Posted on 07/09/2019 9:31:37 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
62% of Democrat primary voters have a college degree. 29% have a postgrad degree.
That’s in contrast to a national average of a third of Americans with college degrees and only around 13% with postgrad degrees.
Those postgrad numbers are very significant.
MA students make up 17% of student loan borrowers, but 38% of student loan debt.
Graduate degree students borrowed $18,120 in one year compared to $5,460 for undergrads. Loan debt hits stratospheric numbers with professional degrees with medical degree debt at $161,772 and law school debt at $140,616. Much of this was due to a rule allowing unlimited grad student borrowing.
Over a third of Dem primary voters earn over $100,000 a year compared to 9% of Americans.
Democrats student loan bailout proposals are heavily tilted to favor their own primary demographic.
The number of grad students is rising as the number of undergrads is dropping. Two MAs are being awarded for every five BAs backed by unlimited borrowing and out of control tuition increases.
But a White House plan to limit the scale of student borrowing ran into Democrat opposition.
Instead Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders have decided to offer a $1.6 trillion bribe to a minority of Americans, but a majority of Democrat primary voters. Warren and Sanders have repeatedly criticized Wall Street bailouts, but their student loan proposals are even more cynical.
The $1.6 trillion giveaway is not an emergency response to an economic crisis. It’s a bailout of irresponsible behavior by an industry and some of its consumers in order to win the primaries.
Sanders and Warren are trying to bribe their way to the valued second place slot in the 2020 race.
Warren has traditionally polled best among post-grads. She’s trying to appeal to that base to get her further into the race. Bernie Sanders has lagged among the 100k+ voters. His plan has no income tests because he’s trying to improve his standing with a minority of Americans, but a third of primary voters.
They’re both scrambling for the support of the same base of young wealthy postgrads who are extremely politically active in Democrat circles and would love to get a pass on student loans.
And that demographic has already been the beneficiary of unprecedented largess.
Loans have gone from being backed by the government to being made directly by the government. When Obama first won his election, there was $140 billion in federal student debt loans. We’re now at approximately $1.2 trillion in federal loans ever since the government all but took over the business.
Turning taxpayer money into loans for a sizable chunk of the Democrat base has now led to a demand that we take a bath on that trillion plus and then buy up loans from private lenders in the bargain.
This is every bit as bad as the Wall Street bailouts that Warren and Sanders inveigh against. Their proposal is to have Americans bail out the Democrat voters they want to the tune of $1.6 trillion.
Warren and Sanders have claimed that they wanted a college loan bailout for all Americans. Demographically, their bailout is about helping them score a few points in tight primaries by appealing to a minority of Americans, who happen to be key demographics in the primary contests.
The largest concentration of student loan debt is among the under 30 and the 30-39 crowd. As college tuition rates spin out of control, younger students are likely to carry heavier debt than in the past.
This is also a group that is far more likely to vote for Democrats.
In the 2018 midterm elections, the under 30 crowd chose Democrats over Republicans, 67 to 32, and 30-44 voters picked Democrats to Republicans, 58 to 39.
Those also happen to Bernie and Liz’s base. The one they’re cannibalizing our earnings to bribe.
Student loan debt is a bigger problem among women than men and among black people than white people. Black college grads owe $53,000 in debt, almost twice as much, four years after graduation.
Black voters tend to vote for Democrats by 90 percent or more.
That doesn’t mean that their problems don’t matter. But, conversely, there’s something obscene about Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders offering a $1.6 trillion bailout to their voters.
The American people should not have to pay the tab for a $1.6 trillion primary bribe.
The socialist candidates claim that the money will be paid for by new taxes on the rich. We’ve heard that line before. All their programs are supposed to be paid for that way. In reality, the costs will be passed down to the middle class while the benefits will be reaped by Democrat politicians and their supporters.
We don’t have a cost crisis in higher education. Instead, we have a spending crisis.
Senator Elizabeth Warren ought to know. Harvard paid her $350,000 to teach one class. Senator Bernie Sanders ought to know. His wife got $200,000 in severance from the college she ran into the ground.
Both Warren and Sanders profited from out of control college spending without caring about students.
The student loan crisis was caused by a chain reaction of irresponsible spending by schools, leading to tuition hikes, and student debt spinning out of control until it approaches entirely impossible numbers.
Student loan debt increased from $90 billion in outstanding student loan debt in 1999 to $550 billion in 2011 to $1.3 trillion in 2014 to $1.6 trillion now.
$90 billion to $1.6 trillion in 20 years is a huge leap. But it can be reversed with market signals that make it clear that the era of free money that drove institutional costs and tuition hikes is over. Or we can flush trillions more down the drain while blowing up the educational bubble until it becomes too big to fail.
Another two decades of such increases would lead to a number that would consume our entire GDP.
When that day comes, the real cost won’t be $1.6 trillion. It will be our entire economy.
The answer to the student debt crisis isn’t to feed the beast, but to tell the institutions that have helped run up unfathomable amounts of institutional and student debt to go on a diet before it’s too late.
