You knew it was coming. And here it is — student loan “forgiveness,” baby:
President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he will forgive $10,00 in federal student debt for most borrowers, fulfilling a campaign pledge and delivering financial relief to millions of Americans.
Biden will cancel up to $20,000 for recipients of Pell Grants.
“Both of these targeted actions are for families who need it the most,” the president said in remarks from the White House on Wednesday afternoon.
I love the smell of moral hazard in the morning. But if there’s a cohort of our society that really loves this sort of thing, it’s the folks who assumed their “Studies” degree was their ticket to the carriage class. The donks long ago realized they have neither reason nor incentive to bestow other people’s resources on the working class or the small business dudes, because they aren’t picking up the check at Le Diplomate. The “S” in an S corporation now stands for suck it.
At this point, the game is evident even to those who’d rather not think about politics — helping the commonweal is right out. Higher education is the best thing the donks have going and subsidizing their efforts is the highest and best use of other people’s money. And if you look at the price tag, you’re probably a denier. And if you paid your own way to go to trade school, you’re a chump. The rewards go to Derrida, not derring-do.
The timing is crucial here — there’s no question this move will piss off millions of potential voters, but there’s also no question that we’ll all be getting a steady supply of ether from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota and the constellation of like-minded political action groups flattering the Studies majors from Olaf and Kenyon and Swarthmore (and Eau Claire and Bemidji, too) that despite everything, they are actually part of the in-crowd. The checks will clear in plenty of time for the clientele, but the unwilling benefactors will be too busy trying to make payroll to get out and door knock.
But hey, have a nice day!
Watch the torrent of inchoate twaddle spew forth from Pedo Joe’s 85 IQ Caribbean spokes dyke, when asked a simple question: “Who is paying for this?”
If I identified as part of the Caribbean lesbian community, I’d be pissed as hell. I mean, they can’t *all* be that stupid…can they?
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6311361779112#sp=show-clips
I said it on Monday…..that this vote-buying plan will divide this country more than politics, race, or religion. And…..after reading a few hundred comments from a variety of news sources I’m thinking I hit this nail on the head.
What a colossal mess.
I’m no Constitutional scholar, but it says the Legislative Branch controls the ‘purse strings’. Last summer, even Pelosi Galore said he didn’t have the power to do that.
When you have nothing to campaign on, it’s time to give away cash and prizes.
Yup! And as usual, the race pimps at the NAACP, this isn’t enough, black people are proportionally more affected by student loans and you promised. That’s why so many (low information black slaves) voted for you.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed that Pedo Pete left out all of the people that got student loans to attend trade schools to learn something useful and be productive. While making my calls on four metal fab shops yesterday, based on the anger generated over this, about 75 more people became Republicans.
The reason the feds hold all of those student loans is because Obama federalized student loans as part of Obamacare legislation in 2010.
Obama did this because, he said, student loans were a cash cow for lending institutions and saw leaving the loans in private hands was actually costing the taxpayers money!
Everyone new that this was bullshit at the time. I quote a WSJ opinion article from 2016:
Democrats devised the government takeover of student loans as an entitlement that might never be repaid, though they sold it as a money saver. New evidence of this giant con arrives courtesy of a report this week by the Government Accountability Office that estimates the taxpayer losses at $108 billion and counting.
To help pay for ObamaCare, Democrats simultaneously federalized the student loan market and projected fictitious savings, all while adding more than $1.2 trillion to the federal balance sheet. The amount keeps increasing like the debt clock. Liberals then cited the government “savings” to peddle the fallacy that the feds make money off student loans—a pretext they then used to sweeten debt forgiveness plans that have helped keep default rates artificially low.
The takeover of student loans by the feds was always intended to funnel tax dollars to a democrat-voting demographic LEAST in need of relief — young college graduates with a lifetime of earnings ahead of them.
As I see this, I think of people I’ve known with liberal arts degrees from Gustavus working assembling electrical parts because that’s what their degree did for them. What’s really needed is a return of student loans to the private sector where the green eyeshades crowd will ask “so how do you propose to pay back that quarter million dollars in debt you want to use to get that gender and ethnic studies degree?”
Ann Althouse points us to a WaPo opinion column where the writer savages the opponents of Biden’s student loan forgiveness scheme as people who are irrationally furious that someone else would receive a benefit — basically, a free degree from a community college — that they were denied.
Althouse then give us the bio of the WaPo reporter, which is just what you would expect:
Petri grew up in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., the only child of Wisconsin congressman Tom Petri and nonprofit executive Anne D. Neal, and attended the National Cathedral School…. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University
Bikebubba, the student loan program has been messed up since the 80s.
A thumbnail history:
In the 70s & early 80s, student loans were obtained from private lenders with a federal guarantee of repayment to the lender if the student qualified.
In the late 80s, THE USUAL SUSPECTS complained that because the loan limit was low (to shield the government from repaying vast sums for a defaulted loan), the limit needed to be raised and had to cover grad school so that poor people could get law degrees, too.
