No because they got the use of the yardbot in the intervening years.
How about this: You can prepay for a yardbot or you can pay more for one on the installment plan. Before the first installment payment happened Musk announces that yard bots are now free for those who chose the installment plan and those who prepaid have to pay a little more to help pay for other people’s yardbots.
How about a payment to all americans who went to college? Those who have higher degrees can get more and those who went to the more prestigious colleges get more. That would be fairer.
People are using the word “Fair” a lot here. The question was whether it’s a legitimate grounds for grievance. Yes, folks should be aggrieved. It’s Changing the Rules in the Middle of the Game"!
People took out loans, promising to pay the other Taxpayers back… and the politicians and the public went along with it ON THOSE GROUNDS… not on some other give away plan. That is changing the rules after they were agreed to and the process began. FOWL!
The answer to all your questions is yes, those situations were clearly unfair. If 1920’s A worked hard all his life, got injured on the job and couldn’t work any more, got evicted from his house and starved to death on the street, while 1960’s B worked hard all his life, got injured on the job, and was rescued by Social Security and disability payments, of course it’s unfair to A.
But that has nothing to do with whether it was right to institute Social Security — of course it is the right thing to do to help people who can’t work to pay their bills.
Many posts here seem to be concentrating on whether it’s unfair for people to get benefits for X, and because they favor those benefits, they say it’s not unfair. But the very fact that they believe that people have a right to (e.g.) affordable medical care, automatically means that people who were denied that right were treated unfairly.
We can’t go back in time and help everybody who ever lived before benefit X, but it seems reasonable to me that if we can institute free tuition or universal health care or whatever, we can allocate additional funds to help people who are currently strapped because they spent their life savings on college or medical bills. It shouldn’t be that hard to verify that they had a modest income, and that it was consumed by those expenses. Rich people need not apply, and those of modest income need not be fully compensated if they paid for tuition at a prestigious private college, rather than in-state tuition at a public college.
But surely it’s more fair to compensate them even partially than to just say, “Sucks to be you.”
I agree with all of this. This “changing of the rules” is not illegal and it is not really even immoral as it was not the intention of the person changing the rules to disadvantage the prior people and the prior people are not disadvantaged at all.
But it does hit the human psyche as a question of your own decision making process and your own self worth. You feel slighted that you weren’t given consideration for what you perceive was a similar situation. You question your own decision making abilities that you should have somehow seen that this give away was coming and not have been such a chump to pay like you chose to pay.
To me it’s not different that if you bought a car for a certain price and next month it is on clearance to make room for the new models or you found out that your neighbor was able to negotiate a better deal. You just feel stupid, stupid, stupid, and like all people, that doesn’t sit well with their mind, so they want to find someone to blame.
It’s a little different to compare 40 years later to sufficiently contemporaneous. Your psyche is eased because you don’t blame yourself for not seeing a change so far into the future.
So I think laws should try to be as contemporaneously fair as possible using grandfather clauses and the like and use sliding scales for benefits going back to before when the law was passed.
Yes they have a legit grievance. As others have mentioned it’s not a reason to not change things. However, the politician(s) pushing this should recognize that some people are going to feel that way and address it. If their only answer is “of course not” and move on that’s just bad politics.
What about slaves who spent many years working to purchase their freedom, and then suddenly they see that slavery is banned and all slaves are set free? Did they have a right to be angry?
It’s not absurd; something very similar happened to me in college. An old exam in one course was found and passed around most people in the class, except for me (I never saw it). This teacher recycled questions, and on this day gave pretty much the exact same test as that older version.
Pretty much the whole class got an A+, while I got a B. I was actually really good in this subject and typically got the best marks. I had studied well and got an OK mark. The others had (in my mind) cheated and got good marks. I felt wronged. The teacher didn’t agree and didn’t consider it cheating or unfair. Sucked to be me. So yes I felt upset, but nothing was done about it which one could say made my grievance not legitimate.
That’s more like, everyone got cookies, but I didn’t know about the cookies, so I didn’t get any.
If it wasn’t cheating, then it was part of the test materials available for you to study. That you didn’t take advantage of the study materials shouldn’t make you feel aggrieved.
Studying off of old exams is a pretty standard practice, teachers not updating their exams yearly is a more problematic, but still widespread practice.
And, at the end of the day, you left the class with more knowledge than the other students.
Personally, I consider a legitimate grievance to be where you have been harmed unfairly. A legitimate grievance is not when someone else benefits from something you don’t think that they deserve.
