Cont: The Biden Presidency Part II

[thaiboxerken]

What contradiction? What standard did he set and then violate with this?

They don't know, but they'll bitch about it anyway.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Why are we basing our standards of decency on Trump and his supporters?

That would be ~40% of voters.

57% of republicans prefer Trump over any other republican for president (if he runs that will jump to 90%+). 79% of republicans think Trump was the real winner of the last election!

But hey, if you don't think their standards of decency are acceptable then I agree - we shouldn't be basing our standards of decency on Deplorables.

 

[Aridas]

Student borrowers in shock over 'zero balance' as federal program fulfills elusive promise

In short, the public servant loan forgiveness program is now starting to work closer to as it promised, under the Biden Administration. There are still caveats and it's not even remotely a solution in and of itself for the larger student debt crisis, but it is a good step.

 

[theprestige]

Student borrowers in shock over 'zero balance' as federal program fulfills elusive promise

In short, the public servant loan forgiveness program is now starting to work closer to as it promised, under the Biden Administration. There are still caveats and it's not even remotely a solution in and of itself for the larger student debt crisis, but it is a good step.

The fact that there's a large student debt crisis makes me think maybe we taxpayers shouldn't be making so many bad loans.

We're lending people all this money, but are they paying it back? No. Are they paying it forward? Also no. We're still in a spiral of deficit spending. We're still flailing around looking for more rich people to extract more taxes from. All these loans do is enrich universities and enable them to raise their prices. Maybe we should be talking about raising taxes on universities. Get some of our money back, since their students are paying them but not us.

Really, why are we saddling entire generations with debts they can't pay back? And if college degrees really are such fantastic engines of wealth, why are college students such an obviously bad investment?

 

[Aridas]

The fact that there's a large student debt crisis makes me think maybe we taxpayers shouldn't be making so many bad loans.

Personally, I quite hesitate on focusing specifically on the taxpayers taking bad loans here - or, to change the term a bit, making an investment that either falls through or takes an extended period of time to pay for itself. Yes, that is part of the issue, but it's only one aspect of such. There are a number of issues in play, some more obvious than others. As you touched on, having a largely for profit higher education system that runs under capitalist principles is a pretty obvious one, especially when combined with a cultural perception, rightly or wrongly, of the role of college as a gatekeeper when it comes to getting a well-paying job and living a good life. Another obvious one is that wages, both in general and in a desired field have generally not at all kept up with the increases in tuition. Both of those are far more on the systemic side. Less obvious ones, though, include the sheer freedom and bewildering array of potential career choices and the frequent lack of relevant jobs to be found even if one does graduate. One certainly can blame a student for not ending up making "good" decisions there with some validity, but doing such will generally ignore the role of a state of affairs where our society has created a situation where it's ever increasingly easy to make mistakes of numerous kinds... and where some of the "mistakes" are choosing careers that really shouldn't actually be considered to be mistakes.

How do we solve such? There's very likely no specific easy fix, but there are a number of things that can be done that would help deal with some aspects of it. To poke at a couple... the availability of "free" or nearly so basic public college education, especially if there's a (local) need based guiding principle when it comes to what education is being provided (for cheap or free) would be a nice potential balance to forced high cost gatekeeping. Adding in a requirement to be a public servant in the trained field for x years to repay the lack of up front costs could also be entirely reasonable and help when it comes to the transition from education to career. Add to that more government funding to create more and better materials for undecided potential students about career paths (including career paths better served by trade schools and without higher education), including data on local availability and need, and pointedly make such available in schools.

Going further, of course, one should also examine issues like what, specifically, are the goals and results being focused on? To poke at one aspect of such as an example, the student debt crisis is acting as a drag on the economy and a drag on a number of aspects of life for especially the younger generations, including, for example, stifling entrepreneurial spirit. In short, it's very much serving to dim the future of the US in many ways. Opinions on how much effort we should be using to work for a brighter future, both for our country and the world, of course, will vary from person to person.

