Thousands of dollars in student debt cancelled. Good news, right?

Politics & Elections
281

By lowering taxes today you’re lowering CURRENT tax revenue.

^ This.

You asked for a cite. He provided many. Now you’re not going to read them? Wow, guess we now know you have no intention of actually discussing the topic.

Going to college is supposed to be a GOOD life decision, yet you want to shackle people to college debt for decades. These people MADE the decision society wanted them to, and it didn’t work out. Now what? Are you going to tell them they did the right thing but circumstances yanked the rug out from under them so just suck it up and stay poor?

What the conservatives never, ever want to admit is that there is, in fact, an element of chance in life. You can get struck by lightning, a tornado can hit your house, heck a frickin ROCK can fall out of the sky and land on you! Guess those people hit by circumstances beyond their control should have had better pre-cognition, right?

It’s meaningless to talk about how college was in the 1960’s, or 70’s, or 80’s because the rules of the game have changed. It’s NOT like it was 40 years ago, so stop it with the Horatio Alger stories. Some folks in the financial industry saw a way to turn tens of thousands college graduates into wage serfs and had it enacted. So now we have people who tried to play the game and found out too late it was rigged against them, both before they graduated and afterward as well.

Meanwhile, corporations and billionaires get tax breaks. Where are the great jobs they were supposed to generate? Where is the wealth that was supposed to trickle down to the masses? That IS the line that sold it, the quote “a rising tide lifts all boats” and job creation. Well, looks like the only jobs created where those overseas. That’s what happened to me in 2008: hey, you have a degree, you do great work, you have decades of experience but people in India will do your work for a tenth of your salary so there’s the door, don’t let it hit your butt on the way out the door.

So the threat that the wealthy are going to take themselves and their created jobs overseas is pretty empty to me at this point. That has already happened to me, and we still don’t have the tax money. Since the wealthy are going to bog off to another continent anyway why should we kowtow to them at all.

Raise their taxes, cut their loopholes. If they leave so what? It’s what they have been doing for years. No loss. Meanwhile, we’ll raise up some new entrepreneurs. And maybe, with the wealthy parasites gone elsewhere, we’ll free up some housing for people who actually do the work that runs the country.

282

I think a version with no big words might be required?

283

I hope this isn’t a hijack, but none of this is probably going to happen.

The courts, up to and including SCOTUS are going to block this. Biden can’t get it through Congress because not all Democrats are on board with it. Many of those who are wanted the plan to include some form of public service.

My thought is that it will give the Democrats a few bump points in November, but then will not be enacted.

This thing is going to be tied up in legal challenges for a long time. If any of it is eventually enacted it will not be the same as the Presidents current plan.

In other words, some of you are counting your chickens before they are hatched.

284

8 million have already received their reductions.

Biden already has the statuary authority, as explained above.

Yes, there will be court challenges. Yes, some district court judge in Missouri may put an injunction on this. It may even be that, years from now, after all accounts have reduced, the USSC may say it was unconstitutional.

So? You would still need legislative and/or executive authority to claw that money back, and who the hell is going to sponsor that bill?

No one. It’ll just be ignored.

285

I would also like to point out that any private citizen, at any time, can take out a loan and pay off their student loans, leaving only themselves… and not themselves + the federal government… on the hook for repayment of that new loan.

This is a way we can all reduce government debt!

So… I wonder how many conservative student-loan holders have gone this route? I’m thinking ‘almost none’.

286

Well, it’s only been 5 days since the Presidents another announcement. I think the next week or two will be interesting.

287

Would that be a way for someone to get around the bankruptcy clause?

288

In what way? Are you expecting some kind of emergency injunction or another immediate halt to something already happening? If so, I wish the instigator much luck.

289

Yes, and any citizen can send money to the U.S. Treasury to reduce the debt. How many liberals have done that? Almost none?

290

Bill Clinton did! $128 billion worth!

