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How will Republicans responds to Biden's student loan giveaway?
Even though the Supreme Court scuppered Biden's plan to forgive student loan debt without congressional approval, he is apparently doing it anyway. So far, it would appear that 4.75 million people have had loans forgiven for a total cost of $167 billion.
Here's a link to a recent Biden administration press release.
I will admit, the devil is in the details. I am not going to comment on the constitutional legality, the many ways to qualify for forgiveness, nor the amount given to high-income earners, which some have claimed is substantial.
But the total cost is staggering. It amounts to over $1000 for every American who pays income tax.
Clearly, this money has electoral implications. The base of people who have large student debts is presumed to be mostly Democratic voters. By giving this group a mean payment of $35,000 each, the Biden administration hopes to increase their enthusiasm to vote. Even the ones who do lean towards Trump might view Biden favorably after getting (almost) enough money to buy a new Tesla Model 3.
Buying votes goes back as far as democracy does. Famously, Julius Caesar was forced to conquer southern Spain after going broke buying votes to become Pontifex Maximus. In recent times, some have argued that farm subsidies amount to vote buying. But, while special interests have always played a large role in American politics, student debt forgiveness is possibly the closest thing to naked vote buying we've seen in our lifetimes.
So... how do the Republicans respond? Whose votes should they purchase with a fig leaf of social justice? I'd propose a group that honestly needs it and creates a lot of value for society: blue collar workers. People who work 30 hours a week or more and make less than $30/hour should get an "earned income credit" of $10,000 a year.
If we're going to just be giving money away, give it to the workers, not to excess elites.
I wish everybody could see what the life of a university student looks like right now.
The dorms have morphed into all inclusive luxury apartments. “Student loans” are spent on food delivery, and fast casual restaurants like chipotle.
Go visit a college town and look at the apartments and the restaurants and everything around it. It’s unsettling.
A university should be surrounded by dive bars. Dorms should continue their long tradition of being just barely habitable, and students should have jobs that they use to pay for their tuition. Anybody who can do basic math saw that as the availability of money increased (unsecured student loans), the cost rose to meet it. There is no gating function on university cost. It will continue to go up until it either reaches infinity, or until we stop giving unsecured loans to children to pass on to these massive multi billion dollar institutions.
“Forgiving” these loans is insane. We’ve robbed billions and billions of dollars from the American people and given it to a small minority of elite wealthy children and massive real estate investment firms which also happen to teach a few worthless classes.
When I graduated in 2014 from a large state university (not my undergrad, mind) I was already wondering how much further it could go.
The campus had its historical parts that predated the civil war which maintained their classic look, but massive modern facilities were popping up on the periphery, and new 'luxury' apartments and home rentals were being added with dizzying rapidity. And while I attended classes in a classic/historical part of campus, they renovated the interior with furniture that cost upwards of $1500 a piece.
And of course my membership to the huge gym/recreational facility and campus life buildings and events and bus transit was all included too. I intentionally sought out bottom-of-the barrel accommodations, but every other aspect of the experience seemed designed to get you to blow out your budget on frivolities, even if you weren't actively partying.
The downtown area was a mix of dive-bar-esque independent establishments but well known chains were encroaching. There was a single lone strip club that was holding out on a side street. A quick google search shows that it is still there, though.
It was readily clear that the college was an anchor for the whole area in terms of funneling student loan funds into the school's coffers and tons of local businesses who were aggressively optimizing for getting naive students to spend more than they needed. The only constraint keeping the school from capturing all that money is that they couldn't build new facilities fast enough.
I think this has had the additional effect of giving college kids hugely elevated expectations as to what real life is like and how they can expect to live unless they snagged one of those FAANG tech jobs right out of school, at which point those expectations are probably accurate. Also they probably get used to having a billion subscriptions for things that simply don't require them and outsourcing all kinds of labor they could economically perform themselves.
And this helps explain why kids getting out of school get the 1-2 punch of realizing how all that consumption during college was financed by debt they now have to pay, AND realizing their standard of living will be slashed by like 40-50% unless they're willing to KEEP financing it on debt for a while.
Tuition will keep rising, as will debt, as long as college grads continue to earn a significant wage premium, which they still are. The gap stopped widening since 2021 or so, so that is some progress finally . There is so much aid , scholarship, discounts and other programs. Parents are happy to dump their kids off at a university whilst taking advantage of these many generous discounts. If college tuition were like any other big-ticket consumer good, maybe things would change.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2VANdobQAAVTvl.jpg:large
heavily subsidized items in which there is a the greatest disconnect between the price and what is actually paid, have seen the most inflation
Yeah, and I suspect colleges can keep adding amenities indefinitely because even if various individual students never take advantage of a particular feature, those can be a major selling point when competing to get more students to attend. So yeah, go ahead and add a rock-climbing wall, a beer garden, a third swimming pool, not like that money is doing anything useful anyway.
There's literally nothing stopping a college from competing on price by offering a stripped down experience (or use the Spirit Airlines model of charging piecemeal for each amenity) so students can see what exactly they're paying for, but there's simply no incentive that I can see for doing so. Price-conscious students aren't the ones they want attending, anyway!
I think the biggest threat to their model right now is, ironically, AI, both because it enables rampant hard-to-detect cheating and because AI will probably be able to replace most instructors in the extremely near future.
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