I really appreciated the purity of Katie's rant about Biden's student-loan forgiveness plan. While I'm not personally upset about the fact that the plan doesn't benefit me, here are a few things about the plan that have been making me see red:
1. Biden wants to deny that the Democratic Party is a party of the elites WHILE handing out a regressive gift to his many college-educated voters right before the midterms AND insisting that, if you're one of the many people who don't vote for Democratic candidates because you don't think they do anything for you, you're just bigoted. Very few of the roughly 2/3 of American adults who don't hold a college degree are going to find this argument persuasive. Cue another nauseating round of the Democrats wondering why the supposedly bigoted working classes aren't enlightened enough to vote for them in greater numbers.
2. Despite the outrageous increases in college tuition relative to wages in the last several decades, college graduates still reap significant financial benefits from their degrees:
"In July, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates was a paltry 2.9 percent. The total lifetime wage premium for a college education is $900,000 for men and $630,000 for women—an amount that’s many multiples of average college debt.
"And while lifetime earnings vary by major, the stereotype of the impoverished art history graduate just isn’t true. A 2020 Brookings study showed that there was a significant lifetime wage gap 'for all 98 majors studied.'" (https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/is-there-a-christian-case-for-bidens)
There's no excuse for making a high-school-educated childcare giver pay for the education of the radiologist who sends his kids to her daycare. He'll be fine. So will his little brother who majored in art history and is now "settling" for an office job unrelated to his major that inexplicably requires a BA.
3. If you'll permit me a peevish addition about how this sort of policy may hurt me, as someone who pays my bills thanks to college students' tuition: Republicans, already inclined to see professors and higher-ed admin as liberal fat cats, are looking for more ways to retaliate against institutions of higher ed. The most powerful politician in my state was already campaigning on an anti-higher-ed plank before Biden announced his plan. The escalation of this particularly stupid culture war is likely to affect everyone who works at or attends public universities in states with red state legislatures. That's a lot of time and money we'll continue to spend fighting about funding, tenure, and First-Amendment rights.
I think Trace is engaging in purity politics by making this something that will cause him not to vote. The fact that this is a line in the sand given everything else that goes on with bullshit in the government seems weird. Ymmv
Also, using the Manhattan Institute is biased. It might be helpful to look at other sources that are not idealogically conservative. Like again there’s a real problem with the lack of state funding which has dramatically decreased and there’s a real issue with the interest rates. The Republicans don’t want to look at that issue about why state colleges are so expensive; they just wanna blame greedy leftist academics and not think that the state should have any responsibility like they always used to. Also Katy‘s whole thing about people shouldn’t have to go to college; sure that’s definitely the case but you know the problem with making it less accessible is that the people not going to college will just be people who don’t have money. I guess I feel strongly about it because I grew up in a poor family in the first generation household and boy, I believe in access and not in middle class people making decisions about what’s the best thing for the economy without checking.
I stopped mid episode to react to Katie thinking a daisy chain meant a flower necklace 🤣😂🤣 she gives Jesse so much shit about his perceived lack of sexual prowess and she thought of flower crowns. GIRL. 💀
What do you think I mean when I say, "I love genuine pearl necklaces so much that I really can't see myself dating someone AFAB," Katie?
I pretty much agree with everything Katie said about student loans but count me amongst those who would rather blocked and reported didn't engage in political rants. Because I can get political rants in literally every facet of my life right now. I'd just rather have the show be something different
Quick correction: Katie seemed to think that student loan forgiveness will prevent us from spending money on infrastructure, while Jesse thinks Republican obstruction will prevent us from spending money on infrastructure, and neither of them seems to remember that a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill actually passed last fall. It got a little lost in a progressive temper tantrum about how it passed without Build Back Better, but it happened! It got 19 Republican votes in the Senate! It was a pretty big victory for the Biden administration.
And Katie alluded to this, but it's worth noting: cancelling student debt could be done through reconciliation (with 50 votes). It seems like that wasn't even considered because they knew they couldn't even get all congressional Democrats to vote for it, which is why it happened through an executive order of dubious legality.
