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Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan:
The amusing thing here to me is that we got two major SCOTUS rulings in two days that are, on the face of it, not directly related to each other in any obvious way (besides the fact that they both deal with the university system). One could conceivably support one ruling and oppose the other. The types of legal arguments used in both cases are certainly different. And yet we all know that the degree of correlation among the two issues is very high. If you support one of the rulings, you're very likely to support the other, and vice versa.
The question for the floor is: why the high degree of correlation? Is there an underlying principle at work here that explains both positions (opposition to AA plus opposition to debt relief) that doesn't just reduce to bare economic or racial interest? The group identity angle is obvious. AA tends to benefit blacks and Hispanics at the expense of whites and Asians. Student debt relief benefits the poorer half of the social ladder at the expense of the richer half of the social ladder. Whites and Asians tend to be richer than blacks and Hispanics. So, given a choice of "do you want a better chance of your kids getting into college, and do you also not want your tax dollars going to people who couldn't pay off their student loans", people would understandably answer "yes" to both - assuming you’re in the appropriate group and that is indeed the bargain that’s being offered to you. But perhaps that's uncharitable. Which is why I'm asking for alternative models.
As others have said, the underlying connection is a literal reading of the Constitution. If Congress wants to amend the amendment to say that organizations can discriminate based on race as long as it benefits blacks, they're welcome to try. If Congress wants to forgive student loan debts enough to actually include it in the budget, they're welcome to do that as well. If Congress wants to write actual legislation protecting abortion, they can do that. If they can't, then they shouldn't.
This is not a legal reason, but as far as student loans go, $10-20k is exactly the range lower middle class people should be able to pay off! They pay off cars in that range just fine, all the time. There are also various programs aimed at that demographic, like debt forgiveness for teachers and government workers. People around the poverty level don't need to make payments on federal loans anyway, on account of income based repayment plans. It doesn't prevent lenders from issuing auto loans or mortgages, and family size is taken into account.
The problem area seems to be those with high debt (which this wouldn't have made much of a dent in anyway), making nominally good money in extremely high cost of living areas, so that they really are struggling to pay rent on their small shared apartment, but looking at their income the financial institution expects them to pay down their loan, and this is too much of.a stretch. I don't feel too sorry for anyone struggling to make it in one of the most expensive cities in the world, though.
I think the non-legal reasons of this post are less reflective of some of these working peoples lives.
60% of Americans Now Living Paycheck to Paycheck and now have to make loan payments that will accrue in interest as they don't have the money to pay down the principle upfront. I believe it would have been significant for them.
20k is a significant sum of money for most working Americans but especially to young people just starting out with high debt accruing interest and a mid to low income. For every year they can't pay that 20k down at 5-8% interest, it's another 1k minimum added on top. A high debt(>60k) maximum repayment period is 30 years, so 20k early could turn into 50k-68k in total relief. The average student loan debt is currently $37,338 meaning for both the average and above average borrower, it would be significantly impactful.
I'd say multimillionaires in the 1% are better able to pay off their doomed submarines. Didn't stop the government from granting Oceangate $447,000 in PPP Loans all forgiven by the American taxpayer, and not just for payroll but for things like mortgage interest, rent, utilities, supplier costs and expenses for operations. Bailouts for the rich, pull yourself up by your bootstraps for everyone else. Because they know how to work the system for mutual benefit.
At an 8% interest rate (charged only to grad students) and 30 years of repayments, that's $146/month. ($167 at 20 years, and $242 at 10 years.) Undergrads pay 5%, which means it's $107/month. If college doesn't increase your income by $107-146/month post-tax, you shouldn't go.
https://www.bankrate.com/loans/student-loans/current-interest-rates/#best-rates
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I do not believe this. Number one: it's survey data. Number two: the link states, "As of January 2023, 60% of United States adults, including more than four in 10 high-income consumers, live paycheck to paycheck"
What I take this to mean is that 40% of Americans will say they are living paycheck to paycheck on surveys regardless of how much money they make.
If you buy a House that is three times larger than the house your British equivalent buys and then get two massive SUVs that you use for all your transportation needs being broke is kind of expected. I work as a software engineer in Europe, and I can't really afford a massive house or a car. Yet, I am able to save 20% of my salary every month.
