General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Forgiving Student Loans..... [View all]gratuitous
(82,849 posts)I don't begrudge other people getting them, certainly not like I begrudge an insanely profitable corporation not paying taxes because of the vagaries of the tax code (or, more likely, specific loopholes written into the code for the sole benefit of insanely profitable corporations). I don't get a deduction for children, I don't get a deduction for medical expenses. I've always tried to live within my means, and my frugal habits have set me up well for retirement in a few years. But in addition to my own carefulness, I was also lucky. Lucky I didn't have some health emergency. Lucky I didn't get plowed into by a drunk driver. Lucky I didn't have my home destroyed by a natural disaster. Lucky in countless other ways because as a white guy, I didn't have to tangle with sexism or racism keeping me down.
The current student loan situation is a decades-long effort to saddle people with unsupportable debt for the enrichment of a select few. One anecdote in the mid-1970s was sufficient for some beady-eyed congressman to start the process of making the student loan system as punitive as possible. Anytime we try to stop oppression, there are going to be people who survived that oppression who won't derive any benefit. That's a poor reason to keep an oppressive system in place.