Nobody said shit about PPP loans either.
Does this person not remember that literally everyone was upset about bailing the banks and auto industry out??? Like why are we pretending that those were popular decisions, and that the population is to blame?
Yeah but no one opposed the other bailouts as hard as they did for students.
Guess I shouldn't have been an impressionable teenager that believed adults when I was told I'd work at McDonald's forever if I didn't take the loan. Egg on my face, haha.
Some of those people ended up working at McDonald's anyway, and then had the audacity to want a livable wage... But that would raise prices... But somehow the prices went up anyways... 🤷
also, don't forget, pre-covid: "you should have enough money set aside in savings to live without income for SIX MONTHS!!!"
covid lockdowns: "our $ multibillion corporation is going to DIE if we don't end the lockdowns RIGHT NOW!!!!"
While at the same time reporting record profits...
As soon as they realized we were bored they pounced.
Related: 75% of Americans don't have enough money in savings to cover their bills for six months. That's why a recession--which leads to a shrinking number of jobs and decreased consumer demand--is such a huge, dramatic siren for the fed and government. A recession for a nation where a large majority are basically flying without a safety net has an even bigger effect on the recession feedback cycle.
In general our entire economy right now has the knob labeled "high-risk/high-reward" turned to 11. With that many people only a few months from not being able to pay car loans, rent, mortgage, and all their other bills, with huge consumer debt, with car loan defaults already rising, and, therefore, only an economic downturn away from not having the means to maintain robust consumer economy, things would go south in the US very fast and with increasing velocity.
I don’t really remember people calling for the bank bailout
Yeah I'm pretty salty about the bank bailouts.
Let them die. If you don't let businesses occasionally fail then you don't have capitalism. You have oligarchical socialism.
Yeah it's a problem for the million or so employees. Bail them out. Bail out the people actually doing the work. Bail out the fucking victims.
Student loan forgiveness is fine, whatever. I'd love to have mine wiped out don't get me wrong, but Jesus it's fucking pointless unless you also change the rules and reform the industry.
All bailed out companies should be required to turn into worker cooperatives
Stay salty. It was a rip off.
The people that have preached free market and competition showed you who they are.
Here's a thought excersise that I hope you feel free to take as rhetorically as you wish:
Can you think of a time when it was "real" capitalism ^^^^tm and not crony capitalism/ forgiving socialism for the rich and robust free market capitalism for the poor?
Personally, I can't and I don't think anyone can name a time that that it was, that would stand up to any scrutiny.
If there was never a time that it could have existed, then It was always a lie.
Just to be clear in right behind you 99%. I may be wrong but feel that if you were to look into that area, you would likely come to the same conclusion as me.
The bailouts should have taken the form of an injection into the FDIC to bail out the account holders after the banks closed their doors.
Yeah, as much as these anti-student-loan-relief assholes do that's infuriating and ridiculous, broadly speaking, the ones I've encountered have also taken a dim view of any and every bailout as well.
There's plenty of ways to fairly criticize their position, inconsistency doesn't seem to be among them.
They gave all the power to those with money and they know, deep down, that those people are nasty and horrible. They’re afraid of them and so they give them tax breaks and bailouts like one would give sacrifices to eldritch god in the hopes they don’t get punished for existing.
They aren’t afraid of their neighbour, though. Why do you think all conservative humour punches down? They’re all pant-shitting coward suck-ups.
250 000$ what the fuck
But now things have changed… the banks will be a “bail in”
That neighbour shouldn't have spent all that money on avocado toast!
In all fairness though, those industry bailouts were generally recovered
Early estimates for the bailout's risk cost were as much as $700 billion; however, TARP recovered $441.7 billion from $426.4 billion invested, earning a $15.3 billion profit (an annualized rate of return of 0.6%), which may have been a loss when adjusted for inflation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008
Ok, that last part about still being a net loss after inflation is fair, but we're talking about a possible rounding error here, not a 12-figure loss for the Treasury.
