Some rando jumped into my mentions on the twitters in reply to a twit of mine about student loan debt forgiveness with the riposte, “but what about PPP loans”? I blew it off because it was so monumentally stupid as to be unworthy of discussion. I mean, there was nothing about the PPP, the congressionally enacted Paycheck Protection Program, that bore any relation to presidential forgiveness of student loan debt under the guise of a national emergency response to COVID.
And then it happened. First, former Southern District of New York United States Attorney cum drug warrior and black man enslaver turned dream date of the chic left for being fired by Trump despite prisons filled with black and brown people for drugs, Preet Bharara.
Some people criticizing student debt forgiveness are learning there are PPP tapes
— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) August 24, 2022
But Preet, having traded in his Drug Warrior post to be a Social Justice Warrior after Trump, whom he was more than happy to serve, threw him under the bus, will take validation wherever he can find. But the White House? And that wasn’t the end of it. Even Krugman in the Times?
And many people have taken advantage of those procedures. For example, businesses owned by a real estate mogul named Donald Trump filed for bankruptcy on six occasions. During the pandemic, many business owners received government loans that were subsequently forgiven.
The issue raised here isn’t whether you favor forgiving student loan debt. It’s a very complicated issue on many levels with serious arguments for and against. But raising something as insanely false and disingenuous as the PPP loans to blunt what’s being dishonestly characterized as the right wing opposition.*
The arguments range from the simplistic moral complaint that if you take a loan, you should pay it back, to the false equivalence of a program approved by Congress, the branch of government with the authority to make legislative decisions, which was intended to be forgiven when put to its intended use from the outset. To conflate the two is mind-bogglingly stupid, and that hasn’t seemed to dissuade people who, one might expect, are more serious than to proffer arguments that would be impressive in a kindergarten debate into the sphere of public commentary.
“What about PPP loans” was good for a chuckle by some rando troll on twitter, whether because he was that dumb or he was betting I was, but Preet? Biden? Krugman? What is going on here that these putatively intelligent and serious people are raising such flagrantly dumb, disingenuous and dangerously bad arguments?
We have become a nation wallowing in the worst, most irrelevant and most irrational arguments around to win a point against the other tribe. At best, it rallies the simpletons who are already in agreement by giving them what, to their mind, makes sense even if it makes them look like the tribe of blithering idiots. And in the battle for time squandered on nonsense, the effort required to unexplain idiocy is at least a magnitude of effort greater than spewing it. It’s not worth the effort.
And lest anyone see this as an opportunity to contrast Biden with Darth Cheeto, today is not the day to test my tolerance for the logical fallacy of tu quoque. Whether the argumentation in favor of this executive action is honest, relevant and rational has nothing to do with Trump or anyone else.
Still, there will be a fiscal cost. Is this the best way to spend that money?
As I said, the question is: Compared with what? Given the choice, I’d spend money on children rather than adults — and aid to families with children was, in fact, a big part of Biden’s original spending plans. But he couldn’t get those plans through Congress, while debt relief is something he can probably do through executive action.
Do it for the children is the last refuge of the intellectually bankrupt. We made those loans available for the children so that anyone who wanted to attend college could, even if they lacked the financial ability to pay. And states cut funding, college tuition skyrocketed, and the loans kept flowing. Were they too young and stupid to grasp how bad their decision to assume all that debt while majoring in grievance studies was? Did they have parents, guidance counselors, anyone with half a brain, to guide them? Arguments invariably swirl around the most egregious examples, the extreme outliers as if it’s normal, whereas the “typical” (whatever that means) student loan debt is under $25,000, such that a $10,000 wave of the hand cuts 40%+ off the top.
There is much to consider, not the least of which is the serial transitory policy choices designed to appeal to the most simplistic tribal partisans of either tribe at the expense of the great many people who can both feel the pain caused by the extreme debt load on many well-intended, if misguided, young people for degrees which will never produce the income needed to pay them off and the false promise that a college diploma at any cost is better than no college diploma.
Much like the arguments about racism, sexism and the various other invented -isms that drive our divisive discourse, heavily ladeled atop the “but they’re children” deceit of emotionalism and moralism, they are doomed to achieve no real solution to the intransigent social and societal problems that are very real and pervasive. We are engaged in a battle of lies, and no one is saved. And whether one tribe is worse than the other when it comes to dishonesty and idiocy does not change the fact that we’re engaged in a spite battle of disingenuous claims doomed to fail and produce misery for all.
This is no way to run a nation. Not if you actually care about people, about children, and want to see real problems fixed.
*There are a great many, perhaps even a majority, of Americans who are not right wing who do not agree with this action. The media and proponents may prefer to pretend it’s only right wingers who disapprove, but that doesn’t change reality. There are a lot of liberals and moderates who saved their pennies and paid for their education, only to see themselves punished for their sacrifice and responsibility. There is no talking this out of existence.
