Student loan forgiveness is being taken seriously right now by the bourgeoisie.
The Federal interest rate going near 0% has led to a massive boom in housing construction. Student loan deferment has led to many people saving up for a down payment on a house. The housing market is carrying the US economy right now.
If student loan deferment ends, this space that Capital found for expansion will disappear. There will be an immediate crisis.
Also, the effort to privatize student loans has been a failure. Betsy DeVos has been the Secretary of Education most dedicated to privatization. She killed the Perkins Loan, which has led many new students to private loans.
Although, after her reign, 92% of public student loan debt are still held by the Department of Education. It is unlikely that the Biden SoE will be more successful at speeding up the process. Capital is in crisis now.
Forgiving public debts is a method of privatization in America, where a culture of indebtedness exists. They want everyone with public student loans to take out private mortgages, owned by JPMorgan, Citigroup, etc.
I’m not saying student loan forgiveness is good or bad. It is good for me. But it serves a purpose that we should understand.
They’re fucking idiots if they don’t do it honestly. Not only would it transfer large portions of young peoples income to private banks, but home ownership Is the easiest way to give workers a stake in Capitalism. Two of millennials’ top issues are student loan debt and their inability to buy homes, and we have seen a big uptick in anticapitalist sentiment among them largely due to these two issues.
Their hesitation is because student loans discipline labor.
The threat of student loans is the major reason I can’t rock the boat at my job.
And this is the real reason to tie health care to jobs, and not just jobs, but full-time “real” jobs.
100%
Teachers went on strike in my city last Wednesday. The School Board revoked their health care Tuesday night.
There was massive community support for the teachers, and the Board capitulated to their demands in a day. But still, it clearly illustrated the role of employer-based health insurance to people here.
This is true, but as someone pointed out, unemployment can serve this function, as well as the threat of underemployment via the gig economy. Mortgages are another way to discipline labor, and it’s one that private banks can profit off of more directly than student loans. Once you own a home, you will run yourself ragged to hold onto it.
I honestly have no idea what is going to happen wrt student debt. I think it’s one of the only concessions neoliberals might dole out exactly for the reasons laid out in this thread. But at the same time I’m not sure of it, because they get some kind of sick pleasure out of the misery they inflict on the working class. I guess we will just have to see.
I was just about to respond to that post:
Great point. The reserve supply of labor is high. Back when unemployment was around 3%, they needed other tools of labor discipline (student loans). They are less needed now, so the bourgeoisie are more willing to consider student loan forgiveness.
They need people to buy their shit. There is an over-production of houses right now.
I think we on the left have a tendency to underestimate how scared of us the Bourgeoisie really is. We had massive violent uprisings all over the country this summer, uniting working class people of all races in opposition to the Bourgeoisie’s tool of enforcement. Police precincts being burned down, people shooting each other, and long term sustained and even organized clashes with the police in Portland. Sure, they didn’t win anything but still that scares the shit out of the porkies. Even though there was bombings and shit in the 60s we didn’t have thousands of young folks, particularly young white folks gearing up in armor and gas masks, forming street phalanxes and pushing the police back for literally months. The hippies definitely were out in the streets but their ideology was inherently nonviolent. Young leftists today believe violence is a useful tool and are clearly willing to use it.
Also, while China is obviously not the USSR, they are a serious threat to US hegemony. They would much rather focus on countering China without worrying about domestic unrest. They understand that external conflict plus domestic unrest is a recipe for disaster. They are doing well with the anti-China propaganda but in the age of the internet its going to be hard to control the flow of info from east to west. Eventually people will start wondering where the mass Uyghur graves are, and start to question the narrative. And even if they don’t, it’s basically impossible to conceal the fact that China is doing better and better while we are doing worse and worse.
It doesn’t matter how much wealth or power or cops they have if the majority of the proletariat turns against them. Automation requires engineers and mechanics, police forces require food, supplies, ammunition, etc. You can’t maintain a power structure if a massive portion of the overall population doesn’t want it to exist and is willing to tear it down themselves.
Capital can only continue to survive if it keeps a fair chunk of the population invested in capitalism. If the entirety of Gen Z and Millennials decided they wanted socialism tomorrow morning, they’re up shit creek without a paddle.
If people cannot buy homes the housing market will collapse again. The immediate need is less about maintaining any self-conscious allegiance to capitalism and more about saving a specific market.
Y’all at giving capital too much credit. All of that is true and they will still cut off their nose to spite their face.
Like letting people pay rent with Credit Cards. That is going crater the whole fucking thing
Real and bout to be a massive problem.
yeah lmao
my apartment complex is offering a “”“special”“” deal during the pandemic where they dont charge you the extra 3% fee they usually charge you if you do it. wow thanks not leeching even more money off me than you already do if i end up in a situation where i have to do something as risky as putting rent onto a credit card, what a generous deal
I’m not holding my breath but Biden is filling his cabinet with diehard ideological neoliberals that exist to serve the interests of finance capital. Student debt forgiveness makes sense from a neoliberal perspective in the same way that corporate bailouts or the ACA does. It puts money into the hands of capitalists, more specifically finance capitalists. Who knows though. The right, which is increasingly representing industrial capital over finance capital, might browbeat them into giving up. We know how Dems love giving up.
These are very different scenarios though. Student payments are money being extracted from the economy and getting funneled to the DOE, whereas in 2008, it was money that was flowing to finance capital that was interrupted. Also the bailouts were a lump sum to restore liquidity. We are talking about eliminating the extraction of a large amount of money from the economy, much of which will go to servicing new long term loans from private banks (hypothetically). A mortgage is most likely multiple times the amount that student loans are and having millions of new mortgages could increase the overall hold finance capital has over the greater economy. On the individual level it’s the difference between being on unemployment until work picks back up vs getting a permanent salary bump.
Joke’s on them, forgiving my student loans would give me enough money to buy 2 shipping containers and a small plot of unincorporated land in Maine or Montana. See ya later housing market, I’m gonna go be starving and homeless before you can even touch me.
All reform is an attempt to stave off collapse or revolt, so this isn’t really anything special. And it would help a lot of people, so I hope they do it. I’d save the equivalent of a full year’s salary.
