 Mr. President, is this unfair to people who paid their student loans or chose not to take out loans? Is it fair to people who, in fact, do not own the multi-billion dollar businesses if they see one of these guys give them all a tax break? Is that fair? What do you think? What about people who paid their loans so struggle to pay their loans and now others don't have to? And that, my friends, is how it's done. That was President Joe Biden shutting down a reporter's question about whether or not student debt cancellation is somehow unfair. Now, we'll address whether or not it is unfair. I think that those arguments are important, so we'll talk about that a little bit later in this video, but because Joe Biden decided to do something that's good, minimal, albeit still good, well, of course, the GOP is incredibly furious and they are going out of their way to attack Biden for this. So let's take a look at the front page of Fox News. Currently, they say that Biden is slaving Americans with a handout that taxpayers will be forced to foot. Hmm, they didn't seem too angry when the Republican Party passed tax cuts for the rich, but apparently now that working-class people are getting a little bit of relief, their irate. Mitch McConnell decided to tweet about this saying, Democrat student loan socialism, this man does not know what socialism means, is a slap in the face to working Americans, these are working Americans who disproportionately benefit from this, who sacrificed to pay their debt or made different career choices to avoid debt, a wildly unfair redistribution of wealth toward higher earning people, as if people who have student debt currently have any fucking wealth, Jesus Christ. But as public citizen points out, you literally canceled $1.9 trillion in tax cuts for the rich. You should sit this one out. Exactly. Now, John Iderola responded by saying, I was lucky enough to be able to pay my student loan debt. And let me say, it is in no way a slap in the face to see others relieved of that burden. Exactly. Now, Mitt Romney, who is a multi-millionaire, whose mansion has an elevator for his cars, decided to weigh in and said, sat to see what's being done to, quote, bribe voters, as if delivering for the working-classes bribing. Biden's student loan forgiveness plan may win Democrats some votes, but it fuels inflation foots taxpayers with other people's financial obligations, is unfair to those who pay their own way and creates irresponsible expectations. Now, let me just pause right there to address that argument that taxpayers will have to foot this bill. The overwhelming majority of student loans are held by the federal government. So by canceling a certain amount of debt, it's not like the government has to raise that money to pay for it. The government is just saying, we're not going to collect this money from student debt holders. You can look at it as a tax cut, but instead they're saying, no, well, somebody else is going to be harmed. Except we don't actually view things this way when we're talking about giveaways to defense contractors in the military industrial complex or complex or wealthy elites. It's only when the working-class get a little bit of relief, which is when they're so concerned about the tax burden. Yeah, shifting the tax burden over the course of decades from elites to the working-class never seemed to worry them. But now, when working-class people get relief, all of a sudden they're horrified about the tax burden. Shut the fuck up. Now, the House Judiciary Committee decided to chime in saying, if you take out a loan, you pay it back, period. But as Kasim Rashad noted in his response to them, GOP supported the PPP Loan Forgiveness Program, which overwhelmingly benefited the top 20% of income earners. 4.1 million PPP loans were forgiven. The average dollar amount forgiven was $95,700, but $10,000 in student loans for low-income people and the GOP rushes to condemn. No shame. Now, as Justin Barragona also points out, lenders forgave $287 million in unpaid loans to Donald Trump. So where's the outrage there? The GOP doesn't actually care about working-class people and middle-class people. All they care about is delivering to their wealthy donors. So the reason why they're angry isn't because they're worried about whether or not, the middle class is going to have to foot the bill for this. They're worried that the elites aren't the ones that's getting some extra money. They want them to have it all and they're just hiding the ball and they're trying to larp as working-class sympathizers when in actuality they don't care because this is something that directly benefits working-class people and we'll get into that. So let's talk about what Biden is actually going to do. So right off the bat, I'm going to say that my expectations were very low and because of that I was pleasantly surprised to see that this is better than I expected and it could be a game changer assuming we get more details about specific provisions that aren't really being discussed but what I think are important. So the key points of this plan were tweeted out by the White House and they are as follows. $20,000 will be forgiven if you received Pell grants. So this is actually a pleasant surprise. This will automatically cancel thousands of more debt for millions of more people. This is really encouraging and the expected $10,000 if you did not receive Pell grants. Now additionally, forgiveness is limited to individuals earning less than $125,000 per year and it's not noted on this graphic but also $250,000 for married couples. So just keep that in mind. The student