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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.
I actually agree that what happened was awful, but I don't think the students are the people who deserve blame and financial punishment. The people who actually profited off all these dodgy loans are not just still there, they're insanely rich - just look at the immense amount of money in University endowments.
Personally, I think that non-performing loans should be clawed back from the educational institutions that actually profited from the whole affair. Many of the students with these shithouse loans are victims living in poverty and deprivation while the people who scammed them are still flush with cash. That's where the money actually went, and that's who should be paying back those loans. I can't really see any other reason to go after the victims (many of whom have qualifications that are either useless or actively harm their job prospects) and further depress fertility rates when the people responsible for all this wasted money are still enjoying the profits they made from it.
The "victims" spent 4 years partying at government expense without thinking much about what would happen when the loans came due and they had a degree in something either worthless or harmful. Personally I'd leave them on the hook for some reasonable value of 4 years of partying and take the rest from the universities, but either way, there's no reason to worry about their fertility rates: depressed rates are negative eugenics in these cases.
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