Joe Biden Love Thread

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by elphenor

if your parents can support you indefinitely while you pay your student loans maybe you're just securely middle class no matter what poor financial choices you make

Let me guess, you don't have any student loans to pay off?

[Guybrush]

Originally Posted by TheBig3

I went to an in-state State School for undergrad and I still have something like $71k left in debt. I don't know how much of that is Grad School but I slimed my way out of paying for half of that.

Man, that's about twice of what I racked up getting my degree.

But in Norway, uni tuition is free so student loans typically only have to cover books and living costs.

I got about 25k left. Could've paid it off, but rates aren't so bad and if I die before it's paid off, it's annulled, so I've done other things with my monays.

[TheBig3]

Originally Posted by Guybrush

Man, that's about twice of what I racked up getting my degree.

But in Norway, uni tuition is free so student loans typically only have to cover books and living costs.

I got about 25k left. Could've paid it off, but rates aren't so bad and if I die before it's paid off, it's annulled, so I've done other things with my monays.

I'm also not pretending to be a financial wizard but I'm pretty sure borrow at low interest and paying back when interest is high is technically beating the system. The money you borrowed had more value than the money you're repaying with.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by Frownland

The coolest part about being middle class is when your DTI is so out of wack that you're functionally lower class but nobody looks at you like you're one of the poors.

like a true bona-fide poor, I had to Google dti.

I wasn't saying there's anything fun about it or ever that I don't think they should forgive it just that I can see why it could be somewhat regressive.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by elphenor

if your parents can support you indefinitely while you pay your student loans maybe you're just securely middle class no matter what poor financial choices you make

I think a lot of them are just somewhat debt strapped but with decent careers and fairly comfortable lives, materially speaking.

Originally Posted by Frownland

Supporting your children for an extra 10-30 years sounds like an upper class move to me.

The concept of the middle class is just a myth used to give the illusion of social mobility and undermine working class solidarity anyways.

I don't think the middle class is a meaningless distinction in terms of material wealth at all. Maybe it's more useful for the lower class and middle class to unite against the rich but that doesn't make them the same.

[Frownland]

Originally Posted by jwb

like a true bona-fide poor, I had to Google dti.

I wasn't saying there's anything fun about it or ever that I don't think they should forgive it just that I can see why it could be somewhat regressive.

Ja internet access is notoriously a poor man's tool.

The regressive aspect is that it's placing a bandaid on a broken system, not that that any form of addressing the issue of college debt would only help the "middle class". The latter is just feigned concern that appropriates leftist ideas to push reactionary politics. I'd say that Biden's policy should be recognized as both a half-measure and as a significant establishment of precedent.

Originally Posted by jwb

I don't think the middle class is a meaningless distinction in terms of material wealth at all. Maybe it's more useful for the lower class and middle class to unite against the rich but that doesn't make them the same.

It exists in terms of how the middle class will attempt to acquire bourgeois aesthetics. This creates the appearance of similarity between the middle and upper class because the middle class is striving to appear as the upper class, not because of legitimate similarities in their societal placement and in the way they live, operate, and think. I reject the idea of the middle class because the middle and lower class have more similarities than what's framed as their class-based division. In reality that division is the bourgeois deferment of blame and defense of status to a more crumb-wealthy strata of the working class. They're distinct when you maintain the false dynamic of that class system, but when broken down into worker/owner class divisions, the (intentional) ambiguity falls to the wayside and brings their similarities to light.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by Frownland

Ja internet access is notoriously a poor man's tool.

Did I mention I used a tracfone?

The regressive aspect is that it's placing a bandaid on a broken system, not that that any form of addressing the issue of college debt would only help the "middle class". The latter is just feigned concern that appropriates leftist ideas to push reactionary politics. I'd say that Biden's policy should be recognized as both a half-measure and as a significant establishment of precedent.

I already agreed with the bit about it being a bandaid if you don't fix the costs. I didn't even say "any form of addressing the issue of college debt would only help the middle class."

I said that I'm guessing more middle class and upper middle class people have a lot of student debt than people who are lower class since they go to uni a lot more so I bet they have more debt to be forgiven. That's what I assumed elph meant when he said it could be called regressive and I was just saying I could see that point not even that it was my main concern.

I would think when you say "any form of addressing the issue of college debt" that would also include lowering prices or having free college so there's not so much debt to be forgiven in the first place. Otherwise poor people will largely continue to be priced out of universities even if you decide to forgive the debt of those who manage to make it in.


I think your last sentence seems reasonable... hopefully it's a precedent that gets built on but if not and it's just one time debt forgiveness then it really doesn't hurt anyone and at least it helps some people.

It exists in terms of how the middle class will attempt to acquire bourgeois aesthetics. This creates the appearance of similarity between the middle and upper class because the middle class is striving to appear as the upper class, not because of legitimate similarities in their societal placement and in the way they live, operate, and think. I reject the idea of the middle class because the middle and lower class have more similarities than what's framed as their class-based division. In reality that division is the bourgeois deferment of blame and defense of status to a more crumb-wealthy strata of the working class. They're distinct when you maintain the false dynamic of that class system, but when broken down into worker/owner class divisions, the (intentional) ambiguity falls to the wayside and brings their similarities to light.

to be fair the worker/owner distinction offers up ambiguities of its own. The idea that Elon musk is a capitalist and Apu from the Simpsons is a capitalist and therfore they are part of the same strata of society seems pretty questionable to me.

In that one abstract sense they are but I don't think that one sense fully embodies the way we actually experience class. Class seems to imply a sort of mixture of wealth and social status. A millionaire who made all their money playing sports is of a higher status in our society than a small business owner with a single corner store, despite the owner/worker distinction. The millionaire will be treated better in virtually every way other than the one you identified, so it seems wrong to say the owner is necessarily of a higher class just by virtue of being an owner.

Similarly, while I largely agree the starkest and most socially significant class distinction is between the bottom 99 and the top 1%, I don't think that somehow means the difference in lifestyle between the poor and middle class isn't also large enough to meaningfully distinguish.

I get your point about them "adopting the asthetic" of the bourgeois but to me it's more than that. Having twice as much money isn't just an appearance. IIRC I've heard something like after 70k a year it caps off in terms of how much happier money makes you but before that it makes an obvious difference just in terms of not being stretched quite so thin financially. Which makes sense since obviously the less you make, the more of a difference an additional 10k a year can make in your life.

[jwb]

I meant someone who owns their own corner store, not a franchise owner. Like in Florida next door to my house there was one owned by this dude from Bangladesh named Ishmael and there was a store like that at least every 3 blocks, many of which were just owned by sole proprietors. You can't seriously tell me with a straight face that these people fall on the worker side of the owner/worker distinction.

[jwb]

They also hire people and pay them a wage. Usually not a very good one for a corner store employee. Then they extract surplus value from the labor of said employees in order to grow their business. How is that not a capitalist?' It sounds like you think you have to be a titan of industry to be a capitalist, which is simply not true.

[TheBig3]

If your station is in the West, you're more likely to make around $60,000 annually on average. Gas station owners in the Midwest could earn around $61,000 on average annually, while operating a gas station in the South could earn you around $66,000 on average per year

How Much Do Gas Station Owners Make?