loan pause is extended one final time through December 31st and undergraduate loan repayments can now be capped at 5% as opposed to 10% of your monthly discretionary income and he'll also be raising the level of income that is considered non-discretionary. Although again, this is not on the graphic but there are more details on the White House website which I'll link to down below. Now even if this is not what I wanted, I wanted all of it canceled or at a minimum $50,000, this is still very significant even if I am admittedly disappointed because 43 million Americans they hold student debt and now millions of Americans nearly half at about 20 million will see their balances completely zeroed out. This is no small thing, this is substantial and this is a good thing. Is it what I wanted? No, I wanted more but still nevertheless this is really important and to dispel the myth that this is going to help the wealthy student loan borrowers. I mean this is stupid just on his face because if you're wealthy, if you come from a family with money, you don't have to take out student loans, you don't have to do that. So to claim that this is a giveaway to wealthy Americans is absurd but this is who this is going to disproportionately benefit. This is courtesy of the Department of Education. 87% of the debt that will be canceled goes to people earning less than $75,000 per year. These are working class Americans. This is not a tax cut for the rich. This is a break for working class people. Now he's also kind of burying the lead here because there are two other potentially massive provisions that could be more beneficial than just canceling $20,000 or $10,000. So this is courtesy of WhiteHouse.gov. He'll also forgive loan balances after 10 years of payments instead of 20 years for borrowers with original loan balances of $12,000 or less. The Department of Education estimates that this reform will allow nearly all community college borrowers to be debt free within 10 years. Also, and perhaps very substantial, it will cover the borrowers unpaid monthly interest so that like other existing income driven repayment plans, no borrowers loan balance will grow as long as they make their monthly payments even when that monthly payment is $0 because their income is low. So that right there is what I'm really interested in. Now we need more details about that specific provision, but what they're doing is they're not zeroing out the interest, which is what I recommended, but they're subsidizing the interest payment as you will so that way your balance won't grow while you're still making payments. Now the question is, well, will our balance shrink as long as we're making payments? And we don't necessarily know, but depending on how charitable this particular provision is, this could actually lead to people being able to pay off their student debt within their lifetimes. Because remember, currently people can't pay off their debt because they take out, let's say $20,000 for example, but then after trying to pay that off within five years, their balance grows and doesn't go down because the interest rates are so high. So if this actually leads to people paying off their debt over time, this could be really what is needed, but we don't know. Now the question is, how do you sign up? Because this is means tested unfortunately. So that means you have to opt in some way. Now currently we don't have details about how you can actually get these benefits, but I will link you to the Department of Education's page where you can sign up for email updates. It's at the bottom of the page and they're supposedly going to let us know how to claim this and that information is supposedly going to come within the following couple of weeks. So look out for that. I signed up for the email updates myself. I hope that they don't spam me, but I want to make sure that I don't miss out and I recommend that you do the same because again it's means tested. So I'm assuming you have to provide proof of income or supply them with your tax return from last year. I'm not necessarily sure, but I think it's important and worthwhile to sign up. I didn't at least, but I mean, if not subscribe and I'll try to keep you all updated. Now I want to address a really good argument made on MSNBC about this and a reason why we should still be disappointed if this doesn't wipe out all of our debt. And this was a point made by Ashtra Taylor. She's the co-founder of the debt collective and what she says here, I've made this point, but still it's worth repeating. Take a look. Well, I and the debt collective have always been of the mindset that every penny of student debt should be erased because college is a public good and it should be free. But there's no doubt this is a huge stepping stone, a milestone on the path to that end. I mean, the call for debt cancellation was extremely unusual when we first raised it 10 years ago and now the president is doing it. And if these estimates or these rumors we're hearing are accurate, I believe they are, and we're seeing $10,000 as a baseline and up to 20,000 for program recipients. That means that up to 20 million people could have their balances reduced to zero. That is hugely significant. It shows that all debt can be canceled. If you can cancel 10K or 20K, it can all go and it should go. We need to fix the higher education system so that future generations aren't buried in unpayable debt. But absolutely, this is significant and will be a big boost for millions of families and for the economy. And that right there is a really important point. If you are demonstrating to us that you