Student loan forgiveness was certainly one of the first issues where I started to feel comfortable putting some distance between myself and the progressive party line, even with five figures of student loans to my name. A regressive handout that does nothing to address the underlying issue is just stupid policy. I’m perfectly happy with the Biden administration for slipping the SAVE plan in there.
"A regressive handout that does nothing to address the underlying issue is just stupid policy."
This is a key point, because "student loan debt" is just a symptom of the larger problem of the cost of higher education. If that was the wording instead of making it about the debt, I'm guessing it would be higher on the list.
Why would you volunteer to take a loan on an overpriced item? No one should be bailed out of their bad decisions. Nothing corrects bad behavior like consequences. It’s called being an adult.
First of all, I read your earlier comment. Rest assured, your thoughts are irrelevant to any discussion.
For anyone else that might have the same thought, though, coercion is a thing. Whether it is outright fraud, like for-profit organizations that use a gilded name to lure targets, or simply being told your entire life that you *have* to go to college for any number of professional or social reasons, it's not as easy as declaring "You may have made a mistake, but lol eat shit loser."
And, of course, that's all just a strawman distracting from the original point, which is the cost itself needs to be addressed, and simply forgiving some debt is just a Band-Aid on the issue.
For some strange reason I seem to think the cost is known up front.
While I have zero evidence I am sure if we broke down the majors of these same people asking for their loans to be repaid I am sure they aren’t in engineering or computer sciences because in this job market there is a labor shortage.
People who can afford to pay off their loans don’t protest for handouts. They accept responsibility.
Stupid children making stupid decisions who were birthed by stupid parents who didn’t guide them through their educational experience took gender studies and philosophy and other useless majors in the real world.
Now they have piles of debt and a low income from their decision making.
Nothing would make them better people than being forced to accept responsibility.
Of course the lefts #1 goal is to deny people learning experiences. They want to coddle people to win elections and weaken them mentally.
That is why today if you can’t find something to be mad about we invented things like micro aggressions.
Anything to make people weaker and in need of saviors.
Those saviors get elected to Congress to make $120k a year but receive $1,000,000 in “consulting fees” for companies when they leave lowly civil service.
Not that Republicans don’t do the same but the victimhood on the left is becoming a profitable way of life.
We can create a new form of victimhood by the day so a handful of people can profit from it.
Let people learn from their stupidity. Don’t deny them the most important education they will ever receive.
I spent 8 years in prison and have a GED and make 6 figures and have a small business on the side. That is the Gods to honest truth.
You know why I’m successful? Because I learned I am in control of my destiny with the decisions I make. Good or bad I choose how my life turns out.
Well off white liberals with what they think are good ideas are killing America.
Except the way student loans are presented is that there is no risk…and the student loans initially targeted for forgiveness were for undergraduate degrees which means when the decisions were being made the individuals weren’t necessarily 18 years old. I turned 18 in the fall of HS senior year and I decided on my college before I was 18.
Yes, but there are important confounding factors there. Expect goals to always poll higher than policy proposals—the latter will almost always have more tangible downsides.
"Relieve student debt" is close to a policy proposal (one I think is bad on net); "make college not cost so damned much" is about as lofty and fuzzy a goal as you can write down.
Colleges now realize how stupid loans for undergraduate degrees are and so the best schools simply don’t allow students to take out loans. So it works like a progressive tax with students from wealthy families paying full tuition and financial aid that isn’t a loan is provided to students from middle class families. If it is considered stupid now then it was stupid 10 years ago too. I graduated from college in the 1990s and I paid tuition working a joke of a job for 20 hours a week because tuition was inexpensive back then.
The initial proposal by Biden wasn’t regressive as it was tied to Pell Grants which if you don’t know what they are means you were lucky to have successful parents that could pay for your undergraduate education. Either getting a college education improves America or it doesn’t and everyone had access to the same federal program. The notion we must degrade someone’s quality of life with 30 years of loan payments for a choice they made at 18 after telling them what a great choice it was is another reason why I will never vote Republican. They want women to have rape babies and they want unlucky Americans with health issues to die in the streets.
Sure, the Pell Grant clause was a progressive notch in a policy that still did nothing for most poor people who never took out student loans to begin with. I agree that college (and trade schools etc.) should be more accessible and affordable, and that the country is better off with a more educated populace. The SAVE plan effectively solves the biggest issues with student loans. Now we should target bringing costs down.
I don’t know what your tangent about evil Republicans has to do with what I said. I agree that healthcare and abortion are issues that inhibit me from ever voting Republican, but the discourse is so toxic lately in large part because of this bullshit rhetorical move of, “if you don’t hold the progressive party line on every issue you’re basically one of those evil Republicans!”
I’m a liberal and not a progressive. And my college is now free for students from middle class families. And the local private liberal arts college is free for in state students that max out Pell Grants and merit based state scholarships. I believe that is the route private colleges should take being free for in state students from middle class families because the local college doesn’t have a huge endowment but can apparently make it work.
