Biden / Harris Focused Discussion

[uuuhname]

Just "maybe letting banks and other lenders engage in abusive and predatory practices is a bad thing". Even if it's not the poor who suffer the most thereby.

or if you really want to deal with white and black wealth inequality you'll need to be a bit more radical than "means testing" everything....

[Endus]

or if you really want to deal with white and black wealth inequality you'll need to be a bit more radical than "means testing" everything....

Means testing itself is basically garbage. The entire concept.

[Ripster42]

From the center-left to left-wing Brooking's Institution: Student loan forgiveness is regressive whether measured by income, education, or wealth.

Do you know what "Student loan forgiveness is regressive" means in this context? Because it doesn't sound like you do, or you wouldn't have linked this. More than 50% of all student loans are held by people in the lowest quintile. Literally fig. 1 in your link. The top 20% hold less than 8% of all student loan debt. Your link backs up exactly what @DarkTZeratul said.

[tehdang]

Do you know what "Student loan forgiveness is regressive" means in this context? Because it doesn't sound like you do, or you wouldn't have linked this. More than 50% of all student loans are held by people in the lowest quintile. Literally fig. 1 in your link. The top 20% hold less than 8% of all student loan debt. Your link backs up exactly what @DarkTZeratul said.

You using a different internet than me? The very first citation says the exact opposite. Almost a third of all student debt is owed by the wealthiest 20 percent of households and only 8 percent by the bottom 20 percent.

I really would like to know how you arrived at the exact opposite.

I'm interested if @DarkTZeratul, with his strong "truthiness" claim, will be honest enough to state, for the record, that people believing differently than him on student loan forgiveness have an argument to make and can cite evidence to back it up. I'm looking for some point of honesty when he's busy accusing others of acting on feelings of truth ("You may feel this is true. It's not"), that he's willing to admit rational people can disagree for good reasons. I cited a prominent left-wing to center-left think tank for his benefit.

And for @Ripster42, clarifying that you can see the link says the precise opposite of what you claim it says would be a boon to my hope that my opponents across the aisle can operate in openness and understanding.

[Ripster42]

You using a different internet than me? The very first citation says the exact opposite. Almost a third of all student debt is owed by the wealthiest 20 percent of households and only 8 percent by the bottom 20 percent.

Literally figure 1. The "Who owes student debt by income and wealth quintiles" figure, where the bar representing the debt of the lowest quintile is right around the 52% mark. Where the bar representing the debt of the highest quintile is right around the 8% mark.

[Edge-]

Literally figure 1. The "Who owes student debt by income and wealth quintiles" figure, where the bar representing the debt of the lowest quintile is right around the 52% mark. Where the bar representing the debt of the highest quintile is right around the 8% mark.

I'm more curious where the data for that graph comes from, because I've spent a few minutes looking for where the author pulled those numbers from but I don't see a source even in his full report.

That being said, it seems like he's creating multiple similar data sets in order to find the results by using different quintile measurements.

For example measuring by income shows that yes, higher earners have more debt which...makes sense to a point if they were actually able to get jobs! And "Including Human Capital" includes the value of the education they paid for - skewing more towards top quintiles again given that they're more likely to have pursued advanced degrees.

Meanwhile, looking at wealth without that value of the degree existing as an intangible for a great many folks who have been unable to get the good paying jobs they were told they could get with a degree, the pictures shifts radically in the other direction to show that it's overwhelmingly those with the least financial wealth that bear the brunt - 50%+ of the total debt.

Ain't playing around with numbers so you can create the results you want grand!?

[unfilteredJW]

From the center-left to left-wing Brooking's Institution: Student loan forgiveness is regressive whether measured by income, education, or wealth.

You want "the height of truthiness." I'm wondering if there's even a hint of humility on people believing differently due to actual reasons supported by real evidence. My hypothesis is definitely no. I'd be very happy to be pleasantly surprised.

Thought you threw a reverse card but it was a 2.

Learn to read your links. Lol.

[ShakesForPRide]

The numbers come from the Survey of Consumer Finances which is produced by the Federal Reserve.
Looks people are mixing up wealth and income..

