guess. There were cheaper ways to go to college and you are in essence punishing those who went that route so those who wanted "the college experience" but couldn't afford it got a free ride.

/waving cane at sky

[LawBeefaroni]

The irony is that without all the free money flooding the system, the tuitions wouldn't be as high. You can charge people whatever you want when they can pay whatever they want with free/cheap money.


Yale has more administrators than students and a student/faculty ratio of like 4:1. That fat doesn't exist without massive tuitions funded by free money and subsidized by a ridiculous tax-free endowment hedge fund.

It's government cheese all the way down.

[LordMortis]

And this is why this cranky old guy will never be a progressive nor even an actual democrat

https://www.businessinsider.com/aoc-can ... use-2022-4

"I think some folks read these extensions as savvy politics, but I don't think those folks understand the panic and disorder it causes people to get so close to these deadlines just to extend the uncertainty," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. "It doesn't have the affect people think it does. We should cancel them."

https://www.bankrate.com/loans/student- ... te-salary/

The average college graduate starting salary is around $55,260.
Computer science majors have the highest projected average salary for 2022, making an average of $75,900.
Humanities majors have the lowest projected average salary for 2022, making an average of $50,681.
There is a projected hiring increase of 26.6 percent for the class of 2022.

And we aren't filling all those jobs.

50 grand is not a crazy good wage to raise a family with but it's enough to get you going and make payments on the debt you chose take on, that you might not have to work so hard to get through school and avoid going to a community college or such for the first two years and then transfer to a university for your specialty.

And where is all of this loan fairy goodness going for people who joined the military so they could put off college while they served because they couldn't or wouldn't get loans? And kids working at the gas stations and coffee shops going to community college and who were serve you your meals at restaurants and...

It just makes me so cranky.

[Isgrimnur]

[LordMortis]

I'm not talking about my suffering. I was raised in a different time. I get that. I'm talking about inequity about poor decision making in the same generation. 18 year old can't afford college. Joins the military for four years and then starts college. 18 year old can't afford college and works full time. 18 year old can't afford the university that accepts them and goes to community college. 18 year gets the "college experience" at $25,000+ a year in loans. Worries about what a 100,000 debt means later. Money comes due and it has to come from somewhere but not from the kid who took the loan and has a leg up on the other 22 year olds doing things without that monkey.


There are two kinds of people. Those who try to live within their means when making decisions and those who will get away with whatever they can and worry about the consequences of their decision making later. I don't accept these dichotomies. The world is more nuanced than that.



Again, I'm cranky but if I'm given the choice, I won't forgive or delay debt any longer and if the progressives insist that's the way forward, well, eventually it gets that much easier to sit out voting.

[malchior]

The irony is that without all the free money flooding the system, the tuitions wouldn't be as high. You can charge people whatever you want when they can pay whatever they want with free/cheap money.


Yale has more administrators than students and a student/faculty ratio of like 4:1. That fat doesn't exist without massive tuitions funded by free money and subsidized by a ridiculous tax-free endowment hedge fund.

It's government cheese all the way down.

I think the point that it's government cheese is on target. I'd say Yale is a bit of an exception and not the rule. It's in many ways an investment bank with a higher ed institution attached versus the inverse at this point with $42B assets under management. Just roughing it out, Blackstone manages fifteen times those assets with approximately 3000 employees. Scaling it down isn't going to be linear - it wouldn't go from 3000 to 200 most likely. I'd therefore guess that 300-500 work in the "Investment Office" alone to manage the endowment. Call it a reasonable guess. In any case, it's sort of a crappy example but it's the Federalist.

I have something of a strong opinion having spent most of the beginning of my career (~10 years) in higher ed and what I saw happening was impacts from easy credit to the students and the institutions crossed with same of the same drivers which drove the financial crisis. Specifically around construction loans which impaired a lot of school's balance sheets and drove up costs.

