It made me lol
I like income-driven student debt relief. The other plan from a few years ago to universally erase debts including from medical/law school didnāt make any sense.
Selfishly a bit here, but yes it does. Huge numbers of student loan borrowers miss out on various programs because of various hoops to jump through arenāt done. Blanket forgiveness catches everyone.
Also, the Biden plan from a few years ago did have income limits, so Iām confused what youāre talking about. I qualified only because my residency salary is so much lower than my attending salary, and it was based on income in 2020 - when I worked half as a resident making ~19/hr and half as an attending making a lot more than that.
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Iām not trying to poo-poo the forgiveness updates and am happy for those that will get some relief!
I have a criticism though, and itās that a lot of this relief is coming in the form of simply fixing government programs that were broken, like PSLF. I think a lot of people are aware of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness stated goal that if you work 10 years in government agency, 501(c)(3), or some other not-for-profit organizations and you make 120 qualifying monthly payments, the remainder of the balance would be forgiven. However, after 10 years and the first 28k people who applied, only 96 were forgiven. In 2020 there was another report of only 1.5% of applicants were actually approved. There are a lot of problems with the program which contribute to that low approval rate, like it being really difficult to track accurately, hard to qualify, and loan servicers that lied about the types of loans to make borrowers ineligible.
So, yes Iām happy these folks are FINALLY getting the reward the government promised them. They were due! If the system worked in the first place then Biden could focus on forgiveness for other groups!
It just feels like this is being done strategically and these forgiveness events are going to be breadcrumbed out strategically on the way to the election to show that he forgave $20B in 2024 already. I do have additional concerns that I havenāt seen any legislation to fix the overall issue and that one of the responsibilities of future POTUS will be to figure out ways to forgive loans through executive acts which could, in the wrong hands, lead to some highly inequitable payouts.
I donāt think this is a particularly good criticism. The problem before was that the Trump administration actively made it impossible to qualify for PSLF. The Biden administration made a huge push several years ago to forgive the people who had gotten screwed over. It isnāt actually hard to qualify, they just made it so that it was impossible. Thatās kind of a big deal. A message of ākeep voting for biden, heāll fix the student loan system as much as possible seems like a good ideaā.
Whatās being breadcrumbed now is reminders of what Biden did.
Thereās also been a ton of other changes (SAVE program, this interest forgiveness program, and more) that I donāt think youāre considering.
Iām not going to go read the actual PSLF legislation, but I have to wonder how much of the original problem is poor legislation designed to fail from the beginning. We do have to remember itās a George W. Bush production! A Trump directed DOE would undoubtedly have an overzealous ādeniedā stamp, but I have to wonder how much of those denies were just following the letter of the poor legislation. (JAQ)
I also think you may be underestimating the qualification process for some folks. Itās probably not that difficult for people that have a continuity of work in the same government agency, but for folks that switched between levels of government, private corp and back, took LOA, etc. did have a number of issues certifying their payments (probably mostly from the Trump DOE, to your point). At least thatās what I heard from some friends. These folks Iām really happy for!
Anyway, now that Iām reading through the actual press-release, I think Iām more upset at news.
To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has approved $146 billion in student debt relief for 4 million Americans through more than two dozen executive actions.
ā¦
The Administration has canceled over $62.5 billion in student debt for 871,000 public service workers, including teachers, firefighters, nurses, and more. Prior to the Biden Administration, only 7,000 people in total had received debt forgiveness through Public Service Loan Forgiveness in the over 15 years since the program was put in place. The Biden Administration implemented fixes to make sure public service workers received the relief they are entitled to under the law, helping nearly 900,000 public service workers receive relief to date
I agree that delivering on student loan forgiveness should be a drum Biden beats loudly! 
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So I actually am pushing for PSLF right now (Iām 6.5 years in or so). The form itself is actually pretty easy, the only problem Iāve had (or have had friends have) is getting someone from a job to sign the damn form.
My understanding is that, in the before times, everything basically got denied. Although I canāt say I really knew too much about it then. I purposely didnāt think about PSLF until 2023, when other rules were changed so that I would be eligible.
(Basically it was impossible for me to work for a nonprofit as an ER doctor in California due to state laws - so the rules were changed so long as I worked in a nonprofit hospital)
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I have no idea what to make of this
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/07/voter-age-biden-trump-2024-election-00150923
What the polls show
Just last week, a new NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist College national poll showed Trump 2 points ahead of Biden among Millennial and Gen-Z voters, while Biden led overall among voters 45 years and older, including those in the Silent and Greatest generations.
A Fox News poll last month showed Trump leading Biden among voters under 30 by a whopping 18 points in a head-to-head matchup ā and by 21 points with independent and third-party candidates included.
I can think of several hypotheses to explain this, but Iād really have to look at some cross tabs, and probably not the ones they publish, to have a firm opinion.
Based on random social media stuff I see Biden is extremely unpopular with young people and Trump has the racist and dumb young people demos sown up. Millenials and younger are completely fed up and disillusioned with EDem bullshit. How could you not be growing up in those eras.
There is an interesting documentary about the rise of 4 chan and the relationship with January 6th I watched recently and a good chunk of the people interviewed were Obama voters then Occupy types that lost their minds after the way the financial crisis was handled by Obama and switched teams at some point. In some bizarre way it makes sense Trump might represent change and Biden represents the status quo which has fucked over those generations for decades now.
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So those same young voters who came out in record numbers to crush the mid-terms for Biden are now going to turn against him and vote for Trump?
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Voted for abortion rights. Not Biden. Even with a Dem landslide in 2022 abortion rights have continued to trend the wrong direction. At some point people ask themselves what the point is.
Also according to CNN exit polling from 2022 Dems barely won the 30-44 demo 51-47. Those ages are pretty much millenials(born 81 and later) and gen z(born 96 and older). So no those demos did not crush the midterms for dems.
The extremely young voters were fairly decisive dem voters but they donāt vote in large enough numbers to matter much.
I have some doubt that āWell Republicans keep taking away abortion rights, which are very important to me, and Dems didnāt stop it in every state, so I might as well just vote Republican now.ā is actually running through peopleās minds.
Young people are voting in record numbers compared to the past, and the trend seems to accelerate every election.
Didnāt most polls have Rs crushing the midterms?
Thereās a massive split in polls regarding the young vote, and I think thereās near zero chance Trump comes back positive. Polls are generally in agreement with one another, but some are showing a massive realignment in how different age groups are voting. Basically do you really think olds are voting for Biden while young people are voting for Trump this time?
Iām guessing thatās just some error in methodology showing up
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Smells fishy to me. Yes Iām in a posh burb, but I sense no change. Interact with a decent number of high school and college age kids through my wifeās volunteering.
I donāt buy this either. Trump +21 with the 18-30 crowd would not only be a historic anomaly, but also wildly different than what happened in 2020. I can understand them being unhappy with Biden, but moving to Trump is tough to imagine.
I sure hope itās wrong. We are beyond fucked if the next generation decides that they like Trumpism.
Itās wrong. Question is, is it wrong enough?
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Zero chance that poll is accurate.
I agree, but itās not one poll, thereās quite a bit of them.