“Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe called out President Joe Biden’s student debt cancellation plan, saying it’s the “biggest pre-Labor Day slap in the face” to working people he’s ever seen.
In the 60-year-old TV host’s recent Facebook post, Rowe admitted he tries hard to “avoid the politics of the moment” on his page and focus only on the impact his foundation has on helping people gain a skilled trade. However, he said after Biden announced his student loan cancellation plan, transferring “billions of dollars” in loans “onto the backs” of the very people his foundation has spent the last two decades helping, he had to say something.
Rowe shared what his foundation does, which is helping award “work-ethic scholarships to individuals who choose to forego an expensive, four-year education in favor of a skilled trade.” He then stated why Biden’s plan is more than unfair.
“When I do weigh in, I try to acknowledge both sides of the argument, and make my points with as much respect as I can muster,” the host wrote. “Today, however, I can see only one side. Today, I can find nothing to respect in the President’s decision to transfer billions of dollars in outstanding student loans onto the backs of those people my foundation tries to assist — the same people I’ve spent the last twenty years profiling on Dirty Jobs.” more here
I have seen comments that a lot of predatory loans come via trade schools rather than universities, particularly schools which are not providing a trade education useful for finding a job. I would like to see better numbers, but of course these are loans to generally lower income people. None of that validates the illegal forgiveness, of course, but it would be worth paying more legal attention to.
However, I rarely see even the Left bring this up. So my view of them bailing out their leftist elites (now working at Starbucks) remains.
Next he’ll forgive Union dues. No better way to buy the Unions.
The people whose student loans are forgiven, will be in debt again. They never learn – it will be credit card debt, loan shark debt, mortgage foreclosures.
I have met these people and it is always “somebody else did this to us”, not “I made a stupid decision and now I am in financial trouble.”
I would still be opposed to this student debt
cancellation reassignment, but less vehemently so, if the money for the program came from a new tax on universities, colleges, and trade schools, specifically including govt owned/run schools.Nevah happen, natch, but an interesting idea.
Oops. That strikeout was supposed to be only for the word “cancellation”.
Dang fingers.
Uncle Al
AUGUST 28, 2022 AT 10:26 AM
“I would still be opposed to this student debt…”
…nooo, that IS where the sentence should stop.
ALL higher education should be ala carte, pay as you go, without any available debt service AT ALL.
That way, you winnow out the lazy kids just being bored and wanting to pretend they are doing something useful, as this forces the kids to work like galley slaves rowing the Yamato away from torpedo bombers, and the whiny ones won’t do it. This ALSO invests the kids in what they actually expect to get OUT of it, because with skin in the game they’re going to want more OUT of it than a barista job to go with their framed Doctorate Of Navel Gazing Studies in their squalid 8th floor walkup closet.
THAT should weed out not just the lazy, but also the stupid Hate Studies degrees, since no one will want to sweat for a degree that leaves them without any marketable skills.
This additionally forces the kids to actually get some LIFE experience. Deal with schedules, making payments, co-worker idiots and asshole customers. It would not be possible to stay in your managed thought bubble echo chamber where even your housing is carefully arranged to keep you with like-minded losers, instead you have to learn to deal with bosses, rudeness, and hurt feelz.
But the BEST part is that it forces the COLLEGES to deal with market pressures. They can’t simply raise the year’s tuition 10,000 every time the government gives out 10,000 loan forgiveness, they will have to price their products to what people paying their own way can actually afford, AND teach classes people genuinely WANT, not a mandatory 4 credit hours of sensitivity indoctrination.
No one will pay OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKET for that.
And this should get rid of tenure nicely too. The colleges won’t be able to afford absurd professors salaries any more, let alone be able to sustain useless chairs in Redefining Racism.
And no endowments, grants, legacies, or bequests allowed either.
Cash on the nail or it don’t happen.
This is how you make colleges and, more importantly, college graduates USEFUL again.
Take away market-distortion tools that are too easy for government to use to manipulate ideological outcomes.
Then maybe, just maybe, the kids may actually LEARN something again.
Jubilee. These predatory loans should be forgiven, and the banking, government entities, and universities/colleges should be the ones “taking the haircut;” the money should come out of the univ/coll coffers. The government must not be involved in funding college edumacations.
This ‘forgiveness’ is useless until the government is out of the lending business, and colleges charge a reasonable cost for their product …based on its usefulness; STEM would cost more, while underwater gender studies would just be a nominal fee. STEM would be residential, full time, and everything else would be part-time while the student worked a full time job.