On the easy money front the government was willing to hand out loans to everyone. I'd argue strongly it was *not cheap money* when talking about education loans. The interest rates on those government backed loans are much higher than the typical market rate for a private loan. Especially considering it was non-dischargeable. Congress set an arbitrary rate that was to be frank is unfair. The schools got tons of money from those outlays. Additionally, the institutions were selling construction bonds, CDOs, and other instruments all across education to fuel campus expansions.

This was part demand response from the easy credit. In the end, schools expanded both "daytime" and "nighttime" instruction. That drove investments in additional facilities and technology (online class growth was robust). It drove private college growth. It drove diploma mills. From the late 90s/early 00s through the 2008 financial crisis there was a drive to transform campus life funded by those dirt cheap construction loans. This was supplemented with grants to build dorms and buildings until the crisis kiboshed it (temporarily).

Anecdote: I once personally oversaw the acquisition of an entire computer network (including new at the time state of the art WiFi) at a rate of 0.25% in 2003. I took a $250K OpEx budget (the maintenance on existing network equipment) and turned it into a $200K/yr. 6-year lease, with $50K/yr. freed up. And this was well before the rates crashed to the earth. State governments were getting free money from private banks even. During the period from 1999 to 2007 when I left, we opened at least one or two: dorms, apartment complexes, or academic buildings for 8 years straight. The campus went from approximately capacity for 500 people to live there to 4000 in that time period. All my peers at other institutions public and private were seeing similar growth.

The main metric being driven in colleges at that time was "ports per pillow per student". They encouraged commuters schools to become campuses. They pumped money in and it drove costs up across the board and it all landed on millennials who got saddled with 8% statutory loans and graduated into one of the worst labor markets in a generation.

[malchior]

I'm not talking about my suffering. I was raised in a different time. I get that. I'm talking about inequity about poor decision making in the same generation. 18 year old can't afford college. Joins the military for four years and then starts college. 18 year old can't afford college and works full time. 18 year old can't afford the university that accepts them and goes to community college. 18 year gets the "college experience" at $25,000+ a year in loans. Worries about what a 100,000 debt means later. Money comes due and it has to come from somewhere but not from the kid who took the loan and has a leg up on the other 22 year olds doing things without that monkey.


There are two kinds of people. Those who try to live within their means when making decisions and those who will get away with whatever they can and worry about the consequences of their decision making later. I don't accept these dichotomies. The world is more nuanced than that.



Again, I'm cranky but if I'm given the choice, I won't forgive or delay debt any longer and if the progressives insist that's the way forward, well, eventually it gets that much easier to sit out voting.

FWIW I get this reaction but lots of folks were being driven by bad policy and bad incentives. Still in the end there was a mess of bad luck in there as well. We could ease a lot of suffering just dropping the statutory interest rate on college loans without cancelling them. I also think there was a *LOT* of predation by banks, schools, and just the way society has hyped career outcomes. It's pretty complicated but we see it in all sorts of data that each generation after the Boomer's is poorer than the next. Despite more education, despite supposed higher wages, etc. This is a big component in the whole inequality shit show we are dealing with.

[LawBeefaroni]

Not really. It's more ant/grasshopper than no suffering/suffering.

[LordMortis]

We could ease a lot of suffering just dropping the statutory interest rate on college loans without cancelling them.

Those are conversations that can be had. My own rep whom I voted for twice now does not want to have that conversation and the President is playing an electoral shell game and not having the conversation at all.

[LawBeefaroni]

The irony is that without all the free money flooding the system, the tuitions wouldn't be as high. You can charge people whatever you want when they can pay whatever they want with free/cheap money.


Yale has more administrators than students and a student/faculty ratio of like 4:1. That fat doesn't exist without massive tuitions funded by free money and subsidized by a ridiculous tax-free endowment hedge fund.

It's government cheese all the way down.

