Is there hope?
I had another Facebook interaction on Saturday, but this one turned out to be positive. At the same time, the entire experience illustrates the mountain we have to climb to get there. It was heartening and disheartening all at the same time. The beginning was simply one of those memes about student loan forgiveness. Just right there we have a triumph of issue framing. In order to be eligible for “loan forgiveness” one has to pay in regularly for at least ten years.
Instead of focusing on hearsay, let’s take a look at actual facts. According to the link, the average monthly payment is 503 dollars. It takes the average person 20 years to repay the loan. My crack math skills tell me that over ten years that ends up being around 61,000 give or take a dollar here or there. The same site said that typically 42 percent of the amount repaid goes to interest.
So, to call it student loan forgiveness is a bit disingenuous to begin with. This is what I lovingly call issue framing. I haven’t even lied yet and you already have a vision in your head of someone paying nothing for an education. The truth is that they pay back on average 61,000 before they are even eligible for the forgiveness. That exceeds the original value of their loan most of the time and we are just looking at the average payment and minimum amount of time to be eligible.
The good news is that the conversation went well. When I started pointing out facts the conversation shifted and became more cordial. I don’t think I converted anyone. The main counterpart still thinks it is better to incentivize big business and is still anti-student loan forgiveness but at least they acknowledged that the “facts” they were going in with weren’t really facts at all.
It took awhile. I had to lay out the groundwork that the federal government gives all kinds of people tax breaks, bailouts, and incentives for various reasons. Then, I had to go through the rules that were put in place to be eligible for the loan forgiveness. From there, I had to combat the notion that students were majoring in lesbian zombie studies or transgender media bias.
This is where things get into the good or bad news territory depending on your perspective. Doing this daily can be exhausting and it is a job that mainstream media is failing at. It isn’t that they are failing as much as they aren’t trying. It makes no sense for them to try. For all of the talk about media bias and a so-called liberal bias, they are ignoring the most obvious bias of all. Everyone wants to make a buck and conflict sells. So, why correct a bad frame when that bad frame gets eyeballs, clicks, and subscriptions?
The 24 hour news cycle and networks could have tackled these things. They could go into more depth on important issues so that their viewers have a more thorough understanding. It isn’t even so much that people would agree more with the idea of loan forgiveness. It would be that they wouldn’t necessarily demonize people because they would see that they have paid back what they originally borrowed and then some.
Again, this can be exhausting. This is one person and one issue. I don’t have the time or energy to tackle all of the issues and all of the people that are basing their opinions on bad information. Some of this is on all of us. I started with a simple question: what is the average loan payment and I was able to find the information in seconds. Information is available if we bother to ask the questions. Critical thinking is critical and nobody has time to do it for you.
We could start calling the interest paid the “Student Education Tax.”
1“Student Education Tax”
Genius!
Nick, you’ve done better than I have. When I try the techniques you described with my Republican Sister, she dodges, deflects, and attempts to change the subject. I try to return to the facts figures and original topic at hand, but she will end the discussion with “well… I just don’t believe that’s true.”
She has a masters degree.
2Depends on the audience. I probably got lucky.
3There are levels of repugnantican lack of reasoning. Some still can understand when facts are finally framed and explained. Others, like my brother, are so far down the black hole of the maga cult that there’s no light or reasoning. As you said, Nick, depends on the audience.
4“ Depends on the audience.”
Yes.
5The techniques described for interaction and discussion are always worth a try though. There’s always a possibility it will go farther than changing the subject.
Maybe this is a little off topic. I’m not going to repeat what you said in the first 2 sentences of your next to last paragraph about the media but it made me think about what the media chooses to discuss in more detail. After watching some of the national media this evening, they refuse to mention the batshit crazy stuff trumpf said at his rally today (as usual). They’re ok to discuss how old Biden is on a regular basis but not to talk about the absolutely nutty crap and lapses in consciousness of trumpf. It’s no wonder people like my magat brother believe what the hear on fox and newsmax and are oblivious about the real trumpf.
6I like to approach the issue from the other side.
When I matriculated at cow college in ’64, tuition was $151/semester and minimum wage was $1.25/hr.
All-in expenses were around $1,500/yr, so you could cover that by working a bit over half-time at some menial job.
When my son went to college in 1990, costs were way up, but students had access to jobs that paid way over minimum wage, whivh I never did, so it is a bit hard to compare burdens.
But it is pretty clear that the burden on him was higher than it was on me. He borrowed a few tens of thousands. I paid my own way after the first semester.
His sister, who started school about a decade later, faced a yet higher burden.
The truth is, boomers were staked to a nearly-costless higher education, and that gift has been steadily withdrawn.
7