To put a fig leaf on it, borrowers were prevented from discharging the loan via bankruptcy. This led to the government holding billions of dollars in defaulted loans that could never be recovered, while the borrower was financially crippled by the undischargeable debt hanging over them.
In 2010 Obama and the rump Dem congress federalized all student loans.
The die was cast at this point, it was only a matter of time until the dems sought to shift taxpayer assets to a preferred demographic. Never thought that they would do it w/o legislation, but Slow Joe is also Lame Duck Joe at this point so there will be no accountability.
It isn’t just $10,000 that’s forgiven….
“About 90 percent of student loan debt is comprised of federal loans, with interest rates ranging from 4.99 percent to 7.54 percent.”
all that interest is forgiven too
on a 10 year payback schedule that is $2,722(@4.99%) to $4,269(@7.54)
on a 20 year payback schedule that is $5,825(@4.99%) to $9,392(@7.54)
That interest is supposed to be revenue for the Govt
Mac, That’s interest that will/has to be extracted from the ratepayers by other means.
Major omission in this Blog post (and most US student debt discourse): why has tuition skyrocketed in recent decades?
Probably the boom in “dean-lets”. It’s gone from schools employing more faculty than administrators to employing 4 administrators for every teacher.
Couldn’t that be fixed at public institutions, or by capping individuals’ federal education loans at, say, $20,000/year to diminish enrollment at inefficient, low prestige schools.
no surprise buying votes is democrat tradition milton friedman not in charge anymore you have no standing to go to court rule of whim not of law
student loans okay when buildings and salaries cost money 1but why pay professors to teach the same class year after year and why make students physicall attend campus
radical solution no more student loans let students view recorded lecturs on line get your degree from YouTube University just as useful as gender studies from st cloud state
The question of why tuition rates have skyrocketed for the last four decades is impossible to answer w/o discussing the major source of post secondary education, which is federal government student loan policy.
Major omission in this Blog post (and most US student debt discourse): why has tuition skyrocketed in recent decades?
It’s a blog post/rant, not a comprehensive look at college finances.
Of course administrative bloat is a huge issue. But it’s all corrupt from top to bottom. Essentially colleges charge as much as they can get by with. I filed FAFSA forms for 8 consecutive years, for the colleges my kids attended. If the FAFSA said I could afford X, that was the bill. If the next year the FAFSA said I could afford X+1, the bill was X+1. It’s the same thing the automobile companies do with tax subsidies for electric vehicles.
And, again via Althouse, the WSJ today:
“Those who will pay for this write-off are the tens of millions of Americans who didn’t go to college, or repaid their debt, or skimped and saved to pay for college, or chose lower-cost schools to avoid a debt trap. This is a college graduate bailout paid for by plumbers and FedEx drivers. Colleges will also capitalize by raising tuition to capture the write-off windfall. A White House fact sheet hilariously says that colleges will ‘have an obligation to keep prices reasonable and ensure borrowers get value for their investments, not debt they cannot afford.’ Only a fool could believe colleges will do this….”
MBerg (and 90% of people commenting on this) needs to look more carefully at the demographics of student loan borrowers.
Start with this:
https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/-/media/faculty/constantine-yannelis/research/student-loan-forgiveness.pdf
Forgiving all student loans would be net regressive. 75% of all loans are held by the top 50% in the income distribution; 50% are held by the top third, and so on. The bulk of these loans are held by liberal arts / non-STEM majors, many of whom have spent nearly a decade in higher education.
It is indeed sad that these people can’t pay off their loans and live the life that they want, but it’s fundamentally unfair to ask those who never went to college now to bear their burden.
I am well aware of the demographics of student loan borrowers.
Emery seems to have gained his expertise the same way that he gained his expertise on Christian theology.
“Emery seems to have gained his expertise the same way that he gained his expertise on Christian theology.”
He stole it?
MBerg (and 90% of people commenting on this) needs to look more carefully at the demographics of student loan borrowers.
MBerg didn’t write this post. I did. And rest assured, I am well aware of the demographics. Of course “forgiving” student loans would be regressive. That’s the point. We don’t need to read white papers to gain an epiphany on the matter.
Read a short article about it on the Time website & then put on the mantle of authority. When called on it, he ran away with his tail between his legs.
The more Emery claims expertise on some topic, the less he knows about it.
A socialist walks into a bar and says “Hey everyone, drinks on me!
Who’s buying?”
A capitalist walks into a bar and says “Hey everyone, drinks on me! I just got a massive state subsidy while also cutting taxes on the rich by donating to our policy makers. Also I have loads of capital from massive central bank stimulus but don’t you try and take it from me, I earned that asset price inflation fair and square.”
A soci@list walks into a bar and says “Hey everyone, drinks on me!
Who’s buying?”
A capitalist walks into a bar and says “Hey everyone, drinks on me! I just got a massive state subsidy while also cutting taxes on the rich by donating to our policy makers. Also I have loads of capital from massive central bank stimulus but don’t you try and take it from me, I earned that asset price inflation fair and square.”
Emery squeaks “Who’s buying?”
