• nortorc@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Student loan forgiveness doesn’t go far enough. We need to overhaul the higher education system to rein in the cost of tuition. I mean, regardless of where you stand on student loan forgiveness, can we at least all agree that a bachelor’s degree costing anywhere near six figures is absurd?

  • Robocopsicle@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This quote from Pence is so unbelievably infuriating.

    Joe Biden’s massive trillion-dollar student loan bailout subsidizes the education of elites on the backs of hardworking Americans

    Good to know all of the millennial and gen z college graduates earning less than $125,000 per year and struggling in an awful economy are “elites” and not “hardworking Americans.”

    Since I’m now apparently an elite, do I get a membership card in the mail?

    • huge_clock@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Although the language is very imprecise, a university graduate will make $720,000 more over a 20 year period than a non-university graduate, spend four years out of the labour force not paying taxes and then will also have a higher life expectancy drawing from the public pension longer.

      Tell me why it’s reasonable for people who didn’t go to university to help foot the bill for people who did?

      • Robocopsicle@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This is the exact type of resentment members of the GOP are trying to sow among marginally different income brackets to promote infighting rather than pointing the finger at the actual “elite” class. You shouldn’t have to be saddled with massive amounts of debt to simply get an education. Adjusted for inflation, college tuition has increased nearly 750% since 1963. Source.

        Why not tax the rich to pay for programs to support the lower and middle classes? Or subsidize education?

        a university graduate will make $720,000 more over a 20 year period than a non-university graduate

        That $720,000 difference over 20 years is less than a one-year salary for thousands of CEOs. Based on this list, there are 2,721 CEOs who earned more than $720,000 in 2021 (you have to scroll all the way down to page 137 to find a CEO earning less than $720,000).

        It’s a drop in the bucket.

        spend four years out of the labour force not paying taxes and then will also have a higher life expectancy drawing from the public pension longer.

        If university grads earn more, wouldn’t their higher tax contributions quickly make up for the four non-tax-paying years compared to someone earning less without a degree? Not to mention it isn’t uncommon for students to also work while in college.

        Regarding life expectancy, this is the same blame-game criticism. What impact would affordable healthcare have on life expectancy? Or a higher minimum wage?

        Tell me why it’s reasonable for people who didn’t go to university to help foot the bill for people who did?

        You could make the same argument for any type of program that distributes tax dollars to others. “Why should my hard-earned money go to someone sitting at home on welfare?”

        The federal government clearly has no problem throwing obscene amounts of money at corporations, whether they need it or not, so why not divert some of that aid to the people?

        When I took out my student loans, I knew what I was signing up for, and I never expected — or wanted – the government to step in and waive them. After seeing the massive amounts of money the government handed out in the form of PPP funds, including potentially $200 billion fraudulently (source), my view changed. If billionaires were getting PPP loans for millions of dollars, why shouldn’t a bunch of college graduates get $20,000 each?

        Would you rather your tax money go to reducing student debt or $2 million to $5 million to Kanye West’s Yeezys? Or Tom Brady’s TB12 getting nearly $1 million?

        It’s obviously not an actual either-or question, but ultimately, if the government is bailing out billionaires, banks, etc., then yeah, fuck it, help your middle class college graduates.

        • huge_clock@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          There aren’t enough CEOs to tax to make up the $400 billion it would cost for the student loan forgiveness.

  • HipHoboHarold@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    5 rich people sign a paper saying it’s cool if they die in a shitty submarine, they do, and we spent millions trying to find them.

    But people actually need help and we could improve our society and economy in numerous ways, and we can’t do that.

    I hate this place so God damn much.

    • tallwookie@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      we Americans are granted a lot of freedoms - not that many countries offer similar freedoms. you could try to leave & go elsewhere but just because the grass looks greener, it doesnt mean that it is.

