When Joe Biden announced he would be forgiving $10,000 of student loan debt for millions of Americans, there seemed to be only two reactions: that Biden’s plan doesn’t do enough, and that it does too much. Speaking as someone firmly in the former group, I would like to personally invite everyone in the latter group to get bent.
A lot of Republicans are opposing Biden’s plan, claiming that it does too much, goes too far, and will encourage students in the future to take out exorbitant amounts, knowing they’ll just be forgiven in the end. That, it should be obvious, is nonsense. We’re talking about $10,000 for most people, that’s not the Super Lotto. Also, there are lots of other details in Biden’s plan that only apply to people who don’t take out more than $12,000 in loans while in school. There’s literally no incentive for people to take out more money than they already would have but this will very likely encourage people who wouldn’t have thought college a possibility to consider attending.
The other argument against student loan debt forgiveness even worse—so much worse. The “I suffered and struggled so everyone should suffer and struggle” brigade is out in full force today. These are the people who believe that because they had to pay off their loans, nothing should ever change for anyone or any future generation ever.
The horror https://t.co/Yzpkipoaun
— rabia O'chaudry (@rabiasquared) August 24, 2022
The history of student loan debt is not stagnant and it’s also, whether these people know it or not, based on a foundation of racism and classism. The ACLU has a great breakdown of that history and the ways in which student loan debt is a racial justice issue, including the unequal funding of HBCUs and the ways in which Black students were refused access to GI Bill benefits. But here’s an especially key bit:
Yet by the end of the 20th century, just as Black and Brown students and women gained entry after decades-long legal battles and social struggles, reactionary policymakers shifted the significant costs of higher education from the public to individual families. What had been considered a public good when it was predominantly for white men, became a public burden to be shifted to families.
College hasn’t always cost this much. It used to be affordable when it was designed for white elites, because it was deemed to be a public interest. But in the decades since, as a college education becomes normalized for low-income and middle-class families, suddenly it’s an individual, not public, cost. Meanwhile inflation has increased the cost of everything while minimum wage stays the same. These things are not accidents.
As Biden cancels (some) student debt, remember why the debt exists. A key Reagan advisor warned in 1970 that free college was producing the dangerously explosive "dynamite" of an "educated proletariat," and "we have to be selective on who we allow to go through higher education": pic.twitter.com/SWqZFRRTuN
— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) August 24, 2022
Also, on the most basic level, shouldn’t we want things things to improve for future generations? As is, it’s a lot of the same people chastising those younger than them for not doing the things they did themselves—buying houses, getting married, having children—without acknowledging that crushing financial debt, accrued from things previous generations didn’t experience in the same ways, is largely responsible for that.
“Pay off your own debt!” says a generation of pundits that went to school when classes were $100 and the minimum wage could finance a mortgage on a 2-bedroom home.
— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) August 24, 2022
But really, even if a person is not willing to accept that student loan debt is classist, racist, and looks entirely different than it did even just a few decades ago, if there’s a chance to relieve even one burden for future generations looking to access higher education, why would you oppose that? That is objectively the wrong take and those people should be embarrassed.
It is every parent’s dream that their children face equal or greater difficulty.
— Daniel Kibblesmith (@kibblesmith) August 24, 2022
a person’s reaction to student loan forgiveness is the new psychopath test
— Marisa Kabas (@MarisaKabas) August 24, 2022
If you were the recipient of a hefty PPP loan that was completely forgiven, I don’t want to hear your opinion on ANYTHING
— Zach Heltzel (@zachheltzel) August 24, 2022
So it’s “socialism” when you give $10,000 to working people to forgive student loans but it’s “economic relief” when you give $1,200,000,000,000 to the super rich to forgive their predatory loans?
— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) August 24, 2022
Rough day for the “I suffered under a bad system therefore all future generations should also suffer; that, to me, is a good society” whiners out there. #studentloanforgiveness
— Rob Sheridan (@rob_sheridan) August 24, 2022
(image: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Published: Aug 24, 2022 06:16 pm