MAGA is happy to ridicule and mock students who are buried alive in compounding interest, calling them "commies" and "dead beats" and "bums" and all the rest, but not a word about the Merchant Class being handed billions in free paychecks to sustain their private businesses during lockdowns. Once again, it's "socialism for the rich, consequences for the poor."
How can the feds justify loan forgiveness for the Merchant Class but not for poor students?
"Asking for a friend." 🙄
I agree, OP. Big Con loves to trot examples of Leftists acquiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for underwater basketweaving degrees and say your tax dollars are going to bail them out. The reality I experienced is that a lot of cohorts in my generation were impressionable teenagers steered by authority figures into taking on lots of debt that they didn't have the life experience to understand. And yeah, someone of them were shithead Leftists, but a lot of them were good kids screwed over by the system. There needs to be more nuance to this issue. Especially when our government routinely bails out failing businesses and dumps billions into the black holes that are Ukraine and Israel. Americans are long past overdue on getting a bailout for anything.
I'm blessed to not have any college debt, but I still clearly remember my high school counsellor handing out a survey. We were asked to list our intended major and the top three colleges we intended to apply. Then he said, "If you're not sure which colleges you're going to apply to yet, just write 'community college' so you're not a loser by default."
I still remember that phrase, "loser by default." He wasn't joking, either. Like you said, we were impressionable teenagers steered by authority figures into taking on lots of debt that we didn't understand. All we "knew" was that we didn't want to be a "loser by default." The truth is that almost nobody knows what they want to do for the rest of their life when they're 17 y/o. Which explains why almost nobody works in the field they studied in college.
Anyhow, they could forgive the debt, but they knew what they were doing when they made the loans exempt from bankruptcy. They were creating a new class of indentured servants, of debt slaves that, four years behind on the debt, could never hope to climb their way out from under the compounding interest. Biden was challenged on the legality of forgiving the loans, but he could have reappropriated money from the Dept. of Ed's budget to "pay" the loans. Anyhow ...
And those are just the stories about duped, but well-meaning teachers. It gets worse than that. Many years ago, there was a big scandal in the local news where some scam college was intentionally targeting vulnerable people with predatory student loans. Foster kids, the homeless, the mentally disabled—people who have generally have no life experience with colleges, nobody to look out for them, and no capacity to understand what they were signing up for. This shitty scam college got them to sign on to $100,000+ loans. This all entered the news when the college suddenly declared bankruptcy and shut down, leaving them all without degrees and lots of debt.
IMO, American citizens are owed reparations from the literal generations of psychological, pharmacological, financial, and straight up violent terrorism waged against us by our own government. If the US government can afford infinite bailouts to banks who knowingly made bad decisions, Ukraine, and Israel, then we can bailout the younger generation who got fucked over on the student loan issue. Frankly, the US government owes us a hell of a lot more than mere student loan forgiveness.
I think the problem is more that affording those infinite bailouts will then go right back to costing the same people you are trying to save in the long run.
Hyper-inflation here we come!
That's the same excuse Big Con feeds us every time someone suggests a bailout for the American citizen. "Oh no, muh national debt!" Meanwhile, the national debt handwringing is nowhere to be found when it comes sending more money to Israel or bailing out a corrupt bank that made bad investments. So until the US government shuts off the money to foreign countries and banks, I don't accept that as an excuse. If we can find the money for Israel, then we can find the money to help American citizens
THANK YOU. I swear, if I have to hear some conservative talking head go on one more time about muh basket weaving and muh gender studies but then go to a sponsored ad read to say we all should enroll in a US Constitution course or bible studies at Hillsdale or whatever, I’ll flip my lid.
My reality is I made an unfortunate gamble on the tech sector. Graduated with perfect grades across the board, proceed to get strung along with contract temp work and the ever present promise of “it’ll build experience!” while that experience never leads anywhere when I go to apply somewhere full time.
So I took the Dempanic plandemic bailout money and have been sitting on it ever since. Can pay my decade old loan off any time, as politicians keep loan forgiveness as a small pawn on the board as an easy campaign promise to float around when they know conservative and Trump-appointed judges will immediately move to block it if they actually move to try it, as we saw several times in the Biden administration.
So now I’m doing unskilled warehouse work for as much or more per hour than all my short term barely full time dead end tech contracts were offering.
I hear ya. A lot of good people made "unfortunate gambles" only to have the rug pulled out under them by forces beyond their control. These shithead trust fund influencers and clueless Boomers still mentally living like its 1970 are completely out of touch with this issue.