Student loan forgiveness: liberal win-win
Sometimes there’s so much out there it’s hard to keep up.
For instance, although I’d heard of the Pay As You Earn program, the details had previously passed under my radar screen. But my oh my, the set-up’s clever:
But the immediate taxpayer S.O.S. concerns Mr. Obama’s Pay As You Earn program. We’ve warned for years about the risks of this program as Mr. Obama has worked to expand the number of eligible borrowers and sweeten its terms.
Pay As You Earn allows students under certain circumstances to borrow an unlimited amount and then cap monthly payments at 10% of their discretionary income. If they choose productive work in the private economy, the loans are forgiven after 20 years. But if they choose to work in government or for a nonprofit, Uncle Sugar forgives their loans after 10 years.
For aspiring community organizers who go to college and then grad school before moving into a job that the government defines as public service, the forgiven debt can be $150,000 or more, courtesy of the taxpayer. And unlike with some other federal programs, when the government forgives the debt of one of the exalted class of nonprofit or government workers, the do-gooder doesn’t have to report it as income to the IRS. Who wouldn’t want to pick up $150,000 tax-free?
What’s so clever about it for Obama and the Democrats? It’s probably pretty obvious, but I’ll state it anyway: it simultaneously fills the coffers of the left’s cadre of propagandists known as the universities and assures a ready supply of recruits for the left’s foot soldiers out in the working world, those employed by government and nonprofits.
And the taxpayer finances what basically amounts to a forced contribution to the Democratic Party. Sweet.
A comment over at Megan McArdle said it best:
“Do I have this straight? An industry completely co-opted by the left and widely pitched as being a necessity for adult financial stability produces a product both junky and too expensive. And for the cherry, the buyers don’t realize it’s too expensive and useless until they graduate and discover the true burger-flipping market value of the grievance studies degree.
I can’t wait to see what the Super Geniuses at HHS have in store for the health insurance market. Could be epic.”
Heh!
It tries to do another thing. Ensure that the educated classes are the government workers.
This won’t get through Congress, right? So it seems just more of Obama appealing to his base going into the Congressional elections this fall. In any case, it underscores the importance of those elections.
they wouldnt let me go to school after i went to bronx sciecne… they dumped all us poor inner city immigrant brains on the street…
i was homeless and went to continuing ed… i did not have a pudenda… and being from the north, was way too white…
so i dont have to worry about them forgiving my loans.
just my sister… she did NOT go to bronx science, or any special programs, but did get to attend college for 30 years on your dime…
they did the same to my son… graduated with honors in STEM, but he was not a woman, or dark skinned. so even the jews hospital where i worked, dont want him. no more jews at the jews hospital (unless they can pay outright), and tons of foreign students and women…
they put me in a tiny room, ruined my reputation, gave me a stroke, told me that for the rest of my life no raises or promotions, and i held on to it so i could see my son grow up, after the feminist judge told me i have no rights…
son now quit college… had to – no one would take him to finish his phd, as no doctor wants to be the one who helped a white male… (its like helping a jew in germany… heck.. you would think the jews hospital would know better!)
of course… i do the work of someone with 30 years… but since i am a techie of the super kind, and not perfectly social… i make entry level wages..
son now is an officer in the navy
he will be stationed near the senkakus islands
me? i am waiting to die..
not even NEO could help… no one can…
i just hang on so that my wife will be ok…
she is the only person left who cares about me…
and everything is for her
i wished i could have given her a child, but they took my future away…
im priveleged.
meaning waiting to die, and its not happening fast enough… and i wont do anything to help it! but the waiting is a living hell when you lost your childhood to achieve, then lost your late teens, to be homeless in cropsy park in ny winter so you could attend courses in something rather than being on welfare… eating others left overs… trying to keep the kids from setting you on fire when sleeping, or freezing to death…
now… i have been told, i am priveleged and have no future… if i try, they will take away my pension for my wife…
pray for AOD to take me in my sleep and set my wife free to go back home and be well… they punished her enough through me… 🙁 🙁 🙁
its torture to work with people from sandia national labs, harvard, yale, and have them depend on me and think my work is phd level…
but dont tell my bosses i have only a certificate, and the rest i taught myself… which is why i work in the team with the supercomputer.. the statute of limitations for their stroke and such is coming soon, and i figure they will then fire me once they are safe.
wish i could show my stuff…
Another “reform” effort masquerading as a solution, which will not only preserve the status quo, but actually exacerbate it. They only offer to treat symptoms, while enabling the causes to fester. It’s a profitable racket.
