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Thursday, October 06, 2022

Links - 6th October 2022 (1 - Left Wing Economics, including Landlord & Student Debt)

US renter accused of cutting off landlord's head with samurai sword after dispute - "Jerry David Thompson, 42, has been charged with murder after the death of talented bridge player Victor King, 64, which is alleged to have occurred after an argument over unpaid rent"
I saw a bunch of commie cheering this. There's the racial aspect to excite them too

Ontario's Landlord and Tenant Board has collapsed, expert says - "Landlord Sian Tuang, who arrived in Canada as a refugee from Myanmar in 2008, said the wait to settle this dispute has been "very stressful."... After working and learning building skills, the father of four bought a home in Smiths Falls, Ont., with plans to flip it himself. He then found tenants who could move in in December 2021 and help finish the basement, which was cheaper than other options.  In exchange, he told them they could live in the home for free for the first three months. They have neither finished the work nor paid Tuang any rent, he said, but they continue to live in the home and allegedly told him he can't do anything to collect the money.  His lack of credit history left him with only high-interest options to pay for the mortgage, which is $2,600 per month, as he waits for a hearing to try to collect rent... Behind $17,600 in rent and another $1,500 on the water bill, the family invited Labano to take the matter to the board in a tense confrontation outside the home.  "I'm suffering. I have to support my own family. I'm working day and night shifts, to pay my bills, to pay this house's bills"... politicians have been reluctant to weigh on the matter because they're worried they seem unsympathetic to renters"
Damn fatcat refugee exploiting the poor!

They didn't pay rent and stole the fridge. Pandemic spawns nightmare tenants - "Bajaj and Lotia aren't big corporate landlords with massive real estate holdings. They're immigrants from Mumbai, India, who bought a small rundown building with four units nearly 10 years ago. They were starting a family and couldn't afford a traditional single-family house. So they live in one apartment and rent out the others.  Over the years, they've slowly turned it into a nice home. They painted it, replaced all 42 of the windows and removed the security bars.  The rental income helps keep the family afloat. Bajaj works for an education nonprofit, and after Lotia lost her job, living on his salary was tough. So the couple rented out their own home, the apartment where they live, and moved 80 miles away to a much cheaper house out in the desert...  the tenants had lots of complaints, even though they weren't paying rent. They called the city if they thought the plants near a walkway needed to be cut. They even called a city inspector because they didn't like how the new dishwasher was working... the rental assistance program in Los Angeles started taking applications. Bajaj says he was told that the renters needed to supply some documents.  "So we reached out to the tenants and said, 'Hey, could you guys please do that?' " He says they tried emailing, calling, approaching them in person, but, "they would just not talk."... the renters left unexpectedly in the middle of the night.  They must have had a pretty big truck because when they moved out, the couple says, they stole some rather large objects. Nimisha remembers walking through the apartment the morning after they left.  "When I reached the kitchen, I noticed, why does this look so open?" Lotia says. "Like, why is it looking so empty and bright? And then I realized, oh, the fridge is missing! Then, oh, my god, the other appliances are missing!"  The couple says the renters stole the refrigerator and the gas stove. They even took the dishwasher they had complained to the city about. There was also considerable damage to the apartment including cigarette burns on the vinyl floors. The tenants hadn't paid rent in 16 months, which added up to $32,000 in lost rent. NPR reached out to the tenants; they did not respond to requests for comment... they were told they couldn't qualify for any help, because for landlords to get paid, renters need to cooperate with the program."

