4 ms·

Your logic being that any time we give money or subsidize some group, it must be good?

aliceryhl 6y ago
The logic is that when you give money or subsidize some group, then that is not _necessarily_ bad. Maybe it really is bad, but the fact that it involves giving money to a specific group is not enough to conclude that.
- underseacables 6y ago
  But the true logic of American government and finance is that if something is good you tax and regulate into the ground, until you’re then forced to subsidize it. The often-attributed quote to Reagan sounds globe but it makes a lot of sense. We should be throwing more responsibility at the system, not money.
  - thomastjeffery 6y ago
    > But the true logic of American government...Reagan. Reaganomics isn't "the true logic of American government". Reagan's administration ended in 1990. > We should be throwing more responsibility at the system, not money. That's a false dichotomy. We can do both.
drewg123 6y ago
I honestly think that we need to stop thinking about "subsidize some group". The more effort we spend making sure that somebody doesn't get something they don't deserve, the worse off we are. Let's just have a UBI rather than lots of bureaucracy keeping score.
- zug_zug 6y ago
  I'm strong pro-UBI, strongly against student-loan forgiveness. It's one thing to acknowledge automation is going to decrease the job pool. It's another to retroactively break financial contracts for a generation that's already not responsible enough with money, giving a huge amount to a small-interest group and ignore those who need it most (i.e. those who didn't go to college).; It also strongly incentivizes colleges, which need to die, and disincentivizes colleges reducing prices to what they were a generation ago.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Even though student payments went largely to administrators? That this didn't used to be the case? That students (of every economic class) paid rich white dudes to sit in offices and pretend to run a college? How is forgiving this loan anything but relief to young people who were essentially stuck either being that low-income group you are so fond of, or paying through the nose?
    - zug_zug 6y ago
      College used to be so cheap, you could pay your way through it working nights as you attended classes during the day. I have family who did this. In that world, there's no such thing as student loan forgiveness, because it's not a crippling debt. The root of the problem is that college got 3x as expensive (after accounting for inflation), and not better at educating. Fundamentally, this is an economics problem. And the lesson here is that people need to stop trying to gamble >$100,000 on class indicators. It's tremendously damaging to the economy if we deny reality and say "Let's keep encouraging 18 year olds to study British Literature for 4-8 years," versus "That's dead, it's all technical now. Sorry, but here are your realistic choices..." https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college
    - vorpalhex 6y ago
      You don't get out of a loan because you don't like the skin color or wealth class of the receiving party. Should we forgive mortgages because the payments go to bankers? Many of us did pay off our loans or took less loans then we could have and we did that knowing loans are to be paid back.
      - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        Well, that's a good point. The BUI addresses that. The money men have learned to skim off of every transaction, which inevitably ends up with them having all the money. This is a new thing too. It's very moral and hardworking of us older folks who lived in a different time and paying loans didn't take half a lifetime. But this whole conversation is about how that world is gone, and young people (in America) are behind the 8-ball.
- thomastjeffery 6y ago
  I agree that UBI is a better solution. Is UBI on the table, though? Are we really looking at the choice between UBI, Student Loan Forgiveness, or both? All I am seeing is the dream of either, and the reality of neither. Right-wing conservatives - informed here by Murdoch press - are obsessed with defending the "neither" option, because anything else is evil Socialism.
  - fr11 6y ago
    I think there's more potential to convince the right wing and the center of UBI than student loan forgiveness. Certainly I think we're making a better society if we are able to do so. The problem with the UBI is that a livable UBI is too expensive for us to afford right now - even at 11k, it's much bigger than the entire US federal discretionary budget. A much smaller UBI that grows with time, though, maybe.
    - thomastjeffery 6y ago
      > I think there's more potential to convince the right wing and the center of UBI than student loan forgiveness. > The problem with the UBI is that a livable UBI is too expensive for us to afford right now Those two statements contradict each other.

The logic is that when you give money or subsidize some group, then that is not _necessarily_ bad. Maybe it really is bad, but the fact that it involves giving money to a specific group is not enough to conclude that.

underseacables 6y ago
But the true logic of American government and finance is that if something is good you tax and regulate into the ground, until you’re then forced to subsidize it. The often-attributed quote to Reagan sounds globe but it makes a lot of sense. We should be throwing more responsibility at the system, not money.
- thomastjeffery 6y ago
  > But the true logic of American government...Reagan. Reaganomics isn't "the true logic of American government". Reagan's administration ended in 1990. > We should be throwing more responsibility at the system, not money. That's a false dichotomy. We can do both.

drewg123 6y ago

I honestly think that we need to stop thinking about "subsidize some group". The more effort we spend making sure that somebody doesn't get something they don't deserve, the worse off we are. Let's just have a UBI rather than lots of bureaucracy keeping score.

zug_zug 6y ago
I'm strong pro-UBI, strongly against student-loan forgiveness. It's one thing to acknowledge automation is going to decrease the job pool. It's another to retroactively break financial contracts for a generation that's already not responsible enough with money, giving a huge amount to a small-interest group and ignore those who need it most (i.e. those who didn't go to college).; It also strongly incentivizes colleges, which need to die, and disincentivizes colleges reducing prices to what they were a generation ago.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Even though student payments went largely to administrators? That this didn't used to be the case? That students (of every economic class) paid rich white dudes to sit in offices and pretend to run a college? How is forgiving this loan anything but relief to young people who were essentially stuck either being that low-income group you are so fond of, or paying through the nose?
  - zug_zug 6y ago
    College used to be so cheap, you could pay your way through it working nights as you attended classes during the day. I have family who did this. In that world, there's no such thing as student loan forgiveness, because it's not a crippling debt. The root of the problem is that college got 3x as expensive (after accounting for inflation), and not better at educating. Fundamentally, this is an economics problem. And the lesson here is that people need to stop trying to gamble >$100,000 on class indicators. It's tremendously damaging to the economy if we deny reality and say "Let's keep encouraging 18 year olds to study British Literature for 4-8 years," versus "That's dead, it's all technical now. Sorry, but here are your realistic choices..." https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    You don't get out of a loan because you don't like the skin color or wealth class of the receiving party. Should we forgive mortgages because the payments go to bankers? Many of us did pay off our loans or took less loans then we could have and we did that knowing loans are to be paid back.
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      Well, that's a good point. The BUI addresses that. The money men have learned to skim off of every transaction, which inevitably ends up with them having all the money. This is a new thing too. It's very moral and hardworking of us older folks who lived in a different time and paying loans didn't take half a lifetime. But this whole conversation is about how that world is gone, and young people (in America) are behind the 8-ball.
thomastjeffery 6y ago
I agree that UBI is a better solution. Is UBI on the table, though? Are we really looking at the choice between UBI, Student Loan Forgiveness, or both? All I am seeing is the dream of either, and the reality of neither. Right-wing conservatives - informed here by Murdoch press - are obsessed with defending the "neither" option, because anything else is evil Socialism.
- fr11 6y ago
  I think there's more potential to convince the right wing and the center of UBI than student loan forgiveness. Certainly I think we're making a better society if we are able to do so. The problem with the UBI is that a livable UBI is too expensive for us to afford right now - even at 11k, it's much bigger than the entire US federal discretionary budget. A much smaller UBI that grows with time, though, maybe.
  - thomastjeffery 6y ago
    > I think there's more potential to convince the right wing and the center of UBI than student loan forgiveness. > The problem with the UBI is that a livable UBI is too expensive for us to afford right now Those two statements contradict each other.