📈Selective Cancellation
Ian cuts through the BS and bad-faith arguments spurred by the student loan forgiveness plan recently announced by the Biden Administration.
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Earlier this week the Biden Administration announced a student loan forgiveness plan that had been speculated about since the election. In typical fashion, the $10k relief ($20k for those with Pell Grants) for people making less than $125k was greeted with outrage from both sides. Many liberals wanted $50k or even all of the student debt canceled while conservatives decried it as a slap in the face to the working man. Party lines were drawn pretty neatly on this one and frankly arguing the most extreme ends of the spectrum is pointless.
Meanwhile, we already covered student loan forgiveness here and our thoughts have not really changed. The higher education system remains broken, simply wiping out debt is a simplified solution to a complex problem, and yet something needed to be done.
Now, despite my opposition to the plan that was unveiled, I have become very annoyed by holier-than-thou conservatives and older generations using this again as a reason to shit on “kids these days”.
Yes, I think loan commitments you accepted should be paid for, and yes I would have liked to have had help with my loans back in the day. But that was then and this is now.
The whole “I worked 2 jobs to pay back my loans” or “I paid for my kids education out of my own pocket” have been trotted out repeatedly on Twitter and Fox News over the last several days. With some takes bordering on Onion headline levels, unironically.
So that is how one side has annoyed me. On the other hand, people have been trotting out PPP loans to dunk on conservatives for accepting loan forgiveness themselves. It went as far as the White House dunking on Marjorie Taylor Green, whose antics make her a profile target.
Again, I think this misses the point. PPP loans were a rushed policy based on a global pandemic that required the government to force businesses to close in the name of Public Health (Full disclosure I took a PPP loan as my company was forced to close for 6 months). Surely there was a lot of good done by these while others took advantage of the program to commit loan fraud.
The real point is government programs, handouts, deductions, etc have ALWAYS been unfair in some way or another. In a country as large and diverse as ours there will never be a perfect plan, and even the best-intended plans will be inherently unfair to someone.
Let’s take child tax credits (sorry Alex) for example, they offer $3600/yr per child in tax credits, not to mention the ability to deduct child care costs.
Just kidding, this is a worthwhile credit. I would gladly subsidize this and enjoy my sleep.
But how about electric vehicle tax incentives…
And finally we have mortgage interest rate deductions. Quite literally a tax deduction on a loan you knowingly took out that was likely for a larger amount than was necessary. Does this sound familiar?
Student.
Loans.
And for all the pearl-clutching over doctors/lawyers/etc getting relief while making $124,999/yr no one seems to mind that mortgage deductions almost exclusively benefit the middle to the upper class.
What’s the Upside?
Student loans became a lightning rod discussion topic once again this week. But we always like to take a step back and realize that the extremes on both ends of the spectrum are the loud minority. While we highlighted some examples, there are more deductions on real estate, green credits, child care, retirement accounts. The list goes on and on and on.
In reality there are no perfect solutions to large problems facing our nation, but instead of playing victim we should realize that we are all in this together. And even more importantly remember to take every single cent the government will give you.
For Your Weekend
Read:
Rocky Mountain Massacre by Ryan Devereaux (The Intercept)
“This story opens with a single gunshot, blood pooling on the snowy ground, and a missing body. The victim: a wolf. The shooter: a member of Montana’s backcountry law enforcement. Some people call what happened a ruthless kill; others say it was part of a sanctioned harvest. Therein lies the central tension of Ryan Devereaux’s deeply reported feature about the wolves of Yellowstone, and how their fate has become tangled with the politics of Montana’s ascendant right wing. This is the (exceedingly) rare environmental policy investigation that reads like a crime thriller.” (Longreads editors)
Decider: New Movies + Shows To Watch This Weekend: Hulu’s ‘Mike’ + More
What to watch this weekend?! Well, in this corner, we have Hulu’s new biographical series, Mike, which comes from the same team that created the Tonya Harding biopic I, Tonya, and promises to tell an unbiased version of Mike Tyson’s life story over the course of its eight episodes. If you’re looking for something a little less, you know, heavyweight, Me Time is the new Netflix movie premiering Friday, which stars Kevin Hart as a buttoned-up stay at home dad who gets the chance to hang with his immature, Peter Pan-like BFF, played by Mark Wahlberg and man oh man, are there ever hijinks. And on Apple TV+, if you like your fighting outside the ring, you’ll be thrilled to hear that See is back. Jason Momoa returns as the sightless warrior Baba Voss who is fighting for his tribe’s survival in what marks the show’s third and final season.
Chuckle
