To be clear, I fully support free college starting now. That’s free college for everyone. Canceling college debt for those who attended in the past but still owe money is providing free college for only those who took out loans and haven’t repaid them. Which is a real kick in the teeth to those who either repaid their loans or found a way through college without incurring debt. It makes people who pay their bills fools.
Instead of simply writing off these debts, why not provide avenues for working them off – community service, working with at-risk kids, etc. There used to be a few such programs, and they could be expanded or brought back. That would enable people to get out from under their debt while gaining skills and experience and giving something in return.
I recently did a survey of local school staff in support of higher wages. Many, many staff on the survey, as well as other teachers I’ve talked to in the past, expressed how difficult it was to make ends meet, to pay for things like shelter and even food; and college loans are a huge piece of this debt. These aren’t people who went to the University of Phoenix for degrees in art appreciation, these are folks with degrees in education who have to live 30 minutes away from their school in order to afford housing, or who struggle to buy groceries at the end of the month.
So no, I don’t think we have different definitions of hardship.
Is your personal attack because you have unpaid student loans? Or are you just uncomfortable with differing opinions. It sounds like your world is very limited, which is typical for middle-class Americans. You really should step out of suburbia now and then – there’s a fascinating world out there filled with ideas. Of course, many of those ideas don’t agree with yours, so maybe you should stay home.
Money’s fungible, and solving it at either income or expense level is a solution. I know best about the issue with school staff because that’s where I am, but I also hear about this problem from many, many other people who are not school staff.
Right, and as I said, I prefer a method of making paying off the debt an attainable goal, rather than simply wiping it away. Right now it’s something that’s going to be hanging over many people for most of their adult lives.
The reason that I bring up the idea of free college education is that by the same reasoning that someone who repaid their student loans should be resentful about others having them paid off, I should be resentful over other people getting something for free that I am paying for.
Anyway, this is certainly a tangent, though I don’t think I would be adverse in participating in a comprehensive educational reform thread.
Ah; I’m sorry for not properly understanding your previous post in that case; it seems we largely agree on that.
I think it would be percieved much differently since it would be altering the terms of attaining a college education across the board and simultaneously.
Coupled with a plan to reduce income inequality in the short term, such a proposal could be viewed as equitable without being seen as unduly charitable, IMO.
Personally, I’d be less in favor of blanket debt cancellation and more supportive of a program where your debt is cancelled if, post-graduation, you work for X number of years (let’s say 5-10) in a field which is relevant to your major and which primarily serves interests of the nation or the community.
A persepctive from the UK. University costs here can end up north of £30k but the important thing is that they end up being treated as a graduate tax. i.e.
You pay nothing until you are earning over about £28k. If you earn about £33k you pay back about £42 a month. It scales from there and the more you earn the more you pay back but the whole thing is cancelled after (I think) 25 or 30 years.
Nor does the lump sum count against you as a simple debt for the purpose of a mortgage, only the monthly obligation matters.
So you end up with a very modest repayment that doesn’t kick in until you have a living wage. That sort of a system, or variation of it, seems pretty fair.
5 minutes ago Manchin came out against build back better on Fox News. Said he is a hard no.
To my point above, which many of you gave me shit for: Biden wasted his 100 days by not focusing on voting rights.
Now, faced with Dems in states which are being gerrymandered against them, Biden can’t get his agenda passed because he needs the support of people who MUST move to the right to keep their jobs. And even then, they likely won’t keep those jobs as Biden didn’t bother to do anything about disinformation either. Wasn’t even an issue.
And student debt payments begin next month. $1.6 trillion of PPP loans get forgiven, but Biden failed on BBB, voting rights, student loans (on this issue, Biden’s entire 2020 campaign was nothing but a lie about how he was to handle this) and effectively has condemned his party to irrelevancy.
Ugh, not $1.6 trillion. $600 billion of PPP loans are up for forgiveness. Not too sure why I typed the $1.6.
(ETA: $1.6 trillion is the amount of student debt outstanding. I obviously was thinking one figure when I should have typed the other. My apologies.)
Oh, and the forgiven loans? The IRS decided that’s free money, not to be taxed.
Which, I’m sure, will weigh on the decision making processes of this solid bedrock of Trumpy demographics: the American small business owner. They’ll remember that the money came from Trump, and assume the forgiveness was his as well. Which, to be fair, forgiveness programs were begun under Trump.
Way to go, Joe! Trump gives his supporters $600 billion in free cash, you can’t even keep your promises regarding student loans.
You had an historic attack on the capital and had a small window to do something about protecting Democracy, yet you decided to do nothing but give trillions of dollars to American businessmen who won’t even vote for you come 2024.
At the moment, just weeks after the attack on the Capitol, a fast-tracked package of voting rights legislation would have had the momentum to pass. You would have gotten Romney, Cheney, Kizinger, etc for R support for the Senate. You could have negotiated with more people instead of just one.
Yes, done properly, a voting rights bill could have been passed and signed by the same time the first Biden COVID relief bill was done, of that I am certain. The political winds were there. And Biden just let them blow.