this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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alternative: "stopping the trolley now is unfair to all the ones already died" - student loan forgiveness opposition logic
The argument against student loan forgiveness is that there are better ways to spend the money, like on universal childcare, than on people with college degrees. Basically any social program you can think of will give a higher return to society. The only reason to support student loan forgiveness over these other programs is for votes.
You can stop the trolly anytime, but it's unfair for the people not on the train tracks.
It's the same metaphor though. Helping a group of people doesn't hurt a different group. Did they make a decision based on whether they expected to get help: yes. Does providing that help against that expectation hurt them: no.
It's an especially good metaphor because nobody is even talking about taxing tradies to fund the relief.
Can't they do both? Do they still need to kill all the people on the tracks? That part of the argument isn't coherent.
It's not a substitute for actual action. But in the meantime, it's at least better than doing nothing.
Any solution to a problem that's existed in the past is going to be unfair to those who had the problem in the past. That can't be an argument against doing something now. Some blue collar workers could turn around and use the improved system to go back and get degrees, and an improved economy from less people in debt will indirectly help others.
That's me, I did that. If I'm what's stopping it I don't think loans for horrible interest rates should be given to a jobless teenager and if you took that risk that's too bad you didn't make better investment decisions. Those loans did more harm than good and canceling them now will help reverse that a bit.
The underlying issue is that education is expensive and it should be free. I don't understand American's obsession with keeping the public stupid but I'm sure you'll defend it.
Right and that's a great thought, we should do that; just like we should nationalize healthcare and immediately eliminate private health insurers and PBMs and all the other dozen middle men that make health care more than 10 times as expensive in the US than abroad. But massive sweeping reforms are massively unpopular amongst the wealthy, and the wealthy through use of undemocratic systems of control like the Senate and Electoral college can wield supermajority control of the government despite only having support of 20% of the people -- so it's not happening until wider reform happens, and during that time tens of millions of people are being crushed by a trolly.
To really push this metaphor it's 'do we invent planes so people can stop being tied to train tracks, or do we stop the trolley.'
It's not an either or situation, it's not a zero sum game, we can do both, but we absolutely should do one regardless of our choice to do the other.
Why would people continue to get student loans if school was free?
Easy, give everyone the amount of the person with the most student loan debt.
Make the ones giving out these loans responsible for funding the program. After all, they're responsible for its necessity in the first place.
"You can only help people if everyone gets the exact same amount of help", is the dumbest argument on the planet. And I'd challenge you're premise that blue collar works are paying for white collar workers to go to school. With progressive taxation, really it is upper middle class and wealthy people that are paying for that school regardless of education background. Very little of that money is coming from the blue collar workers that aren't brining in a lot of money. If $2 of Joe the cashiers taxes go to paying for education but $20,000 of random rich guys taxes go to bettering education, I really don't think that is such an unfair system like you make it seem. The lack of a debt burden on a large subset of society ends up benefitting everyone, including the janitor or cashier.
I agree it should be fixed, but our present legislative branch is incapable of taking on that kind of progress, they can barely wipe their own ass. If that's the best they can do I think it is still better than doing nothing at all. "ploy to win votes" is another way of saying doing what people want, or what they are literally paid to do. It's funny to try and propagandize that into a negative thing.