I gave up a lot to accomplish what I did, but debt ‘forgiveness’ would punish taxpayers like me for our hard work and frugality.

A year after graduating from college, I was able to pay off my student loans in full. Now, President Biden wants me to pay for my peers who have yet to do the same.
Biden’s platform includes “student loan forgiveness” of at least $10,000 per person. Meanwhile, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer have proposed $50,000 in debt forgiveness per individual. On its surface, this sounds generous. American student loan debt is nearing $1.6 trillion, and the cost of college is higher than ever. But what does this “forgiveness” entail on a moral level?
Loans are not “forgiven” or magically disappeared. They are paid off by taxpayers. Whether it is through higher taxes, printing more money, or contributing directly from the national debt, you and I will end up being the ones that pay for it. The United States is already over $27 trillion in debt and $125 trillion deep in unfunded liabilities.
Essentially, the debt burden is shifted off of the shoulders of those who signed the loans and on to everyone who pays federal taxes. If you’re like me, that’s fundamentally unfair.
Paying off my student loans was a concerted effort that took sacrifice. I started working after graduating from SUNY Albany in 2018. Following Dave Ramsey’s financial plan, I cut my living expenses, took on a side gig, and threw all that I could at my $27,000 in student loans.
I cooked my own meals and bought the most affordable groceries. Although I could afford an apartment, I chose to live in subsidized company housing one-and-a-half hours away from my workplace. Commuting for 15 hours a week was part of the price I paid to square my debt sooner.
I packed lunch most days, even when I had to wake up early to do so. It saved money at the cost of the convenience of eating out. Some nights after work I stayed up late to do freelance translation work instead of enjoying leisure time. I gave up a lot to accomplish what I did, but debt “forgiveness” would punish taxpayers like me for our hard work and frugality—just so others don’t have to take responsibility for their own choices.
Rather than stopping at saying that student loan forgiveness is unfair (it is), or that we can’t afford it (we can’t), we should take a deeper look at the root of the debate surrounding student loans. The student loan forgiveness camp is operating from the assumption that people are entitled to a college education and other peoples’ hard work. It codifies in policy the idea that adults are not responsible for their own actions (i.e. taking on debt). In a free society, I am not entitled to a college education and neither is anyone else.
Taking out a loan is a choice, and personal responsibility shouldn’t be supplanted by taxpayer bailouts. “Canceling” student loans means penalizing people like me for honoring my word and repaying the debt I chose to accept.
COLUMN BY

Matthew Noyes

Mathew Noyes graduated from SUNY Albany summa cum laude with majors in Political Science and Japanese Language. He is a columnist at Lone Conservative.
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Taught by the political party they favor to hate white people, attackers left victim unconscious with multiple facial fractures.

When it first opened in 1969, Underground Atlanta was one of the most popular tourist and entertainment districts in the Southeast. My wife and I went there regularly with friends.
By 1972, Underground’s attendance topped 3.5 million. In 1973, there were 65 businesses employing hundreds of workers. At its peak, there were more than 80 restaurants, bars, boutiques, and shops in the Underground complex. Like the rest of the city back then, Underground Atlanta was clean, vibrant and safe.
But like the city itself, the attraction soon fell on hard times.
During a period that coincided almost perfectly with the Democratic Party’s adoption of its racially-divisive identity politics election strategy, Underground Atlanta became a dangerous place to visit, especially after dark. As violent crimes in the surrounding parking lots became commonplace, my wife and I stopped going to Underground, as did most Atlantans.
Over the years, persistent crime continued to plague the development. Despite a major renovation in the late 1980s, Underground Atlanta has faced a constant struggle to recover its initial glory.
Underground’s GM pays steep price for doing his job
Craig Waters is general manager of Underground Atlanta. Last June, after a night of race riots over the alleged police murder of George Floyd, the 66-year-old grandfather was the target of a vicious unprovoked attack by multiple black suspects while inspecting broken windows and other damage done to Underground property. Waters was beaten unconscious, suffering multiple facial fractures, including a broken eye socket. See shocking photographs of his injuries in this local TV report.
Would Waters have been beaten and left for dead if he wasn’t white? Probably not. Black-on-white racial hatred is inevitable when a political party spends a half-century telling inner city voters that white people are responsible for the wretched lives they lead.
Those who attacked Waters must be held accountable. What they did was evil, but I do not believe they are inherently evil people. The odds are off the charts that they were set on a troubled path earlier in life by virtue of the woefully substandard education meted out by Atlanta’s incompetent public schools. And, they were indoctrinated at every turn with the poisonous critical race narrative that white people are hostile to their interests. With two strikes like those against them, it’s hardly surprising that they lashed out in violence when an opportunity to vent their frustrations arose.
For the last half-century, Atlanta City Schools have been under the ironclad control of Democrats. While Atlanta’s most disadvantaged citizens live in rundown neighborhoods marred by rampant crime, generational poverty and chronic despair, the city’s lavishly-paid mayor, school superintendent and other high ranking officials drive new cars, live in new homes, dine at gourmet restaurants and vacation at 5-star resorts.
The inexcusable failure of Democrats to adequately educate the most disadvantaged children in our society is further described in the article below.