Money is fungible and government spending on education is at least partially rivalrous, so it’s not hard to see how those who don’t receive government largesse are in fact being harmed.
This is pretty easy to see if you change the groups who are getting the benefit.
Imagine that instead of “recently graduated students with loans” receiving money from the government, that a program was announced to retroactively pay the school bills of men, but not women. Or white people, but not black people. Would the outgroup not be harmed by that policy? Would they not have a legitimate grievance? It seems obvious to me that they would.
Now, as a policy matter, it still may make sense to have the government pay the college bills of the (relatively poorer) class of students who are in debt and not pay for the (relatively richer) class of students who aren’t. Rich people already have plenty of advantages, and we can level the playing field a bit by supporting the poorer people at their expense.
Although, if you follow that logic very far, it seems likely that it’s a bad expenditure of money in general. People who went to college tend to do better than people who didn’t. If we’re spending money on poor people, people who weren’t able to go to college at all are likely far more deserving.
I’m not sure that your analogy fits, it’s rather arbitrary. You could do that with any groups. You could also ask, “What if we only gave insulin to diabetics, and chemo to cancer patients?” Do those of us with healthy metabolisms and no carcinomas feel left out and aggrieved?
The reason that you would be forgiving student loan debt of students with student loans is specifically because those are the ones who are in an unhealthy financial situation. If you then add other stipulations, like gender or ethnicity, then they would have legitimate reason to be aggrieved, as they are in the same situation as the one who had their loans paid off, except they were denied solely for racist or sexist reasons.
How far should we go back? If people who have paid off half their loans object, should we pay them back what they paid already? If they just made the final payment, do we go back and return all the money that they just sunk in? What if they paid off their loans years ago? I have no problem with paying these back either, but it does start to get a bit complicated. I’d certainly put some sort of cap on it, equivalent to 4 years at a state school. If someone wants to go to a more expensive school, I certainly wouldn’t stop them, but I do not see why the taxpayer should be on the hook for that.
The rich vs poor divide doesn’t help either. I’ve never seen gate keeping like that actually work out well for the ones who need it. The one thing that the poor have over the rich is that there are quite a few more of them. For every 1%'er, there are 99 99%'ers. So, even though that 1%'er doesn’t really need the assistance, giving it to them is ultimately going be be easier for everyone and probably cheaper to the taxpayer than trying to keep that 1% from taking what they don’t need.
I’ve known people on public assistance, and they spend hours every week filling out forms. If they get anything wrong, a typo or an arithmetic error, they can lose their entire benefits for weeks. I am quite sure that they would be fine with the knowledge that someone else is getting something that they don’t need if it meant that they got what they needed.
Except those who are in the unhealthy financial situation chose to be there. They could have chosen a profession that does not require a degree or chosen a more lucrative degree, or worked and saved up money, or gone to cheaper schools. They are getting a benefit that those who acted in more financially responsible way do not get.
Except those who are in the unhealthy financial situation chose to be there. They could have chosen a profession that does not require a degree or chosen a more lucrative degree, or worked and saved up money, or gone to cheaper schools. They are getting a benefit that those who acted in more financially responsible way do not get.
This seems like an even more off-the-wall analogy.
We can agree that people like money and giving it to them is good, right? Whereas medications for diseases you don’t have are not good and often actively harm?
That’s the policy argument for it, which is a reasonable one. But as I point out later, it’s not a very good policy argument. People who have a bunch of college debt are on average going to do better than people who didn’t go to college at all. Sure, temporarily their net worth is very negative, but the wage premium is going to dig them out of that hole.
It’s only by comparing recent college grads with debt to the richest of the rich that they look like they need government assistance.
The man (quoted in an article above) who mortgaged his house to pay for his kid’s education would argue that he has a legitimate reason to be aggrieved. Yes, he is financially better off than most in that he has a house with enough equity to pay for college. But he took a real financial hit to do so and I think is legitimately aggrieved. He literally has college loans that aren’t getting paid off, except that he offered his house as collateral.
I think timing can go a long way here. An announcement that transitions from full private payment of college to full public payment over a decade, with the state absorbing say 10% of costs every year still creates winners and losers, but it doesn’t create them right now immediately in people who are otherwise side by side.
Sharp discontinuities in policy more easily cause legitimate grievances for people on opposite sides of whatever bright line gets written.
Yes, this. I feel like this needs to be the central argument against student loan forgiveness, rather than comparing two groups of people both of which have college degrees. Those who didn’t got to college because they couldn’t afford it, but also aren’t getting a big government handout, are the ones coming out as losers here.