Personally, I will gladly take the combined $20,000 for my wife and my student loans while still being angry that this action failed to stop the root problem that college is too damn expensive. But worrying that it benefits some people and not others is the wrong thing to get angry about. Lots of programs are unfair. Here’s a bit about me: I went to an expensive private school in the 80s, I got some grants but I took out a lot of student loans and had them all paid off by my late 20s. Then at 40 I went back to school for a graduate degree (absolutely required for my career). In public service by the way. I picked the cheapest state school to get it, and 12 years later I haven't even managed to touch the principle. And despite declaring bankruptcy 5 years ago, all that debt remains. The situation has shifted dramatically over the past 20 years, and many people whining, "well I paid of my loans" don't realize it. Do I want credit for paying off my undergraduate loans, no. Do I want help paying off my current loans, yes. Fix the interest rate scams, reinstate the clause making loans dischargeable in bankruptcy (maybe with back credit) and the problem will be solved going forward. Most people with graduate degrees needed to get them, and this idea that people with advanced degrees are wealthy or that they are fluffy degrees is nonsense. For many occupations people without them won't even get interviewed. Stop acting like everyone can just drop out of college and start Microsoft (or a podcast) in their garage. The world just isn't like that.
On Robinson: agree on his SPLC piece which was bang on. Everything else reads like typical champagne socialism. Just add "for other people" to every suggested solution. Notice how he lives in New Orleans, not in some planned suburb in the middle of nowhere? It's easy when your parents pay for you to run a magazine.
Full disclosure: I do not know if this would work but I’m an expert in related fields and I don’t see why it wouldn’t. I paid off my wife’s debt in 2020 and am going to do this.
You are allowed to ask for a return of any payments you made on your student loans starting March 2020 when COVID relief began.
If you paid off your loan in the last two years, ask for a refund of all payments up to a total of $10k. You need to do this very soon because it’s going to take them about two months to process.
Then when the relief goes active end of year, ask for relief of the debt.
I consider it a moral obligation not to allow other people to punish me for doing the right thing.
I'm not wild about the debt-forgiveness plan myself, but I respectfully disagree with Katie about the potentially negative effects this will have on Democratic prospects.
First of all, I don't think most Americans vote based on policy. I wish I knew what did motivate votes--my best guess is an idiosyncratic mixture of fears, hopes, biases, magical thinking, and a fundamental ignorance about how government works. I suspect that there are vanishingly few people who will vote based solely on this issue. Most who do were probably not voting for Democrats anyway.
Second, I have a suspicion that SCOTUS will eventually stomp down this proposal, whether or not it's actually unconstitutional, so Biden may never have to make good this promise. However, the courts won't rule until after November, and the Biden folks may be hoping this will drive turnout among young voters. I'm dubious--see previous paragraph--but if one DOES believe that, then this is a proposal that costs the government no money, but gets Democratic voters to the polls.
In the end, I think this won't affect the elections much, although of course in a close election, *anything* can make the difference. If I had to guess, I'd say the Dobbs decision is more determinative than anything Biden does about student loans.
The US government bails out all sorts of special interest groups and we all just go along with it despite the fact that we all pay for it (farm subsidies for example). This relatively meager cancellation, which is means-tested and helps the lot of relatively lower-income pell grant recipients considerably, provokes anger that appears disproportionate to the size of the actual deal. This kind of 'bribe' seems rather tame and could considerably help some working class people that tried college but then dipped out and didn't get the degree. I honestly just think this is largely just Republicans not liking liberal college kids getting their gender studies diplomas or whatever.
I really appreciated the purity of Katie's rant about Biden's student-loan forgiveness plan. While I'm not personally upset about the fact that the plan doesn't benefit me, here are a few things about the plan that have been making me see red:
1. Biden wants to deny that the Democratic Party is a party of the elites WHILE handing out a regressive gift to his many college-educated voters right before the midterms AND insisting that, if you're one of the many people who don't vote for Democratic candidates because you don't think they do anything for you, you're just bigoted. Very few of the roughly 2/3 of American adults who don't hold a college degree are going to find this argument persuasive. Cue another nauseating round of the Democrats wondering why the supposedly bigoted working classes aren't enlightened enough to vote for them in greater numbers.
