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“Shut up and pay up, sucker,” she explained
The woman who would be matriarch of the new oligarchs was actually asked a real question by a CBS reporter. Let’s watch and listen together and then discuss.
First, credit as always to C-SPAN for getting the underlying video. Second, credit to the CBS morning news team for asking a real question in a fair manner to a leading Democrat, who is both a leading presidential contender and also a U.S. senator with a lot of clout, even in the Senate minority. A free press worked as intended by the Framers that morning.
So, there is real push back from people who paid off their debt or never got that government cheese loan, and who know that others subsidized their life chances and lifestyles with education loans under federally directed programs. Why are beauticians and plumbers on the hook for the consequences of magical evaporated debt, serious money tied up in promises when those same plumbers and beauticians can’t get such a loan on such easy terms to maybe buy their own truck, their own chair, to lease a small retail office space and equip it?
At the same time, we do have a real problem with college budget bloat, massive expansion of administrative staffs, and complete takeover of these non-teaching jobs by the radical left. We have massive debt on a portion of the rising generations, affecting their choices in housing, transportation, and employment. These debt serfs were force-fed lies about all of reality like ducks or geese being stuffed full of corn to swell their livers for foie gras.
A truly bold, non-WSJ /SJW response would be to leverage the current loan and federal grant system against the ivory towers, freeing students of crushing debt by coercing real cuts in costs, all out of the administration line items. Not one penny to be taken from any classroom. No shuffling of titles and programs, on penalty of fraud prosecutions. Stand up for students and teachers!
What do you suggest as a response to Warren’s proposal and to the underlying problems? What is feasible?
Published in Politics
Two words: Moral Hazard. That is the Democrat program.
Ah, but as with agricultural/food assistance programs and as with the housing bubble, both parties are moving their feet together on top of that great big log.
Subsidize irresponsible behavior and penalize people for acting responsibly. What could go wrong.
Hey watch the way you throw the word cheese around. BTW what exactly is a cheese loan? I’m still waiting for mine.
All I know is that I put myself , two wives , three kids through college with no loans. I have also got a big down payment on three grandchildren’s college. Of course times are different but so are what people earn. When I was in college I think minimum wage was 85 cents an hour.
Free college and erasing college debt is a winning issue. I know many people that are conservative minded but will vote Democrat for this issue. In the end people tend to follow their short term interest and this is one for a bunch of people.
Are eighteen-year-olds of age to sign contracts? My understanding is that they are.
They owe that money fair and square.
Are schools guilty of making claims about their product that were false? My understanding is that they are.
They should be paying back some of that money, because they charged more while delivering less.
Is the government also culpable in this for propping up the whole enterprise? Yes, they are.
But they aren’t going to make up that difference because they only have everyone else’s money. Any government bailout is good money after bad from the very same people – taxpayers – who had to pay for this idiocy from the beginning.
The notion that the solution to this problem is tax money to pay these young adults for their bad choice based on bad advice and continue to prop up this system in perpetuity is only made more bizarre by its being proposed by a former professor – who cooperated with and benefited directly from the system in question.
If she is to solve this conundrum Senator Warren might usefully return to the scene of the crime; she desperately needs to go back to school.
Warren is a robot. OK, a lying robot. She was like a deer in the headlights and reverted to talking points. The same thing happened when she was questioned about her Amerindian background (1/1024): “You sound like the original Rachel Dolezal a little bit.”
That reminds me, did Senator Warren say what parts of the federal budget will get cut in order to pay off the loans?
When she does, she can knock back a few more beers on Instagram for our amusement. Comedy gold, I tell ya.
Make the colleges and universities directly liable for a portion of any default by an attending student. They need to have some skin in the game.
Also has the benefit of getting at a key Democratic constituency. Educators will hate having any type of financial responsibility. The current D emphasis on a free college education is a gift to one of its biggest constituencies.
By the way, Warren’s comparison point to Social Security is illogical. She is proposing paying off past debt. This is not about going forward.
What will most likely hurt Warren here is that her student loan forgiveness plan isn’t a stand-alone, but comes on top of the questions about her ‘Medicare for All’ plan — i.e., she might have been able to spin her way out of the former, but already having been dinged, and have been forced to pull back, on the latter, it sets up a narrative that Warren’s really free and easy with Other People’s Money while not thinking her plans through for glitches, such as how does she make good for people who’ve played by the rules and have already paid their loans back? (Bernie’s just as free and loose with taxpayer $$$ here, but he’s unapologetic about his programs and gets away with easier with his core voters, who unlike Liz’s upper class urban elitists are far more likely to be among those who aren”t the ones who’ve paid off loans, but who are the perpetual college students perpetually in debt because they keep taking out loans to take college courses, in large part in order to avoid finally getting real jobs).
How about we make the universities pay back the students loans out of their massive endowments?
