Ron Paul Says He Would End Student Loans

I don’t see how college students who have mounds of debt and little opportunity in today’s centralized economy could be alienated by a plan to end that structure of generational slavery.

It’s not like he would increase federal assistance to make up the difference. Let’s see, if you can’t afford college, you just can’t go. Now there’s a model for generational slavery.

More genius from the umpteen term congressman against term limits, Father of the senator whose (most of anyway ) money comes medicare payments.

Federal and state financial aid should not be allowed to exceed student access to higher education based on the most affordable option within the proximity of the students home.

While the erasure of student loans would cause the near-instant disappearance of the corporate for-profit schools, it would do little to make the public schools become more affordable.

Much of the increasing costs of public school education stems from constant dwindling of state support, and increased bureaucratic requirements (ergo administrative bloat) for the government.

I really don’t see where Ron Paul is going with this idea.

Where are you going with this pov? You made his point for him.

He is NOT ending it.

http://www.ronpaul2012.com/2011/10/24/ron-paul-is-not-ending-student-loans/

Here is some December, 2007 Meet the Press

MR. RUSSERT: But if you believe in the philosophy of term limits, why wouldn’t you voluntarily…REP. PAUL: Well, it’s, it’s one of those, it’s one of those things that’s not on–I mean, you don’t see that out I’m campaigning on that. I mean, I don’t think it’s–I don’t think it’s the solution.

Federal Student Loans programs are like Sub-Prime lending in the housing market. If you can lend any amount of money to anyone, you will create additional artificial demand on top of the true needs of the market. These debt bubbles cannot be sustained as many will have been bad loan investments and will be unpayable by the borrowerI(ie. Political Science and Theatre Degrees). You color this like taking student loans from the government is a good thing and Dr. Paul is wrong but if you listen to the kids at Occupy Wall Street, they will tell you that the Federal Student Loan Program is a Racket. 

It is dishonest and shoddy journalism to announce that Dr. Paul would end student loans without reminding people that he would also end income tax and inflation.  Everyone would have more money by not having to pay the expensive overhead involved in collecting the income tax.  It would be easier to accumulate savings without inflation eroding the value of the dollar.  Overall taxes would be lower just by not paying for a bloated military budget, Fatherland security, and the drug war.

If the federal program ended then each state could start its own program.  Then maybe one state would get it right since the current system is failing.  Many need money and don’t qualify because their working parents are classified as rich by the communists who design the financial aid form.  Working and saving is punished under the current system.  Some get loans who have no business in college.  It is a proven fact that more aid pushes up tuition bills. 

Folks: a little history–student loans for college began with the NDEA, a very low interest loan to help us win the science Cold War. The loans were forgiven when students elected to teach in low income areas. Again, the idea was that the government had a positive societal role in promoting higher education for people whose opportunities were limited by incidents of their birth (for which read they did not have parents who could afford tuition). The loans were not meant to raise a revenue, and were semi-private arrangements involving banks. As the politics of the country have veered toward a more conservative stance on the role of the federal government, federal government’s role in higher education has shifted to a business model which may ill fit loans (hence the comments comparing the federal loan programs to sub-par mortgages). If and only if the federal government returns to its original purpose–increasing the number of students who have access to affordable higher education–will government loan policy make sense. All best, Peter

I’m not a big Ron Paul fan, but I resent the misleading nature of the CHE headline.  Ron Paul did NOT say he would end student loans.  He said he would end the Federal government’s role as lender or guarantor or subsidizer of student loans. That’s a big difference and perfectly consistent with his libertarian and “less government is better” perspective.  I’m sure most of his  college student supporters are just fine with his stance.  Shame on the Chronicle for the misleading headline.  

Which would eliminate access to most of the country’s most prestigious universities for most moderate to low income students from the south, Midwest, and southwest. Basically, an elimination of regional diversity in this country except for the wealthy.