      • Cronch@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        “America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you’ve lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn’t belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don’t care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve”

        -Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine

      • HipHoboHarold@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        So if I want my freedoms as a gay man I should just move? Rather than us just being better? It’s cool to praise the US and our freedoms, but the second we see the opposite we just tell people to leave, and yet we are supposed to be the good guys? Lol

      • Pakyul@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Fuck off with that American exceptionalism bullshit. It’s as shit a country as any other country and it always has been.

      • Endlessvoid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You may have been exposed to a bit too much propoganda my guy. The USA doesn’t even crack the top 20 in most major freedom indices.

  • acchariya@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Now that student borrowers aren’t getting a “free ride”, I want PPP loan recipients to be required to pay back the full amount, plus say, 9% interest, retroactively. Why should my tax dollars pay for your free business loan?

  • R51@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    aw geez

    edit:

    America: We need to reduce cost of education!

    Government: Hey let’s put our taxes towards cheaper education!

    America: no.

    America, can you explain?

      • nichos@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Why is it rigged? Are adults surprised they’re obliged to pay back money they borrowed?I

        • Ragnell@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          When the richest people in the country get loan forgiveness then yes, it can be surprising that the poor don’t get it.

  • iRyu@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Wouldn’t it just be so cool to live in a society where people cared about their neighbors?

      • TONKAHANAH@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Thats not what communism is and even if it was, you literally just tried to say caring about other people is bad regardless of what its called. This is part of the problem.

        • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          He said the quiet part out loud.

          Republicans don’t care about anyone except themselves, and they think EVERYONE is actually that self centered. They literally think progressives are just faking it to gain power.

          • diskmaster23@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            Let’s be real, they don’t even care about themselves. The real motivation is hurting others and punching down.

        • Lukecis@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          He simply said (admittedly completely wrong) something doesn’t work, how exactly is that bigotry and hate???

          • x4740N@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Usually conservatives are the ones to call people working together for the benefit of their fellow human and humanity communism

    • Skyler@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      So that when they say “you take out a loan, you pay it back,” you can point out to them that Donald Trump filed for bankruptcy (i.e. didn’t pay back his loans) five times in his life.

  • CrazyDuck@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I simply cannot grasp how a judicial system that’s entirely based on standing, suddenly decides that 6 random states that have 0 stake in this whole FEDERAL student loan thing have standing to sue over this forgiveness plan

    • axolittl@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s corruption. This isn’t a fluke, it’s that the “justice” system revolves around what’s best for the already powerful elites. It happened because the powerful wanted it to happen, the court just exists to provide the theater to control and placate the masses.

    • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I’m against student loan forgiveness, but I agree. All evidence seems to say that the plaintiffs had no standing. The case should have been thrown out.

      Although I’m happy with the result, the means are not worth the ends. This is a corrupt faction of judges ignoring and applying law where it suits their broader agenda.

        • No1@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Let me preface this by saying I’m open to being wrong and that I don’t expect others to share these views. I still owe on my student loans and am not excited to continue paying them. Also, I’m listing several reasons here, so even if someone pokes holes in one or two, I’d encourage to see if there are still one or two solid reasons to be opposed to the specific method of student loan payoffs that was ruled unconstitutional.

          1. From the beginning, the Biden administration knew this wasn’t a constitutional way of paying off loans. Their hope was that no one would have standing to bring a suit. In general, I’m not in favor of doing unconstitutional things in the hope we can get away with it. That’s a door I don’t want the Republicans to have access to either.

          2. This program was initially proposed as COVID relief but does nothing to help those most impacted by COVID. It DOES however, help a huge class of potential voters. From the start this hasn’t been about helping people, it’s been about gaining votes.

          3. Paying off existing student loans is an expensive measure that does nothing to address what got us here in the first place. We are paying too much for degrees that don’t provide the benefits and opportunities they once did, and that’s not going to change if we cancel existing debt. All it does is out us right back here in 5-10 years.