Emery is a thief deeply committed to the politics of resentment. Democrat or Republican, it really doesn’t matter to him. He’s on the side of whoever is peddling the politics of resentment – there is nothing more heart wrenching for him than someone else having more than him. Always grasping, never having enough.
To Emery’s first comment, I’ve mentioned the bloated administrative apparatus of many public universities. They hire staff, purchase and maintain equipment for functions that could be outsourced and cost less. For instance, the majority of grounds maintenance, including buildings, can be outsourced, as well as HR related functions.
Using the U as an example, as of today, it appears that their HR department has 87 people in it, just in Minneapolis. What do these people do all day?!
Grounds maintenance has over 166 across all U of M campuses. Add to that over $1.6 million worth of vehicles, maintenance equipment and related maintenance. I’m wondering if they are buying electric mowers and snow blowers?
Soci@lists don’t tell jokes because laughter is considered bourgeois…
☝🏻 You can always tell when rAT is taxing his own, 80IQ cognitive ability to comment, rather than stealing a few paragraphs from someone else; inchoate twaddle that says “I know nothing about this subject, so here’s some stupid shit that I thought was funny”.
😂 and no one complained when PPP loans were handed out and forgiven. I didn’t want to pay for that but look at where we are now.
Where do I line up to get a refund on the $$$ I paid for my kids’ kkkolledge indoctrination? Nevermind the millions of people who never went to kkkolledge being saddled with the bill, it it those millions who did and are getting DOUBLE the shaft. And they are more apt to realize that they (and me) are getting screwed twice. Nevermind the whole unconstitutionality of the transfer of wealth. They said if I voted for Trump we would have a dictator in the WH. They were right – because they knew ahead of time who would win, no matter how hard we voted.
Student loans can’t be discharged in bankruptcy. That’s a bad quirk of student loans, but the solution is to make a trivial change to insolvency legislation so that student debts are dischargeable upon filing for bankruptcy, turning the students’ creditors into any other ordinary creditors.
But forgiveness of debt on this scale and via this method is both silly on its merits and regressive.
Actually, Emery, when the COVID loans were handed out and forgiven, yes, there were people who complained about the cost.
Regarding your hypothetical “capitalist” buying drinks at the bar, that’s “Crony capitalism”, not the real thing.
I spent 4 years in the Navy for college money. Then attended a community college for 2 years, took all the inane “well balanced education” courses for 1/4 the cost and then transferred to a 4 year state Uni.
I worked the whole time, and took a couple semesters off when things got tight. I never attended any college functions, because; work tomorrow. I will admit my employer allowed me a lot of paid time off to study and do labs.
When I graduated, I owed $350.00
A few years afterwards, I wanted to get into industrial controls and automation, but my EE had left gaping holes in what employers wanted… Kirchoff’s law is cool and all, but it won’t control that motor.
So I enrolled in a “for profit” trade school to learn PLC and embedded controller programming, SCADA, loop control, digital and analog controls & etc…I paid each semester 100% out of my pocket.
Since then, I’ve taken courses in C+ programming, OSHA risk assessment and remediation, project management and a metric shit ton of specialized classes. Paid for all of it.
This path is 100% replicable today. But it doesn’t land itself to partying, spring break vacations in Florida or Spain, or stretching a 4 year curriculum out to 6.
My kids have paid off their ed loans, too.
I have nothing but scorn for these fucking parasites. I can only hope employers shun them for the unreliable rAT Emory scumbags they are.
the governmetn guarantees student loans to grab the interest to fund obamacare
making student loans dischargeable would bankrupt obamacare hmmm not a bad idea emery
I must have missed when all of these “adults” had guns held to their heads and forced to take out these loans. Worse, they were forced to pursue a degree that had a low likelihood of paying enough to cover their loan payments for the foreseeable future. No surprise that Obama’s VP shows just as much disdain for the concept of contracts when he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
I agree with others: Makes the loans privately-administered again. Better still, treat student loan applicants the same way we treat someone who applies for a mortgage: Demonstrate a willingness and an ability to repay the loan. Or we’ll just find ourselves back here again before the next election.
“Or we’ll just find ourselves back here again before the next election.”
Like giving amnesty for border jumpers back in the 80’s, it will be x10 worse.
Understanding that there is no such thing as a free lunch, I am curious who has been paying for GW Bush’s college cost reduction act that forgives entire college loans after a service industry employee makes 120 consecutive payments. That seems like it could be more than $10,000. That person would have to be at a qualifying employer, so maybe there is some payment by the employer? I am genuinely curious on that program.
Also I believe Biden’s loan forgiveness wouldn’t have happened without Trump’s Covid Emergency EO that reduced college loan interest to zero and allowed people to default on their loans without penalty for most of 2020 (and maybe beyond?) People got used to not paying, and then demanded more, despite abilities to continue to pay. It has definitely become a vote getting issue, like Social Security, Medicare, etc.
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So, I do wonder how the president has the power to do this without some sort of legislative act.
But those who wonder how it’s going to be paid for are forgetting all those new IRS agents, maybe?