Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

It’s a doggy dog world.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Second rate reporter says what?

Let’s finish the job.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

You are here: Home / Politics / Education / Open Thread: The Popular ‘Unfairness’ of Student Debt Relief

Open Thread: The Popular ‘Unfairness’ of Student Debt Relief

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'But It's Not FAAAAIRRRR!' (Student Loan Foregiveness)- STOCKPILE

(Clay Jones via GoComics.com)


Die mad about it:


Open Thread: The Popular 'Fairness' of Student Debt Relief
Why Student Debt Isn’t Elitist:

… Let’s talk about the numbers. The Biden administration says that its plan will provide relief to as many as 43 million Americans. That’s a lot of people, not a small, cosseted elite. In particular, data from the New York Fed say that more than 12 million Americans in their 30s — more than a quarter of that age group — still have unpaid student debt.

What this means is that even if you subscribe to the Trump diner theory of politics — according to which the only voters who matter are blue-collar guys wearing baseball caps — you should be aware that some of those guys probably took out loans to attend trade schools or community colleges, all too often getting nothing but debt in return. Even among those who didn’t take out student loans, many probably have children, siblings, cousins or friends who did. So the Biden plan will touch many people.

In short, student debt relief isn’t some kind of niche elite concern; it’s a broad, one might even say populist, issue. Initial polling on the Biden plan is somewhat mixed, with an Emerson College survey showing much stronger support than a CBS/YouGov survey. Even the latter survey, however, finds a majority of Americans approving of the plan; it even finds much less opposition among noncollege whites than you might have expected given that group’s general disapproval of all things Biden.

The other prong of the right-wing response involves invoking personal responsibility — in effect, portraying the recipients of debt relief as welfare queens. Republican efforts on that front have, however, been extraordinarily tone-deaf.

Just on general political principles, telling tens of millions of Americans that they’re lazy and irresponsible — that they’re all, as Ted Cruz put it, like a “slacker barista” who wasted years “studying completely useless things” — seems … not smart. To be brutally honest, that sort of caricature may have worked for Republicans when the insults were directed at urban Black people. But it’s likely to backfire when we’re talking about a broad spectrum of Americans who were just trying to move up in the world…

The thing is, Biden tried to address this underlying problem; free community college was part of his original Build Back Better proposal. But he couldn’t get it through Congress. He is, however, offering some real help to millions of Americans — and Republicans clearly have no idea how to respond.

Another Repub complaint that should not be overlooked:

Alexandra Petri, at the Washington Post, channels her inner Repub: Stop improving things right now! Everyone must suffer as I did!

DISGUSTING! AWFUL! I have just received word that life is getting marginally better for some people, and I am white-hot with fury! This is the worst thing that could possibly happen! I did not suffer and strive and work my fingers to the bone so that anybody else could have a life that does not involve suffering and striving and the working of fingers to the bone. I demand to see only bones and no fingers!

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thrashing because I have had the nightmare again, the nightmare in which someone else is being spared a small hint of the suffering I endured. The world should not get better! The world should get worse along with me and perish along with me.

Every time anyone’s life improves at all, I personally am insulted. Any time anyone devises a labor-saving device, or passes some kind of weak, soft-hearted law that forecloses the opportunity for a new generation of children to lose fingers in dangerous machinery, I gnash my teeth. This is an affront to everyone who struggled so mightily. To avoid affronting them, we must keep everything just as bad as ever. Put those fingers back into the machines, or our suffering will have been in vain…

I look down at the face of my sleeping child and I vow: If this baby’s life is even one particle easier than mine was, I will burn this whole place down!…

Reader Interactions

34Comments

  3. 3.

    The Oracle of Solace

    This is just a nefarious Democratic plan to win votes by doing things that improves peoples’ lives! How can the Republican platform of [checks notes] 404 Platform Not Found compete with that?

  6. 6.

    eversor

    My loan is private and while I want it gone and it’s mostly paid I’m happy for the people who did get relief.

  8. 8.

    Villago Delenda Est

    That tweet by World Famous Art Thief is just classic.  The “Christians” are not followers of Jesus of Nazareth.  They’re worshipers of Mammon and Moloch.

  9. 9.

    Martin

    Someone nailed it within a couple of hours.

    The thing is, if you went to an Ivy and aren’t making at least $125K, you kind of blew your chance there. Getting hired sight unseen for some stupidly well paying job is the point of the Ivies.

    If you want to a state school and became an engineer, or went off to be a doctor or attorney, then odds are you’re over the $125K as well.

    What’s left is going to be a fuckton of teachers, nurses, social workers, lab techs processing Covid tests, and so on, including a whole pile of government and private sector administrators – claims adjusters, medical billers, shit like that. You know, the people that make the world go round, the cogs in the machine.

    If you went to a private and didn’t get a scholarship to cover most of your tuition, I don’t know what to tell you. Oh, and this will cover a whole bunch of trades that got 2 year degrees or certificates from community colleges and trade schools, because federal financial aid is available to those students that went to an accredited school – so a whole bunch of HVAC techs and shit like that which the GOP supposedly says this won’t help.

  10. 10.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Dump has declared bankruptcy six times, skipping out on billions of dollars in loans.  Yet they don’t have a problem with that.

  11. 11.

    JaneE

    I paid off my student loan too. The loans were a lot smaller then because costs were lower, and the interest rates were a lot lower then, and you could get loan forgiveness for teaching up to half the amount, and the extra income for having a college degree was immediate so you had a leg up on your debt. It was not that difficult to get a degree with very little indebtedness, especially if you were young and lived where commuting was possible.