Btw, the youngest cousin in my family is very smart and so he was going to college in the 2000s when tuition started getting so expensive. I remember his father complaining about student loans if his son got into a good private college. The kid got into the private college and his father took out loans and the kid hated it and transferred to the state college every family member went to. He ended up excelling and got into medical school. So the father was put through financial hell for no reason!! End student loans for undergraduate college today!! It doesn’t work for anyone!
>Either getting a college education improves America or it doesn’t and everyone had access to the same federal program.
I think there is a decent argument that for a lot of students it doesn't "help America" or them. It is an expensive positional good (what matters is how educated you are compared to everyone else, not how educated you are) that is a waste of time for a lot of people who are just run of the mill retail/office workers.
What employers care about is getting the top 20% of people (or whatever) not exactly how many years of earning potential you wasted on stuff that isn't very helpful for your job (obviously different for technical degrees).
Everyone running faster and spending more to stay in the same place... And pumping more $ into the system (through loan buyouts by taxpayers) just makes that whole cycle worse.
>The notion we must degrade someone’s quality of life
Federal policy isn't about/shouldn't be about the government picking/making winners and losers. "We" didn't degrade this person's life, their bad decision making did. And when you insulate people from the downsides of bad decision making, what you generally get is more bad decision making.
>They want women to have rape babies
I am no Republican, but this really isn't a fair characterization of the general Republican position. Anymore than "Democrats want partial birth abortions".
I was involved in Republican Party politics and I was around people whose names you probably know and at least the “ thought leaders” truly believed abortion was murder. Maybe you didn’t believe that but the activists and people that make up organizations like College Republicans and Federalist Society believe life begins at conception and abortion is murder.
The notion we should undermine our economy to prove a point is just so absurd…and you most likely voted for Bush/Cheney who when they saw the economy collapsing in 2008 were open to every bailout Congress put in front of them! You just have animus towards Democrats and so you support dumb things like all Bush Republicans.
Sure lots of people believe that. I still think among Republicans, and I would bet even among "thought leaders" think that a "rape exception" is pretty common and maybe even majority position.
The polling on general "exceptions for rape/incest" is like 94/6 among Dems and 76/24 among Republicans. As I said, you are not really being fair here.
>The notion we should undermine our economy to prove a point is just so absurd
What is undermining the economy? Spending less money on creating history majors and kids with a C average in "communications" from directional state who didn't learn a think but have a piece of paper? I think you are confusing the metric with the outcome we want and targeting the metric.
I’m just telling you what I witnessed around gen x Republican activists during the Tea Party movement and none supported the rape exception because they believed life begins at conception plus it would be abused.
I think we should get rid of student loans for undergraduate degrees…and colleges should use endowment for tuition. The initial student loan forgiveness was targeted to people without wealthy parents who were told getting a college degree was necessary and it would improve the country…and then at the turn of the century the cost of tuition skyrocketed while the value of a BA plummeted.
The "pick 1 of 2" poll methodology is excellent. The paradox of choice is a very real problem in economics. Ask people to purchase 1 of 3 items and they can consistently do so in ways that are rational (repeatable and in line with their previously expressed interests). Ask people to pick among 30 items and their choices become largely irrational. I've always suspected that long and detailed policy polls suffer from the same problem.
On the results of this poll, perhaps there's some hope for the next generation after all.
Do you know of any light reading on how the effect on sample size is quantified? You're kind of smooshing dozens (? hundreds?) of micropolls together, so I would think you start having extra robustness problems when you go crosstab-hunting.
No. and I agree that there could be a lot of data crunching problems. But as an economist, I think this a fascinating solution to the "too many choices" problem.
The entire vicious cycle between govt and higher ed is the reason why tuition fees have soared in the past 15 years. It took me a long time to pay off my MBA loan. I worked two part time jobs while getting my degree. Never even thought about asking for the lender to forgive the loan. If you take a loan, it’s your responsibility to pay it back. If not then don’t take the loan out in the first place. Revolutionary, I know.
> Never even thought about asking for the lender to forgive the loan.
Let's look on the bright side, though—according to the poll, Gen Z appears to mostly agree with you. They're just not banging on pots and pans about it.
There are other things driving the student loan crisis, like the rising cost of living and the unnecessarily increased proportion of jobs which require a minimum education level above HS. I think some of the policies that can address those issues have wider impact than student loans, and are beneficial to all.
So, I agree that people are too eager to jump into loans (would be improved by better public education funding and strict regulation of private schools), but a big part of the root problem here is tied to the increasing perceived necessity of college (would be improved by improving building codes and transit funding to allow more dorms and support more dense cities with better public transit, which also benefits everyone through more progressive civil engineering. Also could be improved by policies that encourage/require most companies to not discriminate based on education level for low-skill roles that should not require an education in concert with drastically better public education (so HS diplomas become valuable/credible again), which should reduce the demand for college degrees as a benefit to everyone both in and out of college).
