It's definitely a bad idea to tie the two together. Too many what-ifs just in the offset.

What if you have had COVID and are on the backend of the availability list, but need the money now?

What if you can't take the vaccine for a legitimate (not just out of fear) reason?

What if the vaccine is delayed to your area because it's a lower risk area, or doesn't have the appropriate storage equipment?

etc..

Its the same with this moronic idea of "forgiving" student loan debt.

What if you were diligent and saved for college so you don't have a loan, but your buddy used his "student loan" to take a spring break trip to Figi?

What if you don't have student loan debt because your parents lived like paupers for 4 years to help you get through?

You get the idea.

I agree on the COVID stuff, as those are all good points, but to your analogy, while I get your point, I’m for student loan forgiveness of some kind, and I think public college should be free. I think certain jobs should get more relief based on the need for workers in that field, so someone majoring in 13th century Asian art shouldn’t get the type of relief a teacher or doctor gets. They should zero the interest on the loans and if someone already has paid more in interest than their borrowed amount then they should be completely forgiven. A salary based repayment system that isn’t as bad as the system we have now would be good too. I could go on. Inherently, any system will not be perfectly fair, but it would be better than the current system where we saddle students with debt and hold that over them, and where we have a system of financial barriers in place to higher education, and where we have a system where wealth and not merit often determines what schools people can attend.

If you get a degree in 13th Century Asian Art you’re on your own. Especially when you graduate and blame capitalism for you not getting a job. Most college students should be in trade schools anyway.

I copy and pasted the wrong value obviously. 18k+ statewide.

We're in partial agreement, and I'm OK with interest forgiveness or working it off over time in the right field. I'm not OK with blanket forgiveness.

In Georgia, assuming you have the grades and do the work to keep them there, and you live at home, public college is basically tuition free thanks to the Hope Scholarship. There are fees and such but anyone with a part-time job could afford it.

The first thing that needs to be done is to fix the loan program to begin with. "Back in my day" a student loan could not be more than the cost of tuition, room and board minus any financial aid you were receiving, and it went straight to the college, not to you. Any additional funds went back to the lending institution to reduce the loan payment.

At least, that's how the one in my financial package, and those of my friends, worked in the late 1970's.

'Free' college or university isn't 'free' - it's paid for by the taxpayers. If you don't have kids or aren't going to college, what percentage of your wages would you be willing to give up to send someone else to college?


Lots of pro and con arguments but I don't think there's a good way to make it 'fair'. The world's not 'fair' and never has been. I don't know what the solution is, or if there's a good one.

At risk of veering way off-topic, I think there's a lot that can be said about this sort of thing.

Personally my parents didn't make enough to qualify for parent salary-based financial aid but were I guess you could say lower middle class. So they required me to work outside of school plus every break (summer, spring, winter breaks full-time). I also had to get scholarships on my own pretty much.

I was also responsible for my apartment rent (they did help with that from time to time if my bank account was close to 0 and I realize a lot of students can't even get that kind of help).

I don't personally think anyone else should need to do that. But on the other hand I do think that just outright forgiving _everybody_ would be a joke to all of us who did work hard to support ourselves and our higher education.

JC used to be free and that seemed to be a good way to do it you could get a lot of your credits out of the way then finish up at a 4 year school. If you wanted Grad school or something past a B degree you made damn sure your career would make that degree worthwhile financially

First jab is planned on the 8th December, someone in Wales will go down in history, hopefully for all the good reasons.

I guess my issue is with the use of the word 'free'. JC might be 'free' to the student, but it's paid for by taxes, which is other people's wages, time and effort. I think that 'subsidized' is a more accurate word.

Years ago my wife, who's in the health care/medical industry was giving a talk to some high school students. One of them raised his hand and asked her 'What do you think of free health care', and she answered 'There is no such thing as free health care' and proceeded to ask them some questions. None of them really had a concept of how it worked - it just sounded good, like 'free ice cream'.

You can call it whatever you want however it strikes some semblance of balance for the pros and cons of how to deal with college educations from a financial standpoint.

Free healthcare is a whole other F story.

Sorry to get us off track on the education thing guys. I really only meant it as an example, but should have known better as this isn't my first rodeo (and fall off the bull).

Well, technically not first given some huge number (30K+ per vaccine or more) have already been involved in the trials but I'm glad to see it moving.

My ancestors (father's family 150 years or so ago) is from Wales. Maybe it will be a distant cousin.

We have also been told that rich and famous people are immune therefore will not be required to self isolate when moving about doing their "business"..

As for distant cousins, my wife is really into this sort of thing, a few years ago we had our DNA mapped through Ancestry.com. We now get updates of cousins, once, twice, thrice and more removed from us.. I was sceptical until last Xmas when my cousin (lives out in Canada) was visiting, I showed him the Ancestry app as someone with his name was showing up as my first cousin.. Turns out that his kids had bought him the DNA test kit for his birthday, he spat into a test tube, put it in the post and forgot all about it!!

I suggest you give it a go, who knows what you will discover..