Should You Be in Favor of Canceling Student Debt?

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There are any number of wonderfully cynical almost old people who have learned the hard way that student debt is one of those things that can screw you over. Sometime back oh almost 20 years ago or even more, the United States figured out how to make a college education a big fat scam.

A major component of ruining higher education in America was the ‘buy now, pay forever’ student loan scam. The people who got screwed by this over a generation ago are now pushing 50 and still trying to pay off their loans.

The aged status and titanic amounts of student loan debt have given rise, at long last, to a backlash in the form of various attempts to cancel student debt.

The backlash against the truly extreme regime of student debt has sparked another backlash. The backlash against the backlash is, I guess, the ‘fuck people who went to college’ backlash, driven primarily by people who went to college before the extreme regime of student debt truly kicked in. Which means, again supposing, that some legislators or other government types may very well try to prevent people who are already eligible for having their student loan debt forgiven from getting the relief they have earned through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF).

The point of the PSLF, enacted during the ‘W’ Bush era of extreme higher education out-of-control-ness, was that if a student loan borrower worked for 10 years in public service (e.g., the military, teaching in public school), then after the borrower made 10 years worth of payments, the federal government would cancel the rest of the debt. So basically, you pay a lot of the loan back, plus you work in some sort of public service job, and the federal government kicks in something like $5K toward the cost of your education.

That $5K definitely helps with your student debt. But it’s noooooooothing like the handouts that billionaires like Elon Musk routinely get.

Anyway, by streamlining the operation of the PSLF, Biden was able to offer relief to about a million people. Hardly seems like something to be all that suspicious of. Ah but Americans in general do not seem to have much trust in their government(s) these days. And these days it’s easy enough to come to the conclusion that at the federal level, the government is to be run by bitter old white guys and bitter old white guy acolytes. After all the state of Missouri sued to block Biden student loan forgiveness plans. If that’s not bitter, what is?

Trump’s first administration blocked most implementation of the PSLF as well as Borrower’s Defense (when you’ve gotten scammed by an supposed college that’s actually just a scam although how can you tell cuz isn’t Harvard just a scam these days?).

And one of the things the Project 2025 people have been jacking off to for quite some time now is the idea of eliminating the federal Department of Education. You might think that this has to do with smaller government and state’s rights.

It doesn’t. No one in the entire world is actually in favor of smaller government. What people are in favor of, uniformly, is a government that stops doing the shit they don’t like and does more of the shit they do like. That’s it. Period.

What the Project 2025 people DO NOT LIKE is people who are not them being educated. There is always the chance that educated people will get all smart and shit. And then they’ll get uppity. And start backtalking the Project 2025 people. Who like to think they are superior to everyone else. Because they have subconsciously realized that they are inferior to everyone else in key respects. So whoops – that’s not a comfortable feeling! Let’s mask it with another feeling entirely!

And so it goes.

The truth is, there are many many hardworking taxpaying people who have been paying their student loan debt for literally decades, in some cases almost 30 years.

And there were a lot of predatory for-profit colleges and lending done. And that the cost of a college education in the US is astronomically extreme.

But you know what? At least some banks made some money of all the interest on those student loans!

Now admittedly, the PSLF program is a complete mess. I’m not sure why it’s a mess. Right-wing folks would probably say it’s a mess because it’s a government program. Not so right-wing folks might say it’s because right-wing folks ran it for years. Because if there’s one thing right-wing folks absolutely cannot fucking do – it’s run a government anything competently.

I exaggerate. They are very competent at feeding at the public trough like greedy little pigs.

Sorry that was mean and inaccurate. I meant greedy big pigs!

So, one of the apparently effective arguments against forgiving any kind of student loan debt is what about the people who didn’t take out student loan debt or the people who didn’t go to college. How is it fair that people who did go to college and take out student loan debt get to have less debt?

I happen to be one of those people who did not take out a lot of student loan debt.

I took out a little. I paid it off quickly. I worked my way through college. I am one of those people who made sacrifices to pay my way through college. Why should I have to pay for someone else’s student loan debt? Why should someone who didn’t go to college have to pay for someone else’s student loan debt?

