I should have explicitly stated that I think the debt cancellation was a good idea, that's on me. And I do believe that demand-side economics largely works much better than supply-side. I also said myself that people would use a lot of the debt relief to pay off other debts. Jesus, dude, did you think I converted to Nazism in the last 24 hours or something? Friendly fucking firing into the crowd, there. College enrollment rates are now dropping faster than ever. I don't think saying "Oh that's just the market naturally responding to how expensive college is" makes for a good argument, because having an increasingly less educated populace can compound into other problems. Neither is fixing the natural inclination towards exclusivity and reputation easily accomplished, if that's even possible. To state something else explicitly: The Problem is that our system of education is now serving as another medium through which to perpetuate wealth inequality. I'm not accusing Biden of anything, but it would be nice if someone that isn't a Heritage Foundation-funded "think tank" did a study aiming to understand and potentially address the ballooning cost of higher education, and how it relates to wealth inequality. Maybe I just haven't seen existing studies, but surely we're at least due for a new one in the post-covid era. I see your explanations of the problem elsewhere in these comments, and largely agree, but what is your solution(s)? I'm working on a "final solution", because hah, pranked ya, I was a Nazi this whole time after all.
I savage because I love, you know that. And because when attacked frontally you resort to less oblique language so it's mostly self-serving laziness. So my basic problem with your reasoning, if it remains unclear, is that you're viewing an economic stimulus as an educational reform. Which is preposterous. It's not "we'll forgive $10k of future debt" it's "we're forgiving $10k of existing student loan debt" which is sops for the proles every bit as much as the mortgage interest deduction, only targeted to people who view real estate shopping as a spectator sport. And my problem with your argumentation, if it remains unclear, is that there's no experimentation here. None. We didn't even run it in small numbers. We threw two point two TRILLION dollars at it barely an electoral cycle ago. Fifty million people pulling down stimulus checks. And we know exactly what they did with them. Bottom decile? Paid off debt. Next decile? Paid off debt. Next decile? Put it in savings. Top decile? fucking invested it in the goddamn stock market. It's a settled point. What do we do about education? Totally different problem. Issue right now is that there's two entire generations with no fucking money. Fuckin' 15% of student loan debt is held by parents of students ('cuz they cosigned 'cuz they're chumps). You wanna lift the economy, you give income to people who will dispose of it. Look - I think it's awesome your wife was lifted by $20k. Apparently our stimulus as a corporation was a good $20k under the average and I was getting emails that said things like "if you can tell us the exact dollars and cents we just airdropped into your bank account you get to keep it!" What did we spend it on? Salary. If we hadn't had that money? We would have... kept paying salaries because we're essential workers so, yeah. We gave out like a quarter of it as hardship bonuses, like a quarter of it went into medical equipment that we needed 'cuz we couldn't get people in to see doctors anymore and the rest? Fuckin' padded the wallet, G. Would I rather see poor people get money than rich people? Yes I would. I think anyone who truly understands capitalism understands that if you give a college student $10k it's all going back into the economy whereas if you give a schlub like me $10k I'm gonna go "uhh thanks for the money I'll put it with the rest of my money." And to pretend this has anything to do with education is silly. It has to do with the fact that we've told seven generations that they'll be ditch diggers if they don't go to college and for the last two generations it turns out they'll be ditch diggers anyway. Enrollment is down because the latest generation fucking figured it out.
Yeah and that would be a good idea in another year or 2 when we’re in there middle of a depression/recession and we need a bunch extra money to jump start the economic activity. But right now with real inflation somewhere in the teens and official only 8% the extra money isn’t going to help with the inflation at all.
And it is dopey comments like this - fully liberated from logic or even a basic understanding of the topic at hand - that forced me to mute your account originally, and reinforces that I have made the right decision. Good lord, man. Think for even half a second before posting whatever flows out of your head. (It's not "extra money". Nobody has been - or will be - given a check. Their student loans will be simply reduced by $10k.)
It is extra money 6% (actual rate might be higher) of 10k is 600 annually or about the same as the stimulus check. There is a bit of an assumption that the amount was being paid which in some cases it wasn’t but it’s real money that will go buy groceries, gas or Nikes or PlayStations. It does contribute to inflation as before it was money that was being pulled out of the economy and now it’s available to spend. Inflation is caused by for the most part having more money chasing a fixed number of goods. This will increase the amount of money just not by an immediate 10k but a percentage of it. There is no free lunch.
Idk how large the amount is probably not any worse than renewing 7k credits to Tesla buyers. There are a lot of folks with debt though and they only build some tiny number of Teslas. That money is all going to go right into circulation though instead of pumping equities or real estate though.