I think you are just reading what you want to read when you read my posts and not what I actually say. I said, "A tax is a confiscation of your money at the point of a gun" - This is true, literally armed agents, armed with guns, of the government may confiscate your money and property if you fail to pay your federal income tax. They may also throw you in prison. I don't think this is wrong. I never said I did. I never said taxes were "theft" - I'm happy to pay taxes to a certain extent. If you don't pay them, they will be taken from you at the point of a gun. I totally disagree with your nonsensical assertion that if taxes are lowered you are being "given" something akin to a handout. You aren't being given a handout. You are having less taken from you.
This is a terrific thread, a rarity down here. I've been passing out "likes" left, right, and center. Literally. I thought the column below was a great read. I'm older than the writer. Still, much of what he said applies. I paid off all my student loans. I still support student loan forgiveness. Boomers like me who paid off all of our student loans need to give millennial's a break. By David Goldstein Updated Jun 24, 2019, 3:16pm EDT I paid off my student loans in full without assistance. Yet when editorialists decry Bernie Sanders’ student debt forgiveness plan as “unfair” to those of us who already paid off our loans (as they did with Elizabeth Warren’s), they’re certainly not speaking for me. It’s the kind of argument designed to tug at our most selfish impulses while ignoring the economic and political transformations that have left a generation of college graduates struggling under an unprecedented mountain of student debt. I graduated college in 1985 with $18,000 in student loans (about $42,500 in 2019 dollars), and then diligently paid them off over the next 10 years. As a father, I saved enough for my daughter’s education to assure that she could graduate college 100 percent debt-free. I’m not rich. I didn’t always make the best financial choices. But I worked hard, played by the rules, and made good on my debts. I could be the poster child for those claiming student loan forgiveness is “unfair.” But you know what’s really unfair? The huge advantage I enjoyed graduating into the 1985 job market. I graduated with a B.A. in history — not the most valuable field of study when it comes to job qualifications. But when I entered the job market in 1985, employers were eager to hire smart kids from good universities, whatever their degree. I got the first and only job I applied for — a cushy tech job I knew absolutely nothing about — at a starting salary of $35,000 a year. That’s $82,000 in today’s money. But that’s how the job market worked for white, male boomers like me back in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s: Companies actually invested in their employees, expecting to train you on the job rather than requiring a STEM degree or years of experience at an under- or unpaid internship or fellowship. By comparison, I know smart, talented, debt-laden millennials who graduated into a post-Great Recession job market so mean and miserly that it literally had them eating out of Dumpsters. Except for those grads at the very top of the pay scale, our current tight job market hardly treats them much better. Over the past couple decades, real median wages for college graduates have either stagnated or declined, even as the costs of achieving and maintaining a middle-class lifestyle have gone through the roof, especially childcare, health care, housing — and of course, college tuition. To be clear, the only reason I graduated with so much debt was I had the privilege of attending a pricey private university. But had I chosen to attend a public institution, I likely would have graduated free and clear. That’s not the case for young people today. Whenever an old white guy like me reminds you that “I worked my way through college,” remind them that in the 1981-1982 academic year, the average in-state tuition and fees at a four-year public college or university was just $909 … back when the federal minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. That means I could have paid for my entire freshman year tuition and fees with less than seven weeks of full-time minimum-wage work at just about any shitty summer job. But over the past four decades, average public university tuition and fees have increased more than 11-fold, to $10,230 a year, while the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has barely doubled. Do the math: Today, the only way to work your way through college on the typical summer job would be to extend the summer break from June through February. So why have public universities gotten so expensive? It’s not what you probably think. Adjusted for inflation, the cost of educating students at public universities has actually increased only modestly. Rather, it’s the price that’s gone through the roof, thanks in large part to a massive shift in costs from taxpayers to students. