RUMOR - Biden to announce cancellation of student debt

[Dill]

(08-23-2022, 07:06 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: We are quite spiteful. I have a great relationship with my MIL, but she said something the other day that I found fascinating. The topic of this debt relief was brought up and she said she was against it because “I didn’t get that luxury. I had to work my butt off and pay it all back. Why should someone else get their debt erased when I didn’t?”

This reminds me of an online conversation I had with a woman about 15 years ago on the subject of tuition and loans. She lived in CA and argued that her uncle had managed to pay for a college degree back in the 60s, simply by working part time.

I asked her if he'd gone to college in CA, and when she said "yes," I explained that for most of the '60s, college was free in the CA system to all CA residents. Also minimum wage went farther then than now. (Reagan led the charge against "free" higher ed in CA, the harbinger of neoliberal "reforms" to higher ed across the nation.) 

She checked with her uncle, who said "yes," he hadn't paid tuition--only for books and a minimal student fee for campus activities. 

I added that in the 80s, CA shifted a great deal of funding from education to prisons, in part to manage the war on drugs and win votes. Tuition rose to make up the difference. Not because of "loans." 

So your MIL might have had to work her butt off, but it was like to pay higher tuition created by defunding, but still much lower than what students are paying today. What an irony it would be if she voted against Dems because of that, and in favor of the party mostly responsible for increasing her tuition (if she went to a public school).