“This will be the rare opportunity for all Americans to see them, unedited and unfiltered by partisan actors,”
CNN is the partisan actor. One moderator was the wife of one of the 51 that lied about the Hunter laptop being Russian disinformation and the other referred to Trump as a Nazi. Watch the tenor and approach of questions tonight with a critical eye.
You used the phrase "..Trump's...more extreme rhetoric..", but Biden's can be just as extreme; he just doesn't shout it loud and proud or use "triggering" words. That makes his extremism all the more insidious.
Well, thinking he can just write-off $billions in loans as if doing so won’t cost anything, for starters. I know that government money has gotten to the point where it doesn’t seem real, but it is. And targeting particular voting blocs for loan forgiveness (as he has done in his most recent iteration) is particularly pernicious.
Government debt is usually not paid back, ever. We still have the WW I and WW II debts on the books. Although large in their day, relative to size of the economy, they total to less than 500 billion and represent a tiny fraction of today's economy. That said, one cannot accumulate debt faster than the economy grows forever. At some point (no one knows when) it will be a problem. To prevent this the US historically has done periodic "debt digests". After running a string of large deficits, taxes are raised to balance the budget. With balanced budgets the size of the debt relative to GDP gets cut in half every 10-15 years, depending on the level of growth and inflation. Once the level falls a new round of deficit spending can ensue. The last such digest was during the Clinton administration.
In the 2000 election a key difference was between Gore's "lockbox" proposal to continue the digest to bring down the debt/GDP level to accommodate future deficit spending for Social Security and Bush's proposal to cut taxes and resume deficit spending. I wrote about that here:
Voters opted to return to deficit spending, leading Dick Cheney to remark in 2002, when responding to the Treasury Secretary's concern about the plant to boost deficits, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." This was all in the news at the time. In 2004 voters registered strong approval for Bush's deficit spending by returning him to the White House.
In 2008 the economy took a nosedive and massive deficits were initially needed to reflate the economy. Republicans, loathe to see Democrats gain a win by quickly restoring the economy, strenuously opposed a strong reflation. A decade later, when facing an economic nosedive on their watch, were willing to spend four times more to reflate the economy, which was effective as unemployment since the pandemic peak rapidly returned to pre-pandemic levels. Because the post-2008 reflation program was limited, recovery took much longer, resulting in an extended period of below average revenues, leading to large deficits.
At some point we are going to need another digest, and that means higher taxes, which will necessarily fall on higher income folks (because that's where the money is). But nobody wants to do that.
Given all this, I rather doubt that the negligible "cost" of the loan forgiveness program is really the source of your concern. Could it rather be moral? A distaste for forgiving those who irresponsibly borrow a lot of money they cannot pay back, although when businesses and households do this, they can use bankruptcy to discharge their debt, which student debtors are prevented from doing by law, which hardly seems fair.
I didn't say anything about government debt. Yeah, it's moral. I agree that these loans should not be exempt from bankruptcy discharges. But mass forgiveness is still extreme, in my opinion.
I mean, it doesn’t literally cost anything to write off a loan, since the money has already been paid, but I understand it in the context of “that’s government revenue that wouldn’t come in anymore.” I think there is likely a good compromise on the student loan issue, because I do believe it’s an issue. We could probably both agree that no one should end up paying way more than the originally borrowed just because the lending terms allowed interest to balloon.
What voting blocs has he targeted? I haven’t come away with that same analysis.
See my answer to Mike Alexander. How about illegal immigrants who've been here more than 10 years and married US citizens? Biden's been trying to find some way to pander to Hispanics, whom he sees as a bloc (they aren't, but that's another issue). But clearly, extremism is in the eye of the beholder. To me, both Trump and Biden are pretty extreme.
I agree somewhat that Biden (and Democrats in general) aren’t good at understanding Latinos. There are a lot of them who wouldn’t like a policy allowing those folks to become citizens. However, I do think that’s a good policy. I would rather Biden be more progressive on immigration, and I think this one is a good one.
All politicians pander. Trump panders to the Republican donor class with tax cuts. To the military industrial complex through increases in defense spending, to pro-lifers by getting rid of Roe and so on.
Again, I don't think the pandering is the issue for you. I think it is, again, moral. You probably feel that those who entered the country illegally shouldn't be rewarded with legal status, when those who went the legal route have to wait their turn. Is this close?
“This will be the rare opportunity for all Americans to see them, unedited and unfiltered by partisan actors,”
CNN is the partisan actor. One moderator was the wife of one of the 51 that lied about the Hunter laptop being Russian disinformation and the other referred to Trump as a Nazi. Watch the tenor and approach of questions tonight with a critical eye.
