thomas leverett weblog

break for the student loan victims

Let's compare, for a moment, Biden's student loan write-off with Trump's 3 trillion tax break for the wealthiest. In both cases, it came out of an American treasury that can scarcely afford it, so on an absolute level I don't want to say one is good and the other is bad. Both helped a distinct subset of the American economy. In the second case, much of the benefit went offshore where most of those CEO's keep their money. But because the 3 trillion tax break was so much bigger, it probably had about the same effect on inflation. More money going around.

Now let me just say that it has a huge effect on a personal level. I remember one time that Clinton gave some kind of tax break for poor people with kids - at the time, I was a poor guy with kids. I couldn't believe anyone would do anything for the poor. I forgave him later, all his "depends what the meaning of is is" stuff, basically because he'd given me a tax break. He made me feel like someone felt my pain. This I imagine is what my sons are feeling. Both are in the position of being helped by this loan write-off.

Both were victims of my (our) assurance that an education is the way to go, that borrowing to get a higher station in life would ultimately be worth it. It didn't really work out that way for either one. There weren't jobs for the educated like there were when I got educated. Now I still bellieve that education is worthwhile just on principle. I believe that if this nation invests in the education of its own youth it will get many benefits from that. But for them, they were victims of capitalism gone bad - easy debt, high pay-off, no reward, like loan sharks (which are illegal in many states).

And saying that education is good on principle has its own hazards. In fact, that's where the cultural divide hits most strongly. If they're educated, they vote Democrat. If they're not, they tend to believe a 3 trillion tax break for the CEO's is good economic management. This country is being divided along lines such that education itself is being seen as the enemy. What does that say about the development of fascism?

posted by tom @ 6:54 AM