How about this? Could Elon Musk pay off a bunch of people’s student loan debt by paying a reasonable amount in taxes on his fortune? Why yes he could! How about that?

How about the billionaires who benefit the most from all those college educated people they try to steal wages from and collude to depress salaries (Apple, Google, etc.) – how about those folks fucking pay for it?

Here’s the thing. I hear so many times, but how will the government pay for blah blah blah? So many people act as though there’s ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING MONEY IN THE ENTIRE GODDAMN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO PAY FOR ANYTHING USEFUL WHATSOEVER.

There is money though.

IT’S JUST THAT THE BILLIONAIRES HAVE IT.

It’s not rocket science people. You truly do not even have to go to college and get screwed on your student loans to understand it.

GET THE MONEY FROM THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE IT AND WHO HAVE BEEN STEALING IT FROM EVERYONE ELSE FOR DECADES.

Because, of course, if people who took out student loans and got themselves into debt for a college education actually made decent salaries upon graduation then there wouldn’t be a whole lot of outstanding student debt to worry about. Most people, most of the time would be able to pay back their loans in 10 years. But they don’t.

If you try to pay off a student loan in 10 years, it can eat up almost a quarter of what you make per month. It’s hard to imagine that working for a lot of people. So what people do is defer paying off the principal, which means the interest keeps racking up which means they end up with a shit ton more in debt after 10 years than they had when they originally took out the loans.

Some say those student borrowers knew what they were getting into when they took out the loans. But of course they didn’t. They did not know that salaries and wages would be artificially depressed for decades or that the Great Recession or the pandemic would happen. They did not know how hard the subsequent economic conditions would make it to pay back those loans.

And, of course, a big part of the problem is that a college education is so expensive in the first place. The reason it’s so expensive is that Republicans, starting with Reagan, stopped funding state higher learning institutions on the theory that – well I’m not sure what the theory was – maybe ‘Fuck you!’ Maybe they thought everyone in college was getting degrees in art or something and they thought saying ‘fuck you’ to people who study art was just a sniggering good time. ‘Fuck you’ was, and is, after all, a popular theory behind right wing movements of all kind throughout history.

To be fair, however, the extremes of student debt from a college education have begun to decline in recent years. The gravy train of excessive everything related to higher learning has stopped producing so much gravy. Part of the reason for that is that – am I going to blame this on Republicans?

Nah. I’m gonna blame it on old people! Old people are hogging up a bigger and bigger percentage of the population as they keep getting older. Meanwhile, younger people, in a vengeful turn of events, are not being born. There are just flat out not as many young people to clog up colleges with their indebted ways.

And of course, if you start deporting fertile immigrants – well there’ll be even fewer people being born.

And then nobody will need an education and you can get rid of the Department of Education altogether, everywhere in the country, and just watch the USA slide into Japanese territory. Loads of fun! Many old people. No young people! Everyone in the world knows how jolly that is!

In the meantime, Biden was able to provide relief to certain student debtors who suffered total disability and are unable to work. Don’t get too excited though, some borrowers will owe state taxes on the amount of loan forgiveness.

Again, this doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would be too controversial. Unless you really hate people with disabilities. Which Trump might. In which case, he’s in luck! Because eliminating the Department of Education could be a good way to get rid of loan forgiveness for disabled people and allow him to mock them for having to pay back the loan servicers. Ha ha ha! Good times ahead.

Other options for those with student debt include income-driven repayment plans (IDRs). These can help lower monthly payments. You can also look for a good credit counselor to help you figure out how to manage the weirdness of American student debt. Do some due diligence to make sure you’re not getting a bogus credit ‘counselor’ out to scam you again after you already got scammed into taking out a student loan for an education that hasn’t paid off well enough to enable you to discharge the debt.

If you’re not going to get help from the government, you can pivot toward a refinance. Do a thorough comparison of rates across different lenders to see if you can get a better deal. Be sure to investigate the details and read the fine print. And get in the habit of saving your money in every possible way.

You could also, futile as it may seem, join with others to organize for change to the existing student debt regime. And you probably should. Why? Because passionate groups of people are the only way anything is going to get done these days.

Also because it’s time to GET PRETTY FED UP!