Hello fellow software engineer in Europe who can’t quite afford such things. What do you do with your savings?
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That could be true, but that is also the least charitable interpretation of these people/families plight. As is the opinion that it is survey data thus unreliable.
More than half of Americans (58%) describe themselves as living paycheck to paycheck
Americans Rely on Credit Cards to Make Ends Meet As 64% Admit to Living Paycheck to Paycheck
two different surveys from 2023 for reproducibility, as all I see are surveys for paycheck to paycheck data. Full disclosure, on one of the surveys only about a 1/4 believe they would benefit from student debt forgiveness, 14% don't know. I actually don't doubt that they are living pay check to paycheck but perhaps the disagreement is that the phrase implies they aren't able to afford to put money away after rent,food,childcare,ect. at the most minimal level possible as opposed to where they live or currently spend? Zip codes would have been valuable to collect, as it is possible someone making 100k as a single person living in a rural area is misrepresenting themselves vs. a couple each making a 50k in a San Francisco type city where they work, struggling with rent and child care costs.
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Alternatively, many people, as they make more money, use the opportunity to spend more money, instead of to be more fiscally secure.
This seems like the correct answer. The definition of paycheck-to-paycheck is extremely loose. All that needs to happen is that the household spend all the money. It’s useful to those who want to gin up support for welfare programs and wealth transfers because it sounds like poverty.
Additionally, many who would report themselves as paycheck-to-paycheck have assets and are saving money. A friend of mine describes himself as such while putting 30% of his money into an investment account each check. To him, that money does not count because it is not available for spending (by his self imposed rules).
Which is hilarious mental accounting.
In which case, I too, live paycheck-to-paycheck. After paying for housing, utilities, food, bills, miscellaneous expenses, and putting the rest into brokerage accounts, I also have nothing leftover. Hmph! Weird.
I can actually relate to your friend. After the brief dopamine hit of buying some ETFs wears off each time I get paid, there's post-purchase-clarity and a general feeling of, "ugh, now I have to wagecuck for another whole pay-cycle to have more money to throw at the stock market." In that sense, it does feel irrationally like living paycheck-to-paycheck, even if it's hardly a central example of the concept (to say the least).
Good for him, though. It would probably be better for most people's financial health to have an attitude like your friend, to treat savings/investments as a recurring, necessary expense and rigidly put money into savings/investment accounts rather than consooming it all away.
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Of course, PPP loans were created because government was preventing people from working and the PPP loans were designed to keep businesses afloat to pay their employees.
Student loan forgiveness is totally the same thing…
My example was a business that did not need the PPP loan to keep the business afloat but got that money anyway. It was to juxtapose the above poster arguing why aid isn't needed for these working class people because they have been able to buy cars before, while rich people allow other rich people to benefit from government subsidies even though they have been and are currently able to finance their submarines. Even if not all of rich people directly benefit from the bailout, they support their fellow rich people, and in turn will get support in the future, unlike you and I unfortunately.
I think you may have skimmed over the comment too fast so I will relink it. things like mortgage interest, rent, utilities, supplier costs and expenses for operations. They payed a privately owned company, so a guy as he owns that company, for much more than his employees.
The deal was “we will give you this loan if you don’t fire your employees.” Quid pro quo.
It was also done quick and dirty as it was thought needed to prevent mass layoffs. Also PPP isn’t the first of many.
Whether it was a good policy or executed correctly is entirely different compared to your point about welfare for the rich but not the poor.
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This doesn't seem right. The student loan case hinged on the wording of a statute, not a reading of the Constitution. See page 12 of the opinion:
As for the affirmative action case, it is definitely not based on a literal reading of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. If it were, it would be a much shorter opinion. The opinion is instead all about whether the affirmative action regimes satisfy strict scrutiny:
Moreover, had the decision been based on a simple literal reading of "equal protection," then the footnote re military academies would make no sense:
This is hilarious, because I just saw the front page of NYT with a Biden quote on the student loan case ruling: "I think the court misinterpreted the Constitution."
