Student Loan Deal with the Devil
Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness Bribe is a deal with the Devil. I didn't vote to pay for someone else's poor decisions; they voted to force me to pay for their mistakes. Socialism is forced servitude
This article was originally posted on X/Twitter.
This is a note to all of those young folks who recently received an email saying that your student loan debt was to be forgiven by Joe Biden—and you silently or openly rejoiced. For those of you who instead felt an unease and a pang of guilt or regret: I salute you.
You have the right to not accept Joe Biden's bribe (which may wind up carrying a price tag of $1 Trillion to be carried by everyone in the country), but 99.9% of you will either not see it for what it is, or you will willingly—perhaps even joyfully—accept it.
You will make up some excuse that "well, I know it's not fair to everyone, but I feel justified for myself, see, because the 'system' didn't give me the job and money and fancy trappings that I was promised by my counselors and parents that I would get if I got a college degree, and things just kept getting so darn expensive every year, so why should I have to pay interest to those evil banksters and all that. Fuck them."
Well, there's a reason inflation made everything more expensive since you were a child, such that you can't afford college, or buy a home, or medical insurance, or even food. That reason is passive or active decisions just like this one, made over and over again through the decades by Democrats and Republicans who gleefully spend other people's money that ends up being printed from thin air—making us all more indebted.
Most of you young folks don't understand that today, $1 buys you what you could buy for 2 cents 100 years ago. That's because the buying power of a single dollar has been slowly, sneakily, and stealthily eroded away by people that you didn't elect or even know about. The inflation they created went to pay for giveaways just like the one you got in your email inbox.
Here's what your bribe-acceptance action equates to:
By accepting this bribe, it transfers responsibility for paying YOUR student loan debt—a debt that YOU willingly chose to take on; nobody forced you to go to college and take on student loans—by shifting that burden onto everyone's shoulders in the US.
You now burden every man, woman, and child in your family, all of your friends, and all of your relatives, everyone on your street —with a $3,000 tax. That's the distributed cost of a $1 Trillion bribe.
In a household of 4, that comes out to $12,000. But of course, not everyone in the US actually pays taxes; only about half of the people in the country do. So double that $12,000 to $24,000. That's the result per household of your bribe.
Well, you say; but those evil corporations who pay no taxes! They should pay their fair share, you say. That will ease the burden on the average person.
Well that just means that all of the food, fuel, clothes and goods that you buy will have to become $24,000 more expensive, because that's how those "corporations" (i.e., other people who work for a living making the things that you want or need) pay for your additional tax demands.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
You are forcing all of the people you know to pay for YOUR college loans. When I graduated, it took me 10 years of hard work and sacrifice to pay off my own student loans; I lived in near poverty for some years, Top Ramen was a frequent dinner meal, and that monthly payment that took a bite out of my paycheck hung like a weight on my finances for many more years.
I couldn't go out to eat, or to the movies, or buy fancy clothes as often as I wanted. I had to scrimp and scrape. But I did it; I paid it off after a decade of hard work and savings. Your bribe acceptance says "Hahaha fuck you" as you spit in my face.
There are other people like plumbers and construction workers who also didn't take on student loan debt to go to college; they worked their hands to the bone for decades to build their businesses.
What your willingness to be bribed by Joe Biden says is this: "Fuck you all. I don't care that you worked hard to pay off your student loan debts; you have to pay off mine, too, whether you like it or not. And so does that plumber and bricklayer (via taxes and inflation.) You all have to work harder and give up your savings and hard-earned money for ME."
Your action equates to this, as well:
You grant the authority to a criminal cartel to forcibly enter your grandma's home and take away her money, whether she can afford it or not, to pay for your bills (via taxes or inflation, which is also a tax.)
If she resists, the cartel will put her in prison. If she resists arrest and imprisonment and tries to run away, you authorize the cartel to hunt her down at the point of a gun and shoot her for failing to pay taxes—to pay for YOUR bribe—to meet your student loan obligations.
If you say "well, Joe Biden will cut her taxes so she won't have to bear that burden" that just shifts the burden yet again onto other people; whether through higher taxes, or inflation (which is a hidden tax) you WILL end up making all of us poorer. Including, unknowingly, yourself.
If you don't think that's what happens in a socialist system, you are sadly mistaken. I suggest that you, yourself, try to not pay taxes, or not pay your rent, or your car payment, or your utility bills; and when the Feds come to your door to demand their money like a criminal cartel does, will you pay up, or choose to go to prison instead?
