Student loan debt erased by Biden plan: $400 billion Cost of the 2017 GOP tax cuts: $1.9 Trillion

[applegrove]

Robert Reich on Mastodon:

Total student loan debt erased by Biden plan: $400 billion

Total cost of the 2017 GOP tax cuts: $1.9 trillion

Funny how Republicans have no problem giving corporations and billionaires big tax cuts, but erasing some student loan debt for millions of people is just too much.

Mastodon

[BigmanPigman]

1. That certainly puts it in perspective.

[Hekate]

2. Here's what I figure: those GOP bastards figured that by making the cost of higher ed all on...

…the students instead of the states kicking in substantially the way they did when I was a student, then offering loans, then raising the cost of tuition, fees, books, and dorms exponentially — and did I mention the loans? Then the same bastards made the loans a business instead of a government program, and arranged it so you could spend the rest of your life paying off your education, even if you dropped out.

Something is so wrong with this picture. After WWII, public college education became something a middle class kid could expect to do, for all the reasons you want an educated population, like critical thinking. Are the people who made it into a backbreaking debt system trying to tell us something about people knowing their places and not striving for better?

I have to stop. It’s almost midnight and my husband says when I start talking economics, I end up sounding like a Marxist.

[applegrove]

3. Yes. It was to make a buck and monetize higher education. People in debt

are not as powerful as those who simply have a mortgage. A mortgage turns into equity and is an investment. A student loan, in a market that pays lower salaries, is a weight around your neck and stops people from making wealth. It is about pulling the ladder up.

[applegrove]

5. Marxsm is far away from government stepping in when the market doesn't work.

Last edited Fri Mar 3, 2023, 07:42 AM - Edit history (1)

You are not a Marxist.

[applegrove]

7. Bernie ran as a socialist not a Marxist. He doesn't want to replace private

means of production with public ones. Most of what he says Canada has. We are a mixed market economy. Not Marxist by any means. His criticisms of inequality are freequent and right on. He is a serious socialist/democrat. Makes it onto the TV quite a bit as a commentator because he is so clear on congressional problems and solutions. He has gravitas

[Hekate]

9. I'm very aware of that. Sometimes midnight musings of private conversations out of context...

…of all that surrounds those conversations are not the best idea. Forgive me, but I’m going to self-delete in the light of common day.

[J_William_Ryan]

4. "Funny how Republicans have no problem giving corporations and billionaires big tax cuts"

Republicans will respond with lies about the ‘trickle-down’ effect.

[MichMan]

8. When 2017 tax cuts go away, not looking forward to the standard deduction returning to what it was.

Last edited Fri Mar 3, 2023, 10:00 AM - Edit history (1)

Lots of people like myself don't itemize.

In 2017, it was $12,700 for married filing jointly; now it is $27,700.