Of course, I happen to totally agree with you that this case was statutory interpretation. If anything, I'm just noticing that this is one of those moments where Biden says something that, had Trump made a similar mistake, it would have been front page news... not because they're cheering on what he said, but because they're aghast about how he could be so ignorant and wrong about this obvious thing (that is a technical little detail, really), and how it must mean that he has no idea what is going on and is therefore incapable to hold office under the 25th Amendment.
I think you're nitpicking here. @Gaashk's comment that it's a literal reading of the Constitution is probably correct. Your quote from the opinion about
is pretty easily understood as saying, "Whelp, a literal reading of the Constitution is that you can't do this. That said, there might be an exception to the literal reading of the Constitution." And sure, they spent most of their time on figuring out whether or not there was an exception for this case, but the result of finding that there isn't an exception is that you just go back to the default of a literal reading of the Constitution.
I would say that it might be misunderstood as saying that, but only by someone who has no actual understanding of the issue. After all, if taken literally, the Equal Protection clause would invalidate all laws, because all laws treat some groups differently than others. "No trucks allowed in tunnel" discrimates against truck drivers, and "people under 16 can't get a driver's license" discrimates against those under 16. That's why courts have said that the Equal Protection Clause is not meant literally: "Statutes create many classifications which do not deny equal protection; it is only "invidious discrimination" which offends the Constitution." Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 US 726, 732 (1963) [citing Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U. S. 483, 488-489 (1955) and Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U. S. 61, 78-79 (1911)).
And, more generally, no justice employs a literal interpretation of the Constitution, nor have any in recent memory, except maybe Justice Black, though the only provision I know of in which he employed literal interpretation was re the free speech clause.
EPC doesn't say that, tho. Like, on its face. Nowhere in the literal words of the clause does it say that the laws cannot make any distinctions for any reason between people.
I think I'm coming around to Barrett's concurrence that sometimes, if you try hard enough to be a moron when reading something, you'll miss the most reasonable interpretation of the literal text. Having a modicum of context informs how you read so that you don't add in things when you're claiming that it's a literal reading.
Yes, it does say that. That is the literal meaning of "equal protection." See Ten Broek, Jacobus, and Joseph Tussman. "The equal protection of the laws." California Law Review 37 (1949): 341, 343 ["Here, then, is a paradox: The equal protection of the laws is a 'pledge of the protection of equal laws.' But laws may classify. And 'the very idea of classification is that of inequality. . . .'" (ellipsis in original)].
But that is exactly why no one interprets the Constitution using the literal meaning of words. "Congress shall make no law" does not mean "no law," and "speech" covers more than literal speech.
Sorry that they struggle to read in the California Law Review. (They try extra hard to read like morons.)
But try. Try in your own words to explain how "equal protection of the laws" means "no possible categorization in laws" means "no laws". It doesn't. It's not there. Clearly, the context, in Barrett's words, is that there are laws. So, given that there are laws, and you're trying to read this sentence about laws literally, please proceed to explain exactly how your literal reading implies that there are no valid laws. What "protection" would these not valid laws be providing?
I think the quote from the law review article makes that clear.
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Moreover, to the extent that involved broader things (major questions), that's usually against a literal reading. (I suppose Barrett tried to argue the opposite. I'm not sure that I'm convinced, in this case.)
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Wasn’t the justification supposed to be that this was pandemic-specific? I.e. the whole economy contracted, and people with the reasonable expectation of paying it suddenly couldn’t. $20k was never supposed to make the difference for med school.
I’m not sure that it actually was targeting extreme COLA like the Bay Area, either. More a general buyout for people who tried to get their first job in 2020.
I also object to the claim that both these cases were prima facie unconstitutional. See the dissents for legitimate arguments!
The pandemic is why federal loans have been deferred entirely these past three years, and I suppose that makes sense. I am not really against either the pandemic deferral, or pretty low income adjusted payments. I'm not even completely against a bill, by congress, reforming loans going forward and forgiving some (even all!) loans to people below some income threshold who probably shouldn't have been issued them.
Sure, it was not unanimous, and the dissenting judges are not puppets or stupid or anything like that. But the question was about what the theory is behind conservative jurisprudence, and conservatives do think that it's overstepping and wrong.
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