Free government money from the feds, state and counties covers well above the tuition and fees for low income students at our school. Without taking loans, they still have a thousand left to use for their ‘educational expenses’, including food, lodging, transportation–in fact, anything the student deems necessary or desirable. If you want your food and lodging paid for, here’s where student loans come in. It is easy to borrow the maximum amount. Many of these students have never seen a thousand dollars (unless they deal drugs), let alone 4 or 5 thousand. Guess what they do with this money! This seems like a much better deal than staying home and looking for a job. If they quit school and go home later, the school doesn’t have much in the way of collecting money that has been refunded. If the student truly doesn’t care about college, who cares if we don’t release a transcript?
How are we helping them?

Please explain how you know Ron Paul is not getting elected.  I am sure we can save millions of dollars on the primary election process. 

I hate to say this, but student loans are free money.  Have you ever tried to get one?  Really simple and there are those out there who do not intend to make anything but a monetary gain from the loan. 

Finally, why does every person need a college education?  I hear punduts saying it is the only way out of poverty.  Well, it is not and they are just part of the big business of Academia. 

“Did YOU go to public school?”

I did (because that’s what you did back then), but my kids aren’t. Can I have my taxes back on that?

Well, Ron Paul would replace student loans with “illiteracy and poverty” in US.

Socafish,

Who invited you into this conversation?  My question was directed to MIKPAP.  I have seen your biting remarks on others’ posts.  What is your end game? It appears not to be entering into conversation, but to discredit.

As for your alleged question, it matters not what the interest rate is when you do not plan to pay back the loan.Your analogy does not make any sense to me.  Please explain.

I see it says aid not just loans.

Wow, people really get angry when their subsidy is threatened. There are two ways to acquire wealth, the economic (voluntary) means and the political (coercive) means. No one argues about car prices because the market provides options and transactions are based on voluntary exchange. Everyone argues about education in part because they either (1) think their subsidy is too small, if they are on the receiving end, or (2) resent having a gun to their head if they are funding the subsidy. Look at all the fitness centers and luxury dorms that are being financed indirectly through federal student aid. How much of higher ed is really current consumption (a fun and interesting experience) versus a true investment in human capital. The current system is clearly inefficient and out of hand. Ron Paul, as usual, speaks the truth.

RON PAUL IS NOT ‘ENDING’ STUDENT LOANS

http://www.ronpaul2012.com/2011/10/24/ron-paul-is-not-ending-student-loans/

That position could alienate some of the college students who support him, the article notes.
Do ya’ think?

Well – he probably ISN’T going to higher elective office!!

Actually accepting medicare is not necessary for any doctor under this current system..http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L9s6l9srzDU

It doesn’t really help to earn “over twice as much” during one’s lifetime if a good portion of those earnings has to be used to pay off school debts. I have a good job and earn good money but it would still take considerable sacrifice to pay off an $80,000.00 plus loan. To make matters worse (i.e. to increase the debt), a number of students decide to go on to graduate school just to avoid having to begin paying off the debt. In a worse case scenario, two individuals heavily in debt from school loans get married and together often owe over two hundred thousand dollars. Relatively speaking, the number of under 30 individuals carrying this debt obligation is a fairly new phenomenon in our society. I hope they manage to avoid it for their own children, if they can afford to have any children.

I’m curious.  Would this mean that a competentand well-off kid could/should go to Yale because she can afford it and doesn’t need a loan, but a gifted but poor kid should be content to settle for a 2/2 education in the public sector and never even consider in her wildest dreams of attending Yale?  I’m definitely not saying one educational venue is better than the other, but if this were YOUR child and the aptitude was there but not the cash, what would you advise regarding the intangibles?  I suspect, when push comes to shove, you’d look at this from another angle. 

You can twist the post any way you like, but you can’t twist the fact that interest rates increase by 100% as of July 1, 2012 and that Mr. Obama, as President, is letting that happen…or was someone else elected President with whom I am unfamiliar?

Many many MDs do not accept Medicare patients.   There is nothing/no one/ forcing them to do so.  Even fewer of them accept Medicaid patients (at any rate, in most states you have to have children or be disabled in order to be elligible for Medicaid.   If not, you’re out of luck!  Of course, if you had been able to access medical care on time, you might not have become disabled and would have been able to keep working, taking care of your kids, paying taxes, etc etc etc) .  (medical providers in countries with a single payer system are not forced to accept patients under that system either)

Hospitals don’t have to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients either.  Only ERs have to provide basic emergency care, but nothing, absolutely nothing, more.  Hospitals are not forced to have ERs and many don’t. 

