You call another forum member a “massive asshole” and now you’re surprised and offended that the conversation didn’t go well?
Agreed. This is the MO of the real power behind the Republican Party and it has been for at least a century.
“Gee, if we aren’t careful, the vast majority will use their electoral power to take all this stuff our civilization produces and pass out the benefits somewhat more equitably. How do we prevent that?”
Answer: “Goad the have-nots to spend their energy on jealousy and resentment of other have-nots based on their getting a little more than them in some particular, such that they forget all about the tiny number who make off with practically the whole pie.”
No matter what we do to try to help people out, offer them something closer to a fair shake, the GOP is going scour the country for groups that can be goaded into jealousy. And then call us the party of jealousy for resenting the 1% hoarding so much for themselves.
The thing is, it works. I saw it on the local level while negotiating contracts for our union, and I have seen it all my adult life in the political arena.
magnet
2936
If Republicans decided to zero out all income taxes exclusively for multi-millionaire real estate developers, would that do you any harm?
Your taxes are staying the same, so by your reasoning this plan would do you no harm and you should not protest. But that’s also money that could have been used to better purpose, and so in a sense you are harmed. It is also an injustice, which arguably harms everyone.
This is certainly true, but that’s not an argument against doing anything. There are no policy changes that don’t benefit some people more than others (though it’s telling that in this example we have to go back in time to identify the harmed people!), so progressive policies will always be vulnerable to this kind of attack, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue progressive policies.
Again, Warren explicitly calls for tax increases to fund her proposals, so they’re funded by new, not existing, revenues. You can still argue that this new revenue could be better spent, but the way to do that is to propose an alternative policy and compare the merits, not talk about harm. Talking about harm is just an exercise in ginning up emotional opposition to a particular policy.
In fact, @Timex made that point much earlier. The best argument for not paying down student loans is how else the money could be used. But I haven’t heard that many better suggestions.
Of course.
But I am always going to be more optimistic about Democratic leaders who seem aware of this and avoid the worst traps. Just as an example, there is a whole boatload of international experience showing that, in the area of affirmative action, set asides for particular have-not minorities results in vastly more political blowback than affirmative action for have-nots, broadly defined.
Whether this is true or not, it seems very likely to me that set-asides for have-nots regardless of race would have been almost entirely ineffective in combating institutional racism in the US and other countries. There is never enough in the set-aside, so administrators must choose beneficiaries, and their choices would have reflected the existing status quo, institutional racism.
magnet
2941
McGrumpy said that student loan forgiveness wouldn’t cause any harm. But if it is funded by dedicated tax increases, then everyone whose taxes increase can claim they are harmed.
I mentioned a couple of alternatives above. If the goal is to promote education, then government could subsidize current students. If the goal is to reduce inequality, then means-tested handouts to everyone, regardless of age or education, would be better.
If the goal is specifically address the long-term effects of tuition payment, then it seems wrong to focus solely on people with unpaid debt. Someone who has paid off their student debt is not necessarily better off than someone who has not yet paid it off.
I suspect that many complaints are rooted in the fact that paying tuition decreases your net worth regardless of whether you are currently in debt.
They can and will, but they are not being harmed in any meaningful way. The very wealthy have income they will never use, and they accumulate wealth they will never use, and a modest incremental tax on both will have essentially no impact on them at all. You can call them harmed if you like, but I can’t really take the claim seriously.
Warren already proposes your first proposal, so it isn’t an alternative, it’s part of her plan. As to the latter, maybe you should flesh it out? If it’s a better plan than Warren’s, I’d support it, and maybe you can get her or another candidate to propose it. Otherwise, it isn’t an alternative, is it?
magnet
2943
A tax on millionaires does harm people. You can certainly argue that you don’t care about that and/or they deserve whatever suffering it brings, and maybe I’d agree. But I was specifically addressing the notion that nobody has any reason to complain, which is false.