    I had a $1000 loan to help offset a $1600 tuition (for a year). It covered 5/8 ths of the amount. Today that tuition is over $63,000, and a loan to offset 5/8ths of it would be over $39,000. I only needed a loan for one year, so when I got my first real job what I owed was about 1/8 of my annual salary. To do the same thing today, a student would need to get a first job paying over $300,000.

    It may be fairly reasonable to expect people who went to school when I did to pay off their loans in full. Or just pay as you go at a state school and not need a loan at all. That was 60 years ago. By the time my generation had kids ready for college, the costs had jumped way more than inflation. Even if the parents’ wages had kept pace with inflation they would have to face an even bigger jump in higher education costs. Education cost inflation barely even slowed when it flatlined for everything else, especially wages and salaries.

    When someone says the kids should pay their student debt, ask them how much debt they finished school with, how much their schooling cost, and how much they got paid when they started working, and then compare that to the costs and wages today. It was easy to pay small debts with big salaries. Now students are more likely to have big debts and small salaries. It is different now.

    If you expect students to pay off their debts or not need them, you need to have them or their parents earning proportionately to what the costs and incomes were back when most all of us did pay our loans or do without them. If every college graduate could earn $300K a year, they should not have a problem paying back tens or even hundreds of thousands in loans. But they don’t. They have been losing ground steadily since I got out, relative to the burden they take on.

  13. 13.

    Geminid

    Most of  the people in their 30s who still hold college debt graduated into the Great Recession. It’s no wonder they had a hard time repaying their loans.

  15. 15.

    eversor

    @Martin:

    A lot of people screaming over this are doing it for social issues.  It’s like avocado toast all over again.   The big gripe is that urban social liberals who don’t do Jesus/sex/gender right are getting money instead of being made to suffer for it.   Even worse, this will give them more money to go do liberal things and live their godless lives.

    It’s always this.  The government should fund and cover private Christian educations, schollarships are OK but only for STEM, all liberal arts should be defunded and shut down and if you have a degree in that get to a McDonalds and make me a fucking burger, also tax any college into the ground and crush it if it dares do anything woke.

    It’s always culture, mostly religious based, all the damn time.

  17. 17.

    Ohio Mom

    @JaneE: I have to admit, I have no recollection of what my college education at a state college cost in the mid 1970’s. My single mom elementary school teacher paid for it, though I did work part-time as a waitress in the faculty club for pocket money.

    Which is me saying: What you said.

  19. 19.

    surfk9

    My Wife’s loans were forgiven two days ago through the public service student loan forgiveness program. Woohoo! It was a lot of money. It took a year and a half and a lot of stress.

  24. 24.

    Kay

    We already give better-off people a tax break on tuition:

    A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged account for education savings. You can save for your child, another family member, or even for yourself.

    My children benefited from a 529 and my grandchildren will too. They’ll have a leg up. It’s just a fact. I’m thrilled people with less also got a break. I just wish it was permanent.

  26. 26.

    caphilldcne

    My undergrad was paid by parents and an AFROTC scholarship at an in state school with what I thought were outrageous costs (bitter laugh – it’s increased exponentially today). I actually got an international relations degree through an Air Force program that was not expensive and provided access to the Bodelian library at Oxford. And then for technical reasons I still had GI Bill benefits so I got a law degree after leaving the AF. Also a state school that I eventually convinced them I qualified for in-state. I took out loans for that that I paid off with an inheritance from a grandparent. I’m delighted for this loan forgiveness package and hope millions of people get some relief. I’d be in favor of more!!  What the Rs have done to make education expensive is unforgivable.

  27. 27.

    Kay

    Also, if you can get into a labor union apprenticeship you’ll finish debt-free. Not all trade schools charge students. It’s an apprenticeship- the idea is you’re working in place of tuition. Put in 5 years with low pay, finish with an immediate bump-up to skilled trade wages. The 5 years is the tuition.

    But Republicans don’t like to talk about that option.

  29. 29.

    caphilldcne

    @surfk9: glad you made it. If this is the relief program for public service I understand it ground to a halt under DeVos. And only 4% of eligible people have been approved so it’s great news!

  30. 30.

    Sure Lurkalot

    My parents and then assistantships paid for my state university education so I got degrees without debt. My spouse and I were able to buy a townhouse during our very first “real” jobs after college. It was a stretch (high interest rates) but no way would we have been able to if we had to pay down debt for our educations. We also bought cars, consumer goods, dined out, vacationed and paid a shitload of taxes, sales and income, excise and others.

    What’s wrong with people that they don’t want others to have at least as good or better lives? Okay, I know, but efgoldman them.

  31. 31.

    Geminid

    @Kay: I frequently hear ads by the IBEW and the Steam Fitters locals on WTOP, the leading all-news radio station for the DC Metro area. The ads feature apprentices talking about the benefits of their paid, skill-building apprentishipments, as well as announcers talking up the union’s productive work force. The ads seem intended to make the unions attractive to businesses as well as recruit apprentices.

  32. 32.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    Oh, I’m glad. I talk them up to teenagers here. My middle son went thru an IBEW electrical apprenticeship and he does quite well. He had to apply twice – once after high school where he was turned down – they only took 20 that year- and a second time afer he completed a electrical course at a community college. He also made what will be perhaps lifelong friends – a particular “class” are together nearly the whole 5 years and the classes aren’t big. They really get to know one another.

    I want one of the kids I talk to to to do an elevator repair apprenticeship!  They’re like unicorns and everyone with an elevator eventually needs one. OMG you can just about name your hourly rate. The elevator has to work! :)

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