I mean, it really is them doing something without them solving the problem.
Let me explain the issues with student debt as I see it.
Many people in my generation were told that they had to go to college to get a decent job. We had it ingrained to us from a young age that college was the path to prosperity, and if we didn't go to college, we would end up working at McDonalds.
Then we graduated into an economy with no jobs. Over half the people with college degees don't even work in their field of study. Many live paycheck to paycheck. A fourth of us make less than $30k a year and 1/7 of us are in poverty. And those statistics seem pretty close to the national average. Poverty rate is generally speaking 10-15%, with a good half of us living paycheck to paycheck.
Yet, many of us are treated with the assumption that we can handle the debt. That we have incomes that can match the debt. So many of these political calculations I see neoliberals make tend to talk in vague correlations and averages, not accounting for everyone. So we got people saying people with college degrees are privileged and that student debt forgiveness is a giveaway to the rich and blah blah blah. And we should help the poor.
Paramount in this bizzaro world mentality of justice of the typical neolib is this idea that all government help should help "the noble poor". You know, the poor people who through no fault of their own are poor, and who cant get out of their position, so not everyone else. They screech at the idea of forgiving say, Jeff Bezos student loans. "why should we bail out doctors and lawyers? if we forgive loans at all we should only care about the poor."
And these are the kinds of people who are influencing Biden and the democrats. So Biden and the democrats are trying to keep two groups happy. The progressive wing who wants student debt forgiveness, ideally all of it, and the neoliberal killjoys who only want those they deem worthy of help.
And that's how we got this mess of a plan. They forgive $10k of everyone's debt. Okay. Well, average debt is $30k according to them so people wiith high debt are a minority. And they all have jobs according to them. They dont need help. They have "earning potential" (my butt). If we forgive $10k we can wipe off student debt for some people and not have to help everyone. Oh, and let's means test it to income.
And then with the pell grants they took off $20k. Why did they do that? Well, because according to them, POC are overrepresented among pell grant recipients (remember what we read last night with the justification?). So they get to target the "underprivileged" with this (admittedly, I had a pell grant once so I should get $20k now taken off, I'm attacking the principle here, keep in mind I'm in the "forgive all of it" camp, I just think that this approach to forgiveness breeds resentment).
So Biden just helped all of the people at the kiddie pool end of the student debt crisis who had paid down most of their debt already or didnt have much in the first place. It allowed him to take a significant chunk of the pressure off of current borrowers where for enough of them this would be life changing, while leaving those in the deep end high and dry.
As for the deep end, he hd some fixes too. He made IBR payments lower. Cool, I guess, but that wasn't the problem. IBR has always been fair to me. Basically, you get your payments based on your income, with you paying 10-15% (depending on the age of your plan) of your income over 138% of the poverty line I think for 20-25 years. Now it's 5% for 10-25 years. Okay, so that lowers payments. You dont have a $200 loan payment on a $40k salary. But that was never the problem for me.
The problem was IBR had some significant structural flaws. While eventually forgiven the amount forgiven becomes taxable income. And if theres 6-8% interest rates on loans, you can see your loans triple over the lifespan of the loan, if youre on IBR and not paying.
While Biden removed additional interest, he didn't solve the tax bomb problem. He solved it for people who have our loans forgiven before 2025, but many of us millennials arent up for forgiveness until the 2030s some time.
So if you already have a high loan total and dont have an income to match it, you're up a creek. These are the people who need help most. The ones who have so much debt there isnt any hope of paying it off through IBR. Because lets face it, if you're on IBR, and youre making $0 payments or something very low, you're not gonna meaningfully dent it. It's just gonna sit there and while it no longer accumulates interest, it's still a problem. And before people suggest I pay it, I mean, then you're basically handing over your paycheck to the government. if 10-15% of your income was oppressive according to these people, imagine working for say, $1250 a month at minimum wage, and giving half of your paycheck to loan payments.
This is the problem with means testing. The democrats were so obsessed with forgiving someone's loans who DIDN'T "deserve" it that they made this complex and half baked system of student loan forgiveness that helped some but left others hanging. Honestly, I dont care if student loan forgiveness isn't "progressive" in the sense that it helps primarily "the poor". I dont care if you forgive some doctor's loans while forgiving mine. You should FORGIVE ALL OF IT.
I hate this philosophy of the democrats of needing to means test people, ensure they're worthy, and give them limited help. It's dumb. And it's alienating. A lesser man would turn conservative over this, because I know this is how my parents used to think. "I work so hard and I need help why dont democrats help me?" Because youre not "worthy" according to their twisted mindset. You have to prove your worthiness to them and if you arent their target audience, well, you're screwed.
While I appreciate what Biden's done, it's maddening to see him devise such a half baked plan that has so many holes and structural flaws with it. It really was politically calculated to ensure that it would help enough people that people would praise him about it, while deterring criticism (already getting downvotes on forums for speaking my mind), while not actually solving the worst of the problem.
So yeah, Bare Minimum Biden I guess.
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