'Biden's Education Department just wiped out $1.74 billion of student debt for 22,000 borrowers...'

[Draco Dracul]

"What have the Romans done for us lately?"

Please provide context and relevance for this remark.

Even when Biden removes debt, you know people are going to whine about it.

The federal government cannot remove debt. All it can do is socialize it, if it even has the legal authority to do so.

The government very much can remove debt because debt like money itself is made up by the government

[Draco Dracul]

Abusing statutory authority to transfer the debt of people with relatively high paying, secure jobs to the general taxpayer. Yeah, great job.

Taxes don't fund federal spending. Read some Modern Monetary Theory.

That is more like Modern Magical Thinking.

However, if taxes do not fund federal spending then the federal tax code should be eliminated, as that is the only just argument to have federal taxes.

Modern Monetary Theory is based on Chartalism. Under Chartalism, taxes exist to create demand for money and spending creates supply of money. If this seems ridiculous, imagine a post-apocalyptic world where a gang demands everyone pay them a hundred dollars in monopoly money or they'll be killed. With the utility of monopoly money well defined by a tax, then said gang could trade monopoly money for whatever fits their wants/needs, whatever those may be.

If the monopoly money becomes a medium of exchange because of that, it would be because of the threat of violemce if it is not used, not because it is a tax, and the value would be set by the people using it exchange it for real goods and services, which would be only indirectly related to what the gang demands. The premises of why money exists seems to be unimaginatively top down. It does not account for the fact that a medium of exhcange is a useful tool to have whether taxes exist or not and may spontaneously emerge because of it without an overarching authority mandating it.

Any implementation of money is going to be top down because it naturally favors those at the top because they can control both the nature of the exchange medium and the exchange rate. It also makes it far easier to extract surplus value from the workers.

Though I find it interesting that your hypothatical jibes with the theory of the origin of governments as stationary bandits.

I mean that's not too wierd a view for leftists to hold as most leftists view hierarchy as wrong and most leftist philosophies advocate for the end of the state.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

And as we've seen, it is possible for the Federal Government to end said liability. Which is parasitic on the very people that it is meant to help.

Yes, by either raising taxes or by printing more money, both of which incur cost on the public.

Or, you know, saying the people don't owe money which Biden has done in tiny amounts but could do in much-much more.

Like I said, the vast majority of money is owed to the government who has been imposing ridiculous punitive fees.

I'm not sure you're getting what I'm saying. I'm not talking about whether they should get the loan forgiveness or not. It's an objectively qualified statement that lifting the burden from the borrower transfers the liable debt back on to the public in order to pay back the people that loaned the money in the first place (which wasn't the government).

[CharlesPhipps]

I'm not sure you're getting what I'm saying. I'm not talking about whether they should get the loan forgiveness or not. It's an objectively qualified statement that lifting the burden from the borrower transfers the liable debt back on to the public in order to pay back the people that loaned the money in the first place (which wasn't the government).

Which I'm saying is not true. Are you aware a lot of these loans are directly to and from the government?

Which is to say, 1.5 trillion of the student in the United States is owed directly to the US government and not a third party lending in their place.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I'm not sure you're getting what I'm saying. I'm not talking about whether they should get the loan forgiveness or not. It's an objectively qualified statement that lifting the burden from the borrower transfers the liable debt back on to the public in order to pay back the people that loaned the money in the first place (which wasn't the government).

Which I'm saying is not true. Are you aware a lot of these loans are directly to and from the government?

Which is to say, 1.5 trillion of the student in the United States is owed directly to the US government and not a third party lending in their place.

Then the government still owes money to the schools that the people went to on said government credit.

[CharlesPhipps]

Then the government still owes money to the schools that the people went to on said government credit.

I worked at a university. The school gets paid before they take the classes and the government then expects you to repay it. It's like buying a car on a loan. The car dealer is paid immediately. The bank has the debt but charges interest.

Ergo, the government could cancel 1 trillion in debt now and no one would lose but the citizens would gain.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Then the government still owes money to the schools that the people went to on said government credit.

I worked at a university. The school gets paid before they take the classes and the government then expects you to repay it. It's like buying a car on a loan. The car dealer is paid immediately. The bank has the debt but charges interest.

Ergo, the government could cancel 1 trillion in debt now and no one would lose but the citizens would gain.

Thus the burden has been shifted on to the public who already paid it. Which is fine by my accounts. The original point wasn't very salient or anything, but it's true nonetheless that there is a zero sum of liability incurred on either the public, the university, and/or the borrower, to which this gets put upon the public, and it is questionably selective as to government employees getting rewarded at that, or I don't really see how public sector work socially affords debt forgiveness.

[Mickey_Rat15]

I'm not sure you're getting what I'm saying. I'm not talking about whether they should get the loan forgiveness or not. It's an objectively qualified statement that lifting the burden from the borrower transfers the liable debt back on to the public in order to pay back the people that loaned the money in the first place (which wasn't the government).

Which I'm saying is not true. Are you aware a lot of these loans are directly to and from the government?

Which is to say, 1.5 trillion of the student in the United States is owed directly to the US government and not a third party lending in their place.

The government has no money it does not extract from the people. The Congress set up a student loan program, not a transfer payment program for college. If you want to make it a transfer payment program, then that is a job for Congress, not the President. Making a loan program a transfer effectively a transfer payment program ex post facto on the President's order is an abuse of power by the excutive.

Furthermore, unearned benefits do tend to be popular with those who receive them, but that is just politicians bribing voters out of the public treasury. It also breeds resentment from those who took less risk in accumulating debt for education, giving them the realization that they have been played for suckers.

[Mickey_Rat15]

Then the government still owes money to the schools that the people went to on said government credit.

I worked at a university. The school gets paid before they take the classes and the government then expects you to repay it. It's like buying a car on a loan. The car dealer is paid immediately. The bank has the debt but charges interest.

Ergo, the government could cancel 1 trillion in debt now and no one would lose but the citizens would gain.

If the repayments for the loans are not coming in, then the loan goes from an asset to a loss, and there is less money in treasury for other items in the budget.

To say that cancelling the loan debt has no effect on anything is a deeply ignorant notion.

[CharlesPhipps]

Then the government still owes money to the schools that the people went to on said government credit.

I worked at a university. The school gets paid before they take the classes and the government then expects you to repay it. It's like buying a car on a loan. The car dealer is paid immediately. The bank has the debt but charges interest.

Ergo, the government could cancel 1 trillion in debt now and no one would lose but the citizens would gain.

If the repayments for the loans are not coming in, then the loan goes from an asset to a loss, and there is less money in treasury for other items in the budget.

To say that cancelling the loan debt has no effect on anything is a deeply ignorant notion.

Except that hurting the citizenry via excessive repayment fees and interests is the exact opposite of how a government should function. The government doesn't need the money while individuals certainly do.

And the whole point is to create an educated non-in-debt middle or upper class.