Let’s torture this analogy some:
Let’s say it’s well known that owning a house with a yard is a good financial investment. But maintaining that yard costs time, and money. Larry has good credit and a 9-5, and he figures it’s a good investment, so he buys a house and takes out a big loan for a Yardbot. Sherri has a 9-5 but bad credit, so she buys a house and does all the work herself until she can afford the Flardbot knockoff years later. Mary, however, has no credit and she’s working two jobs. She figures maintaining a lawn at this point in her life isn’t something she can pull off, so she rents.
At this point, Larry is overwhelmed with Yardbot debt. However, he has the equity of his house. Sherri has no debt but also has the equity in her house. Mary has nothing. Who do you give $100k to?
Why are we debating whether or not it’s fair to Sherri to give Larry the money in order to pay off his loan, when really we should be asking whether or not that’s fair to Mary. SHE’S the one in the bad financial situation – she was priced out of the housing experience altogether. Larry might be struggling but he’s got the home equity to fall back on. Sherri might be cranky that she had to do yard work all those years but she’s still in the best financial situation.
Yes, as an 18 year old, they were told that if they didn’t sign these papers and go to school, then their life would be terrible in 27 different ways. Even if they went to the cheapest state school, and got a STEM degree, they are still going to be paying on that loan for quite a while.
In fact, it seems as thought the ones who should be aggrieved are the ones who did not get the opportunities that the older generations got.
When you went to college, you didn’t have to get a loan.
A generation ago, if you had a HS diploma, you were eligible to have a job that would support a family.
Now, if you want to just support yourself, you really need a college degree.
So, it does sound as though the older generations got something that the younger generations are not getting.
You chose to involve race and gender for some reason. I still do not understand why.
But that’s both simplistic and looking at it backwards.
First, there are those who did not complete a degree, they have debt, and they do not have the increased earning potential.
Then there is the chilling effect. People choose not to go to college because they don’t want to be saddled with debt.
And so the solution is to make other people have to mortgage their homes? If there is a way we can find relfief for people like this, great. But the idea that someone will be upset that someone else doesn’t have to go through a hardship that they did is really a non-starter when you are trying to reduce hardship.
I’d say we can and need to act faster than that. Community colleges and state colleges should be free to attend. Then, if you want to go to a fancier school, then you can take out a loan to pay for it, and I will see no obligation of paying it back.
I look at the economics of a situation, rather than cater to people’s emotions. And the economics say that if we have well educated people in their 20’s and 30’s with disposable income, then our economy will do far better than if most of that generation is uneducated, and the rest are saddled with debt.
Does your argument still hold true under this scenario?
While in college, you busted your ass on your studies and had maintained a 4.0 GPA. Your roommate a regular partier had a 2.0. A new president of the University is hired who institutes a new policy, whereby everyone’s GPA’s will be averaged out. You and your roomate will now have 3.0 GPA’s, from which you will use to try and obtain jobs.
This will by your way of making sure that your roommate doesn’t have to go through the hardship of studying like you had to.
Paying for something that others get for free happens all the time. If you resent each instance, you’ll soon be embittered. I buy two cartons of juice and find out that if I’d waited a day, juice would be on a Two-for-One sale? So what! Happens all the time.
But that’s not what’s happening with student debt forgiveness.
Suppose you’re in a burger shop eating the burger you paid for, and one family shows up, tricks the cashier, and gets burgers for free. Annoying — but let’s just pretend that the family was poor and hungry. But the manager shows up, and comes out with “Because they didn’t pay, that family gets free fries and shakes to go with their burgers!” :eek: Surely at some point grievance by those who did pay becomes legit.
I agree that taxpayers should subsidize college education. Perhaps the subsidies should apply mostly to the needy. But defining “needy” as anyone who couldn’t, or chose not to, pay their student loans would sure seem unfair to me if I had scrimped to pay my debt.
I do understand that we’re faced with a big problem that has no easy solution. Warren’s debt forgiveness may be the best of a bad lot of choices. But it is intrinsically “unfair”; failure to acknowledge this makes “liberals” seem to lack common sense.
I’m not sure how to go into unpacking all of the misconceptions and false implications that are outright ridiculous in your “hypothetical”. That has no relation to reality, nr to any sort of proposal. You might as well say “What if anyone with a 4.0 gets their legs cut off, huh, huh, is it fair now?” for all the relevance your “scenario” has to anything related to the topic.
How about this scenario, everyone also gets free cake on Fridays and tacos on Tuesdays?