 

[theprestige]

Personally, I quite hesitate on focusing specifically on the taxpayers taking bad loans here - or, to change the term a bit, making an investment that either falls through or takes an extended period of time to pay for itself. Yes, that is part of the issue, but it's only one aspect of such. There are a number of issues in play, some more obvious than others. As you touched on, having a largely for profit higher education system that runs under capitalist principles is a pretty obvious one, especially when combined with a cultural perception, rightly or wrongly, of the role of college as a gatekeeper when it comes to getting a well-paying job and living a good life. Another obvious one is that wages, both in general and in a desired field have generally not at all kept up with the increases in tuition. Both of those are far more on the systemic side. Less obvious ones, though, include the sheer freedom and bewildering array of potential career choices and the frequent lack of relevant jobs to be found even if one does graduate. One certainly can blame a student for not ending up making "good" decisions there with some validity, but doing such will generally ignore the role of a state of affairs where our society has created a situation where it's ever increasingly easy to make mistakes of numerous kinds... and where some of the "mistakes" are choosing careers that really shouldn't actually be considered to be mistakes.

I tend to agree with this analysis, but wanted to clarify a few things. First of all, while it's true that there are a number of systemic issues that make these loans very risky, my point is that these loans are very risky.

Second, I don't blame students for "making a bad career choice". I think the system makes it very difficult for young people to make informed decisions about these things, for several reasons (some of which you allude to). Again, my point is not that students are choosing to be deadbeats, but that they're having trouble paying these loans. Again, these loans are very risky - to the students as well as to the lenders.

 

[Aridas]

I tend to agree with this analysis, but wanted to clarify a few things. First of all, while it's true that there are a number of systemic issues that make these loans very risky, my point is that these loans are very risky.

Second, I don't blame students for "making a bad career choice". I think the system makes it very difficult for young people to make informed decisions about these things, for several reasons (some of which you allude to). Again, my point is not that students are choosing to be deadbeats, but that they're having trouble paying these loans. Again, these loans are very risky - to the students as well as to the lenders.

To clarify on my end, as well, I had and have no intention of implying that you were blaming students for making a bad career choice, so I apologize for triggering your need to clarify there. For that part, I was merely giving an example of something of notable relevance that's often overlooked in assessments that doesn't lend itself well to being grouped as either just the student's fault or the system's fault in an objective assessment, as well as something that highlights the need to do better when it comes to examining the less directly money-based root causes and addressing them.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

The fact that there's a large student debt crisis makes me think maybe we taxpayers shouldn't be making so many bad loans.

We're lending people all this money, but are they paying it back? No. Are they paying it forward? Also no. We're still in a spiral of deficit spending. We're still flailing around looking for more rich people to extract more taxes from. All these loans do is enrich universities and enable them to raise their prices. Maybe we should be talking about raising taxes on universities. Get some of our money back, since their students are paying them but not us.

Really, why are we saddling entire generations with debts they can't pay back? And if college degrees really are such fantastic engines of wealth, why are college students such an obviously bad investment?

Colleges are increasingly funding themselves through tuition, rather than state and federal support, even as wages, even for many college educated workers, are stagnant.

Decades of mismanagement in the name small government has lead to colleges increasingly having to fund themselves through tuition, which many students cannot realistically pay back.

You're correct that the government probably ought not be making loans that we all know won't be paid back, but where you go from there really depends on your policy priorities.

 

[Delvo]

The problem with any analysis in terms of "loans that won't get paid back" is that our whole culture is still too stuck on the idea that they would/will. (It mostly worked that way in the 1950s-1970s and a bunch of people are just not letting go of ideas of how the world works that looked reasonable back then but are just simply false now.)

Kids are still being told by all the adults they meet that college is the key to making enough money to more than outweigh the cost of the loan (or even that you can work your way through without a loan). Most of the bottom economic decile of the population these days is not the uneducated but people with degrees who can't get a job that makes it worth it. College students & graduates these days tend to be essentially victims of fraud.

 

[Venom]

It is pretty crazy how eager lenders are to give fresh-out-of-high school students with no credit history $20,000. Especially crazy if they're studying art, or history, or any field that can be described as "studies". No offense to those folks but I'm not sure what kind of career they're aiming for.