The rules are on line, just a click away (Medicare.org). Also stats are all over the place.  Oh, and perhaps you could do some research of your own?  Open up the yellow pages  at “Physicians” section and call each one (or just the first 10!) and ask them if they take Medicare patients.  Reality is right there, at your fingertips. 

I guess you oppose the “system” because:

A) you’re immortal

B) you’re never ever going to come down with a major illness, or have a major accident which would disable you and be  dropped by your insurance or max out your  benefits (have you even looked at what your health insurance, if you have any, covers?).  Oh if you become disabled you’ll gladly live on the street until you starve and/or freeze (Ron Paul is also against food  stamps, and any govt supplies to food banks/pantries, soup kitchens, children’s nutrition programs (hey, if their parents can’t feed the little freeloaders, they shouldn’t send them to school.  And what with those silly child labor laws?  A kid as young as three can work for a living as was shown in the nineteenth century industrial revolution when kids as young as 3 were chained to their work stations overnight in factories )

…  oh I forgot, you claim that hospitals and health care providers will give you their services out of the goodness of their hearts, while, I’ll  bet anything, you’re not giving a penny yourself right now to charity (stats show that the people who oppose social programs are the least likely to donate their money and/or their time to any charity.  I bet Ron Paul’s supporters are at the very bottom or the heap!)

C) Silly me!  You’re never going to grow old!  As soon as you hit 50, (or sooner if you get disabled) you’ll do  your duty and drink that hemlock….  (Oh and I’m guessing you also oppose a woman’s right to chose, not to mention any programs giving free birth control and info.  The fetus is an innocent being, but as soon as that fetus is born and becomes a baby, he/she instantly turns into a free loader.  Contradictions don’t seem to be an issue with the US Right.  Govt has no right to provide  nutrition programs for my kids but has every right to control my womb….

D) you suffer from historical amnesia.  I still  remember before we had Medicare, families had to sell all their resources and use all their savings to get medical care in their old age.  Medicare is one of the things that have been instrumental in the making of the US middle class because it allowed middle class members to hand down a bit of saving and often a house, and/or help pay for rte grandkids college. 

My memory is pretty good for an old timer, so trust me, I remember what my parents’ generation had to face.  No, absolutely no, private insurer prior to Medicare offered insurance to seniors.  The best you could  hope for was a sudden death from a heart attack or stroke.  (a few companies, not yet corporations, did provide medical insurance for life for their retirees, but this is no longer so)

Actually, it’s practically impossible now to get health insurance if you’re in your fifties.  Also  health insurers  will drop you under any pretext if you come down with a major illness, before you even reach your max coverage (look at your insurance if you have one, and then inquire to your nearest hospital about the cost of even one day stay, let alone several weeks….). 

Of course if you lose your job, you lose your  insurance.  The COBRA program (which of course Ron Paul and yourself oppose) gives you the possibility of keeping your insurance for a year or so but you have to pay the full premiums which is not possible for many once their jobs is outsourced to China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc etc etc.  — hey you can look at the map and see where your job went when –not if– you lose yours. 

The stimulus pkg (Obama’s, not Bush’s) provided subsidies (until the Ron Paul types put an end to it) for uemployed people to pay for part of their COBRA, and the new Health Care Reform  law, unless Ron Paul and others manage to block it, would subsidize the health insurance premiums of people who can’t afford them (so there will be no longer any need for Medicaid).  .

If I sound angry it’s because I am.  I’m aghast at seflishness becoming our prominent value, I’m aghast not just for moral reason but for the shortsightedeness and denialthat comes with it.  I still remember JFK’s inaugural address:  ”don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”  –have you done anything for your country, or for any of your fellow human beings (I don’t mean your loved ones, though I have my doubt  even about that). 

Are you in denial of your wish to do harm? 

