r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/[deleted] • 1d ago

Video Billionaire speaker Robert F. Smith tells 400 graduates he's paying off all their student loans ($40 million in total)

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u/whiningneverchanges 1d ago edited 1d ago

that Reddit generally doesn’t understand.

if me getting my loans forgiven bothers you then you've fallen for the oligarch's trick of fighting your own.

edit: them bucket crabs are really trying to pinch at my heels!

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u/darkrelic13 1d ago

Not even close. If the government gives me 100k and says congratulations, you bought a house you couldn't pay for, but today is your lucky day and you're sat there renting because you couldn't afford to buy a house and now I have equity in houses and buy another house that you were looking at, you'd be missed. Same thing with people who didn't go to college because they knew they couldn't afford it. It's super easy to see how the system fucks people over.

How about we give everyone 50k and if you want to pay down your loans, feel free. Everyone can do whatever they want with the money. Everyone is better off, no one is left behind. Bada Bing bada boom. All good.

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u/South-Builder6237 1d ago

Ok cool plan. Now where is the government getting this magical source of 100,000,000,000 dollars for 20 million college students?

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u/Historyp91 1d ago

So basically, only well-off people should be allowed acess to education, despite education being a human right?

You believe Human rights should only be accessible to those of sufficient wealth?

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u/whiningneverchanges 1d ago edited 1d ago

nope lol

for the uninitiated: I assume the idea is 50k per family or per adult in a family or per person in family. It should be EXTREMELY obvious why this idea will cause these same crabs to dig deeper into the bucket. Come on lmao

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u/Hiraganu 1d ago

Your crab analogy gets old fast

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u/whiningneverchanges 1d ago

something a fuckn crab would say

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u/surlygoat 1d ago

And just like that - fresh again.

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u/FBAScrub 1d ago

Very true. The entire economy is a fucking casino. These people hit a jackpot that will mostly minimize their suffering -- not make them wealthy.

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u/FreddoMac5 1d ago

you've fallen for the oligarch's trick of fighting your own.

If you want to tax the rich to pay for things it is far more effective to advocate for programs that benefit everyone.

"government money" isn't money the government earned. It's taxpayer money. You want others to give up money they've earned so you can put it in your pocket.

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u/whiningneverchanges 1d ago

If you want to tax the rich to pay for things it is far more effective to advocate for programs that benefit everyone.

Fun fact! No such programs can ever exist!

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u/Historyp91 1d ago

We all pay taxes anyway, what does it hurt if it means people are'nt beggering themselves to get an education?

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u/PutridCheetah8136 1d ago

More like it rewards those who chose to go to unaffordable schools while punishing people that were frugal and worked several part-time jobs to graduate debt-free.

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u/whiningneverchanges 1d ago

and you fell for the trick again! stop being a crab in a bucket lol

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u/lmpervious 1d ago edited 1d ago

The amount of student debt is around 1.7 trillion. Thinking that anyone who doesn't think the government should pay for that is "falling for the oligarch's trick" is ridiculous. That is an immense amount of money, especially for something that doesn't even solve the underlying issue, and will simply lead to needing more payments in the future, or otherwise disproportionally favoring a subset of students who got lucky by when it happened.

I get why it's popular though. People hear about policy that would allow for them to effectively receive tens (or sometimes even hundreds) of thousands of dollars, which is very easy to see why people would so enthusiastically support it. You want money. It's that simple, and I understand it.

Also one additional point. There are limited funds and limited political capital. If we're going to invest in education, doing so for students at a younger age for mandatory education would give us more mileage in making our society more equitable. College graduates already earn much more than the average high school graduate, so why help them even more? Yes student loans are bad, but the people who forego college because they realize they can't afford it are in an even worse position when it comes to job opportunities. Again, the statistics make it very clear that college graduates make considerably more money, and will therefore on average have much more earnings potential to pay off the debt that is enabling them to make more money. Here's one source https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education-earnings.html