At least this loan forgiveness seems to be targeted at low-income people. That’s much better than the government’s blanket pause on student loan payments for almost two years, which saved many rich people tens of thousands of dollars in interest.
Yay equity.
Russia has 54% of people with higher education, compared to us at 44%. In fact, it's the most "educated" country in the world. Bet you didn't know that...
Look at how that worked out for them.
The value of education is greatly overstated. (and on the other hand people who claim education is soooo important for a good society conveniently pretend things like culture, religion, morals, etc don't exist).
Sometimes less is more. What was originally meant to help the <5% of the non-elite youth who were intellectually gifted or uniquely driven has mutated into a destructive-for-all-parties incentive pushed on 50+% of the population to follow. Quality of output requires quality of input, so returning to merit standards is a must.
I got a quote recently from a plumber that drove to my house in a $90,000 BMW. If he doesn’t want to pay off the student loans of some Starbucks barista with an ethnic studies degree, that’s entirely in his rational self interest. Just as it is in the interest of the barista to seek that policy. It’s pure self-flattery to pretend it’s about anything more than that.
No, but that’s my point. It’s a basic economic issue between voters with different economic interests. Cash-poor college educated people want government subsidies, and non-college educated people with money don’t want to pay for that. People who make their living doing knowledge work see the value in subsidizing college, people who don’t do knowledge work often don’t see the value and don’t think the government should subsidize it. As Marx would say, each group votes according to its class and economic interests. It’s self-indulgent in the extreme to try and dress that up with some narrative about despotism.
Given the ever increasing concentration of wealth towards the top, either Marx was wrong about this or the proles value something more than money.
Again, circle back to my plumber. He pays enough taxes to care what the government does with the money. And he’s quite reasonably persuaded that whatever the government does won’t help him, but will probably make his life harder.
This new loan forgiveness (which as a loan-less dropout I’m not crazy about either) at least seems directed as a handout to poorer loan holders. If I’m going to be screwed, it’s slightly nicer knowing it’s not to a give-away to the tax brackets above me.