I admit my knowledge is anecdotal, but I know somebody in their 20s, who went to college, and is in debt that would be cancelled. This person was the first in their family to go to college, and was unable to find a job in their field. Most of this persons peers are in a similar situation with respect to debt and being unable to find jobs in their field. The jobs these people have are entry-level tech support, bar-tending / waiting tables, starbucks, etc. None of them are upper middle class.
But again, just anecdotal.
Their sources are also linked from that post.
Going by student earnings, the top 40% of earners owe almost 60% of the debt. Going by family incomes has about the same distribution. None of the lower three quintiles are breaking ~15% of borrowing.
This is absolutely a gift to the wealthy.
> This is absolutely a gift to the wealthy.
I think you need to look up the definition of "absolute". You left out 60% of your whole.
This is certainly a benefit disproportionately for high earners from wealthy backgrounds.
Meanwhile, the 60% of people you didn't mention - the ones with only 40% of debt owed - are in a crisis.
You are saying that we must deny those people assistance, because we would also end up helping others who aren't in crisis, and doing so is unpalatable.
So where is the solution for the people in crisis?
Is there any room for accountability, or is the indiscriminate dumping of money out of a helicopter the only solution we're allowed to consider?
That's not what I have been seeing here. What I have been seeing is promotion of doing nothing at all, simply because the option being presented isn't perfect.
The data does not support the idea that student debt should be a top priority for anyone trying to maximize the impact of raining dollars onto the public. I'm presenting data not for the purpose of showing that there's a better way to distribute loan relief, but to show how incredible it is to claim this is motivated by desire to give relief to needy people (and therefore given top priority)
It's decidedly not the needy who'd receive the most relief from this policy.
That was never the claim. Student loan forgiveness is not universal basic income, medicare, food stamps, etc. It is not designed to overcome poverty. That's a totally separate problem that needs attention.
Are you saying you expect every tax dollar to go to the poor first? Clearly you aren't basing your expectations on the status quo: We spend $700 billion on defense, and $350 billion on welfare (not including medicaid).
Just because there are more important problems to solve does not mean we should ignore this one.
Focusing on the debt is a red herring that conveniently rewards elites and others who are doing just fine. Focusing on whether universities are actually doing what they claim on the box is the real issue -- again conveniently elided by a blanket debt forgiveness program.
Focusing on universities is a closely related, but separate issue. It does need to be tackled, but that does not change the existing situation of the current victims.
My entire point is that student loan forgiveness shouldn't be discounted out-of-hand simply because it doesn't fix everything or that it benefits some people you don't want to benefit.
Honestly, the side proposing a large action should also be ready with relevant research.
That is the price of diversity.
Diversity, which is neither bad nor good, has benefits and costs.
My very diverse country invented jazz music and snowboarding and the Internet. We also lack the social trust and cohesion of much less diverse countries like Japan or the Scandinavian countries at whose social welfare programs we marvel.
Personally, I'll take the jazz music and snowboarding even if it means fighting over what should be basic components of the welfare state.
Nonsense.
> We also lack the social trust and cohesion of much less diverse countries like Japan or the Scandinavian countries at whose social welfare programs we marvel.
> Personally, I'll take the jazz music and snowboarding even if it means fighting over what should be basic components of the welfare state.
So what I took you to be saying is that "jazz music and snowboarding" come from a diversity present because of the lack of social programs like welfare. What "diversity" is that if not that which includes poverty?
What I'm trying to say is that it's ridiculous to assert that "jazz music and snowboarding" come from the lack of a welfare state. Nowhere do you illustrate how we can't have both.
As an example, we all benefit hugely from the existence of an EMS (911, ambulances, emergency rooms) system, even if most of us don't use it much. That's a positive externality that's worth the government making sure happens, as it wouldn't necessarily happen without government involvement.
Similarly, public schooling (or publicly paid school) provides externalities: a literate society, a basic level of civic and cultural knowledge that people can assume as a baseline, opportunities for social mobility. None of those exist with a voluntary system.
This proposal doesn't seem to pass that test: at least, nobody has proposed positive externalities that come out of this.
It's one thing to acknowledge automation is going to decrease the job pool. It's another to retroactively break financial contracts for a generation that's already not responsible enough with money, giving a huge amount to a small-interest group and ignore those who need it most (i.e. those who didn't go to college).;
It also strongly incentivizes colleges, which need to die, and disincentivizes colleges reducing prices to what they were a generation ago.
How is forgiving this loan anything but relief to young people who were essentially stuck either being that low-income group you are so fond of, or paying through the nose?
The root of the problem is that college got 3x as expensive (after accounting for inflation), and not better at educating. Fundamentally, this is an economics problem. And the lesson here is that people need to stop trying to gamble >$100,000 on class indicators.
It's tremendously damaging to the economy if we deny reality and say "Let's keep encouraging 18 year olds to study British Literature for 4-8 years," versus "That's dead, it's all technical now. Sorry, but here are your realistic choices..."
Many of us did pay off our loans or took less loans then we could have and we did that knowing loans are to be paid back.
It's very moral and hardworking of us older folks who lived in a different time and paying loans didn't take half a lifetime. But this whole conversation is about how that world is gone, and young people (in America) are behind the 8-ball.
Is UBI on the table, though? Are we really looking at the choice between UBI, Student Loan Forgiveness, or both?
All I am seeing is the dream of either, and the reality of neither.
Right-wing conservatives - informed here by Murdoch press - are obsessed with defending the "neither" option, because anything else is evil Socialism.
> The problem with the UBI is that a livable UBI is too expensive for us to afford right now
Those two statements contradict each other.
We should be throwing more responsibility at the system, not money.
Reaganomics isn't "the true logic of American government". Reagan's administration ended in 1990.
> We should be throwing more responsibility at the system, not money.
That's a false dichotomy. We can do both.
I think that redistributing wealth is essential to having a functional society (where I define functioning as being moderately stable and in some meaningful way reducing the suffering of those who live within it).
And, if you do it right over the long time you create more wealth, more specialization, more complexity...
Now if you overdo it that is really bad... but I look at inequality right now and wonder if I should start up a guillotine shop.
20th century communism would not provide a lot of evidence in favor of that theory.
They (the mixed economies of the West and, even within that set, those with the most redistribution and strongest social safety nets) are.
> 20th century communism would not provide a lot of evidence in favor of that theory.
20th Century Communist regimes (Leninism and it's descendants) wasn't redistributive on an ongoing basis, it was simply a one-time transfer of effective power over the entire economy from one narrow elite to another, hence why non-Leninist Marxists often referred to it as “state capitalism”.
Communism is way way too much, and ignores fundamental aspects of humanity.