I think the point that it's government cheese is on target. I'd say Yale is a bit of an exception and not the rule. It's in many ways an investment bank with a higher ed institution attached versus the inverse at this point with $42B assets under management. Just roughing it out, Blackstone manages fifteen times those assets with approximately 3000 employees. Scaling it down isn't going to be linear - it wouldn't go from 3000 to 200 most likely. I'd therefore guess that 300-500 work in the "Investment Office" alone to manage the endowment. Call it a reasonable guess. In any case, it's sort of a crappy example but it's the Federalist.

I have something of a strong opinion having spent most of the beginning of my career (~10 years) in higher ed and what I saw happening was easy credit to the students and the institutions with a cross-product linkage to the financial crisis which impaired a lot of school's balance sheets and drove up costs.

On the easy money front the government was willing to hand out loans to everyone. I'd argue strongly it was *not cheap money* when talking about education loans. The interest rates on those government backed loans are much higher than the typical market rate for a private loan. Especially considering it was non-dischargeable. Congress set an arbitrary rate that was to be frank is unfair. The schools got tons of money from those outlays. Additionally, the institutions were selling construction bonds, CDOs, and other instruments all across education to fuel campus expansions.

This was part demand response from the easy credit. In the end, schools expanded both "daytime" and "nighttime" instruction. That drove investments in additional facilities and technology (online class growth was robust). It drove private college growth. It drove diploma mills. From the late 90s/early 00s through the 2008 financial crisis there was a drive to transform campus life funded by those dirt cheap construction loans. This was supplemented with grants to build dorms and buildings until the crisis kiboshed it (temporarily).

Anecdote: I once personally oversaw the acquisition of an entire computer network (including new at the time state of the art WiFi) at a rate of 0.25% in 2003. I took a $250K OpEx budget (the maintenance on existing network equipment) and turned it into a $200K/yr. 6-year lease, with $50K/yr. freed up. And this was well before the rates crashed to the earth. State governments were getting free money from private banks even. During the period from 1999 to 2007 when I left, we opened at least one or two: dorms, apartment complexes, or academic buildings for 8 years straight. The campus went from approximately capacity for 500 people to live there to 4000 in that time period. All my peers at other institutions public and private were seeing similar growth.

The main metric being driven in colleges at that time was "ports per pillow per student". They encouraged commuters schools to become campuses. They pumped money in and it drove costs up across the board and it all landed on millennials who got saddled with 8% statutory loans and graduated into one of the worst labor markets in a generation.

Fair enough, maybe not cheap money but extremely easy to get (too easy) with unrealistic terms. There are no limits for grad students. Literally. And we still may make them cheap or even free retroactively. Great. But what happens if they wipe out even 1/10th of the $1.5T outstanding student loan debt? It's not just a ledger item.

[Carpet_pissr]

The irony is that without all the free money flooding the system, the tuitions wouldn't be as high. You can charge people whatever you want when they can pay whatever they want with free/cheap money.


Yale has more administrators than students and a student/faculty ratio of like 4:1. That fat doesn't exist without massive tuitions funded by free money and subsidized by a ridiculous tax-free endowment hedge fund.

It's government cheese all the way down.

I think the point that it's government cheese is on target. I'd say Yale is a bit of an exception and not the rule. It's in many ways an investment bank with a higher ed institution attached versus the inverse at this point with $42B assets under management. Just roughing it out, Blackstone manages fifteen times those assets with approximately 3000 employees. Scaling it down isn't going to be linear - it wouldn't go from 3000 to 200 most likely. I'd therefore guess that 300-500 work in the "Investment Office" alone to manage the endowment. Call it a reasonable guess. In any case, it's sort of a crappy example but it's the Federalist.

I have something of a strong opinion having spent most of the beginning of my career (~10 years) in higher ed and what I saw happening was impacts from easy credit to the students and the institutions crossed with same of the same drivers which drove the financial crisis. Specifically around construction loans which impaired a lot of school's balance sheets and drove up costs.