A Landlord Says Her Tenants Are Terrorizing Her. She Can’t Evict Them. - The New York Times - "The first-floor tenants have not paid rent in 15 months, bang on the ceiling below her bed at all hours for no apparent reason and yell, curse and spit at her, Ms. Mangal said. A tenant in the basement apartment also stopped paying rent, keyed Ms. Mangal’s car and dumped packages meant for her by the garbage. After Ms. Mangal got an order of protection and then a warrant for the tenant’s arrest, the woman and her daughter moved out... Ms. Busgith screamed obscenities at Ms. Mangal from the front patio, according to a recording of the episode that Ms. Mangal showed The New York Times. She accused Ms. Mangal of stealing her mail — “You are a thief, a con-girl!” she yelled — before she pulled up an oversized shirt to flash her buttocks... The first-floor tenants did not answer the door when visited by The New York Times. In a brief telephone conversation, Mr. Garnett, Ms. Busgith’s husband, declined to answer questions, but said he would have a lawyer speak on his behalf. He refused to provide the lawyer’s name or contact information, and no lawyer has contacted The Times about the matter... “You can’t make this stuff up,” Ms. Mangal said, as she scrolled through hundreds of recordings on her phone. “The cameras were the best investment I’ve ever made. People wouldn’t believe me if I didn’t have them.”"

'Someone who does this should be thrown in jail': Trashed rental unit leaves landlord frustrated - "There are the used syringes — scores of them — strewn across the floor and covering almost every surface.   There are animal faeces and dried urine, the result, according to Solga's property manager, of the tenant abandoning two Cane Corsos in the unit for at least five days.   There is a flea infestation so severe Solga was frantically picking them off his legs after a short walk through the suite on Monday to survey the damage.   The stench inside the three-bedroom apartment — located on the main floor of a brick duplex on Highbury Avenue south of Dundas — is overwhelming.   Everywhere there is garbage, spoiled food on the counters and broken cabinets. It's a situation Solga says will leave him out at least $20,000 in damage and lost rent... The two dogs were removed by staff from the Humane Society of London and Middlesex.   Solga's property manager, who witnessed the removal of the dogs, said they were in "terrible condition."   "These dogs had been abandoned in the unit for most of a week and when they actually were removed, they were down to their ribs," said Solga... Solga said his tenant also had two children staying with her for part of the tenancy but they were removed in June by staff with the London Middlesex Children's Aid... the tenant appears to have moved out days before the sheriff arrived, leaving him with an expensive mess to clean up. His property manager told him two cleaning companies have turned down the job after seeing the state of the suite... Harry Fine is a paralegal who represents both landlords and tenants. He said Solga's situation happens to other landlords often.   "Landlords are asked to accept incredible risk that no other group in society is required to take"... a credit check revealed his tenant had "mediocre" credit but that he decided to rent to her.   Fine said Solga could take his former tenant to small claims court, but that it's almost impossible to collect damages."

Meme - "My landlord was extra nice to me this month, so i'll only pour 3.5 blocks of lard down the drain instead of 4 this week. (next week i'll pour 4, I boil it so it really makes it's way deep down). Been doing this the last 5 years (four different rental properties). Never been caught or charged"

Meme - "Landlord said he's raising rent *pours oil down sink*"
A lot of commies are terrible tenants and do their best to destroy the places they stay in so other commies can complain about how lousy their rented places are and how awful their landlords are. This is yet another way commies spoil the market for other tenants and raise rents for everyone - by clogging pipes. Renting needs to be banned so commies will be homeless, since they won't be able to afford to buy a place

Tenant keeps putting cooking grease down the drain - "All the units have hispanic families in them. over the last year I have had to have a plumber unclog the kitchen sink for 3 of the families. One guy texted me just last week and mentioned that his sink is backing up again. 3x in the last year. The plumber has told me it was cooking grease in the lines, he spins the snake quickly when he feels the grease then runs hot water down the drain, that seems to open it up for a few months. I have told the tenants that they need to only put water down the sink but I can see lots of cooking pans full of grease sitting in and around the sinks when I arrive. I have informed the tenant that per their lease they are responsible for drain clogs. he said he will not fix it and he is not going to be responsible for an overflow since he told me about it."

