I am thrilled to talk to @louise_seamster for my guest host stint w/ the @ezraklein show. A lot happened as we tried to capture lightening in a bottle. But like all good sociology, context prevails. The Life-Altering Differences Between White & Black Debt nytimes.com/2021/11/02/opi…
The Biden Administration’s Build Back Better plan would increase PELL, limit 4profits’ access to the means-tested program, but drops things like free community college.
On debt forgiveness, the long rumored memo on whether the President can cancel debt without congressional approval has existed for months. A redacted version released just this week. newyorker.com/news/news-desk…
Student loan debt cancellation is mired in the political economy of debt itself. That is something @louise_seamster & I have talked about for years. And that is what I wanted the world to hear.
She is brilliant on how debt has become the price of entry into citizenship and how the nature of debt - including student loan debt — takes on this nation’s most foundational principles: if it has value, then it must be racialized.
Student loan debt, like all debt, takes on the moral character of a society that extracts value from non-white people and transfers it to a minority of white people to reinforce an economic and cultural ruling class that normalizes that extraction as competition.
Policy created the student loan debt problem, complete with its moral hazards and self-reinforcing racial wealth extraction, and it must be held to account for fixing it. /fini
Thank you @louise_seamster & others, including @StrikeDebt & other organizers who didn’t let up.
Thank you @louise_seamster & others, including @StrikeDebt & other organizers who didn’t let up.
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