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My wife’s siblings all avoided college to avoid taking on debt that they didn’t think they could pay off. They worked low wage jobs during the years their peers

My wife’s siblings all avoided college to avoid taking on debt that they didn’t think they could pay off. They worked low wage jobs during the years their peers attended university on borrowed money. This blatantly unfair debt forgiveness is nothing but a transparent bid to make friends of a subset of the population perceived as more valuable than the subset of which it will make enemies. Why would you expect other’s sympathies to lie with your partner when this policy takes away from people who have families of their own?

semicolon_storm 4y ago
With that logic, nobody can ever be helped because it’s unfair to those who aren’t being helped at the moment.
- rcoveson 4y ago
  With that logic, any program to redistribute any money from any group to any other group is fine. Somebody is being helped; it's okay if not everybody is being helped in the same moment, right?
  - semicolon_storm 4y ago
    False dichotomy
    - rcoveson 4y ago
      Right… that’s what I’m saying. Let’s stick to the assessment of this particular program, not the notion of wealth redistribution in general.
cableshaft 4y ago
Do you have this same feeling against Medicare, even though you aren't benefitting from the program directly? Against disability pay? Against food stamps? Against Earned Income Tax Credits? Against Low Income Housing Tax Credits? Homeowner tax rebates? Business tax credits? Half of your property taxes going to schools when you don't have children. Talked to a guy just today paying over $6k a year just for schools but is childfree. I myself am paying about $3k of my annual property tax straight to local schools yet I do not have kids yet. That's at least $250 every month I'm paying. Tons of taxpayer money gets paid for all sorts of things we don't benefit from directly. If you're not for any of it, so be it, but if you're not, and you're so against 'policies that take away from people' presumably you mean tax money funding these programs, you should probably be equally angry about pretty much all of these. I also avoided getting student loans for a while, dropping out of college so I wouldn't take them out, and it severely stunted my salary trajectory because of it, working in places like Wal-mart shipping rooms for $7.50 an hour in my early 20s when I could have had a degree and made 6x more than that. I eventually did get student loans and finished my degree, and paid them all off shortly before they announced this debt relief. I'm still all for it, as I've seen countless people crippled by student debt.
- pb7 4y ago
  >Do you have this same feeling against Medicare, even though you aren't benefitting from the program directly? Against disability pay? Against food stamps? Against Earned Income Tax Credits? Against Low Income Housing Tax Credits? Homeowner tax rebates? Business tax credits? Half of your property taxes going to schools when you don't have children. All of those things are available to me if I get down on my luck so they make sense. And I don’t have to have children — I was a child once and benefited from public schools. If you didn’t, you had it available to you and your parents chose not to. How is this the same thing? When might I in my life directly benefit from this loan forgiveness like all of those things you listed?
braingenious 4y ago
As a hypothetical, you’re arguing that society should have more sympathy for your wife’s family than GP’s partner’s family? How exactly are we supposed to litigate a “wife’s family vs other wife/husband’s family” debate in these terms? Did the people working low-wage jobs spend time on food stamps? Section 8? Subsidized phone service? If the answer is no, do you think that people working low-income jobs do not, on average, take advantage of public money in any way?
- rcoveson 4y ago
  > As a hypothetical, you’re arguing that society should have more sympathy for your wife’s family than GP’s partner’s family? No, I'm arguing that taking away from the general public to provide for a subset of people requires that the subset boundaries be well justified. Good examples are "people who are poor", and "people who are sick". A bad example would be "people who owe money on their house in 2022". Do those people benefit from debt forgiveness? Of course! And I'm sure they'd be very grateful for it. Meanwhile, people who decided to rent in 2022 or pay their house off in 2021 are footing the bill, for no discernible reason. > How exactly are we supposed to litigate a “wife’s family vs other wife/husband’s family” debate in these terms? Did the people working low-wage jobs spend time on food stamps? Section 8? Subsidized phone service? Those are just benefits for poor people. Those are good, and though some of them could stand to be "ramped" better, they're generally the right idea. Again, the problem is selecting a highly arbitrary subset of people while excluding their peers who differ only in the decisions they made (to take out a loan or not, to pay off a loan quickly or not). The boundaries don't even bother selecting for people in real need. 125k/250k household income? Contemplate those numbers for a minute. So you went to college and you have a world-class job in the 90th percentile of the USA and you're getting money from the government to give you that boost you need so you can, what, remodel your home theater a year sooner than you planned? > If the answer is no, do you think that people working low-income jobs do not, on average, take advantage of public money in any way? People with no degrees driving our food to us and our garbage away can take public money, yes. Being against any form of wealth redistribution is light-years away from being against this one particular redistribution.
  - 4y ago

semicolon_storm 4y ago

With that logic, nobody can ever be helped because it’s unfair to those who aren’t being helped at the moment.