On the easy money front the government was willing to hand out loans to everyone. I'd argue strongly it was *not cheap money* when talking about education loans. The interest rates on those government backed loans are much higher than the typical market rate for a private loan. Especially considering it was non-dischargeable. Congress set an arbitrary rate that was to be frank is unfair. The schools got tons of money from those outlays. Additionally, the institutions were selling construction bonds, CDOs, and other instruments all across education to fuel campus expansions.

This was part demand response from the easy credit. In the end, schools expanded both "daytime" and "nighttime" instruction. That drove investments in additional facilities and technology (online class growth was robust). It drove private college growth. It drove diploma mills. From the late 90s/early 00s through the 2008 financial crisis there was a drive to transform campus life funded by those dirt cheap construction loans. This was supplemented with grants to build dorms and buildings until the crisis kiboshed it (temporarily).

Anecdote: I once personally oversaw the acquisition of an entire computer network (including new at the time state of the art WiFi) at a rate of 0.25% in 2003. I took a $250K OpEx budget (the maintenance on existing network equipment) and turned it into a $200K/yr. 6-year lease, with $50K/yr. freed up. And this was well before the rates crashed to the earth. State governments were getting free money from private banks even. During the period from 1999 to 2007 when I left, we opened at least one or two: dorms, apartment complexes, or academic buildings for 8 years straight. The campus went from approximately capacity for 500 people to live there to 4000 in that time period. All my peers at other institutions public and private were seeing similar growth.

The main metric being driven in colleges at that time was "ports per pillow per student". They encouraged commuters schools to become campuses. They pumped money in and it drove costs up across the board and it all landed on millennials who got saddled with 8% statutory loans and graduated into one of the worst labor markets in a generation.

Oh man, I saw this phenomenon happen before my eyes at our local state university. The MASSIVE amount of rapid, compressed development on campus, and expanding the campus - dorms, admin buildings and things like a brand new law school building, brand new music school building, etc, have been amazing to watch...and all happened in the past 10 years or so. More development in the past 7-8 years than probably the 70 before it combined. And of course a massive increase in tuition to pay for it all.

[Isgrimnur]

I'm not talking about my suffering. I was raised in a different time. I get that. I'm talking about inequity about poor decision making in the same generation. 18 year old can't afford college. Joins the military for four years and then starts college. 18 year old can't afford college and works full time. 18 year old can't afford the university that accepts them and goes to community college. 18 year gets the "college experience" at $25,000+ a year in loans. Worries about what a 100,000 debt means later. Money comes due and it has to come from somewhere but not from the kid who took the loan and has a leg up on the other 22 year olds doing things without that monkey.

There are two kinds of people. Those who try to live within their means when making decisions and those who will get away with whatever they can and worry about the consequences of their decision making later. I don't accept these dichotomies. The world is more nuanced than that.

Again, I'm cranky but if I'm given the choice, I won't forgive or delay debt any longer and if the progressives insist that's the way forward, well, eventually it gets that much easier to sit out voting.

Despite what certain politicians say, there are always winners and losers in any government decision. And at some point we have to investigate the "choices" that the system provided to these "adults".

At the end of it all, debt forgiveness moves money from the federal government back to the lenders who made the money available, who were promised that they'd get it back come hell or high water. The people who were placed in a system where this was presented as a viable path to success are freed from a burden of debt and can start spending money on things that are actually productive for themselves and the economy. Perhaps even retirement investments and things of that nature.

Nobody made the decision to take on education debt with the hopes that Uncle Samta Claus was going to wipe the slate clean. They're not corporations, after all.

[LawBeefaroni]

Nobody made the decision to take on education debt with the hopes that Uncle Samta Claus was going to wipe the slate clean. They're not corporations, after all.

People are making the decision now not to pay off loans because of vague promises of debt forgiveness from a host of politicians. And I can't blame them.

FWIW,. Im all for Fresh Start which wipes out all defaults, but doesn't eliminate the principal.

[noxiousdog]

Nobody made the decision to take on education debt with the hopes that Uncle Samta Claus was going to wipe the slate clean. They're not corporations, after all.

People are making the decision now not to pay off loans because of vague promises of debt forgiveness from a host of politicians. And I can't blame them.