Battle for a Good Education | The Daily Signal

Big-City Schools: Where America’s Most Vulnerable Kids Languish

Democrats and Republicans alike say they’re fully committed to seeing that every child receives a quality education.  Bipartisan agreement notwithstanding, school children in urban America have gotten the short end of the learning stick for a long, long time.  How can anyone defend the following statistics?

• In 2010-2011, public schools in the nation’s capitol spent $29,345 per pupil — nearly $600,000 per each classroom of 20 students —  yet the District’s 8^th graders finished dead last in a nationwide proficiency test in math and reading.
• According to a 2015 report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 96 percent of 8th graders in Detroit’s public schools tested not proficient in math, and 93 percent tested not proficient in reading.
• According to a 2017 investigation by Project Baltimore, 13 of the city’s 39 public high schools had zero students who tested proficient in math.  Zero!  Of the 3,841 students in the remaining 26 high schools, only 14 tested at or above proficiency in math, less than one-third of one percent.

For a half-century running, Democrat-run urban schools have robbed minority children of a realistic chance for a decent education.  In addition to earning an F-minus in their assigned duty to adequately educate students under their care, the three school districts named above have something else in common: they all are run by highly-paid Democrat administrators whose foremost priority is catering to the demands of teachers unions, one of the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituencies.
In school systems with teachers unions exist, Democrats look the other way as the interests of teachers take precedence over the interests of children.  And no wonder. The overwhelming share of union dues paid by teachers is money-laundering study, nearly 99% of teachers union political donations in 2012 went to Democrats.  In 2016, teachers unions gave $43 million to Democrats, $260,000 to Republicans.
Teachers First, Children Second
Once sub-standard teachers have tenure, a Herculean effort is required to get rid of them.  The teachers-first, children-second pecking order in the school systems cited below exists in virtually every urban school district in America, where a king’s ransom of precious educational funding is frittered away to protect bad teachers.

• New York City public schoolsoperate16 reassignment centers, also known as “rubber rooms.”  Rubber rooms are off-campus facilities where teachers accused of incompetence or gross misconduct are warehoused, as their glacial, union-mandated appeals process drones on, often for years.  While receiving full pay and benefits, teachers in rubber room limbo spend each six-hour day napping, reading magazines, playing cards or other leisure activities.  Despite constant complaints that it would do a better job of educating minority children if only it’s given more money, the city’s bloated and incompetent public school system squanders $150 million a year paying hundreds of unionized teachers to do little more than kill time while waiting to find out if they’ll be fired.  Wasting $150 million would be one thing if the city’s public schools did even a minimally acceptable job of educating disadvantaged minority children, but New York City has some of the sorriest public schools in America.
• Getting rid of bad teachers is so difficult in Democrat-run school districts that Milwaukee’s public schools cameup with a mitigation plan called The Dance of the Lemons.  Because teachers union contracts protect all teachers, including those deemed unfit to teach, school principals in Milwaukee found it virtually impossible to fire bad teachers.  To cope with the problem, principals hold a meeting at the end of the school year, where one principal swaps his or her worst teachers in exchange for another principal’s worst teachers, with both principals hoping the lemons they get won’t be as bad as the lemons they swapped.  How are the interests of students served when unfit teachers are shuffled around from one school to another in an endless game of musical chairs where every bad teacher gets a seat?
• New York City and Milwaukee aren’t the only places where unionized, Democrat-run schools fail miserably at adequately educating minority children.  A 2010 investigation by L.A. Weekly found that the Los Angeles Unified School District spent $3.5 million trying to fire seven teachers for poor classroom performance.  Only four of the seven were eventually fired at the end of their union-mandated appeals process, which dragged on for an average of five years at an average cost of $875,000 per fired teacher.  Despite blowing through enormous sums of education funding, Los Angeles public schools graduated just 44% of its high school students in 2006, making it one of the worst-performing school districts in America.  Graduation rates in Los Angeles have since improved, but only after the Democrat-controlled California Department of Education changed its formula for determining graduation requirements.

Inexcusably sorry public schools in Democrat-run cities are nothing new.   They’ve existed continually for the last half-century, with millions of minority students left unprepared to succeed in later life.
The High Cost (to Students) of Bad Teachers
Just as it’s true that good teachers can have an extraordinarily positive impact on the future lives of their students, it’s also true that bad teachers can cause lasting harm to the futures of their students.
According to a study cited by Eric A. Hanushek, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, “a high-value-added teacher in grades 4-8 has a noticeable impact on subsequent long-term outcomes, including college attendance, earnings and family creation.”  How can young adults who were stuck with sub-standard teachers in the public schools they attended possibly do well in later life?  To be fair, socio-economics also plays a role in poor outcomes, but which party is responsible for the welfare-for-votes policies that inevitably lead to broken homes, generational poverty and chronic despair?
School Choice to the Rescue
How can our society help urban students get out of rotten public schools, and into the same kind of safe, high-performing private academies attended by children of affluent families?  The surest way is through federally-funded school choice vouchers.
Unfortunately, the mutually back-scratching alliance between Democrats and teachers unions blocks school choice at every turn.  In doing so, their unholy confederation wreaks unmitigated havoc on inner city communities by robbing generations of urban children of a realistic shot at a decent education.
Although Democrats and teachers unions know better, they say private schools aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.  Anyone who thinks that should ask the two brothers in the video below.  Their story should be the story of every disadvantaged child in America.
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