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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.
And, to note- students can opt out of cost disease. This isn’t a ‘no starter homes available’ situation. You can live with your parents, go to community college for 2-3 years, and then transfer to podunk state school of commuting for 1-2 years, and get a degree for like 1/8 the cost. This is the less popular option.
At some point, controlling the student loan problem requires either underwriting that will automatically get blown up into an algorithm based on throwing money after Shaniqua or reinstitution of sumptuary laws. Simply… cap the conditions available on campus. Require food halls to serve exactly the same food as the nearest prison, ban individual dorm rooms(and for an added bonus, require one-locker-room-per-floor level facilities), prevent the use of student loans for off campus expenses, etc. You want better than that, you pay with cash.
You can also opt out of a lot of problems by going and living in the woods like the Unabomber. Why are people complaining about inflation when they could simply opt out to go sharpen some sticks and hunt rabbits in the forest? There are incredibly severe outcome differences between someone who goes to Harvard or Yale as opposed to podunk state school of commuting and I feel like it is dishonest to claim that they're equivalent.
The outcome differences are primarily due to the kinds of people who go to podunk state vs harvard. Once you control for that, the differences are pretty slight.
I think the estimate of the breakdown of the private returns to college education from Bryan Caplan (not a huge fan of the status quo) was around 50% ability bias ("the kinds of people who go to podunk state vs harvard"), but also 40% signaling (even if you're smart enough to go to Harvard, can you prove that to employers without the diploma?) and 10% human capital (Harvard actually does have some classes that teach you more because they don't need to worry about the slower kids keeping up). If he's right then you still want to steer clear of podunk; the net return to education is still too huge to throw away half of it lightly.
You're misrepresenting Caplan. That's his breakdown of returns to college education vs a high school diploma, not Harvard vs Podunk state.
Sure, but when I can't take a derivative I'll still prefer a finite difference over nothing. How would you think those estimates change when we reduce the delta?
I think the answer depends on what you think is the margunal value of Harvard over Podunk state, which is the very question we are discussing.
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