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You kinda make Preet look like an opportunistic whore. What did he ever do to deserve rehabilitation, and what do you have against whores?
The people making these imbecilic, lazy arguments are our political and media “elite”. Our leaders. And instead of demanding better (large assumption here that they’re actually capable of better) the zealots out there in the crowd just lap it up like thirsty dogs.
Whew, I read the title and thought this was about me! (I’m so vain…)
Polonius in Act-I, Scene-III of William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet.
“ Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be.”
With everyone having access to social media, it turns out that a rising tide does not, in fact, lift all boats. Instead, letting everyone have their say has dragged even the highest performing, top-of-the-line speed boats down to the ocean floor.
We are back to the cliche where emperors parade the streets tossing coins. That is all the “policy” there is to this.
Better. To the extent that PPP loans are comparable, they only highlight how poorly student loans are run. Biden’s student loan forgiveness addresses two real issues- who should suffer for the system that we have, and what will be better for our economy in the long run. I tend to agree with him on both counts- you can’t blame the same kids you yourself rail against every week for being children because they took out these catastrophic loans. The children were essentially pawns- the federal government and other loaners pumping money into colleges that were worthless, with the accreditors that paid no attention, and US New and World Report issuing bullshit rankings, those are the players in this that should suffer.
Now- you claim people who what, did pay off loans are the people that suffer? I mean, they suffered, sure, but I don’t see much logic in “because the train ran over all those people it would be unfair to stop it from running over these other people”. The cost to the tax payer is rather paltry.
Meanwhile- try to imagine what it will be like when, in this economy, people start having to pay on their loans again. If you believe that our consumer-driven economy will be just fine, you’re fooling yourself. So in the end, to save us all, this had to happen.
If I were in the GOP, rather than whining about all of this, I’d be talking about the fact that this is not a long term solution. The GOP with its populism is somewhat shielded from the special interests that typically keep the power players from ever having to face justice for what they do. Why not do in depth reporting on how we got here, who thought it would be a great idea to turn our entire post-secondary education system into a diploma mill? And not just diplomas of course- the reality is that there are few if any people that don’t have to go into postsecondary education, every line of work requires at least a certificate in something. Do we all really think that’s because educations are so great? Or is it because money? If we want to get out of this hole we’re in, we need to figure out who is directing the digging.
I tried a couple times to figure out whether there was a cogent thought buried in there and then I gave up.
Forget it SHG, it’s Jay-town.
Here are two of a series of tweets sent out by the White House:
“Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven.”
“Congressman Vern Buchanan had over $2.3 million in PPP loans forgiven.”
On all the Sunday talk shows Biden supporters will be using PPP loan forgiveness as justifications for the student loan forgiveness.
If Mr Krugman wants to spend money on children rather than adults, how does student loan forgiveness help? The people who have to repay these loans are no longer children. The children who are coming after them won’t have their loans forgiven. Forgiving the loans at this point in time would just perpetuate the inequality that they created – the children (16-18) will be forced to take on loans to match those that got a free education(19-22) in order to compete with them in the workforce. This does not tackle the arms race that led to the loan problem ballooning in the first place, it just picks winners and losers based on an arbitrary cutoff moment.
The fiscally responsible are once again thrown under the bus because they were stupid enough to go to a college they could afford, or work jobs with lesser qualifications until they could do so(or heavens forbid, sacrifice their lives working menial jobs and saving money so their children can afford an education). The story repeats itself over and over teaching people a valuable lesson – if you’re poor, being responsible with your money makes you a chump.
The actual way to solve this is too mundane and boring to fit in a tweet I guess – improving education opportunities across the board, making teaching more prestigious, cutting off access to cheap money for colleges to use in a race for lavishness. It’s something that everyone has to contribute to – from parents changing their attitude towards schools and education, to teachers and school adminstration focusing on academics rather than daycare, to local governance that focuses on long-term improvements to the community rather than the wedge issue du jour. That sounds like a lot of work instead of just asking Big Daddy Biden to just solve everything with the stroke of a pen.
The argument I heard was that while the two are different, both PPP and student loan forgiveness served the same purpose – to help certain people remain financially stable.
Some pointed out that it is hypocritical for businesses that may not have needed the PPP money to take it while at the same time saying that loan forgiveness is unfair.
Since PPP recipients are made public, it seems like certain people will use that fact to shame you and call you a hypocrite. As in this case, if you took PPP money, you can’t complain about student loan forgiveness. And you’ll be considered a hypocrite if you argue against welfare or being anti-government.
Yes, I heard a lot of args trying desperately to make some connection between PPP and student loans. They’re all awful and devoid of reason. These args are moronic, which is obvious to anyone who chooses not to be a moron. But for those desperate to believe, no argument is too stupid to promote.
Is the point of your comment to note exceptionally dumb argument or to raise arguments that you believe have any validity whatsoever? You bring them up without offering a reason why or any position on them. Why?