Biden Announces Plan to Cancel Some Student Loan Balances Under $12,000
Biden Announces Plan to Cancel Some Student Loan Balances Under $12,000
The president says this action will particularly help community college borrowers, low-income and those struggling to repay their loans.
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Hopefully this doesn’t extend to people earning over a certain amount. I’m a relatively high income earner. I’d rather see up to 12 grand in relief go to folks who are earning under a threshold. Perhaps that’s literally in the article and if I read it, I would see that with my own eyes. But here we are!
Programs should be universal. Way easier (and less expensive) to implement that way. If we don't want high earners getting benefits we can claw it back in taxes. I would rather a handful of millionaires get an extra benefit than have vulnerable people who need help fall through the cracks because of means testing.
I also think means-testing serves mostly to create resentment instead of a society that we are all bought into and able to reap the benefits of.
That's definitely the goal. And especially for stuff like this, Jeff Bezos' kids don't need to take out loans to begin with. You're just punishing kids from modest means that against all odds got that education and parlayed that into a higher paying jobs, and you're going to hold them back compared to their peers from a wealthy background because they managed to break out of their class against all odds.
Never mind that they're probably using that higher income to support their poorer parents/siblings and probably have some other debts and costs due to growing up not wealthy (stuff like having to pay rent instead of having property in the family).
Yeah, I hear you. You’ve all changed my mind, good points around!
Means testing: for when you want to stop aid from getting to those that need it, but still want rich people to get it by gaming the system.
This forgiveness is for people who have been paying on their loans for 10 years. I don't think there are many people who:
- Took out under 12k
- Have been paying for 10 years
AND
- Make a lot of money
Why? Interest is a bitch. If there are people who meet those three conditions, there probably aren't many of them.
Honestly, the more I hear about the student loan crisis, the more I'm convinced that, if you're going to go with the line that outright forgiveness is politically toxic, they should just set the interest rate to 0%. A lot of people are basically just stuck paying interest without even hitting the principal, and that's the real problem.
This fixes a few issues:
- the longer you've had your loan, with inflation it'll be a smaller part of your income (provided your income raises with inflation, which admittedly isn't a given in the US)
- the conservative talking point of 'you borrowed the money, so you need to pay it back' is completely moot. Yes, you're paying it back (unlike the business owners that took out PPP loans).
- the goal of those loans should be to fund your education, not for someone to make money off, and that would accomplish this.
- it's still revenue neutral (minus the cost of administering, which really should just be done by government instead of outsourcing), even though MMT tells us that deficit spending for stuff like this would be totally fine.
Obviously the best solution is free education and universal loan forgiveness, but Democrats aren't willing to do that.