An honorable person who won't do a deal with the Devil would. This is the price of Socialism: it is a deal with the Devil.
I did not vote to give up my money at the threat of imprisonment or a gun barrel to fund your mistakes. You —the minority of you who voted for Joe Biden—you voted to force me to pay up, to pay both my bills and yours, or be imprisoned for your benefit.
Well, I've had enough. I can't afford to pay another $24,000 (even if its spread over 10 years) to cover your expenses, and also my own. I can't afford to keep paying more and more at the pump for gas. I can't afford to keep paying $60 for a pack of steaks at Costco that used to cost $15 when I graduated from college.
This system is irretrievably broken. Will you do something about it? If not you, who? If not now, when?
—CognitiveCarbon
I hope you enjoyed this latest post! More to come soon on AI, the Pandemic, and other topics.
CognitiveCarbon’s Content is a reader-supported publication. To support my writing and research work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber: at just $5 per month, it helps me support a family. Freedom isn’t free, and I need to work harder to pay other people’s student loans.
You can also buy me a coffee here. Thank you for reading!
CC— May I ask you to read my post and tell me your thoughts? I think there is a solution outside of our binary discussion. Much appreciated.
I would like to see the rates adjusted retroactively and then going forward — to a non-usurious level — and the borrowers credited accordingly for moneys already paid.
The resulting balance will be a fair way for them to honor their commitments and many will find their newly adjusted debt is already paid off.
The remaning debts will be honestly owed, and in due course: freedom. Otherwise, years of debt slavery — due to both government schemes and colleges’ commensurate exploitation (with their greatly inflated tuition and housing costs, and student [& parent] wooing employees & offices. ) — to which this royal scam would bind the unwise student and or their parents.
I know of such a student. His loans (beginning in 2011) were limited, his interest 2-4x the going rate at the time. His single parent got sucked in too, but with Parent Plus loans, at an even more usurious interest rate (6.7-8.5% at the time): double that of his student loans. — With just high enough an income and just non-minority enough to be the perfect patsies.
The trick was and is: no allowable student loan can possibly cover more than a minor portion of the money needed to attend an out-of-town state U or regular private college (unless he qualifies for scholarships or special status) So the unwise parent will supplement with a second loan of her own — or else, well… the routine of college following HS, then a great job for her only precious son is out (such a myth was marketed to prospective students and parents alike as much as ever the covid vaccine was)— and I’m not talking prestigious schools here; all but a few in the entire country played the game. And only a small fraction of students were brilliant enough to merit a free ride.
Well, this young man has dutifully taken on his single fool of a mom’s obligation, feeling that it is all his burden of debt. But I think she fell into a trap many parents fell into: she failed to read her Parent Plus Loan’s fine print. It said that interest accrues from the time of loan receipt and not after graduation, as it was in her day. So, her 7.5% avg interest neatly compounded her loans by the time her son graduated.
A hard worker, he had difficulty finding a job upon graduation. Seasonal wild land firefighting for the state and interim coaching jobs helped pay the minimum to avoid penalties, while he lived at home. Now, he’s a full-time firefighter and trainer with the forest service, paid a decent salary and constantly continuing his knowledge — and still ever paying what he can (after a covid respite). It’s still uphill, the high interest loans are still roaring apace. With nearly every penny going to the govt contracted loan collector, he’ll never catch up.
In my view, the whole setup is and was wrong, and perhaps both criminally usurious and slyly conceived. Most of the student borrowers were far too immature and the parents too inattentive and foolish.
The government should be examined for their egregious actions and it must be set to right.
But NO to to blanket amnesty. It not only penalizes all taxpayers — but it doubly wrongs and penalizes those who either wisely eschewed the entire loan route, took out a more modest debt and have worked & scrimped to pay it off, and parents who were positioned so to have paid back their PPL debts quickly.
So, there is more to the story than just dumb kids who took stupid classes (which have no place anyway) and who chose majors that never had any usefulness or potential. It’s likely that far less than 40% of them actually belonged in the sham vestiges of places of higher learning in the first place. Those students— and we — certainly don’t benefit, since so many of the jobs they do get are blights on the country
There is much more to tell. But the whole thing has been a great, bloated bill of goods, hard sold and stupidly bought.
What a sorry con job. What sorry patsies.