My personal take - a lot of the outrage against the student loan forgiveness is performative. The folks on the right pulling out their tried and trusted tropes ("We can't BELIEVE you're asking THIS truck driver to just GIVE YOU $10,000 of his hard-earned money! Have you no shame? Learn to take some responsibility!") while those who've b…
My personal take - a lot of the outrage against the student loan forgiveness is performative. The folks on the right pulling out their tried and trusted tropes ("We can't BELIEVE you're asking THIS truck driver to just GIVE YOU $10,000 of his hard-earned money! Have you no shame? Learn to take some responsibility!") while those who've been championing this cause are going to their safe spaces ("We cannot understand how someone who has suffered through hardship is pissed off about other people NOT suffering through the same. Why can't you be happy that future generations don't have to bear the same burdens you did? What about the PPP loans? How is this different from bailing out farmers in Iowa?"). I do not, however, see any of the smart people explaining how or why the tuitions of the public universities got so insanely expensive in the first place? Why something that was being funded by state and federal grants for the longest time kept losing those funds and hence pushing the burden of the cost on to the student year after year. We've managed to keep K-12 public education free and available to students across the board (ignore the loonies trying to destroy that, for a moment). Isn't there a way that we could keep public universities the same way? They don't have to be entirely free, but at the very least, can they not be affordable for those who desire to advance their education? (And also crack down on predatory lending - but that's a whole other show, as they say!)
If there are any resources that can provide answers beyond the outrage, would love to see those.
My personal take - a lot of the outrage against the student loan forgiveness is performative. The folks on the right pulling out their tried and trusted tropes ("We can't BELIEVE you're asking THIS truck driver to just GIVE YOU $10,000 of his hard-earned money! Have you no shame? Learn to take some responsibility!") while those who've been championing this cause are going to their safe spaces ("We cannot understand how someone who has suffered through hardship is pissed off about other people NOT suffering through the same. Why can't you be happy that future generations don't have to bear the same burdens you did? What about the PPP loans? How is this different from bailing out farmers in Iowa?"). I do not, however, see any of the smart people explaining how or why the tuitions of the public universities got so insanely expensive in the first place? Why something that was being funded by state and federal grants for the longest time kept losing those funds and hence pushing the burden of the cost on to the student year after year. We've managed to keep K-12 public education free and available to students across the board (ignore the loonies trying to destroy that, for a moment). Isn't there a way that we could keep public universities the same way? They don't have to be entirely free, but at the very least, can they not be affordable for those who desire to advance their education? (And also crack down on predatory lending - but that's a whole other show, as they say!)
If there are any resources that can provide answers beyond the outrage, would love to see those.
Yesterday I learned just how concerned right-wing America was about the taxpaying plight of the truck driver and the plumber.
Man, those two subsets of America's working class sure got a lot of love, didn't they?
FYI, I piloted trucks for 37+ years.
Why didn't I feel that love during my career?
Of course, The Triad has by far the most cogent, rational, non-partisan take on all this. (JVL is my spirit animal and as a result - is always right!)