kalm wrote: ↑Wed Oct 19, 2022 6:48 am
GannonFan wrote: ↑Wed Oct 19, 2022 6:37 am
No, Republicans are opposed to it because the Democrats are for it. That's basically politics in our day and age and not really a glowing endorsement of either party. As for the student loan debacle, it's been analyzed over and over - the main beneficiaries are predominately white, predominately upper middle class or higher, and are generally people who, in a couple of years, are going to be wealthier than the vast majority of Americans. It's as regressive of an income redistribution as possible, which was always one of the many reasons not to do a student loan relief in the way they are currently about to do it - especially when there's absolutely zero effort being made to address the root causes of the massive debt load in the first place. And not only is there zero effort to do that, Biden went even further and doubled down on making college costs, and likely future debt, even higher when he, on the backside of this loan default bailout, changed the conditions of future loan repayments and almost guaranteeing future write-offs. It's hard to have made a worse decision regarding student loan bailouts, but gotta hand it to Biden, he found a way to do just that. Economic policy is not really a strong suit for the cognitively declined.
But we’re still talking middle class right? Those making over $125,000/year don’t qualify. It’s regressive in that working class people without student debt don’t benefit but the stimulus still benefits the economy as a whole.
No, we're not talking middle class. Young folks (who this relief targets) in their mid to late 20's aren't making over $125k yet - but this relief is going to mostly college graduates (granted, some going to folks who didn't graduate) who have their whole careers ahead of them and many will be making well in excess of the $125k as soon as next year or the several years to come. Kids coming out of law school are just as likely to get this relief as a first generation student of color working a low paying, civil service job. In the end, many very well to do people are going to be cashing a $10k check from the government paid for by the 99% of people in this country who will make less in their lifetimes than those people will make in a year. That's regressive.
As to the benefit of the economy as a whole, when did you become a trickle-down guy? A rising water lifts all boats? Like any theory, they have their plusses and minuses. But also consider that we're in the midst of a generational inflation disaster, one that is very directly attributed to government overspend. Again, inflation is always a money-supply phenomenon. We pumped too much money into an economy that didn't need the additional money. Too much money chasing too few goods always results in inflation. This is at least a $400B infusion of money into an already inflationary economy. The benefits to the economy as a whole are significantly in doubt. Unless you enjoy inflation, which if you do this is welcome news.