But it doesn’t!  Student aid and loans are tailored to in-state tuition at a public institution.  Check out the rules on line!  How is it that in this supposed Age of Information, we seem to be as prey to delusions as thirteent century illiterate European were?

When private universities admit financial aid students, the institutions themselves pay the difference between fed student aid and their own exhorbitant tuition.

FEDERAL FINANCIAL AID DOES NOT COVER THE COST OF A PRIVATE COLLEGE.  

Student loans and grants cover the cost of public institutions.  You can borrow from a private lender if you want more, but that has nothing to do with what Ron Paul was talking about. He is advocating the end of federal student aid, period.

Also, you sound like you’re not aware of the present cost of in-state  tuition at public institutions?  Their tuition is still increasing way way faster than inflation .  You have to work part time and supplement with private loans to make it within the alloted time. 

If you can comment on line, surely you can look up the rules on line as well?

FEDERAL FINANCIAL AID DOES NOT COVER THE COST OF A PRIVATE COLLEGE.  
If a middle class student get accepted at Yale, Yale makes up the difference.  Howewver, you have to be a much better student to be accepted if you’re going to need financial aid from the institutuion than if your family can afford to pay the $50,000 per year in tuition.  However, if your family doesn’t have all that money they/you are free to borrow from a private party as for instance a bank.

This form of financial aid is not the same as winning a merit scholarship.

You are benefitting from the contributions of people who have gone to public schools.  Advances in science, medicine, technology, etc etc etc

Can I get my taxes back from the ingrate freeloader that you are?

Also, give me my taxes back on the roads you are using!

Will you freeloader get the heck out of the roads I paid for! 

Oh I see, you want to pay a 20% sales tax on every package of Top Ramen you buy?  That’s your plan?

And where do you get this “communist” idea?  Do you have any inkling as to what the communist ideology stands for?   Communists believe in doing away with private property.  They came up with that idea in the nineteenth century (we are now in the twenty first!).  So called Communist countries never implemented  this.  A  small group  took  over and accumulated plenty of private  property themselves. 

What does communism have to do with financial aid applications and the limit on family income that makes you elligible?  The conservatives and  the Libertarians simply want to eliminate that aid.  Progressive want to make many more people elligible for it.

The income  limits are set by Congress.   Perhaps you want to elect some people who care about giving you access to higher education?  Or do you want to eliminate access for the middle  class altogether (the middle  class only got access to higher ed starting after WWII in 1948 with the first GI bill)?

And of couse, why should I  treat you when you get sick?  And how many millions of sick people can a limited number of health care providers take care of for free?  Don’t they need to make a living?

And why do you suppose the Canadian $ is  worth more than the US$ right now?  Canadians pay more income taxes than we do.  They have a single payer health insurance system so they live longer and  healthier. 

Just because you use the word “proven”  doesn’t make it so.  More aid does absolutely not push tuition upward.  Tuition at public universities (and federal financial aid is tailored to in-state tuiiton at public institution) is going up as funds are being cut down.  No more income taxes = no more funds = no higher ed = no  more public higher ed institutions…. 

I agree with you about the war on drugs and about some of our wars abroad.  However, you are  throwing the proverbial baby with the bath water.  The newly elected Teapartiers with whom Ron Paul has allied himself demand more drug war, more wars abroad, bigger military establishment, and more governmental power over individual bodies.  The newly elected pseudo Republican Teapartiers in Congress are spending ALL their time coming up with laws to not only prevent abortions but to make access to birth control info harder.  The laws they are trying to pass over and over again have already passed in 1976 with a law that forbade the gov. from funding abortions.  Do you think it’s a good way to spend your tax money (whether from income tax or from the proposed federal state tax those Teapartiers are trying to foist on us)?  Do you think it’s a good way for the people we just sent to DC because they promised us to work on getting back jobs into the US to spend all their paid time on bills that repeat bills that have aldready been passed?

ALL PROPOSED AND PASSED LEGISLATION ARE AVAILABLE ON LINE.  They say “knowledge is power”.  For your own sake, acquire some knowledge or you’ll be  doomed to be a patsy. 

