What Are Your Thoughts on Student Loan Forgiveness?

[pbrower2a]

(09-07-2022, 03:55 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: Eric The Green

Quote:How many boomers forced their kids to go to college? Do we really know? Can we not "realize" something, when it's just you saying so from your own experience, rather than verified stats? And can such charges about what some boomers "said" even BE verified?

Indeed, my own experience talking to dozens of millennials. I went to group counseling several times during university and that was by far the biggest issue that came up. Studies are an important supplement to an educated mind, but so is drawing your own conclusions based off of repeated observations. Studies may suffice in total when they have a study for every relevant question under the sun, but even then, I would have my doubts they would be enough. 

Keep in mind I'm talking about boomers who specifically 
- forced their kids to go to college
- didn't pay for it 
- AND are bitching about student loan forgiveness 

ie, people whom you would probably hate much more than I do

Parents cannot force their kids to attend college, but I would insist upon one of three destinations for one of my kids at the end of high school: college, a union apprenticeship, or the Armed Services. If full-time work I would pressure the offspring to work somewhere that offers college education as a perquisite (which is becoming a norm among employers who have long had difficulty finding employees to hold onto low-paying, servile or menial jobs and keeping them and want employees with more intellectual nimbleness to be able to talk intelligently to customers who might want that along with their latte. 

Nobody can now reasonably see a high-quality education as a sure meal ticket. If society needs people to do low-paying jobs that offer little prestige but a requirement of a nimble mind (insurance adjusters? early elementary teachers? Preachers, often the effective leaders in some communities? Librarians?) then we are going to need inexpensive or highly-subsidized education. Even for wise decisions on politics, the ability to do complex thinking is good for detecting and rejecting crass demagogues. Say what you want, but figure how America addressed the Axis leadership: to follow the Axis leaders required that one stop thinking and numb one's conscience. Trump may not have been quite that bad, but I can't see anything about the MAGA cult that suggests a need for conscience, imagination, or rational discernment. Anti-intellectualism has been a part of American life since the time of the Know-Nothings, and one long-lasting current (the Dixiecrat faction in American life) thrived on the low educational levels and unrefined resentments of poor white people. It may be safe to assume that Strom Thurmond in 1948 and George Wallace in 1968 appealed to the stupidest white people and the economic leadership of the agrarian South but won over little else and that they are anomalies unlikely to be imitated.  Overt racism fails, although more subtle racism can flavor some statewide politics. 

It is shocking that someone like Donald Trump could get elected despite saying things that praise people for civic vice such as being "low-information voters" and ridiculing anyone with a hardship not of his own making.  But he did, and whatever it takes to prevent someone like him to achieve the Presidency. People with the attributes of well-educated people are the appropriate ones for deciding political races.  If we have highly-subsidized education, then we don't have the problem of people who get college degrees, take stopgap jobs that pay little and offer little chance of advancement, yet have hefty student loans to pay. So you will get your liberal arts degree and 'only' become a claims adjuster or bookkeeper. But you will also create prosperity for people other than yourself, and if you don't have a huge college loan to pay off, then you will do fine. The issue is to bring dignity to your work, and if that takes a strong and militant union, then such is the right way to do things. 

I see another angle: that people with little education (high-school dropouts) are still the bulk of the worst of the worst. Criminals. A cursory examination of a large death row (Texas is obvious) shows an inordinate number of people with less than twelve years of formal education (a GED counts as a high-school diploma in adulthood). One may be talking about issues other than stupidity (violent crime is dumb, and people with poor impulse control are trouble-makers who often get themselves in criminal binds), but if one recognizes that criminal deeds just aren't worth the risk one does not do crime.