          4. There’s a right way to go about this stuff. Congress should be the ones doing this, not the president. Unfortunately we have a congress that would much rather assign their work out to other people to take care of and that’s part of what has gotten us in the mess we’re in in the first place. I prefer a weak Office of the President, as we don’t always have who we want in that office. Sometimes this means things move slower than we’d like, but I’d rather that than letting whoever is president at the time take huge sweeping actions unchecked by Congress and the Judicial Branch.

          Now, just to piss off anyone who wasn’t already upset with me, I think Trump is a crook and I hope he goes to jail for a long time.

          Anyway, I’m not trying to start a fight, just give some reasons why I personally am happy with this SC decision.

          • ElectricCattleman@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m also against loan forgiveness and agree with all your points. Especially number 3. I want to add emphasis that I think forgiveness in this way will actually make the problem worse.

            Yes, it would be a huge help to those who had debts forgiven. However if forgiven once, more people will be likely to go to price-gouging colleges, sign up for the huge student loans, and think there is some chance it will be forgiven later. Colleges will continue to raise tuition because people keep paying it.

            We need to address the tuition cost problem. Colleges are out of control. Until we fix that, anything else will encourage them to keep going. Another way of looking at $500bn of loans forgiven… That’s $500bn in the colleges pockets that they get to keep after tripling their tuition.

            I think college is a great thing and important to be accessible. We need to make it cheap enough that students can afford it and not come out of it with $80k+ in loans (I as did).

        • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Doesn’t address the root problem, in fact it makes the root problem worse. It’s just a one time payout to a lucky group of millenials who happen to qualify at the moment.

          Also, it primarily benefits wealthier people who got college degrees. That money would do a lot more good going to poorer people.

    • BombOmOm@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Missouri proved they have standing via direct injury:

      “At least Missouri has standing to challenge the Secretary’s program. Article III requires a plaintiff to have suffered an injury in fact—a concrete and imminent harm to a legally protected interest, like property or money—that is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct and likely to be redressed by the lawsuit. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560–561. Here, as the Government concedes, the Secretary’s plan would cost MOHELA, a nonprofit government corporation created by Missouri to participate in the student loan market, an estimated $44 million a year in fees. MOHELA is, by law and function, an instrumentality of Missouri: Labeled an “instrumentality” by the State, it was created by the State, is supervised by the State, and serves a public function. The harm to MOHELA in the performance of its public function is necessarily a direct injury to Missouri itself. The Court reached a similar conclusion 70 years ago in Arkansas v. Texas, 346 U. S. 368.”

      • xdre@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Missouri proved no such thing.

        Meanwhile, last October, MOHELA admitted in a letter to Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) that its executives “were not involved with the decision of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office to file for the preliminary injunction in federal court.” The Missouri attorney general had to obtain documents from MOHELA through state sunshine law requests in order to use them in the lawsuit. As I wrote last month, if this is successful, “the Supreme Court would be allowing the plaintiffs to win their case thanks to an unwilling conspirator.”

        The internal documents from MOHELA reinforce this. They were obtained through those same state sunshine laws by the Student Borrower Protection Center.

        https://prospect.org/justice/2023-06-19-student-loan-cancellation-supreme-court-mohela/

  • gillrmn@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Lets be honest - the plan was an overreach. This had to pass through congress. So SC is not wrong.

    But it couldn’t pass through congress because of lobbying. Which was bribery made legal by SC. Which was a very controversial decision. But if Roe could be overturned, we should focus on getting Citizen United overturned. And America will be great again.

    But for that US should be united. And that will not happen because all the oligarchs domestic and abroad make sure of that and they lobby secretly and hard. You have Saudis, Chinese buying corporations influencing US decision making. You have Russian interference. European banks also service these oligarchs, so its in their interest too. Now other countries with oligarchs are jumping in too. And they put smokes and mirrors in front of you to keep you off from the real goal - creating issues where there should be none. To keep America divided.

    So its a long attrition based slug war which can only be fought when we love our fellow Americans and stop listening to hate everywhere around us. And realize that all politicians are evil, so you have to keep them pressed. They will not share power, we the people have to be strong and take the power from them.