There are right now no other student loans.  The federal govenment has stopped  guaranteeing student loans lent by banks.  Banks are no longer lending student loans.  HOwever since the feds under the privatizing impetus of the pseudo-conservatives guaranteed privately issued student loans, we the taxpayers have actually paid the banks handsomely for all those loans which the govt now has to try to collect on those loans. 

Ron Paul is consistent.  He is opposed to student aid, to social security, to Medicare and Medicaid, to nutrition programs for kids, etc etc etc.  In short he is oppose to all social programs, whether they be created by individual states or by the feds.

That’s what Libertarianism  is all  about (it’s actually pretty similar to anarchism), and if you only listened to Ron Paul instead of hearing only what you wish to hear, you wouldn’t try to water down his opposition to student aid.

PS: I have to correct myself about Ron Paul being consistent.  If he truly were so, he wouldn’t ally himself with Pseudo Republican Teapartiers who advocate more and more governemental intrution into the most intimate part of our bodies, in this  case our wombs.  Actually, if Ron Paul were consistent, he wouln’t  be drawing his senator’s salary and  accept its health care coverage for life (so of course he  can easily be opposed to Medicare, right?) and the substantial pension he  is going to be drawing (so of course it’s easy for him to oppose social security).  But why isn’t he concerned about the increasing number of US chidren actually going hungry?  Why is he denying the effects of the Great Recession/Depression II and the why is he going along with the deregulations of the measures that  had been enacted to get us out of the Great Depression I in order to avoid the repeat of it we are experiencing now? 

Do you care about hungry kids?  Or do you disdain them for being free loaders because their parents’ jobs have been outsourced to China?

What is this ideological fog that prevents so many of us from using our own eyes?  Haven’t you seen the ever longer lines at food banks/pantries (do you like Ron Paul oppose governenment donation of basic foodstuff to them?).  Haven’t you even a single acquaintance living in her car along with her kids even while working at three different part time jobs?  Do you have it in you to check out the rents in your community and figure out how a minimum wage job can keep a roof over a family.

It’s not about ideology.,  It’s about living experience.  It’s about issues (oh and values.  Libertarianism has turned selfishness and greed into a godlike value.  Its moto could be “may the strongest eat the weakest” or perhaps throw them in the trash if there not edible (along with the likes of Stephen Hawkins who would no longer be with us without the US health care system.  He wrote an article on this, perhaps you might want  to look it up?)

PS2:  selfishness always equals shortsightedness.  I had a Libertarian acquaintance who hurt himself.  He went to the ER where he got taken care of.  He told me “I was pretty sure they would”.  Now he’s on Medicare.  How hypocrite and how gross is that!  By the way my state helps pay  the Mediare premiums for low income seniors –that’s a state program that Ron Paul would certainly object to even though it’s not a fed programs.  I live in a progressive state so we have quite a few safety net programs that some other states don’t.  Incidentally surveys show that progressives who believe in social programs (not just because they reflect their values but because they have enough common sense to know they’ll need them themselves sooner or later), well those progressives are much more likely to donate their money and their time to charities,   What have you done for your fellow human beings (outside of your family and friends)?

PS3:  All ideologies are lies.  Buy them at your own risk.

Seriously, katisumas: NEED-BLIND ADMISSIONS!!!

How extravagant for those students to deem food and lodging and transportation desirable.  They should fast and live naked in the classroom and and and  …… 

Oh and the Pell grant goes first towards paying  tuition.  You don’t get all those thousands of $ in  your hands ever.  It’s divided by semesters, so you don;’t get a years worth of funds for living expenses all at once. 

What’s left over for textbooks and supplies and  living expenses after tuition and fees  is never enough.  You always have to work part time to make ends meet, and most of us can’t work full time and still get a degree within the limited time allowed.,

But you don’t care.  Basically, you don’t want anyone from a low income family to get a higher education. I’m not sure why?  Obviously you don’t belong to the middle class or you would be alarmed by  the doors of higher ed being closed to you.  Perhaps you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth and wish to go back to the time prior to the frist GI Bill in 1948 when the same arguments your making against Pell grants were made against the GIs?  Perhaps you didnt  have the opportunity or the will to get a college degree yourself and now you’re envious? 

