Showing posts with label crushing student debt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crushing student debt. Show all posts

Saturday, July 30, 2022

Biden Administration Flirts With Student-Loan Debtors: Throw Me A Moon Pie, Mister!

 Mardis Gras parades are an ancient tradition in New Orleans, going back to the eighteenth century. Social clubs called krewes sponsor these parades, and krewe members throw trinkets called throws at parade-goers. 

Typically, a throw is a necklace of plastic beads, but krew members also throw toys, small stuffed animals, and plastic souvenir cups. 

Every year, Louisianians flock to New Orleans to attend Mardis Gras parades and gather up the trinkets flung from the parade floats. "Throw me something, mister," is the cry of the day as parade-goers compete for the attention of a krew member preparing to toss a good throw.

Most of the stuff thrown out a Mardis Gras parades is crap. Unadorned necklaces of plastic beads are so worthless that no one even bothers to pick them up. Occasionally, however, a krewe member throws something interesting like a football or a Moon Pie, which is a chocolate-dipped marshmallow sandwich. 

College-loan debtors are much like Mardis Gras parade-goers. The Biden administration dangles various student-loan-forgiveness plans before the electorate while student debtors shout, "Throw me something, mister!"  

We already know that some of President Biden's proposals are almost as worthless as a string of plastic Mardis Gras beads. Ten thousand dollars in loan forgiveness will satisfy no one when annual tuition at a private college runs $60,000 per year, and the average student debt is about 37 grand.

Mr. Biden will almost certainly extend the pause on student-loan payments one more time, probably until after the midterm elections. But that is just another string of plastic beads. Not making loan payments for two and a half years is nice, but these loan-payment pauses do nothing to eliminate the mountains of crushing debt. 

When the midterm election season is over in November, I feel sure that 45 million student debtors will feel much like those Mardis Gras parade-goers who plod back to their cars at the end of the day with sacks of worthless beads and a hangover from drinking too much beer.

Nevertheless, everyone should cheer up. Next year there will be more Mardis Gras parades and more proposals for canceling student debt. Who knows? Maybe the Biden administration will throw you a Moon Pie!


Throw me a Moon Pie, mister!





Wednesday, July 13, 2022

"Boiling with Bitterness": Anonymous student debtor writes angry Reddit post denouncing the Democrats

We have not been appeased, and we have not forgotten. The press ignores us to the doom of the DNC this November

Posted July 13, 2022, on Reddit

Like it or not, many of the millions of us feel so sufficiently betrayed and harmed by the Biden Administration and those who chose him over just about anyone else that we will in November invoke our one and only legal means of effectively punishing them.

We are boiling with bitterness, choking with frustration, and desperate to make our pain known. We can’t afford to send our kids to good schools because of the crushing debt; we can’t take out mortgages on houses because of the suffocating interest rates. Most of us are minorities and women who thought higher education would improve our lives; not a few of us were first-generation college graduates.

When the DNC chose our candidates for us, we weren’t thrilled with Biden at first, but he won our favor by promising to seriously address the student debt crisis. When he said he’d be open to forgiving fifty thousand dollars of debt for each of us, and when he promised to forgive at least ten thousand, we stood ourselves next to him.

But then after he’d banged us and became POTUS, he began to pretend we didn’t exist. Remember several months ago when that journalist asked him two questions, the first of which was about us, and he responded by pretending the first had never been asked, answered the second, and then fled the stage? That hurt.

We have a lot of anger and bitterness, and the only legal means of making sure the Biden Administration feels it is at the polls this November. What other option do we have?

And while we’re preparing to do the unthinkable by not voting this November, the press is doing the worst thing it could possibly do for the DNC: ignoring us. By ignoring us, our cries aren’t reaching the Oval Office.

The DNC will be punished at the voting booth for choosing Biden. The only way we’ll show up is if our needs are met. Our kids need to be able to go to good schools, and we need to be able to mortgage houses, things we’d be able to do if the Biden Administration didn’t treat us like some chick he’d banged just to get a job with her dad.

We’re angry, we’re poor, and we’re not gonna take it anymore.


*****
This Reddit essay is an eloquent expression of a student-loan debtor's frustration and bitterness at being saddled with college debt that can never be paid. Richard Fossey

Despair