We're looking at

• Blue; Debt holders by Wealth Excluding Human Capital ("Earnings")
• Orange; Debt Holders by Wealth Including Human Capital (Estimated "Earnings")
• Grey; Debt Holders by income

Blue basically represents people with no wealth (assets). It's kinda like debt by age.
Blue on the Left is basically young people:

• Unlikely to have any assets
• Fresh out of their degree, no payments on debt. Groups all types of new degree holders together.
• Groups Associates Degrees holders $13k debt, with Dentistry Professional Degrees $241k debt, with guy that went to NYU film school $330k debt
• Like grouping all First time home buyers together as a debt class. Whether their mortgage is $200k or $2 million.

Blue on the Right are basically Boomers that went to College. Got lucky with low tuition and got lucky with low housing costs.

Orange factors in those sweet earnings! So now you see separation between those associates degrees versus the dentists and other professional post bac degrees. Here, those with the highest income hold the most amount of debt.

Grey is just by Income. Again, those with the highest income hold the highest quintile of debt.

[tehdang]

Literally figure 1. The "Who owes student debt by income and wealth quintiles" figure, where the bar representing the debt of the lowest quintile is right around the 52% mark. Where the bar representing the debt of the highest quintile is right around the 8% mark.

From the text prior to the figure:

Accounting correctly for both human capital and effect of subsidies in student lending plans, almost a third of all student debt is owed by the wealthiest 20 percent of households and only 8 percent by the bottom 20 percent. Across-the-board student loan forgiveness is regressive measured by income, family affluence, educational attainment—and also wealth.

Maybe it bears saying, but the link to the full paper is on the webpage.

But that’s simply because they are more likely to be young, at the beginning of their careers, and their wealth is primarily in their educational investments. They have not had time to accumulate financial assets, but they have much of their work lives ahead of them and can
expect many more years of the earnings premium associated with their education. In reality, their lifetime economic status ranks them much higher than their initial financial wealth does.

We don't usually consider people to be unfortunate to be young, because if they were old, they would've had many more years to amass wealth.

In short, measured by either income or wealth, student debt is owed disproportionately by more successful Americans with greater lifetime income and wealth

[Ripster42]

From the text prior to the figure:

That's great. Cope however you have to. The figure is incredibly clear. The poorest quintile has the most student debt. The richest quintile has the least.

[Elegiac]

That's great. Cope however you have to. The figure is incredibly clear. The poorest quintile has the most student debt. The richest quintile has the least.

I'm also gonna point out that even if the inverse were true, the fact that massive amounts of student debt exists for high income professions like medicine is kind of a problem when you already have a severe shortage of providers.

[NED funded]

Literally figure 1. The "Who owes student debt by income and wealth quintiles" figure, where the bar representing the debt of the lowest quintile is right around the 52% mark. Where the bar representing the debt of the highest quintile is right around the 8% mark.

Using measurements of wealth to mark poverty is incredibly deceptive and kinda fake news-ish

Once you graduate you are literally on negative wealth due to debt. This puts you in the bottom % of americans.

@tehdang is right here and you are all intoxicated in your own ideology

[Ripster42]

Someone that took a 500 thousand dollar mortgage for a house has negative wealth because they are 500 thousand dollars in debt. Do you think this person is poor?

Did you really just use a mortgage for a house as a comparison? Because that person doesn't have -500k in wealth. They have a 500k house that offsets that debt. That thought needed a bit more time in the oven.


Edit: Is it that people just don't understand what's going on? This is a wealth transfer from rich and/or old people to poor and/or young people. That's what this is about. It's essentially telling the boomers that decided to cut their own taxes and not fund public schools to go fuck themselves.

[NED funded]

Did you really just use a mortgage for a house as a comparison? Because that person doesn't have -500k in wealth. They have a 500k house that offsets that debt. That thought needed a bit more time in the oven.

Yeah my bad you are right here. But like you get the point right?