Harvards endowment is 41 billion.
Yale has 25 billion
Northwestern has 12 billion.
I would like to know what percentage of these outstanding loans are for classes that weren’t directly involved in acquiring a degree – people who switch majors, for example.
It’s not that I object to switching, but paying for someone else’s change of mind or heart – or their sudden realization that they aren’t as smart as they thought they were – is objectionable on top of objectionable.
Warren won’t address the real problem with student loans- college has become way,way too expensive. She won’t address that problem because the huge inflationary increases we have seen in college tuition have funded many a left wing fantasy and a very luxurious lifestyle for tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dyed in the wool Leftists.
The easy availability of Federally backed student loans essentially gave our college system an endless pool of dollars from which they could leverage to raise tuition over and over again to the point that it is way past affordable because almost all loving parents want there child to go to a “good” college to get ahead and are willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money towards that end.
Not so sure about that, I bet there are a lot of folks out there just like the father who asked the question who are outraged by the unfairness of the proposal. There are also a whole lot of Americans who never went to college who are wondering why they should pay off the debts of those who already have a leg up on them in the job market.
Or make them refund a portion of the tuition charged to all their past students. That would address the underlying fairness issue raised by the father’s question, in that case he would get some of his money back.
Most Americans haven’t got a college degree.
I’ve seen people who get a degree on a student loan, go out, don’t like the work their degree has gotten them, and then go back to college on another student loan to get a slightly different degree and start the cycle all over again — they’re in their 30s or even 40s and are in school more than in the workforce. Warren’s tuition forgiveness/free college plan would create an explosion of those types of taxpayer-funded professional students.
Maybe, but a lot more are in my position. The Obama economy broke us. We went back too school because the Obama economy would not hire without advance decrees. We are in our 50s with ten of thousands of debt. Now the Democrats want to help and wipe it out. The GOP is all about go F yourself. Guess which one they feel affection for?
Somehow I doubt the John Galt of Atlas Shrugged would accept such a government handout, let alone vote for it.
You probably should have read the book better. Galt had given up on the government and actively worked to destroy it. This would be one step in that direction.
Well it was a long and rather dull read.
Try the movie, they are slightly better.
I always try to mention this when this issue comes up – we already have a highly developed and well functioning debt relief system in this country – the Bankruptcy Code – which for some reason is rarely mentioned when people discuss this subject.
Currently, as everyone knows, student debt cannot be discharged. A few minor changes to some of the bankruptcy code sections could change that, and could change it in a way that eases many of the legitimate fairness concerns people have in how to go about addressing the issue.
For example, if you don’t like the idea of an immediate discharge, since it upsets the original bargain between borrower and lender, you could make student debt dischargeable only in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which is the kind that requires a monthly repayment plan. The debtor pays into the bankruptcy plan their monthly disposable income for a period of years. At the end of that plan, whatever debt they owe would be discharged. If that is still too radical a change, you could make student loans a priority debt, which means they will get paid ahead of other creditors in the plan. Or, you could make a student loan dischargeable only in a chapter 13 plan that pays a certain percentage of the debt back.
My point is, we already have a very good system which balances these concerns for most other kinds of debt, just waiting to be used. The changes to the code would actually be pretty minor. A good bankruptcy lawyer could draft them up in a half hour. It would be a tiny piece of legislation, less than a page, but would go a long way toward resolving this issue. It would also be a gentle enough change so that the effects would trickle down over the years – gradually changing the way colleges and lenders do business.
I still think this type of thing is the only way to solve the issue long term. The costs and risks have to be aligned with the benefits.
I learned in managing the finances and budget of a corporate department, and in setting up staff incentives, that if one group or system got a benefit but the costs and the risks were accounted to a different group or system, some really bad decisions got made.
Currently (and in most proposals to have government pay for college) much of the benefit of widespread college attendance flows to the colleges and their faculty and staff, but those colleges bear almost none of the costs and risks of whether the students they enroll will benefit from such enrollment the appropriate students and of whether the students are getting their money’s worth.
The proposals to use government to further advantage those who attend college over those who pursue other forms of personal education and development is unfair.
Many years ago (when a 4 year college degree was an $80,000 endeavor rather than todays $200,000 endeavor), a friend of mine (who had saved up to send both of his twin sons to college) was caught short when one of the 18 year old twin sons asked whether he (dad) would put up $80,000 for the son’s proposed business venture instead of paying for college. Dad realized that conceptually there was no reason to treat the one son’s business proposal differently from the other son’s plan to go to college, but it still felt weird to him. Ultimately, dad still did not fund the business proposal, as that son had not thought the proposal through enough to give it enough probability of success. The son who wanted to go to college had some solid plans for using the college education.
This was a great video. I posted it a few days ago on the Ricochet Instagram account. I’m trying to get it more active on there! Follow us here.
‘Nuf said.