You can make plenty of decent arguments if you disagree with President Biden’s plan to forgive $10,000 of student loan debt per borrower ($20,000 for lower-income folks who received Pell Grants).
If you believe such a plan is too costly — that it will explode the deficit or spur more inflation — so be it.
I disagree with you, but I can respect your take, even as I would insist it was ill-informed.
If you believe such a plan is regressive in that it overly benefits upper-income folks who are more likely to rack up debt attending expensive colleges, fine.
Again, the evidence suggests that middle and working-class borrowers will reap the most significant benefits, but I can respect the concern.
But if your reason for opposing student loan forgiveness is some version of, “I had to pay off all of my student debt, so borrowers today should, too,” you’re just a sadist.
Not to mention an asshole.
And you should be ignored.
Well, actually, no, not ignored.
You should be mercilessly ridiculed for being the horrible human being you managed to become.
Because what, other than a terrible person, would make their hot take on student loans the proposition that “you should hurt like everyone else?”
What must it take to believe that loan forgiveness is a “slap in the face” to those who previously paid their loans on time, as Mitch McConnell, Jim Jordan, and most of the Republican universe have suggested?
That would be like saying the GI Bill or VA loan programs, which helped build the middle class (especially the white middle class), were slaps in the face to veterans from before World War Two who didn’t benefit from these things.
It’s like saying the creation of FHA loans, with their low down payments and favorable repayment terms, was a slap in the face to all those borrowers who previously had been required to come with half the cost of the house upfront and who had only fifteen years to pay off the mortgage.
It’s like saying that providing indoor plumbing and electricity to rural places lacking it was a slap in the face to all the hardy souls who previously had settled for shitting in an outhouse and going to bed when the sun went down.
In short, it’s a stupid argument made by unserious people, which pretty much describes the entirety of the conservative right at present.
It’s especially maddening when one considers the bad faith behind their complaints.
These aren’t people who actually believe there’s some moral obligation to pay off one’s debts.
They reflexively support Donald Trump, a man who has declared bankruptcy six times and is infamous for not paying his bills — not for contractors on his properties, not for the cost of his rallies, and not for his lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani.
They are the same folks willing to explode the deficit with a massive tax cut benefitting corporations and the wealthiest Americans, even though they knew the cuts would not pay for themselves with economic growth — as such tax cuts never do.
And speaking of those tax cuts, the right’s support for them further undermines their arguments against loan forgiveness.
After all, conservatives argue that loan forgiveness ignores the millions who didn’t go to college but went straight to the labor force or the military because they valued work over book learnin’.
In other words, loan forgiveness is an elitist handout to snobby intellectuals at the expense of the salt-of-the-Earth working class.
But aside from how wrong this perception is regarding loan forgiveness, it’s stunning to hear this complaint from conservatives, especially those who are middle class or below.
Because the same people who complain about loan forgiveness not benefitting the typical American had no problem with Trump’s tax cut, which most definitely didn’t.
. . .
Ultimately, the right’s hostility to student loan forgiveness is about three things:
- Hostility to higher education itself, which they view as a place one goes to be turned into some woke ideologue, and which they seek to discredit for purely political reasons. To wit, Donald Trump Jr.’s incessant tweets about how people with “useless” gender studies degrees will be getting all the benefits of Biden’s plan.
- Hostility to the young and poor (especially people of color) who hold such a disproportionate share of student loan debt because these constituent groups consistently vote for Democrats. And:
- A worldview that relies on the elevation of suffering to a positive good. Conservatives believe, at their core, that suffering and struggle build character. And so, if others have had to struggle in life by paying off their debts or skipping college because they couldn’t afford it, then so should everyone else.
This last one is the same mentality that causes them to support cuts in safety net programs. Fundamentally, the right believes in the value of imposing hardship on people to help them grow and improve themselves.
Because conservatism is about rigid discipline.
As such, receiving forgiveness — for loans, the commission of criminal offenses, having a child out of wedlock, or simply struggling amid so much wealth — is considered borderline sinful.
Which is ironic because loan forgiveness is actually Biblical.
Indeed, Deuteronomy 15 notes that all debts should be forgiven every seven years — something that the supposedly Bible-believing Christians of the Republican Party and the MAGAverse seem to have overlooked.
Apparently, God is also a bleeding-heart “socialist” insufficiently committed to making people hurt, despite that whole plagues and hellfire stuff.
. . .
With their hostility to student loan forgiveness, the right has revealed itself and demonstrated who they look down upon.
They look down on people who wanted to better their opportunities in life by going to college but weren’t able to get their mom or dad to write the check for them.
In short, working-class and middle-class people.
They look down on the millions of millennials and Gen Z folks who have suffered the rising cost of higher education as states cut back on direct support for colleges, prompting massive tuition hikes.
They look down on all the young people fresh from college who find themselves graduating into an economy rigged for the benefit of the few.
They are ultimately saying that college should be for those who have enough money to afford it on their own.
Like the Trump children.
Or the Wall Street financiers who wrecked the global economy fifteen years ago.
I mean, derivatives traders had no trouble paying their loans, amirite?
In a normal world, Republican voters who weren’t among the top 5–10 percent of earners would realize they were being played. They would see that attacking loan forgiveness harms people like them, perhaps people in their own families.
But in the upside-down world of the MAGA cult, middle and working-class white folks will gladly line up to slit their own throats, so long as doing so will prevent someone else from getting one over on them.
Because modern conservatism is about nothing but resentment at this point.
And it’s why we can’t have nice things.
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This post was previously published on Tim Wise’s blog.
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This article is soooo dead-on! And thank you for highlighting the Biblical application as well….”by their fruits, you shall know them”–and the hypocrisy of the reactionary right that is all based on personal benefit for only themselves….can’t see it any other way.