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Student loan forgiveness
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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I don't think this comparison really works. These people are against their money going to other people, whether it's to a public school or to pay off somebody else's student loans. Agree with them or not, those things are logically consistent.
Vouchers are my tax dollars. So they don't want their money to go to anyone else, but they're ok taking everyone else's.
School vouchers are paid for with taxes. So their money is going to other people.
Yes, but they see it as their tax money being returned to them. The argument for vouchers is that without them, they're paying for schools they don't use.
Are you operating under the absolutely bizarre assumption that the only Republicans who are in favor of school vouchers have school-aged children? Or children at all?
I'm using "they" more broadly here to include people who share that moral foundation. School vouchers slot into the same worldview as being anti-welfare and pro-private-healthcare, for example, which could be summed up as "I got mine, get your own". I don't subscribe to that personally, but it doesn't help matters to completely misrepresent that position.
I do not see how a childless Republican got theirs with school vouchers. The only people school vouchers benefit are people with school-age kids that want to send them to private religious school.
The reason they're in favor of school vouchers is that they hate public school and they want to religiously indoctrinate children.
You're being too literal. This is an ideology. They see having money as a proxy for responsibility and success, and redistribution of it as rewarding the unworthy. All practical manifestations of this, whether it's schools or healthcare or whatever, stem from that ideology.
Except that "the unworthy" are doctors and lawyers. Including Republican doctors and lawyers. Who will be paying back student loans their whole life. So maybe there's more to it than that.
No, because if they are worthy and pull hard enough on their bootstraps, they too with reach the apotheosis of wealth. Think of it as a trial, or perhaps a filter. If they don't make it, they need to try harder. I'd maybe compare it to Darwinism, or even to military esprit de corps.
You do know those doctors and lawyers paying back their student loans can be Republicans, right? Do you think they believe they've failed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps enough?
I'm in Indiana. I'm surrounded by Republicans. My wife has Republican relatives who are in these situations and in successful careers. This is not how they think. School vouchers are about their idea that public schools are atheist liberal institutions which will teach children to be transgender and worship Satan.
I'm basing my POV less on anecdata and moreso on reading (Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind, uh, comes to mind). With that said, I can certainly imagine that things have pulled in the direction you describe since Trump, so perhaps those sources don't reflect the current reality quite as much.
Which is a dumb and bad argument because better public schools make for the people you run into around town being smarter. Everybody wins.
Here's a fun thing about student loans: we have stupidly high tuition thanks to CA governor Reagan and president Nixon wanting to reduce the number of students protesting against the Vietnam War. Of course the excuse they used was to balance the budget. This is just one more in a long line of things that Reagan and Nixon ruined in this country for decades.
https://12ft.io/https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/
Also, the real reason school vouchers were pushed was to backdoor segregation after Brown v Board of Education desegregated schools.
https://12ft.io/https://www.forbes.com/sites/raymondpierce/2021/05/06/the-racist-history-of-school-choice/
Here's the original since 12ft.io looks a little weird on mobile. https://www.forbes.com/sites/raymondpierce/2021/05/06/the-racist-history-of-school-choice/
It's more strategic. Student loan debt is a mechanism for controlling the employment prospects of college grads.
Public debt forgiveness becomes a method for funneling students into low paying, morally hazardous jobs (prosecutors, police, the public side of the MIC, education in underfunded neighborhoods, bureaucrat in a corrupt or underfunded agency) where you've got an incentive to keep your head down and do the work rather than organize your office or resist deplorable government policies.
Private industries, similarly, offer the better salaries doing the more morally repugnant work - mining and chemical manufacturing, big finance and HFT, pharma, automotive, credit and collections - which draws in the most talented people to apply their talents in the worst ways.
You're constantly asked to sell out your principles for a paycheck/debt relief, or the most invasive and obnoxious applications of technology. You're never going into business for yourself to challenge a corporate behemoth or pursuing public work that both benefits people and pays well. You're never going into activism or politics without a corporate paymaster.
Ever notice how many SCOTUS judges and Senators are in the Federalist Society or from the Heritage Foundation relative to the Sierra Club or the ACLU? A big part of that is simply about the money.
I think you're ascribing much deeper thoughts and foresight to the average Republican voter than is warranted.
It's much bigger than "Republican voters". You'll find plenty of blue states with students drowning in debt and "business-friendly" politicians espousing the exact same "it wouldn't be fair" anti-debt relief rhetoric.
Eh, I don't think this strategy needs to go much farther than the halls of wherever the RNC is meeting that week. If this is the overarching plan, the political moves the party makes are other things that support this outcome. In this case, any narrative that amounts to "loan forgiveness is bad" is all that needs to be sold to the voter. In fact it's better that way since they'll be compelled to vote against their own interest.
TL:DR: "support your corporate overlords you peasants" doesn't sit well with most people so they just say something else instead.