Rising income inequality, the housing crisis, regressive building codes/city design, car dependency, poor quality public transit, decreased economic activity by major companies due to stock buybacks and insanely excessive executive pay (leading to lower hiring, lower quality products, and decreased development), poor public education system, corporate bureaucracy and corrption. These are all driving factors of the higher education price insanity and the subsequent student loan crisis (and each other), way more so than any blatant financial ignorance from college students. All should be popular progressive issues for their own benefits, and the student loan crisis is one more reason to support them IMO. If we start doing all of those, then some debt relief makes a lot of sense (to help prop up past graduates that couldn't reap the college-cost-lowering benefits of policy changes before they took effect).
>unnecessarily increased proportion of jobs which require a minimum education level above HS. I think some of the policies that can address those issues have wider impact than student loans, and are beneficial to all.
The causation is backwards here. Employer requirements have gone up because so many people have degrees.
What an employer wants is a top 20% or top 40% or whatever "brightness/diligence" person. Level of education is a proxy for that.
If 50% of the population has a college degree now, then if you are looking for one of those things, you jsut make a college degree a requirement. If you stopped giving them out to idiots like participation awards, employers would stop requiring them.
The problem w/the student loan thing (other than the obvious) for democrats is that I don't know a single person who is swayed by it. I know a few conservatives with student loans and, while they would probably be happy to not have to pay their debts, I don't believe they would vote D in order to have it actually happen.
Voting happens along a spectrum from "principles" to "self-interest." Voting solely on the "self-interest" side of the line is not axiomatically "smarter" or "better."
Social media sites like Twitter tend to be dominated by college grads who either have student debt themselves or if they don’t are disproportionately sympathetic to people who have student debt because they share similar backgrounds if not social/work circles.
I’m a working class person so I’m more aware of it. I also went to school in England when they had free tuition and I noticed my U.K. university had a lot fewer working class and poor students than my uk university even though in theory you’d have expected the opposite
"That’s fine — Republicans do the same thing with tax policy"
While the SALT cap was basically a middle-finger to blue jurisdictions, the TCJA still included plenty of provisions that benefitted solidly-blue constituencies such as the increased standard deduction.
Student loan forgiveness, by contrast, is striking in how transparently cynical a self-dealing handout it is.
The TCJA did not benefit middle class taxpayers or even low income taxpayers. The increased standard deduction was more than offset by the elimination of exemptions. And for homeowners it was a disaster. Eliminating the deductions for mortgage interest payments made itemizing deductions worthless. I pay far more in taxes than I did under the previous law, and I am by no measure wealthy.
I opposed the TCJA because I didn't think the nation could afford that much new debt. But it was a financial bonanza for us. The expanded standard deduction + expanded child tax credit were, combined, VASTLY larger benefits than the lost personal exemptions, and not having to itemize is a classic example of an unvarnished win. You can still itemize! Most of us just don't have to anymore, because we save MORE MONEY with the expanded standard!
Also, the deductions for mortgage interest payments were not repealed, just capped (and middle-income households come nowhere close to that cap), so I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here.
I think TCJA is going to expire, and I think it needs to for the fiscal health of the country, but oh man is it going to hurt my checkbook when it does.
The TCJA lowered average effective rates for all income brackets, your personal experience notwithstanding. This is extremely well-documented, and the entire reason the Biden administration wants to extend most of the law.
Most people with student debt are middle class, and there's an income cap. It's interesting that the forgiveness is considered "regressive" because if Biden were to propose a tax hike that included most college grads, he'd be lambasted by both sides. That's why his party's platform starts the increase at $400k.
"As Gen Z flocked to the polls to save their relief"...it's really frankly appalling that that made it into Business Insider. Are all of Ayelet Sheffey's articles that misleading?
Gen Z commenter here - can't really speak to my generation as a whole, but amongst my friends (mostly all recent college grads making decent money) there's both apathy & a souring on politics in general. I'm not sure any of my friends voted in the recent primaries - we also just don't talk about politics that much either.
Apathetic because things aren't bad enough (yet?) for us to care / don't have families or responsibility for others
Souring on politics because we've been on the internet our whole lives & seen the rampant disregard for Americans by politicians on both sides - social media makes sharing some of these ridiculous moments easier
Just an observation - would be curious if there's other "youth" voters with the same experience
Honestly curious, what are some key examples of policies and rhetoric that give the impression of “rampant disregard for Americans by politicians on both sides”?
Republicans giving an outright middle finger to women and their reproductive rights
Democrats calling all members of a political movement that contains at least 30% of Americans “fascists”
Both parties are outright disdainful towards Americans that support the opposition party, and in some cases even more disdainful to citizens that identify with their party that break with the party on hot-button issues.
"Republicans giving an outright middle finger to women and their reproductive rights"
This, however, is just spin. Republicans don't believe in abortion. Republican WOMEN are among the staunchest demographic groups to oppose abortion. This isn't a men/women issue, although it is posed as one from the left. The fact that it is framed incorrectly is one of the reasons why it's so divisive--it's two groups of people having two different conversations.
