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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   35732 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan:

The Supreme Court on Friday struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, denying tens of millions of Americans the chance to get up to $20,000 of their debt erased.

The ruling, which matched expert predictions given the justices’ conservative majority, is a massive blow to borrowers who were promised loan forgiveness by the Biden administration last summer.

The 6-3 majority ruled that at least one of the six states that challenged the loan relief program had the proper legal footing, known as standing, to do so.

The high court said the president didn’t have the authority to cancel such a large amount of consumer debt without authorization from Congress and agreed the program would cause harm to the plaintiffs.

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.

Seems eminently fair that people should not be bailed out for their poor life decisions. Hopefully market pressure will simply continue to reduce demand for fluff majors like sociology, gender studies, communication etc.

I find it difficult to believe that student loans won't be forgiven eventually once enough boomers are dead

Only 13% of Americans have student debt whereas 87% don't. Obviously the number will be higher once you partial out minors, but we're still talking of a clear minority. In addition, most Americans with student loans have fairly moderate amounts of debt. So I am not sure if this group of debt-distressed individuals is large enough to warrant a bailout.

What about future trends? The papers are full of stories of falling college enrollment and a preference for majors with firmer financial pay-off prospects. So it strikes me as unlikely that past trends will increase as rapidly as they hitherto have.

Current programs exist right now which forgive debt even if you make payments of $0 over 20 years. These programs (IBR and PAYE) were put in place because they sound good, appeal to a specific voter demo, and have deferred costs which have yet to forgive any debt.

In order for large amounts of debt held by a small minority of debt holders to be forgiven, all we have to do is wait 5 or so years and those programs will already be required to forgive the debt. If nothing is done, large amounts of debt held by a small minority will already be forgiven. The small minority of student debt holders have already mostly accomplished what you express skepticism of their ability to do.

Additionally, the creditors, which I believe to be a far stronger and more powerful interest and lobby group, also want the debt to be forgiven because it being forgiven will mean the US government printing money and handing it to them for bad debts which will not be paid off otherwise.

The bail-out is already agreed to, all we're doing is waiting around until the programs already written and millions of people who already rely on them reach the terminus point of that agreement. And the longer it isn't addressed, the harder and harder it will be for any change of course.

For these reasons, the bail outs and debt forgiveness is coming.

Interesting, thanks.

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