this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024

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Student loan forgiveness (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Not fancy private schools. They'll cover majority cost of their kid's private school.

They want YOUR poor kid to go to a religious school - if they win on the vouchers, eventually the vouchers won't cover the cost of most of the former public schools and private schools. But those religious schools... They'll be standing there salivating with open arms and subsidized voucher tuition. Without other options, you'll send your kid and tell yourself it won't be that bad, tell yourself you'll keep communicating with them to contextualize the education versus the religion, but life will happen. The church will have millions more kids to attempt to indoctrinate than they do in today's regularly declining religious communities.

Under his fucking eye.

Vote. Tell your people to vote and call your "both sides" uncle a piece of shit to his misinformed face.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

20 gallons of water, gone

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

AI garbage, get that weak shit outta here

[+] [email protected] -26 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I chose a lower paying job in lieu of going to college and taking on debt. I'd support writing off the debt if the debtor has paid in the loan amounts worth as if it was zero interest, but making it all written off isn't right by anyone who chose the route I took.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How so?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Everyone with a hs diploma still gas to compete with everyone else when it comes to buying cars, food, housing, and everything else. The limiting factor of a house for instance is "how much is someone who wants it willing to pay?" College debt means that even if you make more, you may not have much more in available income, or a lower credit score than someone with just a highschool degree.

Essentially in a world of limited availability (which we all live in) everyone getting their debt paid off after taking it on is going to raise costs of things because it gives more people the extra income to spend on it. Inflation at the expense of everyone who isn't having their college debt cleared off.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Gotcha, so you subscribe to the mindset that someone getting something redeuces what you get.

The thing is, the richest 1% of people are so incomprehensiblly more rich than the rest of us that they could easily pay for school, housing, and food for all of us and still be incredibly rich. That's the ideal situation IMHO.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Like I said. I'm fine with eliminating the interest and I'm fine with making college free in the future for anyone who wants it. I'm not fine with giving everyone who already received a college degree getting an "out of debt free card". You don't deserve that money more than others. The rich needing to be taxed more is a separate issue.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I see. So it has nothing to do with limited availability, you just want to decide who "deserves" to be in debt. Disappointing...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

Most everyone who isn't wealthy is in debt. I just don't want myself or people like me to fall further behind while you're retroactively given a free college ride.

How about we use the interest money that you've paid into college so far to give everyone who only chose to go to highschool an extra $40,000 a piece?

"Thanks, friend. That seems fair since you have a higher average earning potential."

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Should we stop trying to cure cancer because it would be unfair to all the people who already died?

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

"Millionaires want free money" BOoOoOOO! No way!

"College alumni want free money" Yay! This is totally cool and fair!

You want me cool with wiping off $80k, give everyone else who didn't go $80k.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don’t know what proposals you’re looking at but you might look again. That wouldn’t happen.

Of course since we’re trying it piecemeal instead of systematically, there are many versions of this. But I see prerequisites like already being on income based repayment, ten years perfect record of repaying, up to $10k. There is no wealthy person fitting criteria like this nor would it write off any significant portion of private school tuition.

All I know is that my ex is still paying off her student loans as a teacher, decades after graduating. If we were still married, we shouldn’t/wouldn’t qualify, but as a teacher with limited income she should

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm assuming your ex has paid in more than she initially owed, right? As my first statement in here was that someone like her, I'd be fine with debt wiping. I'm not ok with someone who racked up $150k in student loans, only made $25k worth of payments, and gets the other $125k wiped.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Right, but that’s the point - every proposal I’ve read would not wipe that high end debt. Every proposal is targeted toward struggling earners. Every proposal already does what you want.

In a similar vein, my state offers free college tuition! But is it a free bonanza for the wealthy? Not at all. It covers up to three years community college for everyone or four years at a public college or university, means tested. If your parents make a decent income or you want to go to a private university, that’s great for you but you have to pay for it as before

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You genuinely sound like a toddler throwing a fit right now.

[+] [email protected] -6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You sound like you want to be the special one who gets something to make your own screw up go away. "I didn't know what an apr rate was when I took on $80k in a loan to get my studio arts degree"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Having educated and debt free youth is the only way the US is going to remain relevant in the world economy.

"Crabs in a bucket" arguments like yours really just illustrate how the US has got to the point we are at right now.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Your argument is akin to trickle down economics.

Further, I'm not against making future college free for anyone who wants it. I'm just against bailing out everyone who willingly and knowingly took on large amounts of debt as their own choice, even when there were other viable options not to.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

But that's just the point, the inflation of college tuition is borderline predatory. I absolutely went to college because I "had" to, but after 4 years of further self discovery and education I realized I didn't actually want/need the education I received (the social aspects were absolutely a blast though, don't get me wrong). If I wasn't socially pressured by academic advisors and the wealthy into going to college and instead was actually explained what college entailed, I likely wouldn't have gone (at least in hindsight). Now I work in a profession completely unrelated to my 2 computer science/math degrees and will be paying for the mistake of biting the higher education pill for decades.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sorry you made a bad choice? It was still your choice to make, and you continued making the choice of going for years.

Using your major or not, you still had the networking benefit and the college degree to help you become a more employable candidate than someone without. All other things equal, you would get hired before someone else who only has a hs diploma.

It was also still a choice you made, and really? You had two math degrees you earned but didn't have the capacity to work out college costs and interest rates before getting out of high school? As someone else who's decent at math, you really had to of known how that all worked, surely?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

As someone who is decent at math and shit a social interactions I was promised "No really bro, you want to make more money, trust me bro" by persons of authority and then it turns out, no I don't really. Because yeah it turns out doing extra math homework opens more doors, but those doors are all the same and what was behind those doors was never actually explained. If the government says my brain is still developing and that I can't be trusted to vote for the president then surely that same government must admit that I can't be trusted to make informed choices about 40,000 - 200,000 dollar investments. As someone who really wishes that they took your path, I can absolutely attest that I was coerced into making a poor choice early. And while I won't try and deflect that as it ultimately was a choice I made, I was far from informed.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Cool. All the future doctors and engineers can do the same thing, right?