Warren’s plan offers $50000 in student debt forgiveness if your income is under $100K. But if your income is under $100K and you didn’t go to college, Warren’s plan offers bupkus. Despite the fact that people who don’t go to college are already at a disadvantage compared to those who do. It strikes me as unjust, and possibly an attempt to pander to college-educated youth. Alternatives are not hard to come by, for instance use the millionaire tax to fund or augment a universal basic income.
I disagree. Without an accountant, the rich person in question will never know the difference. The quality of their life will not change one iota. Of course they will complain. As I said, can’t take the claim seriously.
Warren’s plan seems very specific, so we call it a plan. Your’s seems very vague. How much is the UBI, for starters? What will that cost? How will you fund it? It’s easy to critique an offered plan, but unless you offer a clear alternative, you’re just ginning up harm claims.
magnet
2945
I don’t need a detailed accounting to prefer a UBI to a student debt forgiveness plan. For the same reason, one can prefer single payer health care over the current US system even though nobody really has a spreadsheet detailing how much money would be spent on doctor salaries, procedures, and medicines etc and where the money would come from.
No, maybe you don’t, but if you want me to consider it as a better alternative to Warren’s plan, I certainly do. Is the UBI $1? $1000? $10,000? Don’t you think the answer matters?
Timex
2947
Yeah, this was stated explicitly as the only argument against this that i could think of, but when asked, it wasn’t the argument given.
No. It’s entirely funded by a wealth tax and a higher top marginal tax rate. It will by definition not affect anyone else.
magnet
2949
Back of the envelope, Warren plans to raise $275b / yr with her tax.
There are 130m households in the US.
Let’s restrict the UBI to the lower median, which means it’s technically no longer “universal” but it is more fair IMHO.
Then you could use the proceeds of Warren’s tax to add $4K / yr income to those households. Worth it, in my opinion.
Cut that number in half if you insist on a universal basic income. Still worth it.
CraigM
2950
There are lots of people harmed by the status quo, and Warrens plan doesn’t address all of them, unfortunately. But it does a good sight to help many.
Also if you feel young people not getting married, having kids, and buying houses is a problem, well, it’s a good solution for that.
But there is one group that I think needs also be addressed here, those who never went to college because of the cost. While my generation was told repeatedly ‘go to college, get good job. Don’t go to college, have crap job’ there are people who would have otherwise gone to college, who didn’t or didn’t complete college, for financial reasons. And they are the odd ones out here.
Which is a lot harder to measure. It’s obvious when someone has a massive student debt. It’s easily proven. What is harder is when someone didn’t go or complete college for financial reasons. Their futures and lives were harmed by the cost just as much as those with crippling debts, but they are a lot harder to identify.
I seriously do not believe how some of you can honestly think that giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to some Americans but not all Americans, simply based on whether they still have student loans, will not affect anyone but they hyper wealthy.
If giving money away really doesn’t affect anyone else, why do you have a problem paying back the people who already paid off their loans?
You seriously don’t see an issue with someone who intentionally forewent buying a home, because he stuck everything he had into paying back his student loans as fast as he could, then being told, “Sorry, all of your peers who bought houses, paid their money toward home equity, etc., and made minimum student loan service payments, they get their loans paid off for free. Good luck competing on pricing for buying a home, being able to take a lower paying job you actually want to do, etc. like those other people who were just gifted a few hundred thousand dollars in their 20s.”
It’s really not hard to figure out why this is a real, not imaginary injustice to people who actually paid heavy loan burdens, and I think it’s really disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
Look at it another way, if it really is not harm to anyone if someone else gets free money, why do you have such a problem with just giving people free money who have already paid their loans?
As plans go, I wouldn’t turn that one down, but I don’t know it will have any appreciable impact on dealing with the excessive college debt people are carrying. It basically covers the interest payments.
That said, I’d support it. Get someone to add it to their platform.
Who else will it affect? I get that it will make you angry about the unfairness of it, but how will it affect you financially?
