Re:Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class...
by supernova87a on Saturday November 21, 2020 @01:09PM
(#25171432)
How do we feel and how does it matter more than someone's bank account? It starts to, if it determines what we're going to do next, when provided certain incentives and systems in which to behave.
Yes, loan forgiveness isn't a perpetual system (as in my example), for the student receiving it. Obviously. It's perpetual if you do that for every class into the future.
And yes, I said openly in my preface that the picture I'm painting is to illustrate the point of incentives and policies -- not to say at all that student debt holders are underperformers. You miss my point if so.
Re:Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class...
by thomastjeffery on Saturday November 21, 2020 @01:45PM
(#25171750)
> It's perpetual if you do that for every class into the future.
In other words, it's perpetual so long as we perpetuate the underlying problem.
So let's solve the underlying problem, too. By instituting Student Loan Forgiveness, we are suddenly motivated to overhaul our higher education system so that it does not demand student debt.
How does that take higher precedence than the literal financial situation of millions of people?
> Your colleague has been a low performer consistently
You are painting a very different picture here. People by and large don't get into unrecoverable student loan debt because they are low performers. Many of them achieve excellent grades. Their work is simply not compensated. So here in your metaphor, you have made a demon out of the victim.
> How about we run that again the next 2 weeks. What are you going to do?
Again, this metaphor has strayed from the reality it is meant to compare to. Student loan forgiveness isn't a perpetual system. It's an N time deal. N increases during the time it takes to overhaul our failed higher education system. Because we are motivated to keep N low, we are motivated to quickly overhaul our failed higher education system.
> Your boss, at the delivery meeting, says, actually, this was just a motivational exercise to get us to practice coding and teamwork
Notice how even in your metaphor, you are victimizing your teammate when it is clearly your boss who is at fault. That part of the metaphor tracts quite well with reality. In reality, you are blaming the student when the universities and stagnant wages are to blame.
> And that they be called "selfish" for thinking so.
Indeed it might be.