…by giving them $10,000.
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Not a lawyer, but if I was, I’d like to be on the side that says “you can’t forgive loans for students of some schools but not others”. I mean it seems a law like that would immediately be challenged.
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Also, don’t these people actually hate his guts?
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Must have missed the announcement somehow.
Cancelling student debt seems super shady.
Just give money to poor people if wealth redistribution is the goal - then poor people with student loans can use it to pay them off and rich people with student loans can pay them off with their existing means.
I went to college and make $100,000/year: “Here is $50,000. Put those student loan payments you were making towards a vacation house!”
I didn’t go to college and make minimum wage: “Go fuck yourself”.
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Are they struggling more or less than young people who didn’t go to college?
Getting votes is the goal.
Struggle is struggle
Dude a huge % of the student debt is owed by people from poor families who went to college… the vast majority of whom, if they are lucky, make 40-50k a year and aren’t still waiting tables or pouring people coffee.
The actual well off don’t have student loans because mommy and daddy paid for it either through buying elite prep so that they could get a scholarship or just by writing a check.
10k is a good number primarily because it hits the group that is the absolute worst off super hard… the poor people who have student loans and did not graduate. Those people are absolutely struggling more than the people who didn’t go to college. They’re the same people with a five figure debt load that can’t be discharged through bankruptcy.
For every person six figures in debt from grad school making six figures in income there are dozens of poor people who are genuinely struggling with student loans. 10k, even 50k isn’t going to make a huge difference in the lives of the former group.
There’s no reason for there to be student loan debt. If I were offered the opportunity to pay for people’s college in exchange for getting the delta in federal income tax between what they would have paid and what they pay post degree I would invest my entire net worth and every excess penny I ever earned in it. Huge profit. It’s a massive scandal that college costs money at all.
One of the most cynical things the conservative movement has done is introduce massive austerity to government investments that really do generate a large positive return strictly to the government. Infrastructure pays for itself and then some, education pays for itself and then some, basic science pays for itself and then some, and so do quite a few other things. Student loans are a huge drag on the economy because they saddle people with debt at a time in their lives when they are supposed to be launching their families, which is genuinely supposed to be a period of tremendous resource consumption in the life cycle on an American citizen. Not having sufficient resources for that period stunts their economic growth for life. For proof see any lower middle class Gen X’er. Those motherfuckers aren’t retiring and they aren’t paying for their kids college either. They’re debt slaves who have bred another generation of debt slaves to follow them.
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Between this and stuff like this:
Capitol riots commission
If I’m a casino I’m already paying out “they’re going to spend the next four years running on ‘Trump bad’ instead of actually helping people” tickets. Cancelling student debt would be popular among people it helps and others would come around because it would be a huge net positive for the economy. The argument against it seems to be…it’s unfair? Democrats just wholesale adopting and implementing Republican taking points for no gain except to self own, as always. At this point just merge this thread with LOL Dems.
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They can do other stuff during. Bush invaded 2 whole countries while the 911 commission was ongoing
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They can but I haven’t seen any evidence that they plan to implement good policy that would help them win over voters. Too busy trying to middle every little thing. Maybe Biden will come around though, he’s shown willingness to change his mind if something is popular within the party.
To be clear, I would be 100% in favor of giving a $50,000 check to every single American (many of whom would use it to pay off student debt) and then taxing it back from higher earners. I think everyone here supports “giving money to poor people.” (In reality we can’t even get a $2000 check in the middle of a fucking pandemic, sigh.)
There are a lot of poor people that would be helped by forgiveness of student debt. I don’t want to cancel the whole thing just because some engineer that just graduated into a six-figure job will also get money. This forgiveness would ideally be part of a broader economic support package or series of bills that would support poor people without student debt (like raising the minimum wage!) so that we’re doing much more than telling them to go fuck themselves.
Lastly, I’m going to generalize but I assume most who support this idea support it primarily because it’s a beneficial thing to do, not because of any anticipated impact on votes (Trolly’s recent post notwithstanding). My previous post was just to point out that those assuming it will be a net negative towards voter turnout are likely incorrect. I assume the net impact of something like this will be an increase in votes supporting Dem/left candidates–basically, the losses of disaffected minimum wage non-college folks will be offset by the gains of young people materially impacted by this policy.
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i am not strongly anti $50k cancellation, i just feel it’s going to cause universities to keep increasing tuition in a big way. i’d rather guarantee public college at $0 for the student and make private colleges compete with that.
to make the cost equitable for the recently graduated, i would retroactively help paying off loans that originated upto 10 years ago, with some phase out schedule like 10% for oldest loans, 50% for 4 years out of school, 90% for this year’s grads, etc. yeah i’d probably do means-testing on top of that.
eta: those that didn’t go to college, would now be eligible to attend for free obv. like the newly unemployed, etc.
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I’m not necessarily for or against $50k cancellation, but I am against rushing to do it without thinking through the consequences and what the best way to structure loan forgiveness might be and whether it might be better to do it within the context of much broader set of education initiatives (which shouldn’t be a priority right now). I would be fine with immediate forgiveness of a smaller amount.
If only the Dems had some time to plan all of this!
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I bet it takes until after the midterms unfortunately. Really gotta get that means testing down. Oh what’s that the Dems got destroyed in the midterms?
I think the shortest reasonable timeframe is after either a COVID bill passes or it becomes obvious that such a bill won’t pass. I’m not going to be too concerned about not tackling student loan forgiveness before that happens.
i understand that point of view, and i tend to agree that we should pilot the government programs and see how they perform.
but ultimately total college loans is a sum on par with the trmp tax cut, or the supposed cost of obamacare (before savings due to obamacare). we push through these sorts of expenditures all the time. that’s just how you have to govern when the branches of government switch party control every few years.