{"items": [{"author": "Danner", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=466920993349245", "anchor": "fb-466920993349245", "service": "fb", "text": "For the most part, this is my decision. Don't live beyond my means, and for 4 years after college, I didn't pay a dime down on that debt. I killed off my credit, but I've only regretted that a few times, like when car rental places don't take debit cards, even if I could pay for the whole damn rental car via the debit card.
Now my college debt money lives in a savings account, and gets automatically deducted by the company handling it every month, trying to repair my credit, but I don't really need it at this point.", "timestamp": "1355460475"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=466954980012513", "anchor": "fb-466954980012513", "service": "fb", "text": "You can declare bankruptcy, you can choose to not borrow money. But if you are an American citizen, your country is in $16 trillion of debt (and rising), so it's hard to \"not participate\" unless you choose to run away.", "timestamp": "1355461276"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/112947709146257842066", "anchor": "gp-1355461630420", "service": "gp", "text": "One reason for student loans to be special: if you take out a house loan or a car loan and fail to pay it off, the lender can repossess the item in question. If you take out a student loan, they can't repossess your education.\n
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\nIf you could declare bankruptcy to get out from under student debt, you could save the money you would have been paying toward those loans to buy a reasonably nice car with cash within just two to four years, depending on the car and the loan terms. Depending on where you live, you could probably do the same thing (after a much longer saving period, obviously- but not necessarily longer than the length of the student loan) with a small house. Point being, the loss of your credit wouldn't serve as much of a consequence. That would truly be a get-out-of-jail-free card.", "timestamp": 1355461630}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/106120852580068301475", "anchor": "gp-1355462895321", "service": "gp", "text": "I love how you can donate to them with your credit card. ", "timestamp": 1355462895}, {"author": "Josh", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/118273920476267337216", "anchor": "gp-1355463660224", "service": "gp", "text": "The notion that debt is evil seems to me to fundamentally misunderstand the idea of saving and investing. (The converse of which is borrowing: If I have money that I'm not using right now (because I'm saving it for later), and you need money that you don't have right now, I can loan you my money, and when you pay it back (with a little interest), we're both better off.)\n
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\nBorrowing money you can't pay back is a bad idea. (Much like lending money to people who won't pay it back.) And sometimes you think you can, and you turn out to be wrong, and that sucks. But it's no more evil than borrowing a hammer that you then go on to lose, or forget to return before your neighbor moves away, or any other sort of lending. (We don't usually explicitly ask or offer interest on non-monetary loans, although in fact we do often kick some in, if the value of the thing is high enough -- if you lend me your car for a week while you're out of town, I'll probably do something nice for you when\u00a0 you get back, like have it cleaned, or take you out to dinner, or bake you some cookies, or whatever.)\n
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\n(And none of that is fundamentally any different than if you loan me $100 so that I can buy the ingredients to make cookies, which I sell for $110, and give you a plateful to thank you. Or give you $2 as we agreed, take your pick.)\n
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\ntl;dr: Lending and borrowing are fundamentally good.", "timestamp": 1355463660}, {"author": "George", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=466982196676458", "anchor": "fb-466982196676458", "service": "fb", "text": "Money is just tradeable debt so opting out of debt entirely is very hard.", "timestamp": "1355466449"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/106120852580068301475", "anchor": "gp-1355471586641", "service": "gp", "text": "I think the industrial revolution is partly attributed to the easing of usury laws, but I don't actually know. ", "timestamp": 1355471586}, {"author": "Rick", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=467037646670913", "anchor": "fb-467037646670913", "service": "fb", "text": "The whole ethical side is missing from this argument. If you borrow money from me planning to declare bankruptcy and not pay me back, that's kind of like stealing. Why is it different if you borrow money from a larger organization?", "timestamp": "1355483547"}, {"author": "Lex", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/111102660583646544610", "anchor": "gp-1355496776831", "service": "gp", "text": "I agree with \n@Josh\n\u00a0about debt being a way people help each other out. As a specific example, think what happens when someone puts money in a retirement account that then gets loaned out to a college student. The lender gets the interest money later, when they retire, which fits their plans just fine. The college kid gets an education now, and will make more money later as a result.\n
