this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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Two conservative groups are asking a federal court to block the Biden administration’s plan to cancel $39 billion in student loans for more than 800,000 borrowers.

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[–] Touching_Grass 116 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Democrats could rinse and repeat this political strategy to multiple white house victories. Create policy that benefits common people while showing republicans as desperate to a holes that want to stop the help at any cost.

[–] DoctorTYVM 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Has this actually helped Biden win support? Because it seems like the same people benefiting from his policies are vocally trashing him

[–] dogslayeggs 2 points 1 year ago

Not really, because it doesn't impact ALL borrowers. So the "leaning right" to far right people don't like it, and the far left people don't think it's enough, and the "leaning left" people either already support Biden or are among the borrowers that aren't included in this loan forgiveness. My girlfriend is pissed because she doesn't get any loan forgiveness even though it will take her 30 years to pay off at her current salary.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I personally wish he would just say 'vote for me and I'll cancel your loans' or something.

Why do only Republicans play dirty?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

This has been shown to work very well in developing countries.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

That may be, but if the military is that subsidized, why not some of the normal folk?

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[–] MicroWave 62 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Education Department called the suit “a desperate attempt from right wing special interests to keep hundreds of thousands of borrowers in debt.”

“We are not going to back down or give an inch when it comes to defending working families,” the department said in a statement.

[–] hydrospanner 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do they even realize that lots and lots of working families are provided for by people who, spoiler alert, are student loan borrowers?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

Yes. That's the point.

If working families get out of poverty they have to be paid more when you want to exploit their labor.

[–] DirkMcCallahan 43 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Conservatives decide to use the court system to fuck over people in need? What a shocker!

[–] Snapz 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

These "shocker!" or "I'm sooo surprised!" statements are self indulgent and actually kill the inspiration to fight back in some who read along. They don't serve a purpose beyond you personally having something to say for the sake of it.

Use that energy for a comment with some substance next time. Maybe you find and link some examples of your premise? Or promote the simple act of registering to vote so that we can get more progressive minded people in offices with mandates to do things like apply enforceable ethical standards to the Supreme Court.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (13 children)

At some point you have to wonder how does this benefit conservatives at all? On the contrary, forgiving student debt would free up the income of several people in their districts to spend money and stimulate the economy. From a church's perspective, any money that isn't being spent on repayment is potentially money being dumped into their collection plates. And for all those conservative people who want liberals/queer people/racial minorities to move away from them, they would certainly have more money to do so. Even to the most die hard conservative, I don't see how this isn't an absolute win?

[–] AstridWipenaugh 31 points 1 year ago

More liberals go to college than conservatives. So while this will hurt some of their base, it will hurt their enemy more. And it's a culture war victory for their aging boomer base that enjoyed cheap college and never had to struggle with college debt.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It helps people, and for conservatives the cruelty is the point.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Nah, they feed their base hate but that's their playbook and not the point.

Power and money are the point and poor people are easier to exploit. Everything they're doing, even abortion, is about keeping the cycle of poverty going.

[–] Chunk 9 points 1 year ago

Loan forgiveness helps college educated Americans. The GOP has vilified college education as elitist. So blocking loan forgiveness is like a PR will for the GOP base.

[–] who8mydamnoreos 8 points 1 year ago

If loan forgiveness goes though its a major win for the Democrats and they cant have that. If republicans block it, then the peasants among us can claim that Democrats were never serious about it and both parties are the same.

[–] Dran_Arcana 6 points 1 year ago

The overlap of "old people who donate to churches" and "people with student debt" is probably quite low. Debt and hardship breeds low-income, low-educated future generations, and those uneducated bloodlines are easier to convince to go to church.

Keeping middle america poor, uneducated, and struggling is a direct benefit to both religion and the corporate bottom line.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because conservatives don’t represent people they represent Wall Street

[–] JimmyJazz 2 points 1 year ago

That's a bingo

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Poor, vulnerable people are easier for the capitalist class to exploit for lower wages.