You have no idea how hard it was for me to decide whether to load my kids up on student loan debt or not for exactly this reason.

[malchior]

Nobody made the decision to take on education debt with the hopes that Uncle Samta Claus was going to wipe the slate clean. They're not corporations, after all.

People are making the decision now not to pay off loans because of vague promises of debt forgiveness from a host of politicians. And I can't blame them.

FWIW,. Im all for Fresh Start which wipes out all defaults, but doesn't eliminate the principal.

I'm flexible even towards some principal reduction but it'd have to be for good reasons or have work requirements. For example, programs where people were misinformed/mislead by institutions. And those institutions would need to suffer consequences.

But brass tacks, it is a bit pointless when I begin wondering if anything will happen in any sort of "smart way". This is a big problem and it will likely need a slew of tools to address it. And the United States government is falling apart. It has wildly inconsistent policy-performance based on administration, we can't stay on any course, and in short can't solve simple problems much less something as broad based or complicated as this. The previous administration actually made this problem worse - they botched a program specifically designed to deal with predatory lending.

The most likely thing that will happen will revolve around populist outcomes or some systemic failure. Maybe Biden is forestalling a default crisis. Who knows. I wouldn't call it a coin flip on either but I (edit: don't!) know how this will turn out. It somehow keeps going when it should be unsustainable.

[Isgrimnur]

https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-age

[Jaymann]

Nice to see the nonagenarians keeping up their end of the bargain.

[coopasonic]

Nice to see the nonagenarians keeping up their end of the bargain.

I have a friend in her early 50s, she got a PhD in liberal arts and works full time as a professor and now owes close to double the amount borrowed. She will boost that 90+ number if she lives that long.

[Max Peck]

Does that chart reflect outstanding debt as of when the report was compiled, or the amount of student loans acquired while getting an education?

[coopasonic]

Does that chart reflect outstanding debt as of when the report was compiled, or the amount of student loans acquired while getting an education?

I don't see where it is stated explicitly.

30- to 60-year-olds have average loan debts that exceed the national average.

The use of HAVE makes it sound like the current balance of their student loans.

[Max Peck]

If it's current debt, it would be interesting to see a more detailed distribution of debt within each age bracket. I have a hard time believing that a typical 90-year-old still has $20k of student debt on the books. Historically, what percentage of the population in that bracket even went on to post-secondary studies and had the opportunity to take on student debt?

Edit: Although it does belatedly occur to me that there might be people getting student loans late in life. It might even make sense if you think you'll die before needing to pay it off.

[Carpet_pissr]

This is a big problem and it will likely need a slew of tools to address it. And the United States government is falling apart. It has wildly inconsistent policy-performance based on administration, we can't stay on any course, and in short can't solve simple problems much less something as broad based or complicated as this.

Sad and cynical, but bears repeating.

We seem to be in "flail" mode.

[malchior]

If it's current debt, it would be interesting to see a more detailed distribution of debt within each age bracket. I have a hard time believing that a typical 90-year-old still has $20k of student debt on the books. Historically, what percentage of the population in that bracket even went on to post-secondary studies and had the opportunity to take on student debt?

I wouldn't read it as average across the entire population. It is the average debt of people who have student debt in the population. I also wouldn't say typical either. This is average data subject to all the distortions therein. I looked for median but couldn't find it. Mostly because the loan providers just pump out aggregate stats.

[Kraken]

If it's current debt, it would be interesting to see a more detailed distribution of debt within each age bracket. I have a hard time believing that a typical 90-year-old still has $20k of student debt on the books. Historically, what percentage of the population in that bracket even went on to post-secondary studies and had the opportunity to take on student debt?

Edit: Although it does belatedly occur to me that there might be people getting student loans late in life. It might even make sense if you think you'll die before needing to pay it off.

That makes sense.