rcoveson 4y ago
With that logic, any program to redistribute any money from any group to any other group is fine. Somebody is being helped; it's okay if not everybody is being helped in the same moment, right?
- semicolon_storm 4y ago
  False dichotomy
  - rcoveson 4y ago
    Right… that’s what I’m saying. Let’s stick to the assessment of this particular program, not the notion of wealth redistribution in general.

cableshaft 4y ago

Do you have this same feeling against Medicare, even though you aren't benefitting from the program directly? Against disability pay? Against food stamps? Against Earned Income Tax Credits? Against Low Income Housing Tax Credits? Homeowner tax rebates? Business tax credits? Half of your property taxes going to schools when you don't have children. Talked to a guy just today paying over $6k a year just for schools but is childfree. I myself am paying about $3k of my annual property tax straight to local schools yet I do not have kids yet. That's at least $250 every month I'm paying. Tons of taxpayer money gets paid for all sorts of things we don't benefit from directly. If you're not for any of it, so be it, but if you're not, and you're so against 'policies that take away from people' presumably you mean tax money funding these programs, you should probably be equally angry about pretty much all of these. I also avoided getting student loans for a while, dropping out of college so I wouldn't take them out, and it severely stunted my salary trajectory because of it, working in places like Wal-mart shipping rooms for $7.50 an hour in my early 20s when I could have had a degree and made 6x more than that. I eventually did get student loans and finished my degree, and paid them all off shortly before they announced this debt relief. I'm still all for it, as I've seen countless people crippled by student debt.

pb7 4y ago
>Do you have this same feeling against Medicare, even though you aren't benefitting from the program directly? Against disability pay? Against food stamps? Against Earned Income Tax Credits? Against Low Income Housing Tax Credits? Homeowner tax rebates? Business tax credits? Half of your property taxes going to schools when you don't have children. All of those things are available to me if I get down on my luck so they make sense. And I don’t have to have children — I was a child once and benefited from public schools. If you didn’t, you had it available to you and your parents chose not to. How is this the same thing? When might I in my life directly benefit from this loan forgiveness like all of those things you listed?

braingenious 4y ago

As a hypothetical, you’re arguing that society should have more sympathy for your wife’s family than GP’s partner’s family? How exactly are we supposed to litigate a “wife’s family vs other wife/husband’s family” debate in these terms? Did the people working low-wage jobs spend time on food stamps? Section 8? Subsidized phone service? If the answer is no, do you think that people working low-income jobs do not, on average, take advantage of public money in any way?

rcoveson 4y ago
> As a hypothetical, you’re arguing that society should have more sympathy for your wife’s family than GP’s partner’s family? No, I'm arguing that taking away from the general public to provide for a subset of people requires that the subset boundaries be well justified. Good examples are "people who are poor", and "people who are sick". A bad example would be "people who owe money on their house in 2022". Do those people benefit from debt forgiveness? Of course! And I'm sure they'd be very grateful for it. Meanwhile, people who decided to rent in 2022 or pay their house off in 2021 are footing the bill, for no discernible reason. > How exactly are we supposed to litigate a “wife’s family vs other wife/husband’s family” debate in these terms? Did the people working low-wage jobs spend time on food stamps? Section 8? Subsidized phone service? Those are just benefits for poor people. Those are good, and though some of them could stand to be "ramped" better, they're generally the right idea. Again, the problem is selecting a highly arbitrary subset of people while excluding their peers who differ only in the decisions they made (to take out a loan or not, to pay off a loan quickly or not). The boundaries don't even bother selecting for people in real need. 125k/250k household income? Contemplate those numbers for a minute. So you went to college and you have a world-class job in the 90th percentile of the USA and you're getting money from the government to give you that boost you need so you can, what, remodel your home theater a year sooner than you planned? > If the answer is no, do you think that people working low-income jobs do not, on average, take advantage of public money in any way? People with no degrees driving our food to us and our garbage away can take public money, yes. Being against any form of wealth redistribution is light-years away from being against this one particular redistribution.
- 4y ago