this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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So we should just not let the people currently sick have the cure? π€
Even in your analogy, curing any cancer today, even if it doesn't extend to future sufferers, is an improvement over curing no one. Because fuck cancer, and fuck student loans.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Imagine if researchers said: We're working on a cure for cancer, and in the process we've generated a bunch of unobtanium. We can use it as a one-time cure for a bunch of current cancer patients, or we can use it to continue further research towards a permanent, universally-available cure. Obviously, if we use it all up now, we'll be back to square one and have to start generating it again before we can work on a long-term cure. Which would you pick?
"Unobtanium" is political will. If we just do a round of bailouts for current loan-holders instead of addressing the root cause of spiraling education costs, we're just kicking the can down the road. The pressure will be off, a whole generation of 20- and 30-somethings will lose interest in the issue, and it'll fall off the political radar for another few decades, by which time GenZ+ will be well and truly fucked, since educational costs are only going up and up.
The absolute worst way to address rising education costs is to encourage a bunch of students to take ridiculously large loans and then wipe them off the books. That means: 1) schools can raise prices to the roof because they know students have access to mountains of cash from loans, and 2) students won't hesitate to take the loans because they'll probably just be forgiven eventually. Probably. Maybe. Or maybe it'll be a millstone around their neck for the rest of their lives...but hey, what choice do they have, that's just what school costs (because governments make sure students have all the money they need for a bidding war to get in).
So it amounts to just transferring huge piles of taxpayer money directly to overpriced schools and predatory banks, with no plan to stem the flow. It's like trying to help your drug-addicted friend recover with a one-time gift of a brick of heroin. They'll feel great for a while, and they'll love you for it while it lasts, but it's only going to make the problem much worse in the long run.
"Sorry about your cancer. We have to let you die so maybe cancer researchers will be motivated to try harder for a permanent cure."
Get out of here with that bullshit.
Why not contribute something yourself, or address the arguments they're making instead of dismissing them out of hand?
The argument is bad and probably in bad faith. If I can paraphrase it in a few lines and demonstrate how ridiculous it is, it's not deserving of a response.
You don't have to attend every argument you're invited to.
Why on earth do you think I'm arguing in bad faith? What do you think my real beliefs & agenda are? Do you know what arguing in bad faith means?
If the US poured it's full resources into saving John Doe from Birmingham Alabama, who has cancer, they could probably do it. Of course, then those resources (cash, equipment, researchers & doctors) couldn't be used to help other people, or to perform research towards an eventual cure for everybody. It would be a bad use of resources, right?
You don't let John Doe die because you want his death to motivate researchers. But you only have a certain amount of resources, and you have to allocate them in a way that makes sense, and pouring everything into a temporary solution that only affect this one dude (or one batch of student loan recipients) at the cost of a long-term, permanent solution to the root causes of the issue is just...a bad idea.
I think your real beliefs and agenda are that you don't want student loan forgiveness for anyone, ever, under any circumstances. Maybe you're bitter because you didn't go to school or maybe because you did and already paid off your debt. Maybe you have a chip on your shoulder, or maybe you're just a troll. I don't really care. It doesn't matter, because the argument is reprehensible regardless of your motives:
We should let John Doe in Alabama die because it's too expensive to save him.
You decided that the financial expense of saving a life is worth condemning a patient to death just like you decided that the imaginary, hypothetical political cost of a change in policy is worth consigning multiple generations to lifelong debt.
You should be ashamed of yourself. But whether you are or not, I'm not interested in debating with you.
Haha, that escalated quickly. "You don't want a one-time forgiveness of student loans for a particular batch of students which does nothing to solve the systemic issues leading to skyrocketing education costs? Clearly you just hate students and want to kill them and probably eat them!!&!&"
Let me guess: you have a student loan. Well, I'd be okay with forgiving it, after we take care of the core problems so we don't end up right back here again in 15-20 more years. And I'd be willing to bet than by that time, after your loan is forgiven and you start stacking cash, you'll suddenly see the big picture and be firmly on the other side of the issue. You don't strike me as a terribly warm and empathetic person.
Yes. And if you have $10 in your pocket, you prioritized your own well-being over people dying from hunger, war or disease. If you drive any car other than a Mercedes Benz C Class (apparently the safest car ATM) then you prioritized other factors (cost, style, whatever) over your own safety. Oh what, you "can't afford" a C Class? Don't tell me you're prioritizing other things (having a home bigger than the back seat of a Mercedes Benz C Class, eating good food, wearing something other than sack cloth) over your own safety? Statistically, you're condemning yourself to a shorter life expectancy by misallocating your resources!
But really, by your logic, what you should be doing is selling your house, your car, your shoes and whatever you typed this message on, and donating all the proceeds to the GoFundMe for John Doe in Birmingham Alabama, so I guess that's beside the point.
We live in a real world. Suggesting that we can never compromise our principles by allowing any person to die from a fatal disease is just ridiculously naive. And taking a stand on your silly and unrealistic principles to conceal the fact that you just really want a cash handout is sleezy as hell.
I'm not.
Then you definitely don't have to reply.
How is this what's happening? Who said it's a one-time-only thing? Who said they can't also research permanently available cure? Wouldn't proving that removing the debt is a huge boon to everyone cause people to invest more in the idea of a cure?
Sure, once it becomes clear that students being debt-free on graduation is a benefit to society, I'm sure voters will scramble to wipe out student debt! That's why baby boomers, who graduated with very little debt, are such staunch opponents of heavy student loans! /s
Once the pressure is off millennials and gen z, you'll be able to watch the issue drop right out of public discourse. The focus will shift to housing costs, or health care, or some other topic that directly affects them. That's just how politics works, especially in the US, where the constant gridlock in congress means that things only get done in a crisis. If you think we young people are just better than the boomers, and we wouldn't forget to go back and fix the root causes even though we're not immediately affected anymore...you're in for disappointment.
If the goal is to help young people graduate with less debt, randomly forgiving large loans has got to be the worst possible approach. That only encourages educational costs to rise, and encourages students to take on ridiculous debts, and thus ends up transferring taxpayer money directly to schools and banks--and the more outrageous the loans and charges of those schools & banks, the more taxpayer money they get. That is legitimately a crazy way to solve the problem! As I said, it's like giving a drug addict a bunch of heroin. Surely these businesses won't want even more money, right?
So what do you do instead? Well, just off the top of my head: cap student loans. That's what Canada does. I applied for a student loan when I went to school there, and I didn't get to pick an amount. Based on where I was living and the school I was planning to go to, the government just said: "Okay, here's $N". It wasn't that much, something like $6k per term (in the late 00's).
Since students in that case won't have access to arbitrary bags of cash, schools that actually want students will have to, you know, lower prices and compete. So my tuition was something like $4-5k per year, not $20k or $80k. I graduated with something like $50k in debt, which I paid off in a few years.
That would be a reasonable first step. Do that first, while you've got the political support, and then forgive student loans. Don't do that first!