291

Maybe… but if the student loans were already bankrupting you I doubt you could get a private loan. Maybe if you’re doing OK enough to get a private loan to pay off your student loan debt, then later on you run into trouble, like losing a good job, yes, then you could declare bankruptcy.

But anyone doing well enough to get a private loan (which will almost certainly have a higher interest rate) probably doesn’t need student loan forgiveness in the first place.

292

If someone files a case and IF the courts decide that it’s actionable. I wouldn’t bet the mortgage on both of those coming true.

293

It has everything to do with it. Has your family starting with your grandparents been part of institutional poverty? When government policies are directed at short term assistance based around work the results are going to be different than long term policies that aren’t.

The government program in question is a short term solution that doesn’t address long term costs and it encourages poor financial decisions.

The fact that it’s dropped right before an election is not a coincidence.

294

How is the student debt forgiveness plan under discussion “encouraging” anybody’s future decisions? From everything I’ve seen, only people who currently have student debt and meet the eligibility requirements—i.e., a subset of past and current college students—are entitled to this debt forgiveness.

All the college-financial-planning advice I’ve seen subsequent to this announcement has been unanimous in the view that this is intended as a one-off and nobody should count on it for relief from future student debt.

Are the people who moan about this program “encouraging poor decision-making” under the impression that it’s somehow going to be in effect forever? Like, every future college student who takes out a student loan from now on is guaranteed to get at least $10K forgiven if they meet the eligibility requirements? Because AFAICT, that’s not actually true, and no lenders are saying that to borrowers.

You continue trying to hammer on the timing as though it’s some kind of a “gotcha”. But as I noted above, most people agree that “spending government money in order to broadly benefit the American people is a large part of what the American government is supposed to be doing.”

The fact that when an administration enacts a measure to broadly benefit the American people, they prefer to time it so that voters will be likely to remember it next Election Day, is really not the horrifying manifestation of outrageous duplicity that you’re desperately trying to spin it as.

295

Bingo.

Also, they’re NOT conservatives. Conservatives behave conservatively. These guys are reactionaries, and pretty radical ones, at that.

296

Most people? “the American government is supposed to be doing”? That is going to need a cite, please.

297

Oh, for goodness’ sake. How pathetic is it that American conservatives are so in thrall to their own propaganda that they don’t even acknowledge the basic reality that Americans in general support the general principle of the American government spending government money in order to broadly benefit the American people?

For example, a majority of Americans say that it’s government’s responsibility to provide health care coverage for all. A majority of Americans support increased federal efforts to reduce poverty, especially child poverty. A majority of Americans support government funding for medical and science research. A majority of Americans support more COVID aid for the uninsured. A majority of Americans want greater federal support for education. And in particular, most Americans support student loan forgiveness.

I mean, I know that it’s standard conservative/libertarian doctrine to insist that all Americans REALLY want is for government just to leave them alone. But, surprise surprise: when actual Americans are actually asked if various broadly beneficial measures are a good thing for the American government to spend government money on, very often a majority of them say yes.

Of course, we can carry on arguing about what the most effective way(s) might be for government spending to get the most bang for the taxpayer buck, and debating the extent and ways in which there are always going to have to be compromises between different spending measures competing for a finite amount of taxpayer revenues.

But if you can’t even admit the basic fact that most Americans in the real world agree that a big part of the American government’s job is spending government money to broadly benefit the American people, then you are living in that “alternative reality” that conservatives used to brag about.

298

Given that it’s not liberals that are constantly only complain about the debt when a Democrat is President shouldn’t you be asking How many conservatives send money to the U.S. Treasury to reduce the debt?

299

Republicans would rather say that 40 million Americans made unique and individual bad financial decisions over the last 20 years, than believe that something is wrong with a system that results in 40 million people making bad financial decisions.

300

Decisions which nobody had to make in the 3,000 history of Western Civilization.

Nope. “It’s the bad people, not the bad system which our ideology helped create.”