Democrats want everything to be fair. Perhaps, then, Biden (and his sycophants) can explain how his student loan forgiveness and cancellation scheme is fair. The scheme certainly isn’t even close to being fair. It benefits over 30 million Americans at the expense of 300 million of us. The scheme’s total cost stands at $400 billion.
Biden, in an effort to buy votes, has announced yet another round of student loan cancellation or forgiveness that will benefit 277,000 borrowers at a total of $7.4 billion. Biden’s attitude about votes is ‘if you can’t win them, buy them.’
The loan recipients entered into a legally binding contract to repay the loan principal and any accrued interest. Nobody twisted their arms or made promises about future earnings. The student loan amounts don’t ‘just go away.’ That amounts are real. The amounts will be transferred to all Americans as an obligation that must be met, either in the form of tax dollars paid to lenders or deficit dollars printed by the Federal Reserve paid to lenders. Biden tells folks he will make the ‘rich’ pay. The sad part is it will not be only the rich paying. Everyone will pay, including people who chose not to go to college, which is 63% of the American population.
There is currently an attempt to garner sympathy by saying the interest owed exceeds the principal borrowed. For example, Rachael Maddow said, “Republicans are suing to make sure that Americans have to pay more in student loans, to make sure that you have to pay more interest to banks on your student loans. That is what they are offering America in this election year. Isn’t that what America most needs? For banks to make more money off people who took out loans to go to college?”
I guess Maddow doesn’t understand that interest is the price paid for the use of money. Nor does she understand that money, like everything else in the world, has a price. If the principal amount is not fully repaid then, of course, the price is added to the outstanding principal and a new loan balance, one that reflects the unpaid amount plus the price of not repaying the entire principal, is reported.
By the way, blaming banks is common among Democrats. But banks play no part in issuing student loans. Passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 excluded them.
Getting a college degree increases earning prospects. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, people who obtain a degree make an average of 71% more money than those with a high-school diploma. Students in some majors can expect to experience a significantly higher cost in work, study, and effort than others. They can also expect to be paid more than those with less demanding, majors.
The college majors with the highest earnings-to-debt ratio are in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Physical sciences, computer engineering, general <img alt captext="Public Domain” class=”post-image-right” src=”https://conservativenewsbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/student-loans-and-fairness.jpg” width=”400″>engineering, chemical engineering, and computer science are the top five earning degrees. The majors with the lowest earnings-to-debt ratio included law, pharmacy, and education, mainly because of the postgraduate degrees these majors require (Note: law and pharmacy eventually generate good pay), Graduates who major in, for example, social services, fine arts, or ‘studies’ are usually paid low salaries. Many entering these lesser-paid fields are underemployed, employed in jobs that don’t traditionally require a college degree.
We finally get to the crux of Biden’s student loan and forgiveness scheme: equity. Why is equity replacing equality as a political and social goal? Because equity is inexorably linked with identity and discrimination. Biden identifies the group he thinks should receive equity (and therefore vote for him), then discriminates by creating two groups: those who receive loan forgiveness and those who pay.
Biden is denying equality to the 300 million who didn’t take out student loans, is granting equity to those who took out loans by placing them ahead of those who didn’t get loans in two ways. First, he’s making us taxpayers assume the forgiven loans. Second, he is, to buy votes, placing those who got loans ahead of the rest of us Americans by doing them a financial favor.
Biden is using a classic Democrat tactic: Make what he does for one group sound wonderful without mentioning the consequences for the other group.
But what about equality? As shown above, college majors chosen make a difference. Is it ‘fair’ to forgive equal loan amounts for a person whose STEM degree was much more difficult to get than for a person with a ‘studies’ degree?
Biden, ever the hypocrite, declared in February, 2020, in response to a voter asking whether he’d back a proposal to cancel or forgive student loan debt, responded, “I will not make that happen. I don’t think I have the authority.” Biden was correct. The Supreme Court, by a 6-3 decision, stopped his plan to buy votes. SCOTUS said Biden’s plan overstepped his authority. But still he tries to buy votes.
Have you noticed that Biden never mentions people who have paid off their federal student loans? Is that fair? Is he treating these people the same as those with outstanding loan balances?
Bottom Line: Election time draws near.
Warren Beatty has created a web page that facilitates quick responses to anything you consider outrageous: quick-rant.atwebpages.com
Image: Public Domain