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\nThis said, I suspect the point being made, a little bit over-aggressively, is that \nindividuals\n should be\u00a0leery\u00a0of debt. Don't buy a TV on a 2-year plan. You'll make a Quaker sad.", "timestamp": 1355496776}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=467156239992387", "anchor": "fb-467156239992387", "service": "fb", "text": "@Chloe: are you saying going into debt for a car, house, or education is rarely worth it?", "timestamp": "1355500933"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=467157716658906", "anchor": "fb-467157716658906", "service": "fb", "text": "Debt is worth it if you have a good plan for getting out of it. It's like any other kind of dive.", "timestamp": "1355501144"}, {"author": "Karla", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=467187503322594", "anchor": "fb-467187503322594", "service": "fb", "text": "I'm not sure I agree with you that one should be able to opt out of child support debt. I know there are serious issues with the child support system as it stands (slow or non-responsive to changes in circumstance). By child support debt, do you mean debt to the other parent, or debt to a bank for a loan you took to pay the other parent?", "timestamp": "1355506847"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=467226409985370", "anchor": "fb-467226409985370", "service": "fb", "text": "@Karla: \"By child support debt, do you mean debt to the other parent, or debt to a bank for a loan you took to pay the other parent?\"
The former. The latter, as far as I can tell, would be an ordinary loan.
One way that child support debt (as well as some of the other debts that survive bankruptcy like alimony, and fines) is different is that someone didn't choose to lend to you. That gives less reason to let people \"opt out\".
Reading some, it looks like for student loans if you convince the court that they pose an undue hardship then they can be forgiven along with the rest of your debts in a bankruptcy case. Expanding that to include all kinds of debt seems like it might be a good balance between letting people get out of crushing obligations while also keeping creditors from losing out on their deserved payment.
(Not a lawyer.)", "timestamp": "1355514722"}, {"author": "Karla", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=467229843318360", "anchor": "fb-467229843318360", "service": "fb", "text": "I'm just concerned about the welfare of the child/other parent in this situation. It seems different to opt out on paying the government or banks back than to opt out on supporting your child...", "timestamp": "1355515280"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=467233486651329", "anchor": "fb-467233486651329", "service": "fb", "text": "@Karla: It seems to me that your concern really comes down to a distinction between failing to pay what you owe an individual vs failing to pay what you owe an organization or group. (See Richard's comment.)", "timestamp": "1355515839"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=467233979984613", "anchor": "fb-467233979984613", "service": "fb", "text": "@Richard: People borrowing money with the *intent* of not paying it back is clearly wrong, illegal, and kind of a side issue.", "timestamp": "1355515951"}, {"author": "Phillip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=467255193315825", "anchor": "fb-467255193315825", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff, you can argue that going into debt without a clear plan of how you will pay it off, is close to stealing. Currently the fashion (see Occupy Wall Street) is to blame the lender and ascribe no responsibility to the borrower. That said, we have societally become debt oriented as opposed to seeing debt as an exception. This is particularly evil in the case of college debt. Colleges being subsidized by student debt have allowed their costs to vastly outpace inflation. The rational necessity of college that I saw as young man continues as the societal norm, but the facts on the ground show it not to be a good economic decision. What I find frustrating is that the lenders get blamed instead of the colleges.", "timestamp": "1355520478"}, {"author": "Phillip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/466911283350216?comment_id=467255816649096", "anchor": "fb-467255816649096", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff, no it's not a side issue, the rules got changed when a large number of students rationally and immorally discharged their debt in bankruptcy. That said, I hate student loans, since they subsidize waste at colleges.", "timestamp": "1355520610"}]}