AOC to those who paid off student loans: 'We can support things we we won't directly benefit from'
..."Maybe student loan forgiveness doesn't impact you," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in an Instagram story, in response to a question on the benefits of debt cancellation for those who already paid off their loans. "That doesn't make it bad. I am sure there are certainly other things that student loan borrowers' taxes pay for. We can do good things and reject the scarcity mindset that says doing something good for someone else comes at the cost of something for ourselves."...But most Democrats want to see Biden enact broad student-loan relief for everyone, free of thresholds.
"Instead of continuously extending the pause under pressure," New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman recently tweeted, "he needs to cancel all student loan debt."...
https://www.businessinsider.com/aoc-those-who-paid-off-student-loans-support-debt-forgiveness-2022-5
= new reply since forum marked as read
We have many different forms of assistance given to our fellow citizens. So are you saying if you are not directly profiting (in the strictest meaning of the word) you are against these programs Its a long list my friend so think long and hard. Thanks AOC
forgiveness, not even 10K, and not even if it is capped via wealth, even after they admit that the amount paid by them, their total costs were staggeringly less than what a person nowadays has to pay. Some adopt the classic IGMSFY/drawbridge attitude of 'suck it up, buttercup' (paraphrasing) which is just maddening to see here.
The average total cost of a 4 year public bachelors degree is now over $100K. Also, when you are talking the non wealthy (which, in terms of sheer numbers of debtors, is the vast majority), black households are more impacted by student debt than white households are.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/student-loans-the-racial-wealth-divide-and-why-we-need-full-student-debt-cancellation/
snip
But a college degree does not eliminate the income gaps between white and Black workers. Black students finance their education through debt, and thus college degrees actually further contribute to the fragility of the upwardly mobile Black middle class. And because education does not achieve income parity for Black workers, the disproportionate debt Black students are taking to finance their education is reinforcing the racial wealth gap. Today, the average white family has roughly 10 times the amount of wealth as the average Black family, while white college graduates have over seven times more wealth than Black college graduates.
Most analysts believe there is a student debt problem in the United States, and even conservative scholars acknowledge some debt must be forgiven. Tuition is outpacing students’ ability to pay, and the share of students taking out loans to finance their degrees rose from roughly half (49%) to over two-thirds (69%) from 1993 to 2012, according to the Pew Research Center. Between 1993 and 2020, the average loan amount grew nearly three-fold, surpassing $30,000. Past discrimination should compel researchers and experts to seek solutions to the student debt crisis that center the experience of Black people. The Black-white wage gap is getting worse, while Black communities’ indebtedness is increasing. If we can create systems that recognize these lived experiences, we can create more equitable outcomes for everyone.
Figure 1. Changes in student debt and median income by race
A FOCUS ON INCOMES HIDES THE BLACK STUDENT DEBT CRISIS
Disagreement on the extent of the student debt problem tends to center on the positive correlation between educational attainment and income. Scholars who downplay the problem of student debt tend to assume that that relationship is causal, and that student borrowers are largely able to repay their loans out of the higher income their borrowing financed. However, too great a focus on income can lead researchers to wrongly assume that people with similar incomes have the same ability to pay back student loans.
Regardless of the incomes they make after graduation, Black households carry more student debt, which pushes down their creditworthiness. Unsurprisingly, then, Black people with a college degree have lower homeownership rates than white high school dropouts. Moreover, research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis finds that after college graduation, white households receive wealth transfers from their family to help pay for things like the purchase of a home. Black households, on the other hand, transfer their increased post-college income to help their family. Different patterns of intergenerational transfers contribute to nearly three-quarters of Black borrowers’ student loans having a higher balance today than they did originally.
Figure 2. Share of loans where current balance exceeds original
snip (much more at the top link)
Figure 3. Changes in median income and student debt, 2009 and 2019
Figure 4. Student debt-to-income ratio by income deciles, 2009 and 2019
Figure 5. Number of borrowers by loan amount and tract median income
Figure 6. Outstanding balance by loan amount and tract median income
Figure 7. Percentage of original balance remaining of borrowers who began repaying loans in 2012, by type of repayment plan
Figure 8. Share of current balances that exceed original, by origination year
Can't add a thing!
as being never promised by Biden.
Here is some evidence he did:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-biden-cant-do-on-student-debt-and-what-he-wont-do
During his first month as President, at a CNN town hall in Milwaukee, Biden was asked how much debt he planned to cancel.
snip
Finally, he concluded, “I’m prepared to write off the ten thousand dollars’ debt, but not fifty. Because I don’t think I have the authority to do it by a sign of the pen.” He appeared to be suggesting that the President has the power to cancel debt up to but not beyond some unspecified amount of money—an interpretation that is, at best, legally ambiguous.
One of the most frustrating things (to take focus back away from DU) has been that the administration has been sitting for over a year now on the memo Biden ordered the DoE to do about his actual power to forgive student loans via EO. 85 or so congress people, including some in House and Senate leadership, asked him in January to release the memo, and still nothing.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and dozens of other Democrats on Wednesday called on President Joe Biden to show his cards on student loan forgiveness and release a legal memo his administration prepared about his powers to cancel student debt.
The new request for the documents by 85 House and Senate Democrats comes as progressives are once again ramping up their pressure campaign to convince Biden to cancel large amounts of student debt ahead of the midterm elections.
“Publicly releasing the memo outlining your existing authority on cancelling student debt and broadly doing so is crucial to making a meaningful difference in the lives of current students, borrowers, and their families,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Biden that was shared with POLITICO. “It has been widely reported that the Department of Education has had this memo since April 5, 2021 after being directed to draft it.”
another source:
Over 80 lawmakers call on Biden to release memo outlining authority to cancel student debt
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/26/over-80-lawmakers-call-on-biden-to-release-memo-on-ending-student-debt-.html
Here is the letter itself, it is public domain so I can legally post it in toto
https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Final%20-%20Letter%20to%20Biden%20Cancelling%20Student%20Loan%20Debt.pdf
who are in my social sets and also in my age cohort (18-34yo, I am 25 so approaching the dead middle), as is climate change (which is a global issue. as many of us pay/paid little to no uni tuition, as we (I went to both EU (some only UK now as .. fucking Brexit) and US unis) went to EU tuition-free (or ultra low cost) schools.
In the UK it is also now an issue, as the tuition fees exploded there in the past decade or so. I had just turned 14 when the 2010 uni fee riots exploded in the UK, especially near me in London.
From Pew Research:
Kind of looks like the Boomers and older let Biden down.
