"Fuck you got mine" is real here. Just see the nauseating argument against discharging student loans.
Not sure I agree on student loans though. The main reason I struggle with that one is because it seems to me to be a regressive policy: most people with student loans (though certainly not all) are better off that people who didn't have the opportunity to pursue higher education at all. So forgiving student loans benefits a chunk of the population, but does nothing for those who are even more in need (some of whom might have chosen a different path if they'd known they could have their debts forgiven). I'd rather see policies that can benefit everyone in financial need proportionally.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-report-puts-a-1-4...
If saving money were more important than putting down poor people, the US would have universal healthcare by now.
A lot of social dysfunction makes a lot more sense if you assume a large chunk of people actually do go around thinking that both good and bad outcomes must have been earned somehow and so are deserved whether or not you can establish a causal link.
Every student loan forgiveness proposal I see suggests that taxpayers foot the bill and the counterargument is why should those who did not attend and/or those who paid off have to foot the bill.
I agree with that counterargument and will never vote for forgiveness.
However, send put a proposal in front of me that seizes assets from the universities selling these degrees that apparently can never pay for themselves and sell off their assets to pay down student loan debt? You'll get my vote.
A lot of this would solve itself if people in student loan debt could discharge it through bankruptcy. Colleges that can't produce degrees where students can pay their loans off would close and many people wouldn't be able to get student loans, and I argue that would be a good thing.
I just named basic pillars of any modern society. Yes economic approach is very effective in open markets and due to historical reasons gives US top spot in global economy, but society as a whole is much more selfish and less humane. Not something future generations will look and judge kindly, unless we reverse massively due to some catastrophes (and then nobody will care about the past anyway).
One of the reasons very few people from richer western Europe strive to move to US, its just a bad quality of life overall and more 'primitive' cruel society, which define actually important stuff in life much more than just raw paycheck amount. And yes its cruel, walk among homeless folks in LA that should be in professional psychiatric facilities, and not dying slowly on streets in front of everybody, without much care, for decades.