    No one can destroy US. Only US can destroy US.

    • nameless_prole@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      This is the most lukewarm, wishy washy, “enlightened centrist” shit I have ever read. Like,

      So its a long attrition based slug war which can only be fought when we love our fellow Americans and stop listening to hate everywhere around us.

      ???

      What are you fucking talking about? This is some next level naivety.

  • Laughbone@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I guess the only way to get your loans forgiven is to become a Supreme Court justice and have your assigned billionaire pay them off.

  • AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Student debt cannot be simply expunged through bankruptcy, it requires extra steps.

    After the 2008 sub-prime mortage crisis, Hedgefunds and Banks didn’t stop with their predatory behaviour, they simply shifted it around. Student loans were a prime target for that. As well as commercial mortage backed securities (CMBS) rather than the mortage backed securities (MBS) from that bubble popping in 2008.

    With COVID making work from home inevitable and CMBS becoming a huge risk factor as well as student loans possibly being forgiven, the financial elites have been rotating to survive another day until they can resume squeezing your pennies out of you again so they don’t have to go under.

    Just a piece of the shit pie that the US financial markets are. It’s just a huge rackateering ring. I’d be immensely surprised if student loans were ever forgiven or university costs socialized again in the future. It’s just too lucrative to fuck young people.

    • nameless_prole@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Capitalism has robbed us of more than we could ever even imagine. To the point where most people don’t even realize they’ve been robbed. It’s tragic.

      We live in a society where amoral, faceless corporations are more valued than actual human life. And those corporations have so much power over people, and their cognition, that the majority have been tricked into consenting to this perverted system against all of their interests. And I would love for someone to explain to me why there should ever be a distinction between the people producing something, and the people/corporations that own the means of that production. Why should these be two different groups, and why in the FUCK would the class that doesn’t do any actual goddamn work, make 300x more money? It’s fucking disgusting.

      But on the other hand, they said they were going to lower taxes. And also, trans people exist, so…

      • JasSmith@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Capitalism has robbed us of more than we could ever even imagine. To the point where most people don’t even realize they’ve been robbed. It’s tragic.

        Capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s the reason our standard of living is higher than ever. Every time we try anything else, millions of people die. I’m not sure how many more people need to die for people like you to accept reality. We need to improve capitalism, not turn to authoritarianism.

        • Crimfresh@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          No, that argument is a complete lie. Technology is why we have a higher standard of living. Technological advancements have taken place in communist countries. They experience the same increases of quality of living as capitalist countries. This proves that argument false. Capitalism isn’t responsible for technology. That’s just wealthy people pushing a narrative to protect the system that consolidates wealth in their hands. Consolidated wealth at the top of the economic ladder is a well known and documented side effect of capitalism. That’s why capitalism requires strong regulations, not free market dogma.

          • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Technological advancements have taken place in communist countries.

            1. rofl

            2. regulated capitalism is very different than communism

            • Crimfresh@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Formulate a response of substance or fuck off. You absolutely didn’t disprove a single thing I said. Capitalism didn’t raise the quality of living, technology did that. Capitalists steal everything thing they can, including credit for technological advances. They’ve been taking credit for work done by talented engineers and scientists for many generations.

              • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                They’ve been taking credit for work done by talented engineers and scientists for many generations.

                Those engineers and scientists were also capitalists rofl. Pfizer? Capitalist. Apple? Capitalist. Ford? Capitalist. Hell the only non capitalist quality of life enhancements we’ve had come from our military.

                • Crimfresh@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  To pretend that only capitalists have invented and improved technology is an exercise in ignorance.

    • Temple Square@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You join like six people I personally know, either is a close friend or family member.

      For some reason this one feels so deeply personal, that I feel motivated to vote like hell. I’m so over being held hostage by maniac Boomers who are losing their minds. We are the bigger generation now. Let’s go kick their asses!

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    SCOTUS is why we can’t have nice things. Well, them and congress. And often the executive branch.

    Basically we can’t have nice things.