It should be considered that America is investing in its infrastructure by making sure that its educated population of professionals and pre-professionals is able to find suitable work and stable living conditions debt-free. Instead of that, we have a severe lack of foundational jobs for the educated (unless you're an overpaid nurse or engineer that will always be in demand), exacerbated cost of living, and foreign students taking away competitive education seats from American students. Everything has been one big sellout to the wealthy, domestic or otherwise, while average Americans and their students suffer. Student debt forgiveness isn't a metric designed to be measured by a sum of money arbitrarily gained in return after investing, it's an investment in the wellbeing of its society and its people.
No arguments there... But the 2008 bailouts are severely misunderstood.
Also auto industry and farmer bailouts seems like a sensible thing considering how many jobs are tied there. Dunno if this sub would have preferred them to go under and those people be out of job, dunno.
Food will always be in demand, so a slight change in supply can have a huge impact on price. Imagine a ton of farmers going under and far less interested in taking over producing the crops/livestock that were ending up in our stores. Even if you don't work in agriculture or food processing or whatever, you'd still be severely affected.
Student loans shouldn't be guaranteed by the government.
You are partially right, there should not be student loans. Education should be free for the benefit of society.
The government has an economic interest in ensuring we have educated workers.
Friendly reminder that Joe Biden, despite being advised that he should cancel student debt under established provisions, chose to make it a brand new covid program. It was his unauthorized new covid debt cancellation program was cancelled by SCOTUS (AKA setup to fail). Biden still has the ability to cancel under the original terms his lawyers suggested. Instead he screams a legal provision be made out of thin air wasn’t respected so he is not gonna do anything except take credit for cancellations that were in effect before he was in office. You seen how he acts about Israel, you think he really fighting student debt earnestly?
It wasn’t a case of him creating a “COVID program” bound to fail. Biden used the HEROES Act—a post-9/11 law meant for emergencies—to address debt issues exacerbated by COVID. The Supreme Court's conservative-shit-stain bloc shut him down. This wasn’t a Biden "setup." It was an intransigent conservative court doing what they always do.
After the ruling, Biden didn’t abandon debt relief either. Instead, he did exactly what you're implying he didn't: he pivoted to the Higher Education Act, which allows debt cancellation but only through a lengthy rule-making process. He can't just use the HEA to "cancel" student debt in the way he was trying originally. This route takes longer and still faces legal obstacles, as you might have noticed, but it shows he’s exploring every option available within legal limits, not just “giving up.” He’s also rolled out specific programs for groups like public service workers and adjusted repayment options to reduce debt burdens in the meantime.
Blaming Biden’s actions on lack of commitment ignores the layers of legal and rule-making shit-fuck layers at play. He's pushing for debt relief within what’s legally possible, starting with the faster attempt that was killed by Republicans, and now a slower and less sweeping manner as required by the HEA—which continues to be contested by Republicans.
You: Conservative SC shot down student debt relief
Also you: How could the democrats do this!?!?
They shot down an expansion of executive powers. You know why POTUS has almost absolute immunity? Because Obama got sued so many times for killing American Citizens abroad that SCOTUS had to make a new shield of immunity. Trump saw that and ran with it but this is not his doing, look at the precedent cases.
Instead he screams a legal provision be made out of thin air
Thank you for revealing what you are so I can block you
What did I reveal? And/or are you unable to withstand criticism?
While nothing is perfect and could be better. Latest relief under Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program brings total loan forgiveness approved by the Administration to over $175 billion for more than 4.8 million Americans. So he has done something. Idk if you expected a magic wand for everyone but something is better than nothing.
As for Israel we have a former president actively tanking any policy for a ceasefire. Who do you think if elected would be more likely to negotiate a ceasefire with Israel? Tbf America is a single policy for Israel in general that fact there is even a waver on the democrats side is amazing
Biden tried to take credit for the PSLF is bullshit. Those learned loans were guaranteed to be dismissed back during Bush.
My point is that its a Bush era program Source. Israel I am not even gonna touch ys seen them punk Biden’s redlines on tv enough
I try and remain intellectually consistent.
I'm opposed to bailing out banks.
I'm opposed to bailing out any industry not just the auto industry
I'm opposed to bailing out farmers (and I currently live amongst corn fields).