[–] dragonflyteaparty 3 points 1 year ago

Because their base has the idea that it if doesn't benefit them personally, we shouldn't do it. If they don't get "free money" too, then they missed out. How dare we correct a mistake of outrageously high college loans without just giving money to those who didn't go to college or were able to pay it off? That's not fair.

[–] afraid_of_zombies 2 points 1 year ago
  1. Conservative areas have lower education rates so it doesn't impact them as much.

  2. Banksters lobby.

  3. It might get them a few votes from their core supporters.

  4. It is denying the Democrats a win.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I know one generation in particular who is going to be pissed about this…

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The one who was able to afford a year of college after working a single part-time job over the summer?

[–] cdipierr 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My genx Brother in Law loves to bring up how he had to pay for college working a pressure washing and catering job. So that's two part-time jobs. 🙄 Of course the idea of student loan forgiveness is outrageous to him.

[–] robbotlove 44 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't understand why they keep doing research on curing cancer. it wouldn't be fair to my dad who died a couple years back. just not fair at all.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't understand why they bailed out the banks in '08, it wasn't fair to citizens who were in debt because their houses were underwater, just not fair at all.

[–] foggy 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

tbh 15 years later I wish they let the banks fail. It would have been a pretty terrible 10 years, but I think by now we'd have a functioning world better suited for today's generations/problems.

[–] preciousjewel128 4 points 1 year ago

Didn't Iceland actually jail the bankers?

[–] afraid_of_zombies 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't buy into the propaganda. There was never going to be a big crash. They would have taken a small hit and FDIC would have insured every deposit. The big banks had already unloaded the mortgage backed securities into pension funds.

But but what about Lehman Brothers? Yeah what about them? The CEO alone took a +600 million dollar bonus they year it was going "bankrupt". They can't stay open but gave him over half a billion? I don't think so. Bankrupt for normal people means rice for dinner for years, for the big banks it means they just don't feel like "working" anymore.

What should have happened is jailing the lot of them, a foreclosure freeze across the US for a year, replenishment of Pensions from AIG and Goldman and Lehman executive salaries, and finally a requirement that everyone that is to be evicted be given a court appointed attorney who has the same case load as the bank's attorney.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I am also Gen X with 2 teenagers. My college tuition was roughly $3-5k per year. For my kids, college tuition will be $9k/year. I have no problem with student loan forgiveness. College tuition has gotten out of control and student loans are holding younger generations back.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I am also genX and my tuition at a shit-tier school out west was 15k/year in 2003. After losing everything in a messy divorce my 45k owed became 70k over night (I lost all my bursaries and scholarships when I left school 2 weeks early).

[–] dragonflyteaparty 1 points 1 year ago

9k is cheap. Schools were I'm at are about 15k a year.

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[–] TenderfootGungi 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Student loans do not effect the wealthy. They simply do not have student loans. For them it is a waste of tax money.

And boomers did not need student loans because college was affordable. They believe you can still get s part time job and pay for school. So to them, quit being so lazy.

Then we have the rich boomers that pay politicians to rage for them.

[–] JimmyJazz 7 points 1 year ago

Tax money that they, by and large, don't pay anyway

[–] WalkableProgrammer 9 points 1 year ago

🙋‍♂️

[–] Aoxomoxoa35 25 points 1 year ago (7 children)

If the forgiveness fails to go through, I wish they'd at least set the interest rate to 0% and/or make the minimum payment something ridiculously low like $20/month. Both would help a lot

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

The GOP/Nazi party is sickening to watch in their cruelty.

[–] slumlordthanatos 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Really, if I were him, I would have a "better to beg forgiveness than ask permission" attitude about this. Just set it up in such a way that the Treasury can basically press a button and clear the balances, then announce it AFTER it already happened.

It's a lot harder to stop it after the fact.

[–] afraid_of_zombies 1 points 1 year ago

He would never do it but a pretty simple solution would be to not assign any money to the record keeping of the debt. The only thing that could stop that is an act of Congress, which won't happen.

If that was done for a few years the records would be hopelessly wrong and a class action could argue that there is no way to collect a debt if you can't even determine the amount owed.

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