do have the authority to unilaterally cancel student debt and you don't cancel all of it, then you're still leaving us hanging. And that's just a little bit frustrating because what millennials are asking for, what Gen Z years are asking for is we're not necessarily asking for anything new. We're asking to be at parity with our predecessors. I mean, I had conversations with my college professors who are older and they took out student loans, but they were able to pay it back within months because they were able to get affordable jobs. The cost of tuition wasn't as high back then. So we just want to be able to go to school and not be burdened with debt for the rest of our lives. I think that a higher education is intrinsically valuable and it's a public good and it's a human right. So all we're asking for is to have the same luxury that our predecessors had. But still, there are a lot of people who are in this in between where they managed to pay off their debt, but they wouldn't qualify now for cancellation. So let's go to a tweet that really demonstrates that. So this is from Karen Herbert, I believe her name is who writes, I paid off two student loans. Where's my $20,000? Now, I think that Daniela had the perfect response asking, would it be fair to the people the trolley has already killed to divert it now? And that's a really good question because think about this. Do we just stop making progress in the name of fairness? I mean, think about this in 2020. So many people died due to COVID-19. Does that mean that we don't offer the vaccine to people of following year because it would be unfair to the people who died? Do we never advance medically or technologically because previous generations didn't have access to the technology that we have access to? I mean, if you buy into this argument, this is by definition an argument to keep us forever in a state of regression where we never make progress because we're always worried about whether or not some people will or won't be left out. Now, I understand like trying to empathize with Karen here. If I just managed to pay off my student debt, which I can't foresee that happening ever. But if I were able to pay off my student debt and a year later, the president announced cancellation, would I be a little bit disappointed? Sure. I would take the stance that John Iderola takes where it's like, I'm not going to be mad. Sure, I wish I could have benefited from that, but I'm not going to be mad that other people are getting relief. But I still sympathize with their argument. So this is why if I were a benevolent dictator, I would find some way to help people within the last five years, let's say, if they paid off their student debt, so perhaps offered them a tax cut or a tax kickback at the end of the year, $5,000, $10,000, so that way they don't feel as if all that hard work to pay off that debt was for nothing. But ultimately, I don't think that that's necessary to offer cancellation. I think that what you need to do is target relief to people who need that the most. And that is people who are struggling with student debt. They can't purchase homes. They can't purchase cars. They can't start their lives and move out of their parents' homes because of this debt that they will have likely for the rest of their lives. But we're finally heading in a direction where that is starting to change. Understand like a year ago, Nancy Pelosi was saying that the president doesn't have the authority to cancel student debt, even if Trump and Biden canceled some student debt. But now she's applauding him. So the Overton window is shifting, and that's a really good thing. I don't want people to feel disappointed and feel spiteful because some people are getting access to something that they didn't get access to. I think that you should celebrate this. And as Caitlin Burns puts it, if you have a problem with the student loan cancellation because you already paid off your student loans, just pretend it's a tax cut for the rich that you also never got but mysteriously didn't complain about. There you go. So it just makes no sense to me how these same people who bemoan student loan forgiveness never question increases to our defense budget, never question, you know, aid to other countries who are human rights abusers, never question whether or not rich people should continue to get tax cuts. And now that working class Americans are getting something, all of a sudden you're going to ask, well, where's mine? I mean, I was asking, where's mine when rich people got bailed out, when Wall Street was bailed out. Why weren't you there with me asking that same question? So yeah, you're never going to please everyone. And no policy is fair. America is a catastrophically unfair system. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't celebrate the small wins when we get them. I mean, this is rare. So I'm going to celebrate it. Look, again, this is not what I wanted. I wanted at least $50,000 canceled. But still to see 20,000 of my student debt canceled, because I did take Pell grants, I feel relieved, not completely relieved, but a little bit more relieved. Because, you know, if it's the case that the government is going to subsidize interest payments, and I can actually pay down my student debt, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, something that people my age haven't seen. So, you know, this is a good thing. And it's a small victory, but I'm still going to celebrate it, but keep pushing for total cancellation. This isn't the end. This is just the start of hopefully more steps to completely eliminate student debt.