There is a real debate there, but it's "when does a fetus become a life that deserves protection under the law," it isn't "how come republicans want to control women?"
Until the real debate is had, you aren't going to see any middle ground.
Do you think gen Z broadly believes Democratic politicians think all Republicans are fascists? Or is it more of a general consensus that negative polarization is gross?
Most of us barely remember a time with respectable politicians? A lot of our introduction to politics was Trump getting elected. We feel as if our future has been sold off to the highest bidder and all politicians have to tell us is “stop being lazy and work harder” or “we see you, we hear you, now stop being lazy and work harder”
Climate change, school shootings, and the endless assault presented by social media on our attention spans and self image are issues that have all left us drained and we have seen no substantive action on. Teenage depression rates and suicidal thoughts are at an all time high, we’re apathetic and checked out about almost everything. It’s genuinely sad to see just how much pain and fear there is among people my age, because I fully understand the feelings and how powerless it can make a young person feel.
As there should be: politics is not a great lens to view the world and it is not a great vehicle to change the world. Your vote doesn't matter much. Politics as entertainment just isn't that fun. If you really care, engage in local politics and be a force of good in your community.
I read Nate and Matt, but that's about the sum total of my political media right now, far less than when I was a political junkie. In most situations, most people are fine but caring about politics (and occasional extremes it is existentially important).
I think the things you mention are all things that have been either stationary or perhaps improving over my entire lifetime. This is probably part of why young voters have always been relatively apathetic, because it takes time to see that these aren’t new problems and that voting is meaningful even if it doesn’t do everything you imagine when learning about it in school.
"I’m not sure I’ve seen this methodology used before, but I like it". The "forced choice" experimental design is rather popular in experimental linguistics and psychology. Not sure about polling, though :)
The point on younger generations caring less about foreign policy (e.g. Israel) rings especially true. I know a lot of conservative Boomers and Gen Xers who treat foreign policy as something very important. I’m a Millennial, and I don’t know anyone in younger generations like this. I’ll admit that I don’t run in the same circles as any leftist activists.
As an evangelical, I can say there’s a huge gap in Zionism between older and younger evangelicals. Though I think the younger, while mostly apathetic, still lean Israel, but more out of the default American democracy vs. terrorism frame than any reasons of Dispensationalist theology.
These kids with horrible parents who guide them as liberals and not conservatives send them off to get a worthless degree which they can do nothing with in the real world then want someone else to pay for them wasting their time on a bachelor degree in Women’s Studies.
Parents need to teach self discipline and self esteem not be friends. That’s why these liberals kids are clueless about consequences.
Liberal parents are the worst parents in human history. Kids don’t even know what sex they are anymore. Now we got parents who instead of helping them play make believe with them.
lol given what the people at MAGA rallies look like it would appear it’s the MAGA parents who are the worst parents in history.
Young people know what gender they are. It’s easily triggered older people who freak out over it.
I suspect people block people like you because they think you’re tedious bores and they block you for the same reason people avoid bores and jerks at bars and parties. That’s why I’m blocking you.
You don’t see MAGA kids so mentally confused they think they are in the wrong bodies or spending $100,000 to get a degree in Gender Studies then graduate to a $30,000 a year job as a barista at Starbucks crying they are a victim and didn’t know how loans worked. 😂
It's instructive to contrast the coverage of student loans with inflation. In both cases, the press comes to the Biden Administration's rescue.
Inflation, which is a more important issue by a country mile, is downplayed in news articles that blame you and me for not appreciating how good we've got it. We're being gaslit into not wanting to blame Pres. Biden. If the economy's actually doing well, then we should vote for the incumbent, right?
But when it comes to student loans, reporters see it as a net-positive to Biden's campaign.
Because journalists are overwhelmingly Democrats, especially at the standard-bearer publications, it makes sense that they would want to see student loan forgiveness as a boon to Biden's reelection. Hence never challenging the partisan narratives.
When I recently saw the mid six-figure salaries of those benefiting from the forgiveness, combined with those earners obviously being college-educated, I doubted the impact on the election. It's not as if they were going to vote for someone else on that one issue. They are, as Nate said, already a strongly Democratic cohort.
Student loan forgiveness was certainly one of the first issues where I started to feel comfortable putting some distance between myself and the progressive party line, even with five figures of student loans to my name. A regressive handout that does nothing to address the underlying issue is just stupid policy. I’m perfectly happy with the Biden administration for slipping the SAVE plan in there.
"A regressive handout that does nothing to address the underlying issue is just stupid policy."
This is a key point, because "student loan debt" is just a symptom of the larger problem of the cost of higher education. If that was the wording instead of making it about the debt, I'm guessing it would be higher on the list.
Why would you volunteer to take a loan on an overpriced item? No one should be bailed out of their bad decisions. Nothing corrects bad behavior like consequences. It’s called being an adult.
First of all, I read your earlier comment. Rest assured, your thoughts are irrelevant to any discussion.