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, student tuition as a share of total spending at our nation’s public colleges and universities rose from 24 percent in 1988 to 46 percent in 2015. And in some states, this shift in costs has been far worse. In my adopted state of Washington, once home to one of the most affordable public university systems in the nation, the funding split dramatically flipped from 70 percent state, 30 percent tuition in 1991, to 30 percent state, 70 percent tuition by 2013. Boomers like me have pulled up the ladder behind us after being educated largely at taxpayer expense. No wonder young people have piled up more than $1.5 trillion in student debt. My father, who grew up poor, used to tell us that he worked hard so that he could give his kids all the things he never had. And by far the greatest gift he gave us was the sense of economic security that defines what it means to be middle class. I want the same for my daughter, which is why it was so important to me that she graduate into today’s job market debt-free. This isn’t the economy we boomers grew up in. Tuition is expensive, wages are stagnant, and housing prices are so outrageous that the only way my daughter will likely ever own a house in Seattle like the one she grew up in is if I die in it. And if my child deserves a debt-free college education, doesn’t every child? So, yes, as a late-wave boomer with absolutely nothing to gain from Sanders’ or Warren’s plans, I enthusiastically support both student debt forgiveness and debt-free college. Not just because it would be damn good for the economy by giving a whole generation saddled by debt more freedom to build up savings, buy homes, and contribute to the economy. But because I believe in the golden rule: Give unto future generations the same opportunities and privileges my generation enjoyed. www.vox.com/first-person/2019/5/2/18527036/sanders-bernie-millennials-cancel-student-debt-forgiveness
when Sanders says he wants to wipe out debt, it won't be the universities who charged the tuition taking the haircut of course
Excellent post by Deckard. As a boomer I, too, graduated into an economy that was very easy to succeed in. 7 of my 8 brothers and sisters worked their way largely through Texas State schools, when minimum wage had equal buying power to $18/hr in today's money. Mostly at UT Austin Tuition per semester was very cheap and equal to about 100 hrs or less of minimum wages, the types of jobs unskilled students normally get.. Now tuition per semester at UT is equal to about 600 to 700 hours of minimum wage type work. When my son went very few bothered to work, but took out loans as student type jobs could barely pay for books, much less tuition. In my day IRRC the interest on student loans, was unlike now less than mortgages and did not start accruing till 6 months after graduation. The 3 to 4 yrs of compounding is another reason loans are so high. I, too paid off my loans. Easily, I might add given the factors above. I also paid for my one son's tuition for 7 years at UT undergraduate and Law. I, too was frugal. always living below my means. I do not begrudge other folks my or my son's good fortune. It is so sad to see the millennial and Generation X types having inculcated the talking points of the elite, selfishly squabbling over the crumbs left over after austerity for the many and the tax breaks for the wealthy
8 pages in 24 hours. I’d say that’s a pretty good sign Bernie got what he wanted accomplished at least in forums like this.
Haha. I meant national dialogue jagoff. This forum is a pretty good indicator of public sentiment though IMO.
AOC: "...I join Bernie Sanders, Pramila Jayapal & Ilhan Omar to forgive ALL student loans AND make colleges tuition-free. PS: for the cost of the GOP tax scam (~$2 TRILLION), we could’ve already forgiven every student loan in America w/ billions left over." (twitter.com)
For those who often repeat talking points that claim that Sanders and progressives do not cost out their proposals. http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/rpr_2_6.pdf My summary of the executive summary of the 78 page document. The policy of debt cancellation could boost real GDP by an average of $86 billion to $108 billion per year. Over the 10-year forecast, the policy generates between $861 billion and $1,083 billion in real GDP (2016 dollars). The inflationary effects of cancelling the debt are macroeconomically insignificant. • The net budgetary effect for the federal government is modest, with a likely increase in the deficit-to-GDP ratio of 0.65 to 0.75 percentage points per year. • State budget deficits as a percentage of GDP improve by about 0.11 percentage points during the entire simulation period. • Research suggests many other positive spillover effects that are not accounted for in these simulations, including increases in small business formation, degree attainment, and household formation, as well as improved access to credit and reduced household vulnerability to business cycle downturns. ,Summary we find that cancelling student debt would have a meaningful stimulus effect, particularly in the first five years, characterized by greater economic activity as measured by GDP and employment, with only moderate effects on the federal budget deficit, interest rates, and inflation over the forecast horizon. Overall, the macroeconomic consequences of student debt cancellation demonstrate that a reorientation of US higher education policy can include ambitious policy proposals like a total cancellation of all outstanding student loan debt. Higher education is a valuable social investment, with research demonstrating social returns up to five times the dollar amount of public spending in the United States (OECD 2015).
