All my parents successful friends all took advantage of every government program they could. They often lobbied through trade associations to get more favorable programs and handouts. Farmers all across the country get anywhere from 50-100% “cost-sharing” aka government handouts to do things like upgrade their irrigation systems and use more efficient fertilizer application technology, things that are already cost effective but that they would still refuse to implement because they were lazy and stuck in their ways or smart enough to realize they could leverage their influence to get the government to pay for it. That behavior is objectively less “ethical” and a more significant handout in most cases than what they are all now upset about random former students for doing.
This points out that the income based repayment system will change university incentives for the worse without the government price controlling tuition
A student that plans to enroll in IDR has no reason at all to care about the prices colleges are charging. To them, $15,000 of student debt is no different from $100,000 of student debt. For as long as the percentage of students enrolling in IDR remains small and students and colleges are unable to identify in advance who will wind up on IDR, this lack of price sensitivity among IDR participants is probably not much of a problem. But as IDR becomes the dominant form of repayment, it could become a serious problem.
Imagine if Medicare and Medicaid did not dictate the prices of covered services, but instead reimbursed medical care at whatever price the provider and patient agreed to without any cost-sharing. An IDR-dominant college sector, absent separately-imposed price controls, would be basically the same thing.
I cannot predict the future and different incentives don’t necessarily result in different behavior. But the slow creep of IDR, which will be accelerated by the Biden plan, does at least increase the risk of certain unwanted behaviors by colleges, students, and even state governments.
There are other countries that have IDR-dominant college financing systems, such as Australia. But in Australia, the maximum price a university can charge for a particular course of undergraduate study is directly legislated by the government. If we are going to make the leap into an IDR-dominant college financing system, then we may need the government to also play a much bigger role in setting college prices, something it probably should have been doing even before the Biden policy change. Otherwise, we may very well see more unwanted cost bloat beyond what we already have.
The fact that it was a LINO only strengthens the fact that complaining about “fairness” is ridiculous. But that’s a little subtle for the general public, so “lol hypocrite” works well in its stead.
Also, lots of people who believed it wasn’t really a “loan” have ended up having to pay the money back because of sketchy lenders, and I guess in fairness their own lack of sophistication. Just another way the PPP was stacked toward people with acumen, or with the means to hire people with acumen.
Had a conversation with a friend about Biden yesterday that genuinly disturbs me lol. I’m thinking that there may not be a president in my lifetime that slaughters fewer people worldwide then Biden. That alone agruably puts him in the conversation for one of the best presidents. How many dudes would you put above him?
Biden’s legacy is gonna be more in line with Carter: a guy pretty much hated during his presidency but history will look back later and realize that he wasn’t as bad as people remember.
I’m not a historian, and don’t know all that much about Carter, but it feels like his reputation saved by his sucessors (and longevity). Carter popularized austerity politics in the Democratic party and arguably introduced Reganomics (he appoined Volker!), but never got that stigma. Quite the opposite somehow.
Now he is just a nice old guy who builds houses for the poor.
“Yea he sucked but he was better than the alternative” we say to ourselves, 30 years from now when our health insurance premiums and higher education costs are both approximately $1M a year while minimum wage is still <$10/hour.
Maybe I’m just grumpy but my views are closer to Wichita’s on this. The alleviation of student loans is great, but it will nonetheless further entrench a fundamentally corrupt system for decades, much like the ACA has done with health insurance.
I’m having a hard time because I want to celebrate this as a short-term win (especially because I know a ton of people saddled with ridiculous amount of student loans) but can’t overlook the fact that we’re still utterly fucked.
If anybody ever read or listened to Carter’s White House Diary it’s very hard not to come away with a tremendous amount of respect for how serious he took the job, how much effort he put into it, and how much it pained him to deal with the realities of some of his decisions. The last great man we’ve had as president IMO, despite his flaws. (Micro please do not mention Pol Pot or whoever it was again!)
He was also a military man and very courageous and it’s a fucking disgrace what the right did to him calling him a pussy and all that when half of their candidates (more?) are all draft dodging scum.
Carter was a Christian who took the best parts of Christianity seriously
Guy basically fell on his sword. Shit he and Volcker did was massively unpopular and hurtful in the short run but Carter’s deregulating set up the pins for a boom in the 80’s.
When America’s a totalitarian state 30 years from now, historians that were able to find asylum in Canada or Mexico will see Biden in a positive light.
If nothing else, Carter was like 50 years ahead of the curve on environmental sustainability.
Wait is this a good thing?
All I remember about the Carter Administration is long lineups for expensive gas, US hostages in Iran, and his brother drinking a lot
the first president i remember was clinton and the first thing i remember learning about him was he got a blowjob, so since the age of 8 i always wanted to be president
This post is out of character and regrettable. Is it too late to just go with “Carter was the Velvet Underground of the Neoliberal turn”?
Thanks, someone mentioned his bravery up thread. I guess this is what they were referring to
bring back debtor’s prisons!
as an engineering officer on a nuclear sub, jimmy carter took 90 seconds shifts to take out fuel rods out of a melting reactor. he and his team knew they would potentially be exposed to lethal doses of radiation
They’re not debtor’s prisons, they’re Financial Wellness Long Term Detention Centers.