For anyone else that might have the same thought, though, coercion is a thing. Whether it is outright fraud, like for-profit organizations that use a gilded name to lure targets, or simply being told your entire life that you *have* to go to college for any number of professional or social reasons, it's not as easy as declaring "You may have made a mistake, but lol eat shit loser."
And, of course, that's all just a strawman distracting from the original point, which is the cost itself needs to be addressed, and simply forgiving some debt is just a Band-Aid on the issue.
For some strange reason I seem to think the cost is known up front.
While I have zero evidence I am sure if we broke down the majors of these same people asking for their loans to be repaid I am sure they aren’t in engineering or computer sciences because in this job market there is a labor shortage.
People who can afford to pay off their loans don’t protest for handouts. They accept responsibility.
Stupid children making stupid decisions who were birthed by stupid parents who didn’t guide them through their educational experience took gender studies and philosophy and other useless majors in the real world.
Now they have piles of debt and a low income from their decision making.
Nothing would make them better people than being forced to accept responsibility.
Of course the lefts #1 goal is to deny people learning experiences. They want to coddle people to win elections and weaken them mentally.
That is why today if you can’t find something to be mad about we invented things like micro aggressions.
Anything to make people weaker and in need of saviors.
Those saviors get elected to Congress to make $120k a year but receive $1,000,000 in “consulting fees” for companies when they leave lowly civil service.
Not that Republicans don’t do the same but the victimhood on the left is becoming a profitable way of life.
We can create a new form of victimhood by the day so a handful of people can profit from it.
Let people learn from their stupidity. Don’t deny them the most important education they will ever receive.
I spent 8 years in prison and have a GED and make 6 figures and have a small business on the side. That is the Gods to honest truth.
You know why I’m successful? Because I learned I am in control of my destiny with the decisions I make. Good or bad I choose how my life turns out.
Well off white liberals with what they think are good ideas are killing America.
lol
Except the way student loans are presented is that there is no risk…and the student loans initially targeted for forgiveness were for undergraduate degrees which means when the decisions were being made the individuals weren’t necessarily 18 years old. I turned 18 in the fall of HS senior year and I decided on my college before I was 18.
Yes, but there are important confounding factors there. Expect goals to always poll higher than policy proposals—the latter will almost always have more tangible downsides.
"Relieve student debt" is close to a policy proposal (one I think is bad on net); "make college not cost so damned much" is about as lofty and fuzzy a goal as you can write down.
Colleges now realize how stupid loans for undergraduate degrees are and so the best schools simply don’t allow students to take out loans. So it works like a progressive tax with students from wealthy families paying full tuition and financial aid that isn’t a loan is provided to students from middle class families. If it is considered stupid now then it was stupid 10 years ago too. I graduated from college in the 1990s and I paid tuition working a joke of a job for 20 hours a week because tuition was inexpensive back then.
The initial proposal by Biden wasn’t regressive as it was tied to Pell Grants which if you don’t know what they are means you were lucky to have successful parents that could pay for your undergraduate education. Either getting a college education improves America or it doesn’t and everyone had access to the same federal program. The notion we must degrade someone’s quality of life with 30 years of loan payments for a choice they made at 18 after telling them what a great choice it was is another reason why I will never vote Republican. They want women to have rape babies and they want unlucky Americans with health issues to die in the streets.
Sure, the Pell Grant clause was a progressive notch in a policy that still did nothing for most poor people who never took out student loans to begin with. I agree that college (and trade schools etc.) should be more accessible and affordable, and that the country is better off with a more educated populace. The SAVE plan effectively solves the biggest issues with student loans. Now we should target bringing costs down.
I don’t know what your tangent about evil Republicans has to do with what I said. I agree that healthcare and abortion are issues that inhibit me from ever voting Republican, but the discourse is so toxic lately in large part because of this bullshit rhetorical move of, “if you don’t hold the progressive party line on every issue you’re basically one of those evil Republicans!”
I’m a liberal and not a progressive. And my college is now free for students from middle class families. And the local private liberal arts college is free for in state students that max out Pell Grants and merit based state scholarships. I believe that is the route private colleges should take being free for in state students from middle class families because the local college doesn’t have a huge endowment but can apparently make it work.
Btw, the youngest cousin in my family is very smart and so he was going to college in the 2000s when tuition started getting so expensive. I remember his father complaining about student loans if his son got into a good private college. The kid got into the private college and his father took out loans and the kid hated it and transferred to the state college every family member went to. He ended up excelling and got into medical school. So the father was put through financial hell for no reason!! End student loans for undergraduate college today!! It doesn’t work for anyone!
>Either getting a college education improves America or it doesn’t and everyone had access to the same federal program.
I think there is a decent argument that for a lot of students it doesn't "help America" or them. It is an expensive positional good (what matters is how educated you are compared to everyone else, not how educated you are) that is a waste of time for a lot of people who are just run of the mill retail/office workers.
What employers care about is getting the top 20% of people (or whatever) not exactly how many years of earning potential you wasted on stuff that isn't very helpful for your job (obviously different for technical degrees).
