Tags
barack obama, Bill Whittle, College Debt, D/S/C profligate spending, forgiving college debt, Gropin' Joe Biden, healing the nation, pay your own damned debts, self-imagined elite, socialism, special snowflakes
This morning on Brietbart News, I watched Rudy Guiliani, Sidney Powell and other members of President Trump’s legal team lay out the legal basis of their work to overturn the election results in several key, corrupt states.
They have the evidence. What remains is to see how corrupt the courts are in those states. Don’t believe what the media are telling you, and certainly not what D/S/Cs are telling you (I know; same thing). This truly isn’t over, and if the Constitution and state law are actually upheld, Joe Biden will not be the next president.
In the meantime, however, we see that Gropin’ Joe wants to heal the nation, because he’s all about mercy and unity, as Larry elder notes at PJ Media:
After four years of attacking President Donald Trump as ‘illegitimate,’ ‘fascist,’ ‘Nazi,’ ‘tyrant,’ ‘dictator,’ ‘racist,’ ‘anti-Semitic,’ ‘Russian stooge,’ ‘traitor,’ ‘grifter,’ ‘xenophobe,’ ‘sexist,’ ‘homophobe,’ ‘ignorant,’ ‘fat’ and ‘lazy,’ Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive president-elect, now says, ‘Let’s heal.’
By all means, take the link and read the whole thing. How then, any reasonable person might wonder, will Biden heal the nation? Why, by forcing responsible Americans to subsidize the educations of unemployable deadbeats. Fox Business explains:
As President-elect Joe Biden is preparing for his transition to the White House in January, progressives in the Democratic party are ramping up pressure on the former vice president to forgive student loan debt once he takes office.
‘Student loan forgiveness is good, actually,’ Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Monday. ‘We should also push for tuition-free public colleges to avoid this huge debt bubble from financially decimating people every generation.’
She argued it is ‘one of the easiest progressive policies to ‘pay for,’ with multiple avenues from a Wall St transaction tax to an ultra-wealth tax to cover it.’
Of course. Just tax the rich. They have lots of money. Actually, considering the level of spending D/S/Cs want, there is no sufficient amount of money. Allow me, please, to provide the link to a classic Bill Whittle video demonstrating just how stupid the idea of taxing the rich to pay for profligate spending is.
“A billion here, a billon there, and pretty soon you’re
talking some real money.’’
Attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced a resolution back in September, in which they urged the next president to use executive authority through the Higher Education Act to ‘deliver meaningful relief to struggling Americans and broadly cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt.’
According to the Federal Reserve, there are about 45 million student loan borrowers who owe a collective of roughly $1.6 trillion in federal and private student loan debt as of June 2020.
Let’s review a bit of history. It was Barack Obama—Joe Biden was his Vice President—who federalized the student loan industry and encouraged everyone to get a college degree. Colleges and universities were delighted and responded in primarily three ways: they opened the doors to students completely unprepared for college level work; the dramatically raised tuition costs far beyond the rate of inflation; they reduced actual tenured teaching staff, hired very poorly paid adjunct faculty with no benefits instead, and dramatically increased the number of diversity and inclusion administrators and support staff.
Because colleges were admitting people they knew were not remotely capable of actual college level work, they established remedial high schools on campus, requiring those courses of academically unable students, but for full tuition and no college credit, adding 2-3 years to any degree program and raking in the tuition. They also dumbed down their course offerings, which merely accelerated the trend of replacing academics with “studies” courses, such as black studies, Hispanic studies, gay studies, trans studies, feminist studies, etc. Thus have our colleges produced a generation of college graduates, many with graduate degrees, who are absolutely unemployable and have no prospect of paying their enormous college debt. Add to this the millions that have dropped out of college—go here to see why this was not only easily foreseeable, but inevitable—without a degree, but with crushing college debt, and we arrive at the crisis, entirely of D/S/Cs making, that in part motivates them to want to “forgive” college debt.
Oh, but forgiving college debt will actually stimulate the economy and also provide daily rainbows! College is free! Everything should be free!
Bharat Rhamamurti, a member of the Congressional Oversight Commission and former economic adviser to Warren, pushed back against Furman in a lengthy thread, arguing that the loan forgiveness will lead to more jobs and growth, narrowing the racial wealth gap, and increased savings for the average American. Rhamamurti said the tax Furman refers to could be avoided if loan forgiveness is deemed as a disaster payment relating to COVID-19 under Internal Revenue Code 139, a qualifying scholarship under Internal Revenue Code 117, or an exclusion for insolvent taxpayers under Internal Revenue Code 108.
