In the end I am oversimplifying my statement, but there are a lot of loopholes and things a person can do with company to avoid having their personal property attached to a corporate bankruptcy. I was reading a little while ago about hedge fund guys setting up corps that they used strictly for trading so if they lost and ended up in the negative they could collapse the company and walk away. Of course those are guys who have access to some of the best tax and corporate lawyers in the world, they aren't your typical mom and pop who take out a loan in hopes of opening a cafe that doesn't work out.

It is getting harder to borrow money for a start-up without a personal guarantee, like you say, but the odds of losing on a business, being able to bankrupt the business and keep your personal assets are a lot higher than taking a student loan, defaulting and trying to get out of paying it.

Thanks for making me aware. Heading to sign the petition now

So you think the money I've been working for and saving, which had been loaned to people for school, should just be stolen from me?

I know kids who bust their asses in college and then take on three summer jobs so they have enough to live for the year. Students not doing that aren't taking their education seriously. How hard is it to lifeguard, work at Hollister and cut grass when its the only things you have to do for a few months?

Those same kids will take that work ethic into their careers and succeed while the others that borrowed their living expenses will sit on Facebook at their $40k a year job bitching about work.

Survival of the fittest.

The money you have been paying in taxes is wasted in many different ways. Would you rather it be used to let a student off from paying his/her student loan or given to a government that likely hates the US and is trying to attack us?

Or given to a bank filled with multimillionaires who ran their business unwisely and destroyed it then scared the shit out the country and got paid off?

Or used to give free food, shelter and medical care to illegal immigrants.

Or used to help fund the current presidents fund raising activites as he flies all over the nation raising money for the next election?

Or just given to states and cities who end up squandering on projects that they don't need or never actually do.

Or give it to businesses who do nothing but put it in their pockets and sit on it instead of hiring and expanding.

Or give it to farms and pay them to not grow any crops

Or give it to the FCC who spend more than $350K per year to sponsor a NASCAR driver.

Or use it to spend $1.8 million dollars to build a private golf course in Atlanta.

and the list goes on and on and on.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it can't be done. Hell, a friend of mine got out of the Marine Corp and was married with a young child. He worked a full time job during the day and went to school full time at night to get his degree. He was worn out and it wasn't easy, but he did it.

Many kids do just as you say. They come home and work through temp agencies or wherever to save as much money as they can for the school year and they will be rewarded with less student loans, real work experience, a solid work ethic and the respect of their friends and family etc.

But there are a lot of factors that can come into play. Take for example a friend of mine's son who just started college this fall compared to another friend of mine's daughter who will be a junior this year. She is majoring in history with a minor in education. Her class load is big, but not so intense that she couldn't get a part time job. He is studying chemical engineering. Just the classes and labs he has are 50+ hours per week. He could still get a part time job, but if he had the choice of working and being constantly tired which could cause him problems with his grades or taking out a few hundred a month extra in student loans so he had some extra money to live on and he was free to focus on school, I don't see a problem with that. He could still come home and get a job on summer vacation, but he likely will not make enough to last him the full school year and this just gives him another option. I'm not saying that a student should be allowed to borrow an extra $3K per month, that is crazy, but some extra cash to help them get by isn't a terrible thing. After all, you are only young once. If you have the chance you might as well enjoy it. You have the rest of your life to work your ass off.

And what way is "setting up correctly?"

You have to put yourself on the line to get that corporate credit. Companies don't just magically get credit. It comes from somewhere. Personal assurances. You are still responsible for that debt. I am personally responsible for both the taxes and the debt of my corp.

Now if we are talking about a Fortune 500 company that is publicly traded and owns Wall Street... you might have a point. For almost every other corporation, you do not.

When I was at the college age... every single one of my friends was broke, worked at least 30 hours a week, went to school full time, studied part-time, and partied the rest of the time. I have absolutely no idea why college kids of today (only eight years later) should get off any different. This is how life works.

I've seen proposals about a gradually increasing loan payback program. At the beginning you pay a little because odds are you make little with your first job, overtime you pay more. This is not a bad idea, though the interest would definitely need to be figured out. Paying such a low amount at the beginning could really jack up the overall price long-term in a huge way.

i dont support this sort of thing at all.
i paid back all my loans for school. It really sucked actually for awhile.
If i hadn't gotten into porn, or doing my own business, perhaps id still be making payments on it. That being said, i think it develops character and will push people into trying harder.

So if you take the money to get ahead in life...pay it back, once you do.

i wouldnt mind seeing it get harder to affect credit ratings though for student loans

That's exactly how it worked when I was in school too... and looking back to it, it wasn't even THAT hard...:2 cents:

As I said above I am oversimplifying the statement. I have read a lot recently about hedge fun and derivative traders setting up shell companies so if they take losses they can walk away from them. I also read a story (probably about a year ago) about a couple that started a restaurant. They invest $50K of their own money, found a great location and the building already had a full stocked professional kitchen.They were able to use that equipment and the building as collateral for the loan. They get the money, start the place up and for about 2 years it did pretty well. It started slowly, but they began making a profit and were paying back the loan. All looked well. Then they failed a sanitation check and were shut down for a week by the state. They fixed the problem, passed the re-inspection and opened back up. But the damage was done and they never recovered. Business slowed down and they eventually had to close up.

The reason the story was in the news is that they owed all of their employees about 1 month worth of pay. They declared bankruptcy and the court liquidated all the assets of the company. They had an insurance policy that paid some of the other debt including the back pay for the employees, but they still owed about $75K in random debt to different vendors and creditors most of whom said they held out little hope of ever getting that money because the owners blamed the downfall of the company on the manager that they hired and said he was negligent. They were actually suing the manager because they said he was the reason they failed the inspection.

I don't know what ever became of it all. As far as I know there was no follow-up story. It looks to me like the couple will walk away owing about $75K to random people and may never have to pay it. Perhaps, in the end, they will, but from the sound of it those owed the money were not very confident.

There is also a book called Boo Hoo which is about the rise and fall of the website Boo.com . The people that started that site got a ton of investment money (around $135 million all told) and eventually ran the company into the ground and killed it before it ever really had a chance to get started. The owner/CEO to this day owes a ton of vendors and contract workers money and he hasn't paid them a dime. He claims the company failed, it went bankrupt, they liquidated the assets and that is all he can do. He is sorry if they are upset. Meanwhile he never lost his personal assets including a decent amount of money he made from a previous online venture.

So I'm not saying it is the norm and clearly there are people who risk everything to start a business and can lose everything if it fails, but it appears that isn't always the case.

wow fuck that! forgive student loan payments? thats part of the process of going to school. so down the road taxes payers will have to pay for this one way or another, but this is bullshit IMO.

so what about people like me who paid by working to go to college? if they are going to forgive student loans, then they should pay me back my money then :2 cents: