I think it’s probably true that the threshold is too high. And that there are other ways in which this could have been implemented better than it actually was. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing—that it didn’t, overall, do more good than harm.
Sometimes, the easiest, most efficient, or most effective way of helping people who do need and do deserve help involves some people who don’t need it also benefitting. I suspect this true of a lot of things money is spent on, by both the government and private organizations.
Right away when I first heard this news, I could think of several naive reasons why this was a bad thing, as well as several naive reasons why this was a good thing. I have seen some of those reasons expressed in this thread, as well as elsewhere on social media. I’m still not sure that this is overall a good thing from a non-naive and non-partisan perspective, but I’m leaning towards believing that it is.
I concede that federal initiatives are often blunt instruments and, not being any kind of policy wonk, I imagine this effort could possibly have been better designed. But that’s a long way from your implication that no one who attended college could need this relief.
New graduates have the most student loans, and the vast majority of them make under $125,000. But most of them are on a much better trajectory for life-long earnings than those who will be paying for it. After all, that’s why they went to college.
And student loans are already capped to a contain percentage of income to ease the burden on those just starting out in their lucrative careers.
The people who should be most offended this are are those who claim to care for the poor and diadvantaged. This is a wealth transfer from the working classes to the current and future ruling classes.
Jason Furman, Obama’s former economic advisor, has strongly opposed this, and says the inflationary effect would require the equivalent of a .75 basis point increase in the bank rate to offset. Larry Summers, another former Obama economic advisor and previous head of Harvard agrees. So this will be paid for by mortgage holders, people with credit card debt, small businesses, people with car loans, plus all the people who will suffer under increased inflation until those rate hikes go into effect.
The winners are the future wealthy of America. Progressives should be the last people supporting this, except that the Democrats have completely abandoned the working class and are now the party of wealthy college grads and race/gender warriors.
Think about how much better from a social justice standpoint this would have been if the money had been earmarked for a relief program only for those who could show serious hardship. It would have helped a lot more poor and unemployed people with student loans, Instead, most of the money is going to go to people who are already or will soon be doing better economically than the people paying for their freebie.
It would also have been more in line with the HEROES act they used to enable this.
Do we have evidence on how many of the people who will be receiving this benefit are in fact “college graduates” (much less “new graduates”), versus people who attended college for awhile but never managed to graduate?
For example, about 71% of attendees at for-profit colleges receive student loans (versus 49% at 4-year public universities), and the six-year graduation rate at for-profit colleges hovers around 30%. (cite)
For-profit institutions enroll about 10% of American post-secondary students and account for about half of all student loan defaults. (cite)
Most American people disagree with you on that, as per the survey I cited.
Which is fine: anybody’s allowed to have their own opinion about which government spending measures best qualify as “broadly benefiting the American people”.
But if you’re refusing to accept the basic general premise that most Americans consider it to be a big part of the American government’s job to spend government money somehow to broadly benefit the American people, as D_Anconia was doing in the post I responded to, that transcends mere political differences of opinion about which measures qualify as beneficial. That’s just living in a conservative/libertarian fantasyland.
Well, those are definitely numbers, and they are definitely smaller numbers than the ones specified in the actual measure. But what’s the precise economic reasoning behind choosing them as the best cutoff levels to produce the desired economic results?
Remember, the point of means testing for federal programs isn’t primarily to establish who officially “deserves” or “needs” financial help. The chief point is to get the federal money operating in what economists consider the most effective manner to achieve the overall goal: in this case, reducing the eonomic constriction caused by persistent burdens of student loan debt.
The Administration considers that that optimal means-test threshold is $125K for individuals. You think it ought to be $40K for individuals. I don’t understand the details of how either one of you picked those exact numbers, but I suspect that the feds had more actual economists involved in the decision than you did.
That’s because Americans have been conditioned to think that way. Going back to the New Deal, continuing on to the Great Society, and on to the present. By Presidents and Congresses of both parties, I might add. Congratulations.
I’m sure you can find a poll that “most Americans” want a puppy, but that doesn’t mean the government (taxpayers) should pay for it.
Let’s just take what you say as true. Let’s say there is a more progressive option. Biden isn’t a progressive. Does it really make sense to get upset about the good that this will do because it could have been better?
Plus, remember that this was a campaign promise. A significant part of this is about getting more Democrats into office in the midterms. And, as you can see by the people whining, it’s a lot easier to convince people to support you if they’ll actually benefit from the action.
It’s in progressives best interests for more Democrats to be in office, as that is the only way for progressives issues to even be considered. And, with the fascist side of the GOP, it’s really in the interest of those who support democracy. We kinda need to expunge Trumpism and MAGA by punishing Republicans for their support of such.
I myself am just happy that something is being done. That alone is likely to get more people on board. And as they realize that this wasn’t such a bad thing, it opens the door for more progressive ideas to get passed in the future.
And there’s the bonus of all the conservatives who object for hypocritical reasons, and can be called out for such. There’s a lot of political savviness in this move. It’s ridiculous how much they’ve been ceding the social media fight online.
Oh, for goodness’ sake again. It’s right there in the Preamble to the Constitution that the American government is intended to “promote the general Welfare” among other things that broadly benefit the American people, such as “insur[ing] domestic Tranquility” and “provid[ing] for the common defence”. All such things cost money, which the government has to spend in order to achieve them.
Like I said, we can argue all day about exactly how and how much and on what specific measures the government ought to spend its money to accomplish things that broadly benefit Americans. But the fundamental principle that that’s a major part of what government does is not up for debate. Not in the reality-based community, at least.
I think you may be discarding the good in search of the perfect.
There was never going to be a cut-off that didn’t generate debate. Upping the top threshold gets more voter/public support for the program as a whole. If 87% of people helped meet YOUR criteria (more or less) then I’d say it’s a win and let’s go for it.
Yes. I have several co workers with a bachelor’s degree earning less than 30k a year in “glorious” retail. A college degree - no matter what degree you’re talking about - is not a guarantee of a middle class income. Not sure it ever was, but that’s certainly not the case these days.
I will say that I have one concern about this, and it’s not over how much it will cost, or whether those who get it deserve it, but whether people will consider the problem fixed.
Obviously those who are opposed to spending government money for the welfare of the people will continue to rail, and if other proposals are made to try to lower the cost of education, they will point to this and say, “Look, we already fixed the problem, when will you be happy?” And even those who do think that the government should have some level of responsibility towards its citizens will take this as a win and focus on other ways the government fails its people.
This is probably false, since the lion’s share of income taxes is paid by the upper middle class and the wealthy, not the working classes, and this money will come out of income taxes, not payroll, sin, or sales tax (all of which fall more heavily on the poor and middle class).
No, I’m discarding the bad in search of the good. This is a gigantic expense. It should be, at the very least, targeted toward the people who really need it. This doesn’t even attempt to do that.
We are arguing over exactly how and how much we spend the money. You’re the only one arguing the second half. We said “this hurts America”, you said “It’s the government’s job to broadly benefit Americans,” we said “This doesn’t broadly benefit Americans,” and you’ve replied “but won’t you leave your fantasy lands, come back to reality, and concede my point to me?” You’re arguing against nobody and being condescending about it.
I’m not going to pretend you suddenly care about a precise economic analysis of the most effective circumscription of the eligibility criteria. You didn’t care when this EO was made, and you don’t care now. I’m not going to respect your “If you can’t present precise scholarship for your counter-proposal, then you must accept my shot in the dark random number” gambit. You want a reason? A justification? Here it is: It’s just below the median individual income level, and the married number is slightly less than twice that figure. If you make that, you’re closer to broke than most people. We possibly should help you. You make more than the median but want a literal handout? Fuckouttahere.
Long before I called out Christian hypocrisy, I postulated a justification: this is a middle class tax cut, and it’s likely to provide a boost in economic activity.
If I’m wrong, why?
And if you are bitter, why? Are you bitter when the government spends money in other ways designed to improve the economy? Did you ruminate on who had to pay when corporate income tax rates were dropped dramatically? Why is this different?
No, you’re just not paying attention to what was said in this thread prior to your jumping in on the topic.
As I’ve already pointed out more than once, my initial response on that subject was to D_Anconia’s post demanding a cite for the basic concept that the American people expect the American government to spend government money to broadly benefit the American people:
Well, that sufficiently answers my question of whether you have a precise economic analysis—or even an imprecise one—of “the most effective circumscription of the eligibility criteria”.
And again, your impression of whether I “care” about this issue is distorted by your obliviousness to what was posted in this thread before you jumped in. As far back as post #32, I was pointing out that the point of this program is not to grant or deny charitable assistance based on what individuals may “deserve” or “need”, but for the sake of the broader effects on the economy:
Well, that is definitely a justification, but it’s an arbitrary justification based on your subjective moral feelings about which earners “should” be helped, rather than an actual economic one based on the specific projected quantitative results of a particular fiscal policy.
Like I said, I suspect that if there is such an economic justification in existence for choosing particular income criteria for eligibility for student loan debt forgiveness, the Biden administration economists know much more about it than you do.
It’s amazing how much outrage the right wing is showing over this. It’s almost like they think most of the recipients are liberals and/or minorities. The student debt forgiveness is one small attempt to alleviate a very big problem: college education is very expensive. Students whose parents are very rich don’t have a problem with it, their parents can easily pay for their education. Students whose parents are very poor don’t have a problem with it, need-based scholarships will pay their way. It’s the students of middle-income parents (or the parents themselves) who have to take out huge loans to pay for their education. So we throw a small bone their way and help them out- I don’t have a problem with it. I see better ways to do this: increase public funding of higher education, pump more money into needs-based assistance so that middle class students have a shot of getting aid.
A couple oft-repeated lies. The first is “My taxes will go up to pay for it.” No they won’t, not any more than they went off to pay off Matt Gaetz’s and MTG’s PPP loan forgiveness. Nobody’s taxes are going up to pay for it. The other is “They need some skin in the game”. They have just as much skin as you do, they’re paying federal taxes the same as you.
It all really boils down is this: as right wingers, you’re duty-bound to hate anything that might benefit liberals and/or minorities. The rest is just fig leaves thrown on to cover up the true motivation for the outrage.
The wealthy and privileged do not want their kids to have to compete on a level playing field with poor kids. This is why college remains expensive and hard to access for many. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that. They want their advantages and for their kids to have those advantages. Merit based competition is anathema to them.
Not to me it isn’t. I (not a right-winger) could immediately think of several, probably naive but somewhat reasonable and non-partisan, reasons why someone might see this as a bad idea: unfair, unjust, and counterproductive. Add on the emphases and spins that the right-wing media inevitably put on anything the Biden administration does, and of course there’s going to be outrage.