There have been enough bailouts. It’s time to stop bailing and fix the boat.
Americans can’t afford Bernie and Liz’s $1.6 trillion bribe to their voter base. Nor can we afford the cost of the bubble when it finally bursts.
Yes, and do not underestimate for a second what a damned effective bribe it will be.
and taxes have to double to pay for it
Commie RATS. Wanting to STEAL more of your money and give it away for votes. Right out of Karl Marx’ playbook.
So it is really a $1.6 trillion money-laundering scheme -- a way to shuffle taxpayer money to Leftist agitators posing as professors.
Redistribution of wealth to the upper middle class, chosen more or less at random based on whether they paid for college outright or took out loans.
I am amazed the student loan program is even discussed. Student loans are the means by which Congress chose to pay for the gold plated government retirement plans. This is why they outlawed private companies from competing for student loans as the government has a rate higher than would otherwise be normal in a competitive market. Also, Congress made it against the law for a bankruptcy judge to forgive student loans as a degree in underwater basket weaving and masturbation studies would never produce any income and would thus be forgiven, leaving those gold plated retirement plans unfunded. To forgive the loans would require Congress to raise taxes or ditch the retirement plans. Neither will happen.
Why does nobody bring this up?
I'm missing something. Will this be an Executive Order; or will it have to pass both houses of Congress and survive Court Challenges?
ML/NJ
Probably because it wont change anything. Gov will still handout loans to kids that shouldn’t borrow, and in 15 years we have the same problem and precedent for the same solution.
Maybe they can claim it’s for National Security and re-route funds from the Defense Budget
I have talked with a shocking number of Millenials for whom this is their #1 issue.
They are up to their eyeballs in student debt as a result of their own bad decisions. It is preventing them from buying houses, starting a family, or doing many other things.
But the debt is so deep they likely will never be able to pay it off. Collectors hunt them down like dogs, and the debt can not be discharged in bankruptcy.
Basically they see themselves as cornered, and the only way out is to vote their way out. Which they will.
My pet conspiracy theory is that Democrats did this on purpose, and for this reason.
our system is broken
political hacks buying votes for themselves with our money...
just like ancient Rome before it fell
When Aurelian was emperor (270—275), the practice of “giving free things” to the citizens was already well established. Bread and Circuses. (Welfare and Internet Cat/Porn Videos?). To keep them supporting the Emperor, well pacified and entertained.
Aurelian increased the size of the “free” bread given Romans (by an ounce per loaf). He also was preparing to commence distribution of “free” wine and additional welfare benefits to the citizenry... (before his death).....
As is recorded,
“48 1 He had planned also to give free wine to the people of Rome, in order that they might be supplied with it as they were with oil and bread and pork,176 all free of cost, and he had designed to make p289 this perpetual by means of the following arrangement. 2 In Etruria, all along the Aurelian Way177 as far as the Maritime Alps, there are vast tracts of land, rich and well wooded. He planned, therefore, to pay their price to the owners of these uncultivated lands, provided they wished to sell, and to settle thereon families of slaves captured in war, and then to plant the hills with vines,178 and by this means to produce wine, which was to yield no profit to the privy-purse but to be given entirely to the people of Rome. He had also made provision for the vats, the casks, the ships, and the labour. 3 Many, however, say that Aurelian was cut off before he carried this out, others that he was restrained by his prefect of the guard, who is said to have remarked: “If we give wine to the Roman people, it only remains for us to give them also chickens and geese.” 4 There is, indeed, proof that Aurelian really considered this measure, or, rather, made arrangements for carrying it out and even did so to some extent; for wine belonging to the privy-purse is stored in the porticos of the Temple of the Sun,179 which the people could obtain, not free of cost but at a price. 5 It should be known, however, that he thrice distributed largess180 among them, and that he gave to the Roman people white tunics with long sleeves, brought from the various provinces, and pure linen ones from Africa and Egypt, and that he was the first to give handkerchiefs to the Roman people, to be waved in showing approval. “
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(From the Historia Augusta, 1932 Loeb Edition, Harvard, Ch. 37, Sect. 48)
But, alas, Aurelian died (and after awhile also did the Empire, of course)...
I might be ok with forgiving individual debts but with taking some of the money back from the colleges who swindled the noobs into tens or hundreds of thousands of $$ of debt.
Make student debt dischargeable also.
These dopey students then become debt slaves and cannot start their lives with kids, marriage, etc.
The colleges and universities are the enemy. Claw back the money from their endowments.
its bigger than that... add up the new green deal, student loans,$1,000 per month gift from the government, open border for fewer jobs for Americans... all the money has to come from somewhere.... only place it can come from is increased taxes....from dah pipples for a totalitarian guvernment.
This was Joe Biden's "gift" to millennials. Ha ha ha. He was the one who pushed that through. Great ammo for Warren and Sanders.
I don't have a dog in this fight. But I'm all for Operation Chaos.
The young people will be paying double taxes for the rest of their lives.
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