Everyone running faster and spending more to stay in the same place... And pumping more $ into the system (through loan buyouts by taxpayers) just makes that whole cycle worse.
>The notion we must degrade someone’s quality of life
Federal policy isn't about/shouldn't be about the government picking/making winners and losers. "We" didn't degrade this person's life, their bad decision making did. And when you insulate people from the downsides of bad decision making, what you generally get is more bad decision making.
>They want women to have rape babies
I am no Republican, but this really isn't a fair characterization of the general Republican position. Anymore than "Democrats want partial birth abortions".
I was involved in Republican Party politics and I was around people whose names you probably know and at least the “ thought leaders” truly believed abortion was murder. Maybe you didn’t believe that but the activists and people that make up organizations like College Republicans and Federalist Society believe life begins at conception and abortion is murder.
The notion we should undermine our economy to prove a point is just so absurd…and you most likely voted for Bush/Cheney who when they saw the economy collapsing in 2008 were open to every bailout Congress put in front of them! You just have animus towards Democrats and so you support dumb things like all Bush Republicans.
>truly believed abortion was murder.
Sure lots of people believe that. I still think among Republicans, and I would bet even among "thought leaders" think that a "rape exception" is pretty common and maybe even majority position.
The polling on general "exceptions for rape/incest" is like 94/6 among Dems and 76/24 among Republicans. As I said, you are not really being fair here.
>The notion we should undermine our economy to prove a point is just so absurd
What is undermining the economy? Spending less money on creating history majors and kids with a C average in "communications" from directional state who didn't learn a think but have a piece of paper? I think you are confusing the metric with the outcome we want and targeting the metric.
I’m just telling you what I witnessed around gen x Republican activists during the Tea Party movement and none supported the rape exception because they believed life begins at conception plus it would be abused.
I think we should get rid of student loans for undergraduate degrees…and colleges should use endowment for tuition. The initial student loan forgiveness was targeted to people without wealthy parents who were told getting a college degree was necessary and it would improve the country…and then at the turn of the century the cost of tuition skyrocketed while the value of a BA plummeted.
The "pick 1 of 2" poll methodology is excellent. The paradox of choice is a very real problem in economics. Ask people to purchase 1 of 3 items and they can consistently do so in ways that are rational (repeatable and in line with their previously expressed interests). Ask people to pick among 30 items and their choices become largely irrational. I've always suspected that long and detailed policy polls suffer from the same problem.
On the results of this poll, perhaps there's some hope for the next generation after all.
Do you know of any light reading on how the effect on sample size is quantified? You're kind of smooshing dozens (? hundreds?) of micropolls together, so I would think you start having extra robustness problems when you go crosstab-hunting.
No. and I agree that there could be a lot of data crunching problems. But as an economist, I think this a fascinating solution to the "too many choices" problem.
I should have been clear on that—on the whole, I think it's a great technique to add to the toolkit.
The entire vicious cycle between govt and higher ed is the reason why tuition fees have soared in the past 15 years. It took me a long time to pay off my MBA loan. I worked two part time jobs while getting my degree. Never even thought about asking for the lender to forgive the loan. If you take a loan, it’s your responsibility to pay it back. If not then don’t take the loan out in the first place. Revolutionary, I know.
> Never even thought about asking for the lender to forgive the loan.
Let's look on the bright side, though—according to the poll, Gen Z appears to mostly agree with you. They're just not banging on pots and pans about it.
There are other things driving the student loan crisis, like the rising cost of living and the unnecessarily increased proportion of jobs which require a minimum education level above HS. I think some of the policies that can address those issues have wider impact than student loans, and are beneficial to all.
So, I agree that people are too eager to jump into loans (would be improved by better public education funding and strict regulation of private schools), but a big part of the root problem here is tied to the increasing perceived necessity of college (would be improved by improving building codes and transit funding to allow more dorms and support more dense cities with better public transit, which also benefits everyone through more progressive civil engineering. Also could be improved by policies that encourage/require most companies to not discriminate based on education level for low-skill roles that should not require an education in concert with drastically better public education (so HS diplomas become valuable/credible again), which should reduce the demand for college degrees as a benefit to everyone both in and out of college).
Rising income inequality, the housing crisis, regressive building codes/city design, car dependency, poor quality public transit, decreased economic activity by major companies due to stock buybacks and insanely excessive executive pay (leading to lower hiring, lower quality products, and decreased development), poor public education system, corporate bureaucracy and corrption. These are all driving factors of the higher education price insanity and the subsequent student loan crisis (and each other), way more so than any blatant financial ignorance from college students. All should be popular progressive issues for their own benefits, and the student loan crisis is one more reason to support them IMO. If we start doing all of those, then some debt relief makes a lot of sense (to help prop up past graduates that couldn't reap the college-cost-lowering benefits of policy changes before they took effect).
>unnecessarily increased proportion of jobs which require a minimum education level above HS. I think some of the policies that can address those issues have wider impact than student loans, and are beneficial to all.