Meme - "You're not you when you hunger for the flesh of the bourgeoisie: "Vincent Anastasi. Studied Home Renovation
My old tenants poured concrete down the drains with no possible fix. It also got in the sewer system and I have to pay out the city for damaging their infrastructure. What do I do?"
"New direct action just dropped""

Vancouver landlord finds drains filled with cement, other damage left by former tenant - BC - "The video shows cement poured down all of the suite’s drains and the toilet, holes kicked into the walls, and food left to rot inside the fridge, which had been unplugged. The key to the front door of the one-bedroom suite was super-glued into the lock, while glue was also found on the floors... The key to the front door of the one-bedroom suite was super-glued into the lock, while glue was also found on the floors... Tom told the tenant no pets were allowed in the suite, which she agreed to.  Three weeks later, Tom says he was called to the suite over a noise complaint and found the tenant with a small dog “who wouldn’t stop barking.”... Tom says he got a text message from the tenant threatening to sue him. He says she sent other messages blaming him for the end of her marriage, which mystified Tom... the tenant contacted him again to demand her damage deposit back. Tom said he needed to check the unit first and get an address to send the cheque to. The tenant didn’t agree"

Meme - Kandist @kandistmallett: "If my rent money is paying for my landlord's mortgage, shouldn't I be part owner?"
Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog: "This reminds of the time when I bought a Big Mac and became CEO of McDonald's"

Meme - "Leftists attempting to explain why owning and maintaining properties isn't a real job but showing your butthole on the internet is"

thomas 🍌 on Twitter - "i meet jeff bezos in a store. i laugh at him because he only owns 170 billion dollars in stock. "none of that is liquid" i explain. i dangle a 20 dollar bill in front of his face. "u ever seen one of these u fuckin poor?" i spit on his shoe and his employee licks it clean"
So he's not hoarding money?

Alice Smith on Twitter - "People fear capitalism because it would give their skills a marketplace value far below their sense of entitlement."

Meme - "*Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Moore* They own 13 homes and are worth $61 Million. And, they are discussing Income Inequality"

Jay-Z Compares Being Labeled A “Capitalist” To Being Called The N-Word - "Jay-Z has never shied away from his aspirations of accumulating wealth and power, and he’s attained them throughout the course of his career. However, the rapping mogul recently took issue with being labeled a “capitalist,” and equated the negative connotation of the term to a racial slur, particularly the N-word."

Meme - "Fact: You could confiscate the entire wealth of all US billionaires and you'd only fund the federal government for about 8 months. When they insist that their massive taxpayer bailouts are going to be paid for only by taxing "the ultra-rich," they're wrong."

Existential Comics on Twitter - "How anyone can confuse capitalism with a "meritocracy" is beyond me. Capitalism is based solely on property relations. Your boss isn't better than you because they own the business. Your landlord isn't better than you because they own the building. They just own things."
Carl Benjamin - Posts | Facebook - "How anyone can confuse Corey with someone who has any understanding of how the world works is beyond me. He literally just makes comics after reading Wikipedia all day.  He isn't informed because he draws a comic. He isn't capable of explaining the world because he drew a comic. He just drew a comic."

Savvy🚩 on Twitter - "My philosophy professor is conservative and today the whole class agreed capitalism is the root of our suffering, I could SEE the pain in his eyes"
Philosophers hate shitty claims after all
Clearly the fact that there is suffering where there is no capitalism and there was suffering before capitalism just shows how powerful and iniquitous capitalism is

Meme - "The Simpsons own this home on a single salary from a husband who didn't go to college This was considered normal in the when the show began"
Comment: "Abe Simpson bought this house for Homer with his money (Homer convinced Abe to sell his own home to help him), then Homer put him in a retirement home- they’ve said this on the show quite a few times. Then Homer hates any time his dad visits or he has to interact with him. Working and not going to college had nothing to do with it... the left sourcing their meme content from these made-up scenarios they fabricated in their own heads that never actually happened is why the left can't meme."