I don't have much student debt. If the government agreed to outright forgive $10,000 I'd be a happy man, but I'm not on my knees praying for it. I had my loans deferred for years until early last year, COVID-19 or not. And the 14-month pandemic extension doesn't hurt.

 

[pgwenthold]

The "student loan crisis" is not because of loans to fresh out high school students attending public universities. They are paying it back. The ones that are the problem are the people at the for-profit colleges where students enroll but don't finish.

They account for most of the student loan defaults.

 

[Delvo]

The "student loan crisis" is not because of loans to fresh out high school students attending public universities. They are paying it back. The ones that are the problem are the people at the for-profit colleges where students enroll but don't finish.

They account for most of the student loan defaults.

The problem isn't just the defaults.

 

[theprestige]

The "student loan crisis" is not because of loans to fresh out high school students attending public universities. They are paying it back. The ones that are the problem are the people at the for-profit colleges where students enroll but don't finish.

They account for most of the student loan defaults.

There are two villains in your story. People who borrow heavily to get into a diploma mill and then not follow through on the basic task of milling their diploma, and the jackasses who lend to them.

I know you want this to be about the diploma mills. But this is about Biden's presidency. His student loan amnesty just encourages them, instead of cutting off the deadbeats and just not paying taxpayer money into the system.

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

The student loan amnesty you have to be fully disabled to get? Those deadbeats?

 

[theprestige]

The student loan amnesty you have to be fully disabled to get? Those deadbeats?

I don't know what you're talking about, but it sure sounds like people borrowing money they couldn't possibly be expected to pay back. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether the lender or the borrower is the biggest idiot scumbag here. But it seems pretty obvious both of them are idiot scumbags. Unless you have good evidence these disabled people were otherwise smart and intelligent and taken advantage of by unscrupulous lenders like the US government.

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

Most people aren't born disabled. I'm speaking from the perspective of one of those deadbeats, I'm on income-based repayment with an income that qualifies me for Medicaid (thanks Obama!) and a minimum payment of zero. I *was* taken advantage of, though I can't accuse the university of doing it deliberately. At this point in the cancer treatment, I'm terrified of getting a better-paying job, perhaps even one in the field I trained in, because then I'd lose Medicaid and I just barely got done paying off the collections from medical bills from the three years I had employer-based health insurance. I don't get amnesty.

 

[theprestige]

just over three-quarters of Americans (76%) want Biden to consider "all possible nominees." for the vacancy on the Supreme Court. (ABC, reporting on an Ipsos poll)

Related: Biden made the promise of only considering black women in order to secure Representative Clyburn's campaign endorsement going into South Carolina. (Legal Insurrection, aggregating reports from ABC, the NYT, Bloomberg, and elsewhere)

 

[ZiprHead]

just over three-quarters of Americans (76%) want Biden to consider "all possible nominees." for the vacancy on the Supreme Court. (ABC, reporting on an Ipsos poll)

Related: Biden made the promise of only considering black women in order to secure Representative Clyburn's campaign endorsement going into South Carolina. (Legal Insurrection, aggregating reports from ABC, the NYT, Bloomberg, and elsewhere)

I think it's more important to fulfill his campaign promise than to pay attention to polls. Remember several other recent presidents have made similar promises so this is nothing new.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

So Biden is just going to roll over on the vaccine mandate, huh?

Recall that Trump resubmitted his Muslim ban 3 times, tweaking it each time, until it finally got the SCOTUS stamp of approval.

The SCOTUS decision to say OSHA can't enforce a workplace vaccine mandate was pretty god-damned stupid and outrageous, but there were elements of the decision that indicated that the court may be open to a narrower (though still broad) mandate.

What else is Biden up to these days? Surely there's some spare lawyers hanging around the White House that could cook up another draft and get another EO issued.

Successfully managing covid is as core to Biden's political message as being an overt racist was to Trump's. Perhaps he should fight a bit harder.

 

[Delvo]

Taking the virus seriously rescued Biden in the election, but public sentiment has shifted. Now people don't want the virus taken seriously anymore.