The causation is backwards here. Employer requirements have gone up because so many people have degrees.
What an employer wants is a top 20% or top 40% or whatever "brightness/diligence" person. Level of education is a proxy for that.
If 50% of the population has a college degree now, then if you are looking for one of those things, you jsut make a college degree a requirement. If you stopped giving them out to idiots like participation awards, employers would stop requiring them.
Potato potato, it's a cycle. More degrees means more companies will require it, which means more degrees, which means.... On and on.
Awesome point.
The problem w/the student loan thing (other than the obvious) for democrats is that I don't know a single person who is swayed by it. I know a few conservatives with student loans and, while they would probably be happy to not have to pay their debts, I don't believe they would vote D in order to have it actually happen.
Voting happens along a spectrum from "principles" to "self-interest." Voting solely on the "self-interest" side of the line is not axiomatically "smarter" or "better."
This article is exceptionally spicy—exactly as the topic deserves. Bullshit, indeed.
Now, everybody get off my lawn.
Social media sites like Twitter tend to be dominated by college grads who either have student debt themselves or if they don’t are disproportionately sympathetic to people who have student debt because they share similar backgrounds if not social/work circles.
It’s a good point
I’m a working class person so I’m more aware of it. I also went to school in England when they had free tuition and I noticed my U.K. university had a lot fewer working class and poor students than my uk university even though in theory you’d have expected the opposite
It was free when I went there in the 1980s. I think there were some restrictions but it was free for most students.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2017/10/06/england-ended-free-college-which-was-great-for-students/?sh=374a996d4951
It wasn’t free .
"That’s fine — Republicans do the same thing with tax policy"
While the SALT cap was basically a middle-finger to blue jurisdictions, the TCJA still included plenty of provisions that benefitted solidly-blue constituencies such as the increased standard deduction.
Student loan forgiveness, by contrast, is striking in how transparently cynical a self-dealing handout it is.
The TCJA did not benefit middle class taxpayers or even low income taxpayers. The increased standard deduction was more than offset by the elimination of exemptions. And for homeowners it was a disaster. Eliminating the deductions for mortgage interest payments made itemizing deductions worthless. I pay far more in taxes than I did under the previous law, and I am by no measure wealthy.
Now I really want to see your tax return. I'm a middle class household with a young mortgage (purchased in 2017 right around when TCJA passed) and firmly within the middle-income range in this Pew calculator, both when TCJA passed and now: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/07/23/are-you-in-the-american-middle-class/
I opposed the TCJA because I didn't think the nation could afford that much new debt. But it was a financial bonanza for us. The expanded standard deduction + expanded child tax credit were, combined, VASTLY larger benefits than the lost personal exemptions, and not having to itemize is a classic example of an unvarnished win. You can still itemize! Most of us just don't have to anymore, because we save MORE MONEY with the expanded standard!
Also, the deductions for mortgage interest payments were not repealed, just capped (and middle-income households come nowhere close to that cap), so I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here.
I think TCJA is going to expire, and I think it needs to for the fiscal health of the country, but oh man is it going to hurt my checkbook when it does.
The TCJA lowered average effective rates for all income brackets, your personal experience notwithstanding. This is extremely well-documented, and the entire reason the Biden administration wants to extend most of the law.
Most people with student debt are middle class, and there's an income cap. It's interesting that the forgiveness is considered "regressive" because if Biden were to propose a tax hike that included most college grads, he'd be lambasted by both sides. That's why his party's platform starts the increase at $400k.
"As Gen Z flocked to the polls to save their relief"...it's really frankly appalling that that made it into Business Insider. Are all of Ayelet Sheffey's articles that misleading?
Nate really needs to start a new podcast. I need his snark back in my life.
Gen Z commenter here - can't really speak to my generation as a whole, but amongst my friends (mostly all recent college grads making decent money) there's both apathy & a souring on politics in general. I'm not sure any of my friends voted in the recent primaries - we also just don't talk about politics that much either.
Apathetic because things aren't bad enough (yet?) for us to care / don't have families or responsibility for others
Souring on politics because we've been on the internet our whole lives & seen the rampant disregard for Americans by politicians on both sides - social media makes sharing some of these ridiculous moments easier
Just an observation - would be curious if there's other "youth" voters with the same experience
Honestly curious, what are some key examples of policies and rhetoric that give the impression of “rampant disregard for Americans by politicians on both sides”?
Republicans giving an outright middle finger to women and their reproductive rights
Democrats calling all members of a political movement that contains at least 30% of Americans “fascists”
Both parties are outright disdainful towards Americans that support the opposition party, and in some cases even more disdainful to citizens that identify with their party that break with the party on hot-button issues.
"Republicans giving an outright middle finger to women and their reproductive rights"
This, however, is just spin. Republicans don't believe in abortion. Republican WOMEN are among the staunchest demographic groups to oppose abortion. This isn't a men/women issue, although it is posed as one from the left. The fact that it is framed incorrectly is one of the reasons why it's so divisive--it's two groups of people having two different conversations.