Love what u r doing. Sandi shapiro
Great read, thanks!
You used the phrase "..Trump's...more extreme rhetoric..", but Biden's can be just as extreme; he just doesn't shout it loud and proud or use "triggering" words. That makes his extremism all the more insidious.
I’ll be honest, it’s not often I’m able to get outside my own political bubble. What do you see as extreme about Biden?
Well, thinking he can just write-off $billions in loans as if doing so won’t cost anything, for starters. I know that government money has gotten to the point where it doesn’t seem real, but it is. And targeting particular voting blocs for loan forgiveness (as he has done in his most recent iteration) is particularly pernicious.
Government debt is usually not paid back, ever. We still have the WW I and WW II debts on the books. Although large in their day, relative to size of the economy, they total to less than 500 billion and represent a tiny fraction of today's economy. That said, one cannot accumulate debt faster than the economy grows forever. At some point (no one knows when) it will be a problem. To prevent this the US historically has done periodic "debt digests". After running a string of large deficits, taxes are raised to balance the budget. With balanced budgets the size of the debt relative to GDP gets cut in half every 10-15 years, depending on the level of growth and inflation. Once the level falls a new round of deficit spending can ensue. The last such digest was during the Clinton administration.
In the 2000 election a key difference was between Gore's "lockbox" proposal to continue the digest to bring down the debt/GDP level to accommodate future deficit spending for Social Security and Bush's proposal to cut taxes and resume deficit spending. I wrote about that here:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/nixon-gore-the-paths-not-taken
Voters opted to return to deficit spending, leading Dick Cheney to remark in 2002, when responding to the Treasury Secretary's concern about the plant to boost deficits, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." This was all in the news at the time. In 2004 voters registered strong approval for Bush's deficit spending by returning him to the White House.
In 2008 the economy took a nosedive and massive deficits were initially needed to reflate the economy. Republicans, loathe to see Democrats gain a win by quickly restoring the economy, strenuously opposed a strong reflation. A decade later, when facing an economic nosedive on their watch, were willing to spend four times more to reflate the economy, which was effective as unemployment since the pandemic peak rapidly returned to pre-pandemic levels. Because the post-2008 reflation program was limited, recovery took much longer, resulting in an extended period of below average revenues, leading to large deficits.
At some point we are going to need another digest, and that means higher taxes, which will necessarily fall on higher income folks (because that's where the money is). But nobody wants to do that.
Given all this, I rather doubt that the negligible "cost" of the loan forgiveness program is really the source of your concern. Could it rather be moral? A distaste for forgiving those who irresponsibly borrow a lot of money they cannot pay back, although when businesses and households do this, they can use bankruptcy to discharge their debt, which student debtors are prevented from doing by law, which hardly seems fair.
I didn't say anything about government debt. Yeah, it's moral. I agree that these loans should not be exempt from bankruptcy discharges. But mass forgiveness is still extreme, in my opinion.
You statement "as if doing so won’t cost anything, for starters" implies debt. The cost is higher debt.
I mean, it doesn’t literally cost anything to write off a loan, since the money has already been paid, but I understand it in the context of “that’s government revenue that wouldn’t come in anymore.” I think there is likely a good compromise on the student loan issue, because I do believe it’s an issue. We could probably both agree that no one should end up paying way more than the originally borrowed just because the lending terms allowed interest to balloon.
What voting blocs has he targeted? I haven’t come away with that same analysis.
See my answer to Mike Alexander. How about illegal immigrants who've been here more than 10 years and married US citizens? Biden's been trying to find some way to pander to Hispanics, whom he sees as a bloc (they aren't, but that's another issue). But clearly, extremism is in the eye of the beholder. To me, both Trump and Biden are pretty extreme.
I agree somewhat that Biden (and Democrats in general) aren’t good at understanding Latinos. There are a lot of them who wouldn’t like a policy allowing those folks to become citizens. However, I do think that’s a good policy. I would rather Biden be more progressive on immigration, and I think this one is a good one.
All politicians pander. Trump panders to the Republican donor class with tax cuts. To the military industrial complex through increases in defense spending, to pro-lifers by getting rid of Roe and so on.
Again, I don't think the pandering is the issue for you. I think it is, again, moral. You probably feel that those who entered the country illegally shouldn't be rewarded with legal status, when those who went the legal route have to wait their turn. Is this close?
If that was for me, you couldn't be more wrong. I think the folks who are going the legal route should be given priority.