2. Despite the outrageous increases in college tuition relative to wages in the last several decades, college graduates still reap significant financial benefits from their degrees:
"In July, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates was a paltry 2.9 percent. The total lifetime wage premium for a college education is $900,000 for men and $630,000 for women—an amount that’s many multiples of average college debt.
"And while lifetime earnings vary by major, the stereotype of the impoverished art history graduate just isn’t true. A 2020 Brookings study showed that there was a significant lifetime wage gap 'for all 98 majors studied.'" (https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/is-there-a-christian-case-for-bidens)
There's no excuse for making a high-school-educated childcare giver pay for the education of the radiologist who sends his kids to her daycare. He'll be fine. So will his little brother who majored in art history and is now "settling" for an office job unrelated to his major that inexplicably requires a BA.
3. If you'll permit me a peevish addition about how this sort of policy may hurt me, as someone who pays my bills thanks to college students' tuition: Republicans, already inclined to see professors and higher-ed admin as liberal fat cats, are looking for more ways to retaliate against institutions of higher ed. The most powerful politician in my state was already campaigning on an anti-higher-ed plank before Biden announced his plan. The escalation of this particularly stupid culture war is likely to affect everyone who works at or attends public universities in states with red state legislatures. That's a lot of time and money we'll continue to spend fighting about funding, tenure, and First-Amendment rights.
I can't think of any red flag bigger than describing ones sexual history or intentions as "ethical." The Boyslut doth protest too much, methinks.
I think Trace is engaging in purity politics by making this something that will cause him not to vote. The fact that this is a line in the sand given everything else that goes on with bullshit in the government seems weird. Ymmv
Also, using the Manhattan Institute is biased. It might be helpful to look at other sources that are not idealogically conservative. Like again there’s a real problem with the lack of state funding which has dramatically decreased and there’s a real issue with the interest rates. The Republicans don’t want to look at that issue about why state colleges are so expensive; they just wanna blame greedy leftist academics and not think that the state should have any responsibility like they always used to. Also Katy‘s whole thing about people shouldn’t have to go to college; sure that’s definitely the case but you know the problem with making it less accessible is that the people not going to college will just be people who don’t have money. I guess I feel strongly about it because I grew up in a poor family in the first generation household and boy, I believe in access and not in middle class people making decisions about what’s the best thing for the economy without checking.
I stopped mid episode to react to Katie thinking a daisy chain meant a flower necklace 🤣😂🤣 she gives Jesse so much shit about his perceived lack of sexual prowess and she thought of flower crowns. GIRL. 💀
What do you think I mean when I say, "I love genuine pearl necklaces so much that I really can't see myself dating someone AFAB," Katie?
Ladies and gentlemen of the world: I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you know someone is married, stay away! It rarely ends well.
Katie's right to be mad about the student loan bailout, but I think both of you are failing to recognize just how unconstitutional this is - up to a trillion dollars added to the debt by the executive - not the Congress. Good debate here (Charlie CW Cooke from NRO) has been knocking it out of the park on this issue for a few weeks now: https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/podcasts//the-legality-of-the-biden-administrations-student-loan-forgiveness-plan
“Most people are males or females”
-Jesse Singal
Fact check: all people are either male or female
I pretty much agree with everything Katie said about student loans but count me amongst those who would rather blocked and reported didn't engage in political rants. Because I can get political rants in literally every facet of my life right now. I'd just rather have the show be something different
Listening to Katie discuss actual substantive policy is always painful.
Quick correction: Katie seemed to think that student loan forgiveness will prevent us from spending money on infrastructure, while Jesse thinks Republican obstruction will prevent us from spending money on infrastructure, and neither of them seems to remember that a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill actually passed last fall. It got a little lost in a progressive temper tantrum about how it passed without Build Back Better, but it happened! It got 19 Republican votes in the Senate! It was a pretty big victory for the Biden administration.