Existential Comics on Twitter - "You've got to hand it to capitalism, convincing everyone that "freedom" meant obeying your boss or starving was a pretty incredible achievement."
Of course, it is better to starve regardless in the state of nature, or under Communism

What the monstering of Molly-Mae reveals about the left - "Molly-Mae Hague, influencer and Love Island runner-up, has come in for an extraordinary kicking on social media this past week. Why? Because she said she has worked hard to become successful, and that others could do the same... Critics of Molly-Mae painted a vision of the world in which ordinary people are totally lacking in agency, utterly unable to change their personal circumstances, no matter how hard they try. Perhaps they may as well just give up... working-class people are not averse to the idea of aspiration, and once upon a time the left valued hard work as a means of self-advancement and self-actualisation. Left-wing politics was once the means through which working-class people collectively sought proper remuneration for their efforts. Yet now believing in hard work and just reward apparently makes you a selfish, Thatcherite individualist. The graduate class that now dominates the left seems to have lost touch with what work means to ordinary people. This was already obvious from its growing embrace of a universal basic income – as if basic subsistence is the high point of ordinary people’s aspirations. Some left-wingers now even talk of building a ‘post-work’ society. This is a bleak, disempowering vision of the future."

Meme - Trev Lewis: "public schools wouldn't be struggling if wealthy parents had to send their kids to them. abolish private schools."
The equal misery principle of the left strikes again. Ironically parents with kids in private schools are a net gain to the public school system since they still pay into it
Of course they're ignorant about the science that shows that school quality doesn't really affect kids' grades, and that funding doesn't make that much of a difference
 

Saagar Enjeti on Twitter - "Why is cancelling student debt without dealing with the corrupt college behemoth such a dumb idea? If you cancel 10k the amount of outstanding debt will return to todays levels in just 4 years"

Meme - Emily Alford: "Giving me $150,000 for a PhD in creative writing was the government's own poor choice and if I pay them back they'll never learn personal responsibility"
Clearly student loans for the arts should be stopped. But of course that will still piss liberals off

