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Post by Optimus on Aug 26, 2022 15:55:36 GMT -5
Yeah, but you can find just as many people (even economists) saying that it won't meaningfully increase inflation. Furman's just one guy and his (and others') "Chicken Little" doomsday proclamations of inflationary impact are 100% hypothetical. Those dubious assertions rest on a laundry list of bullshit assumptions of how people "might" spend the "extra" money that these economists claim people will have based on this small amount of debt relief. I remember when health experts like Fauci made a bunch of bullshit assumptions about how people "might" behave during the pandemic, and look how that turned out. The idea that this small amount of debt relief will lead to significant and immediate increases in consumer spending (which is the only way it would affect inflation) are questionable, at best, and farcical, at worst. www.vox.com/2022/8/25/23320825/student-loan-debt-forgiveness-inflationI somewhat get why some people are uneasy about it based on some sort of moral or economic principles (though I disagree with them), but this action will likely have zero impact on their lives at all. So why do they care other than "government do something bad in very abstract sense...me get big mad...so me go rage on Twitter!!! Grr!!!." The day-to-day lives and finances of the people most butt hurt about it will change the same amount of "not at all" as they did when the Bush government wasted trillions fighting wars in the Middle East. Regardless, I have almost $80,000 in student loans and barely make half of that a year, so the people who have their panties in the tightest of twists about Biden's action on student loans can go eat big fat dicks as far as I'm concerned. I'll take the relief and they can learn to cope.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 26, 2022 11:11:24 GMT -5
A couple of things: 1) The PPP program was a total crock, and it was brought to us by both Dem and Repub, alike. But...people are misrepresenting it by comparing it to the cancellation of student debt. The PPP loans weren't suddenly forgiven one day, the program had stipulations and if you got a loan and met the requirements--or could at least show evidence that you did--by spending the money in specific ways, then you wouldn't be required to repay the loan. Still utter bullshit, as pols and their cronies reaped the rewards, but these weren't long term loans that were being repaid with interest then suddenly just written off. My point was that the stupid retorts like "if you take out a loan, you should pay for it" that have been flying around (mostly from conservatives) about student loans are hypocritical, at best, given that the government forgives huge loans/debts all the time (including debts much bigger than what was just announced). Forgiving these loans will have zero affect on the average taxpayer just like forgiving the PPP loans had pretty much zero effect on the average tax payer (in terms of tax rates). This will likely have no effect on inflation. Repayments have been paused for the better part of the past two years so any effect that repayments would have on inflation is already baked in to current inflation rates. However, I do agree that it could lead universities to raise tuition yet again (that's the crux of the scam I talked about earlier) but they already do that anyway. Sorry, I meant loan servicers not lenders. It's true that the fedgov is technically the lender but fedgov doesn't service the loans itself in any meaningful way. Those duties were shifted to quasi-governmental "loan servicers" like MOHELA over a decade ago (and nearly all student loan balances were also shifted to these loan servicers too). There are also private financial companies like SoFi that participate in student loan servicing and refinancing. All of these loan servicers profit off of student loan payments via interest rates (duh). However, even private companies like SoFi cannot collect payments from student loan borrowers during fedgov's moratorium on payments, so they take a profit loss the longer the moratorium stays in effect. And, as I said, these loan servicers pressured Biden into cutting this deal, so that the repayments could start back up ASAP and they could start making money again: www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/sofi-ceo-biden-cancel-student-debt-restart-payments
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Post by Optimus on Aug 25, 2022 11:52:55 GMT -5
I don't mind them cancelling student debt, especially because I have a lot of it that needs cancelling. When compared to the $700 billion in PPP loans they gave out to mostly rich business owners and then forgave, this is pocket change. The issue I have with it is that it's a purely cosmetic gesture. Once payments start back up, that $10K per person will be recouped over the next couple of years in interest. This was a gift to the lenders, who pushed Biden for specifically $10K in relief, because they knew it wouldn't hurt them at all. They just wanted payments to start back up ASAP. The bigger issue with this is that it doesn't address the actual problem, which is rising tuition costs that are insanely, unjustifiably high. The entire tuition-and-federal-loan industry is a money transfer scam exacerbated by exponentially growing university administration payrolls. For example, University of Michigan has 48,000 students. For a student body that size, they have roughly 6800 academic faculty but also nearly 19,000 admnistrative staff. Their administrative staff is larger than the student population of most US universities. Contrast that with University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, which has around 64,000 students. Even though they're teaching roughly 16,000 more students than UM, they somehow are able to do it with only 3200 faculty (about 3600 FEWER than UM) and only 7,400 administrative staff (around 12,000 FEWER than UM). The US university model is all kinds of fucked up and it seems to be designed this way to support a system that is indistinguishable from a price-gouging, money-laundering racket.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 25, 2022 11:34:29 GMT -5
To be fair, people at CNN pretty much are paid to cover for Biden.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 25, 2022 11:32:18 GMT -5
I'm not a fan of all the guns in the South but I know that kind of stuff doesn't happen much there because so many gas station workers have access to guns behind the counter. Those kids would get their asses shot if they tried that in TN or AL.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 25, 2022 11:29:21 GMT -5
I usually don't wish ill will on people's careers, but if this completely destroys Stelter's career, I won't shed a tear.