And Katie alluded to this, but it's worth noting: cancelling student debt could be done through reconciliation (with 50 votes). It seems like that wasn't even considered because they knew they couldn't even get all congressional Democrats to vote for it, which is why it happened through an executive order of dubious legality.
Personally, I will gladly take the combined $20,000 for my wife and my student loans while still being angry that this action failed to stop the root problem that college is too damn expensive. But worrying that it benefits some people and not others is the wrong thing to get angry about. Lots of programs are unfair. Here’s a bit about me: I went to an expensive private school in the 80s, I got some grants but I took out a lot of student loans and had them all paid off by my late 20s. Then at 40 I went back to school for a graduate degree (absolutely required for my career). In public service by the way. I picked the cheapest state school to get it, and 12 years later I haven't even managed to touch the principle. And despite declaring bankruptcy 5 years ago, all that debt remains. The situation has shifted dramatically over the past 20 years, and many people whining, "well I paid of my loans" don't realize it. Do I want credit for paying off my undergraduate loans, no. Do I want help paying off my current loans, yes. Fix the interest rate scams, reinstate the clause making loans dischargeable in bankruptcy (maybe with back credit) and the problem will be solved going forward. Most people with graduate degrees needed to get them, and this idea that people with advanced degrees are wealthy or that they are fluffy degrees is nonsense. For many occupations people without them won't even get interviewed. Stop acting like everyone can just drop out of college and start Microsoft (or a podcast) in their garage. The world just isn't like that.
I hate to inform Jesse that pescetarians are like the A in LGBTQIA+ -- they don’t exist
On Robinson: agree on his SPLC piece which was bang on. Everything else reads like typical champagne socialism. Just add "for other people" to every suggested solution. Notice how he lives in New Orleans, not in some planned suburb in the middle of nowhere? It's easy when your parents pay for you to run a magazine.
Full disclosure: I do not know if this would work but I’m an expert in related fields and I don’t see why it wouldn’t. I paid off my wife’s debt in 2020 and am going to do this.
You are allowed to ask for a return of any payments you made on your student loans starting March 2020 when COVID relief began.
If you paid off your loan in the last two years, ask for a refund of all payments up to a total of $10k. You need to do this very soon because it’s going to take them about two months to process.
Then when the relief goes active end of year, ask for relief of the debt.
I consider it a moral obligation not to allow other people to punish me for doing the right thing.
I'm not wild about the debt-forgiveness plan myself, but I respectfully disagree with Katie about the potentially negative effects this will have on Democratic prospects.
First of all, I don't think most Americans vote based on policy. I wish I knew what did motivate votes--my best guess is an idiosyncratic mixture of fears, hopes, biases, magical thinking, and a fundamental ignorance about how government works. I suspect that there are vanishingly few people who will vote based solely on this issue. Most who do were probably not voting for Democrats anyway.
Second, I have a suspicion that SCOTUS will eventually stomp down this proposal, whether or not it's actually unconstitutional, so Biden may never have to make good this promise. However, the courts won't rule until after November, and the Biden folks may be hoping this will drive turnout among young voters. I'm dubious--see previous paragraph--but if one DOES believe that, then this is a proposal that costs the government no money, but gets Democratic voters to the polls.
In the end, I think this won't affect the elections much, although of course in a close election, *anything* can make the difference. If I had to guess, I'd say the Dobbs decision is more determinative than anything Biden does about student loans.
The US government bails out all sorts of special interest groups and we all just go along with it despite the fact that we all pay for it (farm subsidies for example). This relatively meager cancellation, which is means-tested and helps the lot of relatively lower-income pell grant recipients considerably, provokes anger that appears disproportionate to the size of the actual deal. This kind of 'bribe' seems rather tame and could considerably help some working class people that tried college but then dipped out and didn't get the degree. I honestly just think this is largely just Republicans not liking liberal college kids getting their gender studies diplomas or whatever.