And, I'm opposed to too big to fail.
I'm also opposed to student loan forgiveness.
You realize the whole reason for farm subsidies is insurance, right?
Like, farmers destroying tons of good crops is bad and all...but you know what's worse? Drought, famine, disease, or other disaster knocking out half of our crops or the infrastructure that transports them. Having a surplus is much, much, much better than not having enough.
Forgive me, but I think I need an ELI5 here please.
I also try to remain intellectually consistent:
- people matter
- corporations aren’t people
The people in them should be liable for their criminal decisions though.
corporations aren’t people
Erm, yeah, about that
It's the darndest thing
University costs are also one of the few things that have far out paced inflation, and wages for decades. It's not about getting handouts, it's about not saddling an entire generation with debt they never should have had in the first place.
p.s., it's not "intellectual" to oppose this. You're just an ass.
Starting at the bottom...
I'm curious that it makes me an ass to believe that no matter who your are, you should pay your debts. That goes for banks, industries, farmers, and students.
As I mentioned in another comment. I do believe the law needs to be changed to make student loans dischargeable in a bankruptcy.
The rest of your comment will take a lengthy reply, so I hope you stick around.
You are correct that education has far outpaced the rest of the economy when it comes to inflation. I believe there are two factors at work there.
First, we have glorified education at the expense of the trades. I grew up in the 70s and the roots of that were already beginning to take hold. The adults around me praised and respected (though that's not quite the right word) the "educated". They would say things like "if you want to amount to anything you need a college education!" While at the same time complaining about what the plumber, or electrician, or mechanic charged them.
When I went to high school I went to a school that had been "boys only" (a bad thing) until shortly before I started in 1977. They taught the trades. In fact I had to take eight introductory courses in various trades my Freshman and Sophomore years (a very good thing).
But educators bit on the whole "if you don't go to college, you will suck as a human being" thinking. Parents of course want what's best for their children, so they pushed their kids into colleges. Many of those kids would have been far happier elsewhere.
As an aside, my high school still exists, but I don't think you'll learn the trades there anymore (I may be won't about that as I haven't paid attention in many years, but I think I'm on pretty solid ground with my claim.)
More customers competing for limited resources raises prices. That said, it's not the main culprit.
The main culprit is the fact that there is no means-testing for student loans. Need a loan to go to school? Here's a check.
There was no financial pressure for universities to constrain costs. They knew that lenders would pay for someone's schooling regardless of cost, because those lenders had absolutely no risk!
This created a horrible downward spiral. Too many highly educated individuals competing for too few jobs has created a morass that will take generations at least to resolve.
We have too many highly educated folk, and too few folk willing to do manual labor in the trades. I can't count the number of trades people who have told me that they just can't find good help!
Of course too few people working in the trades has created another sort of inflation. That in turn impacts all of society.
When kids are conditioned from birth to believe that the only way they're ever going to improve their miserable lives is to go to college, and then the price of that college education is jacked up 600%, and graduation didn't actually do much for their overall financial situation or quality of life, hell yes I think it should be cancelled. The whole thing has been an elaborate extortion racket for decades, and it's been encouraged and backed by the government.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.
Corporations are allowed to discharge debt via bankruptcy. Let's give that to students. Does that satisfy your consistency?
I think we all know who prohibited students from discharging debt via bankruptcy.
As you can see in two further posts here I did say that student loans should be dischargeable by bankruptcy.
i don't mind it being your opinion and I agree its consistent without trying to dig in to find a gotcha, however being logistically consistent without exception does not resolve an evolving crisis that could have further, worse, knock on effects that affect even the most consistent of thought experiments.
If, in 30 years' time, we are at a point where the education system collapses, it'll be a lot worse than the "pain" of not being entirely consistent when reallocating government budgets.
In fact one might argue its more sensible - in many regards not just this - to maintain a flexible case-by-case policy should the need arise.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
Forget all the haters, I do not agree with you but can understand your viewpoint and respect it.
Thank you.
As I was thinking on this subject, I do have one significant proposal when it comes to student loan debt. It should be dischargeable under bankruptcy.
