Tag Archives: jobs

Student Debt

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In an article about Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s plan for reducing student loan-centered debt, The Wall Street Journal asked

What do you think would be an effective way to reduce student loan debt in the US?

Getting government out of the way of the economy so graduates can get jobs and pay their debts is the first and most critical step.

For the future, we need to require colleges and universities to publish the median and mean first-five-year annual incomes for their various majors.

In addition, we need to require colleges and universities, either individually or as consortia, to be the sole lenders of last resort to their students

We also need to remove government altogether from the student loan industry, as lender, as loan guarantor, and from any other role.

Finally, the only legitimate way for graduates to reduce their student loans short of repayment is through ordinary bankruptcy. We need to force our government to eliminate its ban on bankruptcy discharge of student debt.

Biden’s “plan” unfairly singles out private colleges/universities by not having their students’ debts ameliorated, a deliberate attempt to punish them; he’ll only mitigate the student debts for graduates of public schools and those who were cheated (under his definition of cheating) by for-profit schools.

Even worse, by making it so students don’t have to repay all of their debt through his forgiveness bit, Biden will greatly diminish, if not destroy, the student loan market, shifting the whole thing onto the backs of taxpayers, unless the methods outlined above are enacted.

Maybe Not So Much

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Some economic news from the end of last week:

The latest jobless claims figures from the Labor Department, which cover the week ending August 1, show that more than 1.18 million workers sought aid last week….
Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expected 1.41 million new claims.

And

Continuing claims, the number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid fell by 844,000 to 16.1 million.

The data coincide with the expiration of the $600/week Wuhan Virus-related payments added to ordinary unemployment payments, so that’s not a driver of this sharp labor improvement; although the impending end of the addendum could have had some impact. The overall improvement in our economy is the driver.

This weakens the case Progressive-Democrats are making to continue paying folks to not work, and it emphasizes their blatant obstruction to getting any sort of relief into our economy.

The biggest relief, of course, would be for the Federal government as a whole to get out of the way of our recovery, to let businesses reopen unfettered. Progressive-Democrats, though, and too many Republicans are continuing to insist on interfering.

Pen and Phone

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The editors at The Wall Street Journal expressed worry about President Donald Trump’s use of his “pen and phone” over the weekend to render the Congressional Progressive-Democrats’ obstructionism regarding Wuhan Virus relief for Americans irrelevant. They think he’s aping too closely ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) pen and phone.

It’s true that Trump is using his pen and phone. The differences between his actions and Obama’s, though, are two: Trump is undoing Obama’s pen and phone actions, not creating new things—with this exception, which is the other critical difference: Obama’s actions were largely illegal, struck down on legal challenge; Trump’s have proven legal, in the main, upheld on legal challenge.

The editors are worried about this use in particular:

Mr Trump’s FEMA order is a bad legal precedent that a President Kamala Harris could cite if a GOP Congress blocked her agenda on, say, climate change.

This is mistaken. For one thing, not doing a useful thing because a bad person (of either party) might misuse it later is simply foolish. If the thing is useful, it’s usefully done. Full stop.

For another thing, Obama already set the general precedent—Congress not performing to his satisfaction was his rationale for his own pen and phone use.

Finally, the question of precedent enabling a President Harris to use FEMA funds on her global warming agenda—to take a particular example—is plain wrong. Harris needs no precedent to use FEMA funds for her agenda; she’d do that anyway. And set her own precedent, without a care.

RTWT, though. Aside from this last item, it’s a generally soundly reasoned piece.

Tyranny of the Left

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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) says he’ll cut off the power and water to those homes and businesses

that are in violation of gathering regulations as a means to “shut these places down permanently.”
“By turning off that power, shutting off that water we feel we can close these places down, which usually are not one-time offenders but multiple-offenders[.]”

Never mind that draconian lockdowns damage the economy to the point of doing more harm than the Wuhan Virus. Garcetti, in addition to permanently destroying businesses—and the lives of those business’ owners, operators, and employees—fully intends to destroy homes and homeowners, also.

This is the tyranny we can expect from a Progressive-Democrat Federal administration, empirically demonstrated.

Progressive-Democrats and Economic Recovery

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Progressive-Democrats don’t seem to care about economic recovery, only about using the current Wuhan Virus situation and the economic dislocation the virus has spurred for their own political power gain.

This is made plain by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) in an interview she gave to CBS News‘ Face the Nation Sunday.

…what we will not support is the following. What they’re saying to essential workers, you have to go to work because you’re essential. We’ve place no responsibility on your employer to make that workplace safe and if you get sick, you have no recourse because we’ve given your employer protection.

This is completely disingenuous. There already exist a plethora of labor law making employers explicitly liable for the existence of workplace negligence as well as any injuries resulting from that negligence. There already is responsibility on your employer to make that workplace safe.

There’s also this exchange between FTN‘s Margaret Brennan and Pelosi regarding the Federal addendum to unemployment insurance payments:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well- but specifically on what has just expired, that- that boost of $600 to federal unemployment. Republicans and the White House are saying that they want to keep some money going, but bring it down to about 70 percent of prior wages. Is that something you can accept?
SPEAKER PELOSI: Well, let me just say this. The reason we had $600 was its simplicity.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
SPEAKER PELOSI: And figuring out 70 percent of somebody’s wages. People don’t all make a salary. Maybe they do. They make wages and they sometimes have it vary. So why don’t we just keep it simple? Unemployment benefits and the- the enhancement, which is so essential right now and that’s really where we are starting and–

Seventy per cent of somebody’s wages might be a little bit more complex than a flat rate, but the arithmetic is something any third grader can do. And we have these neat, new machines—the technology for which was first developed almost 100 years ago and constantly, rapidly improved since—even the Federal government has them, computers, that can do the mass calculations and record keeping necessary.

No, this is just an excuse to justify another piece of Progressive-Democrat obstructionism.

And this:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Will you stay in session until a deal is negotiated?
SPEAKER PELOSI: We can’t go home without it.

After months of hiding out in their several basements instead of convening to conduct the nation’s business—which the Senate has been doing all along, in person, in the Senate chambers. Pelosi is just cynically virtue-signaling with that.

Pelosi and the Progressive-Democrats she leads are simply raising all of this obstruction because they do not want serious support for our economy, for getting businesses back into production, workers back to work, consumers back to spending and saving, our economy back to thriving.

Economic chaos works for the Left. Prosperity works for everyone else.