Not only did he "fight" misinformation by spreading his own, he (as you mentioned) acted like Chris Cuomo's and Jeff Zucker's purse puppy. Couldn't bring himself to even acknowledge, much less honestly report on, either of those douchebags' bad, unprofessional behavior that was happening in the same building where Stelter spent every night whining about the bad behavior of Fox News.
Fuck that guy and the Zucker dick he rode in on.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 24, 2022 12:21:02 GMT -5
Fried still got over half a million votes. That should be enough to terrify anyone. I suppose "terror" is relative, at least in this case. Sure, she got 534,000 votes, but Crist got nearly twice that many votes. Half a million isn't a lot when you lose by nearly the same amount. If the race had been closer (or close at all), then I would be more inclined to agree with you. Also, given that there are roughly 5 million registered Democrat voters in Florida, it's kind of sad that she was only able to garner support from 1/10th of them. I know people don't come out for the primaries in general, but if Dems want to win anything they're gonna need to get off their asses. Unfortunately (for me, because I'm a democrat), this is par for the course for Dem voters. They talk a big game in the press and on social media but then stay home when it's time to actually vote.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 24, 2022 11:15:40 GMT -5
I can't find the clip of it, but did you see Nikki Fried's embarrassing Zoom talk from the other day? At the end, she opened it up to questions from the press. After a few beats, nobody asked anything so they moved on. Apparently, there weren't any members of the press on the call at all.
Pretty sad when a democrat candidate is so awful that the left-leaning media doesn't even care to cover them.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 24, 2022 11:08:35 GMT -5
Yeah, I don't know whether to be depressed or entertained by the fact that this is what our modern politics has devolved into. Right now, I'm leaning toward entertained (especially after the crudite fiasco). But maybe I'm laughing to hide the tears? I hate that politicians are on social media at all because it's encouraged them all act like bitchy, bratty middle school children. It's not just Oz and Fetterman (though they do seem to be going hard in the paint with this stuff at the moment). I hit a nauseating level of immaturity back when "The Squad" (or, as I like to call them, the DemoBrats) started being more active on Twitter a few years ago.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 17, 2022 15:13:43 GMT -5
So, typical Twitter thread then, eh?
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Post by Optimus on Aug 17, 2022 15:07:14 GMT -5
Yeah, it's the classic choice between a plate of hot cat shit and a plate of hot dog shit. I consider the MAGA Trumper candidates to be hot dog shit so, if I were forced to eat shit, I guess I'd rather it be cat shit.
However, either way, you're still having to eat shit.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 16, 2022 23:48:10 GMT -5
Oof, it's almost like they're begging to be sued.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 12, 2022 17:52:59 GMT -5
Somebody really needs to put all of her galaxy brain quotes in a book one day. Guaranteed to be a #1 best seller on the modern philosophy charts.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 12, 2022 13:25:37 GMT -5
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Post by Optimus on Aug 11, 2022 19:17:42 GMT -5
I'm guessing that Lorenz's disability is intellectual?
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