Ann wonders if this will get through Congress. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is already the law.
It’s a self-licking ice cream cone — that has two tongues!
It’s pretty slick, too.
It’s got you coming and going… licked twice.
$$$
And some say Barry has no smarts.
&&&
He’s more Left than Black… he shows it here.
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These Leftist cadres will be elevated into an ‘above judgment caste’ — for there can be no performance criteria to hold against them.
Any performance short falls will be laid at the knees of the ‘wreckers.’
This new boon must function very much like royal jelly to produce drones for the Left, by the rite.
@@@
One is reminded of parasites that infect the brains of their hosts. It makes the host logically helpless — and part of the food chain.
Barry — in socio-economic terms — is a policy-judgment impairment that parallels heavy metal poisoning of ones nervous system.
Is it any wonder that many think he’s as mad as a hatter?
Neo: the most depressing thing about this site is the same as many other well-meaning sites, the assumption of well meaning intent by Leftists.
For many decades the Left has played the absurd but totally effective pov of pretending it was not was it was, which is totalitarian in in its pov.
The essential pov of the Left is shut up. With government, shut up is very effective.
The non-Left, interested in just life, and the functions of just life, understands the complexity of Life.
Life is complex and mystifying. That is what the non-Left understands.
The Left insists otherwise.
CapnRusty — You’re right, Pay As You Earn is already law, but I meant to refer to its expansion in Obama’s 2015 budget. That’s what I think won’t make it through Congress.
I just gotta get in on some of this endless river of gravy!
Hey folks, remember what we are dealing with here; with this administration Congress matters not one whit.
Executive orders all around!
What mystifies me is that DC (and most of the states) thinks their various government ponzi schemes can be kept afloat indefinitely. The big banks are not as disllusional, they think their derivatives ponzi can be kept afloat because they know DC will always bail them out. But nothing can bailout DC when we have our Athens moment. Since nearly all others (nation states) are in the same shape; I fear war will be the answer. I fear for my children and grandchildren.
So this was passed by the house? I’m going to vomit.
We’re 17 trillion in debt and the idiots in the house just keep adding to it.
And given that so many of today’s college students are getting worthless degrees, not to mention advanced worthless degrees, this should help accelerate BO’s race to be third world country in 20 years.
Our children and grandchildren will be so burdened with taxes to pay for each other’s sinus infections and communications degrees, they won’t have any money to charge up their little green golf cart cars, or time to hold hands and sing about world peace.
The very fact that so many students go into debt to get a “certificate” is something I would never have believed would happen. The worst thing about it is that the colleges have gotten so fat and rich while providing a mediocre product.
I first noticed this back in the 80s. I was planning to give some money to my old geology school. Imagine my surprise when I learned that they had twice as many faculty yet the same number of students as when I was there. When I read their newsletter and saw that fully half the faculty were on sabbaticals doing “research” – mostly about endangered species or environmental problems – I changed my mind about donating money to an organization that I realized was no longer turning out geologists for the oil and mining industries. The graduates were all going to work for the government or environmental organizations with educations designed to turn them against natural resource production. Gag me with a spoon!
Yes, it’s a racket designed by the progs and the debt forgiveness is just another piece of it.
And as a bonus, whoever votes against it can be vilified for not wanting poor kids to get an education.
Like Madoff, they realize the ponzi won’t go on forever. But they also realize that by the time everything is over, their clan will be setup for life, and if they are personally lucky, they’ll have taken an overseas trip away from US rendition and extradition.
parker – why would war be the answer? To wipe out the debts? But can anyone really afford to go to war?
War doesn’t wipe out debt. War wipes out the current status quo via force, thus dissolving fiat currency and rebuilding from the ashes. Fiat currently is like the invisible tax of inflation, they can always extract as much money from the US economy as they want, without anyone noticing.
It’s how the Democrats were able to fund WWII construction and social welfare before and after. It’s how they funded the welfare for blacks to destroy them. Without fiat currency, they would get stuck with the same problem King George had with the US colonies.
The incentives are the opposite of what they should be. The worst of our nation’s long term problems is that we have too many people in the public cart and not enough people pulling it. So Obama incentivizes people to jump on board the cart with more favorable loan repayment terms, when the better terms should be for those joining the private sector, which doesn’t rely on the taxpayer for its salaries, benefits and pensions.