It was still possible to work one's way through college and graduate debt-free when I went in the late 1970s. Tuition at a state university was in the mid $hundreds for a full course load per term -- a lot of money back then, but manageable, especially if you could land even a modest scholarship. I worked four part-time jobs and grossed around $150/wk, which was just about enough to cover rent, food, heat, gas, etc. My parents helped with tuition, as did the federal government in the form of Social Security disability checks (my dad was disabled) and food stamps. Point being, I doubt that any 90-year-olds racked up student loans 70 years ago.

[Blackhawk]

I owe considerably more than I borrowed. I have been on non-stop forbearance for ~20 years now, and it is unlikely I will ever be able to pay on it. I expect that I'll be an anti-millionaire by the time I die.

[pr0ner]

If it's current debt, it would be interesting to see a more detailed distribution of debt within each age bracket. I have a hard time believing that a typical 90-year-old still has $20k of student debt on the books. Historically, what percentage of the population in that bracket even went on to post-secondary studies and had the opportunity to take on student debt?

Edit: Although it does belatedly occur to me that there might be people getting student loans late in life. It might even make sense if you think you'll die before needing to pay it off.

That makes sense.

It was still possible to work one's way through college and graduate debt-free when I went in the late 1970s. Tuition at a state university was in the mid $hundreds for a full course load per term -- a lot of money back then, but manageable, especially if you could land even a modest scholarship. I worked four part-time jobs and grossed around $150/wk, which was just about enough to cover rent, food, heat, gas, etc. My parents helped with tuition, as did the federal government in the form of Social Security disability checks (my dad was disabled) and food stamps. Point being, I doubt that any 90-year-olds racked up student loans 70 years ago.

Tuition at Virginia Tech was somewhere between $1750 and $2000 a semester when I went to college in the late 90s/early 00s (tuition for my freshman year was $3500). Room and board was roughly the same as tuition every year. I also came out of college with no debt, but that was thanks to shrewd investing by my dad and me going to a reasonably priced school.

But yes, I agree that I don't see any 90 year-olds racking up student loans 70 years ago, either. Maybe they're getting late in life graduate school loans, but yeah, that much student loan debt today for someone who's in their 90s feels off to me.

[LordMortis]

That makes sense.

It was still possible to work one's way through college and graduate debt-free when I went in the late 1970s. Tuition at a state university was in the mid $hundreds for a full course load per term -- a lot of money back then, but manageable, especially if you could land even a modest scholarship. I worked four part-time jobs and grossed around $150/wk, which was just about enough to cover rent, food, heat, gas, etc. My parents helped with tuition, as did the federal government in the form of Social Security disability checks (my dad was disabled) and food stamps. Point being, I doubt that any 90-year-olds racked up student loans 70 years ago.

It was still doable in the mid 90s for in state tuition at anything short of the UofM. It was difficult to do so and pay rent. It would have been unreasonable to do supporting a child.

My frame of reference ends there but I know it got progressively worse because supporting infrastructure took off in the late 90s. Every had to move in to the tech world, hire the tech world people, and modernize their campuses to allow for that infrastructure. Even in 94, Internet usage was minimal and EMU had like 30 computers on campus available for renting time for word processing and printing. That was it. We had "VAX" system for networking by students that no one used except a few dozen MUX players and professors paid it lip service as a resource.

I think EMU tuition for for 12 credit hours was costing me about $1,500 OoP in state tuition by the time I graduated in the mid 90s. I did have to fight the university to live at home. They insisted all freshmen must have the "college experience" but I wasn't having any of that. Paying for dorm life was out of my price range. Of course, getting scholastic aid, nor even loans, was waaaaay more difficult then. And though I qualified for an unsubsidized loan at 8%, nope. Either my 7-11 wage was going to pay for school or school wasn't happening.

I feel the barrier to entry at the universities now but the answer isn't to throw more money at the universities. Especially as commuter colleges and community colleges are doing fine at being affordable, albeit with underpaid educators (and would still be doing fine if they paid more and even passed that cost on to the students). That said, I do support in state subsidized intuitions.