[+] [email protected] -27 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I don't think this comparison really works. These people are against their money going to other people, whether it's to a public school or to pay off somebody else's student loans. Agree with them or not, those things are logically consistent.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Here's a fun thing about student loans: we have stupidly high tuition thanks to CA governor Reagan and president Nixon wanting to reduce the number of students protesting against the Vietnam War. Of course the excuse they used was to balance the budget. This is just one more in a long line of things that Reagan and Nixon ruined in this country for decades.

https://12ft.io/https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/

Also, the real reason school vouchers were pushed was to backdoor segregation after Brown v Board of Education desegregated schools.

https://12ft.io/https://www.forbes.com/sites/raymondpierce/2021/05/06/the-racist-history-of-school-choice/

Here's the original since 12ft.io looks a little weird on mobile. https://www.forbes.com/sites/raymondpierce/2021/05/06/the-racist-history-of-school-choice/

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

These people are against their money going to other people

It's more strategic. Student loan debt is a mechanism for controlling the employment prospects of college grads.

Public debt forgiveness becomes a method for funneling students into low paying, morally hazardous jobs (prosecutors, police, the public side of the MIC, education in underfunded neighborhoods, bureaucrat in a corrupt or underfunded agency) where you've got an incentive to keep your head down and do the work rather than organize your office or resist deplorable government policies.

Private industries, similarly, offer the better salaries doing the more morally repugnant work - mining and chemical manufacturing, big finance and HFT, pharma, automotive, credit and collections - which draws in the most talented people to apply their talents in the worst ways.

You're constantly asked to sell out your principles for a paycheck/debt relief, or the most invasive and obnoxious applications of technology. You're never going into business for yourself to challenge a corporate behemoth or pursuing public work that both benefits people and pays well. You're never going into activism or politics without a corporate paymaster.

Ever notice how many SCOTUS judges and Senators are in the Federalist Society or from the Heritage Foundation relative to the Sierra Club or the ACLU? A big part of that is simply about the money.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I think you're ascribing much deeper thoughts and foresight to the average Republican voter than is warranted.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Eh, I don't think this strategy needs to go much farther than the halls of wherever the RNC is meeting that week. If this is the overarching plan, the political moves the party makes are other things that support this outcome. In this case, any narrative that amounts to "loan forgiveness is bad" is all that needs to be sold to the voter. In fact it's better that way since they'll be compelled to vote against their own interest.

TL:DR: "support your corporate overlords you peasants" doesn't sit well with most people so they just say something else instead.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

It's much bigger than "Republican voters". You'll find plenty of blue states with students drowning in debt and "business-friendly" politicians espousing the exact same "it wouldn't be fair" anti-debt relief rhetoric.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 month ago

Vouchers are my tax dollars. So they don't want their money to go to anyone else, but they're ok taking everyone else's.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 month ago (1 children)

School vouchers are paid for with taxes. So their money is going to other people.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yes, but they see it as their tax money being returned to them. The argument for vouchers is that without them, they're paying for schools they don't use.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Which is a dumb and bad argument because better public schools make for the people you run into around town being smarter. Everybody wins.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Are you operating under the absolutely bizarre assumption that the only Republicans who are in favor of school vouchers have school-aged children? Or children at all?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I'm using "they" more broadly here to include people who share that moral foundation. School vouchers slot into the same worldview as being anti-welfare and pro-private-healthcare, for example, which could be summed up as "I got mine, get your own". I don't subscribe to that personally, but it doesn't help matters to completely misrepresent that position.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I do not see how a childless Republican got theirs with school vouchers. The only people school vouchers benefit are people with school-age kids that want to send them to private religious school.

The reason they're in favor of school vouchers is that they hate public school and they want to religiously indoctrinate children.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You're being too literal. This is an ideology. They see having money as a proxy for responsibility and success, and redistribution of it as rewarding the unworthy. All practical manifestations of this, whether it's schools or healthcare or whatever, stem from that ideology.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Except that "the unworthy" are doctors and lawyers. Including Republican doctors and lawyers. Who will be paying back student loans their whole life. So maybe there's more to it than that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No, because if they are worthy and pull hard enough on their bootstraps, they too with reach the apotheosis of wealth. Think of it as a trial, or perhaps a filter. If they don't make it, they need to try harder. I'd maybe compare it to Darwinism, or even to military esprit de corps.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You do know those doctors and lawyers paying back their student loans can be Republicans, right? Do you think they believe they've failed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps enough?

I'm in Indiana. I'm surrounded by Republicans. My wife has Republican relatives who are in these situations and in successful careers. This is not how they think. School vouchers are about their idea that public schools are atheist liberal institutions which will teach children to be transgender and worship Satan.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I'm basing my POV less on anecdata and moreso on reading (Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind, uh, comes to mind). With that said, I can certainly imagine that things have pulled in the direction you describe since Trump, so perhaps those sources don't reflect the current reality quite as much.

[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The wealthier you are, the greater the expectation that others will serve you.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Remember the lords and peasants system? We actually haven’t moved on from that just given it a new coat.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And instead of breaking your back ploughing fields.. you now fuck it up in a desk chair.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

But hey, we're living much longer these days.

Think about how much more productivity time we're donating to our lords and masters!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yup. We had a couple moments but we never exploited them to prevent capitalists from turning themselves into nobles in all but name.