There is a real debate there, but it's "when does a fetus become a life that deserves protection under the law," it isn't "how come republicans want to control women?"
Until the real debate is had, you aren't going to see any middle ground.
Okay, so you’re a Republican who doesn’t believe in women’s bodily autonomy! Thanks for making that clear with your own spin.
This is a pretty disdainful response
Do you think gen Z broadly believes Democratic politicians think all Republicans are fascists? Or is it more of a general consensus that negative polarization is gross?
No, most of Gen Z themselves believe that so they don’t need to project it onto politicians.
Don't ascribe it to "Democrats," then, in a direct comparison with actual enacted Republican policy.
So what do you think is behind more widespread political apathy among gen Z?
Most of us barely remember a time with respectable politicians? A lot of our introduction to politics was Trump getting elected. We feel as if our future has been sold off to the highest bidder and all politicians have to tell us is “stop being lazy and work harder” or “we see you, we hear you, now stop being lazy and work harder”
Climate change, school shootings, and the endless assault presented by social media on our attention spans and self image are issues that have all left us drained and we have seen no substantive action on. Teenage depression rates and suicidal thoughts are at an all time high, we’re apathetic and checked out about almost everything. It’s genuinely sad to see just how much pain and fear there is among people my age, because I fully understand the feelings and how powerless it can make a young person feel.
As there should be: politics is not a great lens to view the world and it is not a great vehicle to change the world. Your vote doesn't matter much. Politics as entertainment just isn't that fun. If you really care, engage in local politics and be a force of good in your community.
I read Nate and Matt, but that's about the sum total of my political media right now, far less than when I was a political junkie. In most situations, most people are fine but caring about politics (and occasional extremes it is existentially important).
I think the things you mention are all things that have been either stationary or perhaps improving over my entire lifetime. This is probably part of why young voters have always been relatively apathetic, because it takes time to see that these aren’t new problems and that voting is meaningful even if it doesn’t do everything you imagine when learning about it in school.
"I’m not sure I’ve seen this methodology used before, but I like it". The "forced choice" experimental design is rather popular in experimental linguistics and psychology. Not sure about polling, though :)
The point on younger generations caring less about foreign policy (e.g. Israel) rings especially true. I know a lot of conservative Boomers and Gen Xers who treat foreign policy as something very important. I’m a Millennial, and I don’t know anyone in younger generations like this. I’ll admit that I don’t run in the same circles as any leftist activists.
As an evangelical, I can say there’s a huge gap in Zionism between older and younger evangelicals. Though I think the younger, while mostly apathetic, still lean Israel, but more out of the default American democracy vs. terrorism frame than any reasons of Dispensationalist theology.
These kids with horrible parents who guide them as liberals and not conservatives send them off to get a worthless degree which they can do nothing with in the real world then want someone else to pay for them wasting their time on a bachelor degree in Women’s Studies.
Parents need to teach self discipline and self esteem not be friends. That’s why these liberals kids are clueless about consequences.
Liberal parents are the worst parents in human history. Kids don’t even know what sex they are anymore. Now we got parents who instead of helping them play make believe with them.
lol given what the people at MAGA rallies look like it would appear it’s the MAGA parents who are the worst parents in history.
Young people know what gender they are. It’s easily triggered older people who freak out over it.
I suspect people block people like you because they think you’re tedious bores and they block you for the same reason people avoid bores and jerks at bars and parties. That’s why I’m blocking you.
You don’t see MAGA kids so mentally confused they think they are in the wrong bodies or spending $100,000 to get a degree in Gender Studies then graduate to a $30,000 a year job as a barista at Starbucks crying they are a victim and didn’t know how loans worked. 😂
Consider the reality that people with degrees tend to be paid much more than those without. And people with degrees tend to vote liberal.
Reality doesn't really jive with your day dreaming.
Coward sounds a lot more like he’s describing himself than the people he’s ostensibly dissing.
"I’m not sure I’ve seen this methodology used before, but I like it: making pairwise comparisons"
It's called conjoint analysis, it is a classic market research survey technique.
It's instructive to contrast the coverage of student loans with inflation. In both cases, the press comes to the Biden Administration's rescue.
Inflation, which is a more important issue by a country mile, is downplayed in news articles that blame you and me for not appreciating how good we've got it. We're being gaslit into not wanting to blame Pres. Biden. If the economy's actually doing well, then we should vote for the incumbent, right?
But when it comes to student loans, reporters see it as a net-positive to Biden's campaign.
Because journalists are overwhelmingly Democrats, especially at the standard-bearer publications, it makes sense that they would want to see student loan forgiveness as a boon to Biden's reelection. Hence never challenging the partisan narratives.
When I recently saw the mid six-figure salaries of those benefiting from the forgiveness, combined with those earners obviously being college-educated, I doubted the impact on the election. It's not as if they were going to vote for someone else on that one issue. They are, as Nate said, already a strongly Democratic cohort.
Business Insider pandering to a lefty agenda? Say it ain't so.