WSJ editorial board this morning: Bernie Sanders’ Old Free College Try He tries to leap Senator Warren in a single $1.6 trillion socialist bound. By The Editorial Board June 24, 2019 6:47 pm ET The Democratic presidential primary is turning into a bidding war. Bernie Sanders on Monday introduced a “revolutionary” bill to eliminate tuition at public colleges, while canceling every student loan in the country. That’s $1.6 trillion owed by 45 million people. “We will make a full and complete education a human right in America,” Mr. Sanders said. Two months ago Elizabeth Warren floated a similar plan, but with limitations. She’d forgive $640 billion in student debt: up to $50,000 a person, with the amount declining to zero as household income nears $250,000. Expunging loans for “the top 5%,” in Ms. Warren’s formulation, would worsen inequality. Mr. Sanders, in contrast, said his proposal has no caps because he happens to “believe in universality.” So Ms. Warren’s proposal is chopped liver. At Mr. Sanders’s elbow Monday was Randi Weingarten, the powerful teachers union chief. “I cannot begin to express,” she said, “the gratitude of the American Federation of Teachers—and the 1.7 million members and all of their families—for this bill.” Another speaker, describing her own debt, said partial forgiveness wouldn’t cut it, since “even erasing $50,000 would still leave me with a balance of $162,000.” Don’t forget that when Democrats nationalized student lending in 2010, they promised it would make money for the government. The Congressional Budget Office estimated $87 billion in savings over a decade. From the start this was fiction, and now Mr. Sanders is admitting it was off by a mere $1.5 trillion. As for ending tuition, that won’t address the real troubles in higher education. Thanks to creeping credentialism, many jobs that once didn’t require a bachelor’s degree now do. College-funding mechanisms make little distinction between studying nuclear engineering and pursuing contemporary dance. Administration buildings teem with associate deputy deans for diversificlusion, and schools compete to have the most climbing walls per capita. The fix isn’t to promise taxpayer-funded diplomas for everybody. Mr. Sanders said his plan would cost $2.2 trillion over 10 years and would be “fully paid for by a tax on Wall Street speculation.” A fact sheet from his office lays out a financial-transactions tax of 0.5% on stocks, 0.1% on bonds and 0.005% on derivatives. To exempt investors of modest means, he would create an offsetting tax credit for people with incomes under $50,000 or couples under $75,000. There’s no way a financial-transactions tax would pay for this. It could make America’s capital markets less liquid or push traders overseas. By lowering asset values, it would dent every 401(k) and public pension, while raising costs for institutional investors. Mr. Sanders says it would raise $2.4 trillion over a decade, but France’s version failed to meet revenue targets. The only way Mr. Sanders can possibly pay for his agenda—not only free college and this student-loan amnesty, but also a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, an expansion of Social Security, a federal job guarantee, higher teacher pay, and more—is to soak the middle class. Bernie won’t admit this, but he knows it’s true. He isn’t a socialist for nothing. Appeared in the June 25, 2019, print edition as 'Bernie’s Old Free College Try.' https://www.wsj.com/articles/bernie-sanders-old-free-college-try-11561416462?mod=hp_opin_pos2
I wonder what the geniuses at Sanders communist headquarters think will happen to University tuition costs when all debt it eliminated? Maybe the issue is that University tuition has skyrocketed over the last 30 years. Tenured professors make six figures while teaching for 6 to 9 hours a week. Layers and layers of administration fees allow more bureaucrats to suckle off the system driving tuition higher. Why not tax the University Endowments across the country and force any school accepting government guaranteed loans to keep annual tuition below $10,000. Why must students buy 'NEW' books written by professors for $100-$250 dollars as another tax on students and subsidy to these University pricks living large while students go into debt slavery.
If this country is to remain relevant, we must make higher education more easily accessible. Saddling debt on our future generations only puts this country further behind. Giving everyone a chance for free higher education will bolster the economy in the long run. Could you imagine if the state charged for a basic grade and high school education? A system where only the wealthy could attend? The model we currently have clearly is indicative of a system we need for colleges. A system where all the poor students are shipped to ghetto schools. If a kid is lucky, he will land in a middle class public system. The wealthy will continue to send their kids to private schools away from the 'poor trash' and get a proper education, paying tens of thousands a year. Anyone who thinks 'free college education' is the answer is a fool. We can't even get our grade school system working properly for the poor. What makes anyone think we can make it work for college? The internet has more knowledge than any one person can handle. We are already getting to the point where a college degree is about as useful as a high school diploma.
Not only that, but prominent conservatives are addressing the issue now. It's great to see this vital problem get more attention.