Let us ever keep in mind it’s very easy to spend other people’s money, and college debt “forgiven” doesn’t just vanish into the ether. That money has to come from somewhere, and the government’s only source of revenue is us, our tax dollars. Oh, they can print all the money they want, but that causes runaway inflation—I lived through the Carter inflation and astronomical gas prices and shortages; don’t get me started on the 55 MPH national speed limit—and if you’ve visited the Bill Whittle video, you know there isn’t enough money in the country—in the world—to pay for D/S/C spending, and the bill always comes due. The greatest source of money, of wealth, of cash for profligate and irresponsible government spending isn’t the rich. They have ways to get out of paying those sort sorts of taxes. They might get fleeced one year, but the next, they’ll simply move out of country. The greatest untapped source for D/S/C spending is the middle class, and just as D/S/Cs are coming for your guns, if they accomplish that, they’ll be coming for your assets.
The problem with socialism is you always runs out of
other people’s money.”
Margaret Thatcher
Joe Biden is talking about immediately, through an executive order, forgiving $10,000 dollars of student debt across the board. Does he actually have that authority? Doubtful, but like Obama, he has a pen and a phone for the things he doesn’t actually have lawful authority to do. He also, by the way, wants to make at least the first two years of college free! No matter how I’ve tried, I’ve yet to discover this source of free money. I always wind up paying for things.
And what of the morality of forgiving student debt? Is it right to expect people who paid for their college to also pay for the college of those who would or could not? Is it right to expect Americans who never attended college to pay for unemployable snowflakes with useless studies degrees? And that about the wealthy who attended college and can absolutely affored to pay their own debts?
People of good will can sympathize with those lured into trying to get a degree they had no ability or real interest in attaining, and inevitably dropped out with enormous debt and no skills or credentials to pay it off. But people make bad decisions every day, and if they were not fraudulently induced to make them, there is no crime, and the consequences of those bad decisions are rightfully theirs.
In “forgiving”—transferring debt to innocent others—college debt, are we doing anything to produce productive, responsible citizens, people capable of taking their place in the world of work to pay their legitimate fair share of Social Security, or are we producing generation after generation of slackers, social parasites, people who have no sense of responsibility and think they owe nothing to their fellow Americans? A nation of entitled sloths cannot and will not defend liberty.
And what of those that argue forgiving nearly two trillion dollars in debt with stimulate the economy, even create jobs? Believing that is akin to the retail sales slogan: “the more you buy, the more you save!” Adding two trillion or so to the national debt is not an economic stimulant—the bill always comes due—and what, exactly, are these miraculous new jobs? Who will fill them, the unemployables with graduate degrees in trans studies?
I have two radical ideas: (1) Pay your own damned debts. (2) Require colleges and universities to refund the tuition and other costs of those they’ve tricked, used, and generally served so badly. Maybe that might help to encourage them to return to fiscally rational policies and to run academic charlatans off campus in exchange for real teachers teaching real academic subjects. This might help too:
Altruism is not the motive for paying off college debt. It’s political advantage. The more reliant on the state D/S/Cs can make Americans, the more they ensure votes for an eternal one-party socialist nation. That they will always run out of other people’s money is not a bug to them, but a feature.
D/S/Cs have produced a generation burdened by unnecessary college debt, and in the process emotionally destroyed them. Encouraging people to attend college who had no business being there and dropped out, knowingly set them up for failure, and every month, when their college debt is due, they are reminded of that failure and surely do not feel good about themselves or their chances. Such is the kindness of the self-imagined elite.
it took me twenty years to pay off my student loans, all whilst raising three small children. Lazy MFRS. can kiss my wrinkly old nether regions if they think I’m paying for theirs.
Dear wardalanm:
What you said X 2.
A third radical idea: Gt the US Gub’mint OUT of the student loan business! =>[.]<=
Dear Raycheetah:
But then you can’t make people dependent on government…
What Mike said exactly. Read “Forgive them their Debts”. Debt has always been used by Government and Bankers in a war for power. Too many people will sell themselves into debt serfdom and will not learn the lesson. This has been taking place for at least 2500 years. The problem is now not only have you financed gender studies degrees or whatever else you don’t like, but it has also raised the price of STEM and degrees we do need.
Further the youngsters of today realize they have been screwed by this system. y should 20 somethings be a fan of a government that holds them in serfdom. Sure, they are complicity, but they are what they have been taught to be. The system is now set up to virtually guarantee student loans. Cancel the whole thing (Its all debt to the government). You will end debt serfdom to the government. Yes this smacks of socialism and is not fair to those that have been responsible, but the whole system is empowering the D/S/Cs by providing an angry army of the young.
Cancel student loans an also outlaw student loans. Hold universities that have played tuition games with Covid responsible, Stop the federal funding of the various rackets that are in place. The internet does open up all new educational opportunities. Self directed students learn whether in a class room or in a living room. Stop subsidizing the whole thing, as it is it is set up to feed the Democratic machine.
