Americans love helping businesses, but not student debtors.
MCTs
We taxpayers are always happy to bail out our corporate friends: railroads, airlines, cars, aviation, sometimes banks no one has ever heard of. What are our billions for if we can’t help our friends in need?
Take, for example, the $290 billion bailout we made to the Savings and Loans Association a few years ago. Sure, that’s a lot of money, but we couldn’t let all the rule-behaving ordinary people suffer from questionable corporate management and the Congress that gave them their freedom.
Indeed, our generosity was tested a little during the 2008 financial crisis. The Government Accountability Office says it cost our economy her $22 trillion. The direct dollar bailouts to various companies and corporations were so shocking that no one can agree on how much they really cost. But it was a lot. This made savings and loan relief seem like pennies.
Much of the responsibility piles up on mortgage-focused hedge fund managers. Yes, they knew they were doing something wrong. No, I shouldn’t have. But since corporate friends in need are actually corporate friends, it was the right thing to do to help them.
We taxpayers continue to show generosity to our corporate friends by giving them a huge tax loophole. Many large companies pay no income tax at all. none. zero. Zilch. Some even offer multi-million dollar rebates. This proves that we value and support good business.
We are equally kind to our rich and super rich friends. Many of them don’t even pay income tax.
Take a look at Ronald Reagan’s “Trickle Down” Tax Cuts for the Rich. The idea was that the rich and super-rich would put money into the economy and create more jobs for the rest of us. I gave jobs to overseas workers because I thought there was.
You may not think it’s fair, but you have to admit that business is business and there will always be winners and losers.
“Trickle Down” turned out to be a “Trickle Up” from working class to rich, but George Bush gave it another chance. Then Trump gave the rich another big tax cut, knowing he had enough business-owning votes in Congress.
So where did that “crunchy” money go? It’s hard to say. Some suggest looking at an estimated $21 trillion (trillions with a “T”) hiding in legitimate offshore tax shelters so they can’t be taxed. It doesn’t look very patriotic, but law is law and our country is governed by the rule of law.
Now we are faced with the problem of all these young people trying to wiggle out of student loans.
Note that 1) students aren’t corporations, 2) they don’t own legislators because they aren’t rich, and 3) they don’t have enough votes to cause serious political trouble. Therefore, as taxpayers, we are under no obligation to help them.
they did what they were supposed to do. Even though they tried to play by the rules. A deal is a deal even if you get duped by all sorts of scammers along the way.
So learn your lesson, accept personal responsibility and pay!
How else are you going to grow and be a good corporate citizen?
David Musser, now retired, built miniature guitars, dulcimers, and other instruments for use by elementary school students in Eastern Kentucky for his Traditional Appalachian Music and Heritage Hands-on Music Program.
