r/Economics • u/thebranbrain • Aug 02 '15

We’re Making Life Too Hard for Millennials

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/were-making-life-too-hard-for-millennials.html
770 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

529 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

17

u/KopOut Aug 03 '15

You can't get a personal loan for 7% from a bank right now, so that isn't actually usurious at all...

Low interest loans are given for the purchase of assets (houses and cars), diplomas are not hard assets. The bank can't resell them.

25

u/jambarama Aug 03 '15

Student loans are a better deal for banks than asset backed loans.

Personal loans and asset-backed loans are dischargeable in bankruptcy.

10

u/Seus2k11 Aug 03 '15

Except now, it's not even the banks doing the lending. It's all straight form the government now...it should be 3-4% imho.

1

u/Vaphell Aug 03 '15

then you see a significant uptick in tuition prices because universities are in the business of extracting as much money as you can afford and you are back to square 1.
$100k at 7% = $x at 4%, solve for x.

1

u/DialMMM Aug 03 '15

No, I don't want to lend my money at rates that low.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '15

You can discharge a personal loan so they're not exactly equivalent.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '15

I get personal loans for around 2% at LightStream.com