Dear xoph:
Whatever will manifestly support American constitutionalism and individual responsibility and liberty–mutually necessary for either to exist, is fine by me. By the way, welcome to SMM!
Maybe I can then afford to go back to school for that doctorate just in time to die.
(Yeah, same me, new identity for a changing world)
Now that’s funny. I’ve done my time on the student debt too. I like the idea of making the colleges take the hickey for some of it. Having worked in one as an adjunct for 20 years, I saw firsthand how the scheme works and what government dollars did to warp the university economy with wrong-headed incentives and unqualified students, who would have best been served by heading in other, frankly more lucrative and promising, directions. The boneheaded scheme (always cause the gubment is here to help) also further enabled the job drain to other countries.
As much as it pains me to say this.. Mike was right… in that some college required-for-degree curriculums are just plain garbage for money. Perhaps if one got what they paid for…………….
Dear Doug (new version):
One could argue they’re getting exactly what they paid for: a useless degree requiring no actual academic work, but lots of agreeing with political indoctrination. The public and our future–that’s another story.
Sometimes the resume fodder is all that’s needed.
Dear Old Barn:
I had no college debt because Mrs. Manor worked full time at a well-paying job, and I took my bachelor’s in 2.5 years. I also taught as an adjunct, but that was long enough ago students were required to produce and actually learned. There were no studies classes then, and nothing that even smelled of them, but that was Wyoming for you. As Ronald Reagan said, the most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Dear Doug:
Yeah. I was thinking about a double doctorate in Trans and Black studies, because I can identify as both as well as anyone.
Hehe.. double doctorate? You set your sights low. Pacing yourself?
Dear Doug:
Nah, getting three or four simultaneous studies degrees would be a little flashy, don’t you think?
Well.. could be. I think we are both well past the age of flashing anything… and it making a difference to anyone.
Dear Doug:
Mrs. Manor says she still likes me…
Love can be blind.. or so I am told.
Dear Doug:
Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut–or two…
Hehe.. now THAT was funny.
I agree Mike. Pay your debts. Let’s do something about the interest rate though. I think a happy middle ground would be capping the student debt so it cannot grow any more than say, 10% of the total amount borrowed, full stop. So you borrow 50k to go to college, you pay back 55k. Minimum 10% gets garnished from your wages every paycheck until it’s paid off in full. That way the student debtors don’t get a free ride (which I would resent more than most, as I opted for a less glamorous and more responsible career path while my peers were off enjoying themselves) but they are not doomed to exist as debt slaves in perpetuity. Yes, they chose poorly, but the Federal Government, The Universities, and the Banking Institutions should not have even offered them that choice – so they bear some responsibility, I think, and should take some of the burden.
mercy?! mercy for what?! not wanting to give my money to pay college debt for people who chose poorly? my wife i put 2 kids through college debt free. mercy for not wanting our country to be overrun by every welfare leech in the hemisphere? fuck his mercy. i’ve got an idea, why don’t you just leave all of us the hell alone you old pervert and tell everyone who voted for you to fork it over for your pet projects
Dear ontoiran:
And there is the basis of our republic: the right to be left alone.
Dear ontoiran, my wife agrees with you. We got my daughter through college debt free.
Debt punishes both the responsible and irresponsible. College loans can’t be cancelled with bankruptcy, they are an obligation that won’t go away, serfdom by any other name. The irresponsible put themselves in that position. Historically a majority of the population always have. The responsible don’t want to see the irresponsible forgiven, live with the consequences. The irresponsible get resentful of the consequences. Thus you have the college loans where recent graduates feel they got screwed and will latch on like ticks to anyone that promises forgiveness. Or they will flee from anyone who wants them to face the consequences.
The system is rigged against these kids, but it is also rigged against conservatives. All you attitude does is empower the opposition and create debt serfs that need a government rescue.
Tear the whole thing down. Punish the system. Erase the debt. Stop government backed school loans, get the government out of that business. (I may be wrong on the last, if education debt is all private, you shift the lord of the manor from government to the banks. I’m not sure which is worse)
You want a conservative value, lets start with abolishing debt as a way of life. You want a conservative action, tear down a system built to create debt serfs. History shows a majority of people will get in to debt. You can’t stop people from making bad choices, but we can act to minimize it. (Yes Prohibition didn’t work and there are loan-sharks for people who the banks won’t touch). We must offer a viable alternatives. See Glenn Reynolds, Mike Rowe and Jerry Pournelle on those.
Reblogged this on Gds44's Blog.
Dear Gds44:
Thanks for the reblog!