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Notes -
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.
What are you talking about?
I graduated from a state school in the 2010s. Our dorms had been standing since the mid century. They did demolish some even older ones to put up new dorms, and those fit your description, but nobody wanted to live in them because they were too expensive. I think they were either a donor earmark or part of the athletics rat race.
I paid $400/mo for my room in a bedsit, and it showed. Could have gone cheaper, too, in one of the complexes with a reputation for fire risk. I only wish my current town had anything close to those prices.
Most people I know either worked, or had parents rich enough to pay their way. Occasionally both. The best scholarships (outside of athletics) just wiped out the outrageous out-of-state tuition without covering housing or the ridiculous fees. Wait, unless you were Native American, in which case they gave a better stipend as a mea culpa.
Boomers like to complain about Chipotle or whatever. Sure, I guess the standard for fast casual raised a lot. Want to take a shot at how many burritos it takes to meet the average $11,000 tuition?
Nobody did delivery, either. If we really needed to get off campus, we walked to the shitty Asian restaurant across the street and came back with fried rice, as God intended. Same goes for the bars. They probably made most of their money on game day, anyway.
Two things:
First, depending on if you were at the beginning or end of the 2010s, there will be a vast difference. The money pouring into luxury (by any stretch of the definition) is staggering. By the time I left my alma mater we had completed 2 brand new dorms that competed directly with off-campus apartments, and a new fitness center with golf simulators, rock walls, and the best equipment money could buy. When I visited 10 years later, even more new dorms, stone buildings, and high-end food options were available - with the dive bars replaced by chains and uber-high-end apartments. The story is the same at many other formerly sleepy state schools.
Second - it still varies. The first school I went to for 2 years had far more rudimentary accommodations and we typically ate at the dining hall and that was it. Our dorm bathrooms were communal, there was one tiny kitchen to rent per 400 person complex, and "Luxury" was renting a ratty ranch house that still smelled like Natty Lite but had enough space, or a postage stamp of flimsy new-construction apartments. There was one nice dorm that you could get into, in theory, but that was about it. The dive bars were still losing ground to chains but....
And as I talk about this I'll revise a little. Three things, then!
I wish I had gotten student loans and spent a little more. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be able to take women out to eat, go on weekend trips since I could afford gas, and work out at that gym instead of slaving away at some fast food joint. It would have been un-fucking-believably fun. It also appears that there would have been virtually no consequences for it - either the government would have paid for everything, or I would still have been able to afford the ~$50k in loans at the end of it pretty easily.
This may seem tongue in cheek but to put it another way, I have enough money now I would kill to go back in time and give 20 year old me a ton of cash, even with a penalty. I think there's a lesson there about living beyond your means a bit when you're at the apex of your youthful vigor, even if getting taxpayers to pay this shit instead of people's future selves is disgusting.
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