Like if you graduate you have student debt that subtracts from your wealth. That is why you can be poor in wealth terms but not poor in a way that actually matters which is what the paper focuses on

[Ripster42]

Yeah my bad you are right here. But like you get the point right?

Like if you graduate you have student debt that subtracts from your wealth. That is why you can be poor in wealth terms but not poor in a way that actually matters which is what the paper focuses on

I'll point you to my above edit. I understand the point very well. It's just irrelevant. College debt relief isn't about equalizing future wealth. It's about equalizing recent generations' economic footing with their parents.

[Fugus]

Using measurements of wealth to mark poverty is incredibly deceptive and kinda fake news-ish

Once you graduate you are literally on negative wealth due to debt. This puts you in the bottom % of americans.

Someone that took a 500 thousand dollar mortgage for a house has negative wealth because they are 500 thousand dollars in debt. Do you think this person is poor?
@tehdang is right here and you are all intoxicated in your own ideology

As someone who knows people who have done stuff like you mentioned, yes, they were poor.

You just mentioned people who were living beyond their means to attempt to make a point of how they weren't poor.

I have family who has graduated college and had negative wealth because they were in debt. The ones you see who don't are typically the ones who were already well off to begin with.

But watching people sign up for $400,000+ homes having to make $1,500 a month in rent when they are required to have 2 incomes in the household just to hold even doesn't mean they aren't poor because they are living in that home and also aren't the people who are being talked about helping in debt forgiveness.

Debt forgiveness is an improvement but honestly a half measure when a full measure is needed, Sanders had the better deal when it talked about tax funded public colleges. Gives the poor a way to go to college without leaving in a mountain of debt and gives the private ones a real thing to compete against and at least match them in quality while being much cheaper than they currently are.

I actually used to be on the fence about this when Sanders proposed it but after watching the US, under Trump and the GOP with DNC on board, give over twice the amount to cover this in an annual budget increase for the military that they didn't even need. If we can afford to blow money on the military after their own records showed they were already wasting 25 billion a year without batting an eye, we can afford to spend a fraction of that to help the nation and its people with actual substantial improvements and something the rest of the industrialized world has figured out but American just can't seem to get it right.

[Ripster42]

I actually used to be on the fence about this when Sanders proposed it but after watching the US, under Trump and the GOP with DNC on board, give over twice the amount to cover this in an annual budget increase for the military that they didn't even need. If we can afford to blow money on the military after their own records showed they were already wasting 25 billion a year without batting an eye, we can afford to spend a fraction of that to help the nation and its people with actual substantial improvements and something the rest of the industrialized world has figured out but American just can't seem to get it right.

Student debt is well on its way to 2 trillion. Should be clear in what you mean by "fraction of that" because clearing all student debt is bigger than any single year's military expenditures. I do submit that a different reading would be correct: a fraction of the military's per year costs if the costs of the debt relief was factored over all the years it took to accrue. I'm assuming you mean something like that, but I figure I'd try to make that clear.

[ShakesForPRide]

"Down with billionaires!"
"But not those Billionaires..."

Lawmakers who voted against a bill urging the U.S. to seize the frozen assets of Russian oligarchs and use the proceeds to help Ukraine:

Cawthorn R-NC
Greene R-GA
Massie R-KY
Roy R-TX
Bush D-MO
Ocasio-Cortez D-NY
Omar D-MN
Tlaib D-MI

[Dontrike]

"Down with billionaires!"
"But not those Billionaires..."

Lawmakers who voted against a bill urging the U.S. to seize the frozen assets of Russian oligarchs and use the proceeds to help Ukraine:

Cawthorn R-NC
Greene R-GA
Massie R-KY
Roy R-TX
Bush D-MO
Ocasio-Cortez D-NY
Omar D-MN
Tlaib D-MI

Surprised there are any democrats, or for that matter anyone though Reps don't surprise me, that would disagree with that.

[DarkTZeratul]

Surprised there are any democrats, or for that matter anyone though Reps don't surprise me, that would disagree with that.

I would be curious to see their reasoning, since context often provides clarity in these cases. The last three, I'm almost positive, will have explained their votes.