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if I am reading this right, cancelling student debt would materially help 75% of my fellow citizens.
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I don't see how you think it shows that. What it does show is that forgiving all student debt would give far more to people earning high incomes. It's a regressive form of basic income, ignoring most of the people who actually need it most. It wouldn't just be neutral for them.
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cancel student debt and enact UBI. these are not mutually exclusive.
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The money for cancelling student debt could be equally distributed instead of giving it primarily to the people who already got theirs. People with high income careers will do just fine without their loans being forgiven. If they want to spend UBI that way, they can do it.
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or we just give people the money. this sort of fine slicing to avoid any chance someone “undeserving” benefits is how our current welfare system works and it is a punitive disaster. if we can pass $1.8T in tax cuts exclusively for the wealthy, with hardy any debate...
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Yes, just give everyone the same amount of money. If you want them to be able to pay off their loans, give them more money. Specifically forgiving certain loans that you see as more deserving of forgiveness and are distributed most to high income earners is regressive.
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It's yet another proposal for helping out high income earners at the expense of poor people. That is the reality of what it is: a regressive policy proposed primarily by privileged people. People who went to university are not more deserving of help than those who didn't.
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Instead of helping out a lawyer with $200k and not giving anything to someone who went to work after high school to support their family, how about giving them both 100k? If the lawyer wants to use it to pay off their student loans, they can do it.
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Specifically forgiving student debt is exactly what you describe: seeing education as something virtuous and people who spent lots of money obtaining one worthy of having society support them more than those who didn't, similar to policies subsidizing home ownership, etc.