 Or is it that you imagine all low income students as being minority students as perhaps your disgusting innuendo about low income students having been drug dealers seems to imply?  This comment is particularly egregious in that stats show that European Americans are using
illegal drugs at the same rate ad African Americans except that African Americans end up in prison more often for exactly the same offenses.
 
It’s disgusting that you throw in that stereotype when speaking about low income students who already have achieved so much and overcome so many difficulties by graduating from high school and getting good enough SAT scores to be admitted to college.

Lucky I haven’t had my breakfast yet I would lose it.

Finally, an intelligent candidate willing to take an unpopular stand against corrupt, popular public policy. It can only make you stronger, Ron.

There seem to be grave misunderstandings of Ron Paul’s libertarian philosophy. Libertarianism is a political philosophy that opposes aggression. Although sometimes associated in people’s minds with libertinism (a hedonistic lifestyle), in truth libertarianism is not a life philosophy – it simply says that people should be free to pursue their own ends. Ron Paul is very conservative in his personal life; other libertarians make different choices – but that’s the point. Libertarians are able to make a distinction between holding a personal life philosophy (and perhaps using persuasion to encourage others to their way of thinking) and using the power of the state to force a life philosophy on others.

I do not view libertarians as selfish just because they find it objectionable for government to take one’s money and spend it as government sees fit. Libertarians see control of their own person and the fruits of one’s labor as a basic human right. A free society would likely be very charitable to the benefit of both the givers and receivers of charity.

The big government philosophy of the Democrats and Republicans has led us to the welfare-warfare corporatist police state that we live in today. Open your eyes – the government is here to serve the elites, certainly not the shrinking middle class or the dependent underclass. Most of us are just fighting over the table scraps.

I hope we are all working toward utopia, but I am quite sure I am not
inhabiting it now. If the morality of liberty is not persuasive, another
tack is to look at the effects of the current system, not its
intentions. The effects of the current system are excessively high
tuition fueled by cheap loans, debt slavery for middle and lower class families, and over- and misallocation of
resources to higher education (including all the crazy debt financed amenities and the waiters and sales clerks with college degrees, not to mention all the dropouts with debt and no degree). On the free market, a variety of educational options would be available at all different price points. And, yes, charitable people will fund scholarships in some cases and other people will offer loans to students just like loans are available for all sorts of ventures.

 @atexasambassador:disqus –”unemployable things like Political Science or Theatre…”  That people with your view are reading a higher education journal amazes me.  I was a history major and I found employment right out of college.  Been employed ever since, and never once in history.  Ignoring the mismatched modifier, what’s an”employable” major?  Business?  Engineering?  Right.  All those business geeks are the ones who tanked our economy and made everyone else unemployable because they somehow never learned that there is more to the world than the profit motive and their own paychecks.  I don’t dispute that employment is essential.  But that’s not the purpose of an education, and your major is not most often what
makes you employable.  Education is supposed to generally raise the knowledge, the reasoning levels, and the worldview of the citizenry so they can be informed participants in society’s efforts to make the world a better place for everyone.  (Hmm.  Sounds like political science might be useful!)  Education is a good thing, if done right, regardless of what major you pick, and the broader your base of learning, the better.  I don’t know about you but I sure don’t want the people running the country and the world to have studied only accounting and fluid dynamics.  By the way, have you ever been transported and informed by a spectacular play?  Have you ever seen a play? 

Replying to yourself, feudipandola?  (See below dear readers). Wow — you sure have me beat in the silly department.  Threads, when read in the proper sequence, sometimes make sense to the reader.  You have confirmed by replying to yourself — in the process changing the dialogue completely — that you are not interested in the back and forth.  If you want to believe a fiction — that “The President” (any President) sets forth a change to Direct Loan interest rates via stand alone legislation that is not specifically linked to Reauthorization already being taken up by Congress, by all means believe away.  But, be aware that such things only occur where the unicorns talk.

jimeddy