What really bugs me most about the student loan forgiveness issue is that the same people who support corporate welfare, tax cuts to ultra-wealthy, and other “economic boosting” policies aren’t supporting student loan debt forgiveness.
So you can give estate taxes more room, literally creating generation after generation of family dynasties of people that have yachts, multiple mega-mansions, and quite often never work a day of true labor in their life… BUT you can’t give the “elites” who are in DEBT for going to school a break? These aren’t the ones who graduated from Yale and went to work at daddy’s law firm. They’re neighbors, people who struggle to pay bills, part of the class that is trying to achieve the American dream by better themselves and shooting for the stars. Betting on themselves and creating a more powerful workforce, true labor, the true economic support. Because they went to go get additional training for advanced jobs, and they didn’t have the wealthy family to pay for it. And THOSE are the people that do not deserve help? What the fuck?
Call it what you want, but the only reason US students have loan debt is because it’s not covered by tax revenue, just like it is for K-12 (one of US’s ground-breaking strategies for positioning itself as an advanced world power) and like almost every other developed nation does. Punishing the poor by keeping them as indentured servants is the only truth about student loans that matters. Yet your neighbors will vote against you, support this nonsense, and then turn around and send money off to the likes of someone with a private jet. It’s so unbelievably idiotic.
What happens when 43 million people have to start paying a good chunk of their income to this expense? Will that not take away the money they could spend at other actual businesses? People who say taxes are too much will then say this is acceptable? Meanwhile supporting military spending that far outweighs student loan forgiveness? Supporting corporate tax breaks, the entities that get the actual benefit from all this additional education spending anyway? Does increased knowledge and labor not serve as one of the largest bases to our entire economy? If something is worth supporting with taxes in the name of the economy, it’s this training - which is what school is. Training for the workforce.
I’m so sick of this. I know it’s not the only illogical part of many people’s economic “beliefs” but it’s just so frustrating. The anti-intellectual movement in the US is a serious roadblock toward progress of many types, and this is one of the most severe. The US is far from the most knowledgable nation, and that’s going to make a difference. It already has. And it’s simply sickening how much some people wish pain and suffering on people in debt but will willingly support those who will never feel the pain of financial stress.