Why Democrats Might Come to Regret Student Debt Relief - "Biden has attempted to misappropriate a minor provision of the post-9/11 HEROES Act (a provision intended to give the executive branch a little more flexibility in aiding military families and victims of terrorism) to assert that individuals who borrowed taxpayer funds to attend college no longer need to repay roughly $500 billion in federal loans...   There’s a laundry list of substantive critiques of this maneuver. It’s regressive, steering vast sums to college-goers who, on the whole, are disproportionately well-off. It’s inflationary, pumping hundreds of billions of unearned dollars into the economy without even a pretense that it’s paid for. It’s unnecessary, given that income-driven repayment and loan forgiveness options already exist to accommodate borrowers in need. It creates an immense moral hazard, encouraging colleges to be ever more cavalier about raising tuition and future borrowers about taking on student debt. And it’s ludicrously designed, with up to $20,000 in benefits flowing to borrowers who racked up their debt at Harvard Law or Stanford Business School.  The justification is also laughable. Biden’s legal rationale isn’t even coherent on its own terms. This spring, when his administration wanted to end Title 42—adopted as a public health measure to keep asylum seekers in Mexico—the White House asserted there was no longer a COVID-19 emergency to justify that policy. And Biden brags about our 11 million open jobs and insists that the economy is humming. Yet the White House now claims that COVID-19 is a national emergency with economic ramifications that require an extraordinary giveaway to the nation’s most educated workers? This was an idea Biden mocked on the campaign trail in 2020 and that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in 2021, said was beyond Biden’s authority.  Biden’s calculus is simple. He’s giving up to $20,000 in taxpayer money to millions of college-educated borrowers, whom Democrats trust to be appropriately grateful. Meanwhile, the cost will be borne by, well, everyone, including children and grandchildren who aren’t yet with us. The politics here are those of sugar subsidies— concentrated, visible benefits and dispersed, ephemeral costs. Most of the time, this kind of politics pays off.  Is there any reason to think things might work differently in this case? Maybe... Biden’s loan maneuver was tailor-made to fuel the suspicion that Democrats are contemptuous of personal responsibility and intent on catering to woke kids with graduate degrees... The audacious illegality of Biden’s move and the calls for more from the progressive back-benchers feed the suspicion that Democrats will be itching to do a reprise in the future... just as the “Inflation Reduction Act” seemed to be helping Democrats make a little headway addressing concerns about inflation and runaway federal spending, loan forgiveness risks making them look like phonies.  The political cracks aren’t hard to see. Jason Furman, former chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers has blasted Biden’s maneuver as inflationary and misguided. In fact, it’s tough to find serious left-leaning economists who think forgiveness was a good idea. Centrist Democrats have tiptoed around it, acknowledging that it’s a mixed bag. The move even got denounced by the Washington Post, for heaven’s sake.   This would hardly be the first time that the progressives have led Democrats down a path they’d regret. Remember “defund the police”? Or the consequences of progressive enthusiasm for dealing with illegal immigration via amnesty and an open border? Progressives argued that this would help Democrats win over the broader Latino community. As it turned out, though, Latino immigrants who came here legally weren’t all that thrilled about rewarding line-jumpers.  Such a backlash isn’t hard to imagine. Keep in mind that less than two in five Americans have a bachelor’s degree and that, of those who’ve borrowed money for college, just 7 percent owe more than $100,000. The beneficiaries are a small, relatively privileged slice of the nation. And the public’s legitimate concerns for the unemployed, the struggling, or those who wound up with student loans but no degree can already be addressed by existing income-based repayment programs... Colleges with multibillion-dollar endowments have charged outrageous tuition (especially for graduate school) and then encouraged students to take out student loans while hoarding their endowment funds for buildings and bureaucracy. If this was troubling before, it’s unconscionable in light of Biden’s scheme—under which colleges that have pocketed ludicrous tuition bills now get to cheerfully watch their customers collect a taxpayer-funded refund. If there are to be refunds, they should be paid by those institutions themselves.   Policymakers should insist that any institution with an endowment in excess of $50 million repay taxpayers all the funds “forgiven” to its graduates before it can again participate in federal lending or be eligible for any federal funding. Henceforth, an annual “student loan repayment assessment” should be a condition for endowed institutions to participate in federal student lending or other federal aid programs.  Colleges and universities that want to continue to be eligible for federal loans should have to adopt appropriate austerity measures, similar to those imposed during the General Motors bailout during the Great Recession or the savings and loan bailout of the 1980s. At a bare minimum, Congress should insist that Biden’s scheme not apply to those who voluntarily used the funds to obtain graduate degrees or attend pricey private colleges. Usually, giving stuff away is a winning political strategy. But that’s not an iron law. A little more than a decade ago, in early 2009, the Tea Party movement was ignited by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli’s outraged rant over the Obama administration’s Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan. That initiative came in the midst (not the aftermath) of a raging crisis to which the solution (restructured mortgages) was at least plausibly related and where the beneficiaries (who had to meet certain qualifications) could at least be portrayed as vaguely responsible or deserving. And yet, the backlash was still enough to upend the political landscape. Biden’s massive giveaway is more sweeping and far less defensible than what gave rise to the Tea Party. But making Democrats pay will require a credible messenger and a coherent message. Unfortunately, neither of these are GOP strengths right now. Indeed, it’s not clear whether Republicans are capable of (or even interested in) mustering the necessary discipline. If they’re not, it risks sending the signal that it’s safe for Democrats to buy off the Warren-Sanders gang with even more shameless, cynical grift. And that’d be an unfortunate lesson indeed."

Meme - ""I demand someone else foot the bill for my terrible decisions" is the battle cry of the modern Leftist."
"I owe 87k in student loan debt. I am a jobless single mother of 3, i demand forgiveness on my debts."

Meme - "The fact we are forgiving student debt Without taking a dime back from the Universities While literally letting millions of people sign up for the same exact loans....this year... AKA letting the Universities keep cash flowing by generating the SAME debts. Lol...just lol."

Meme - "Pete, who took out the student loan?"
"Me!"
"Who is benefitting from the student loan?"
"Me!"
"Therefore, who should pay back the loan?"
"Everyone else!"

Nina Turner on Twitter - "Canceling $10,000 in student debt when the average white borrower is $12,000 in debt, while Black women hold on average over $52,000 isn’t just unacceptable, it’s structural racism."
Grievance mongers will never be satisfied
Having bad financial skills means you're a victim of racism

Fusilli Spock on Twitter - "Good news for thousands of my former students. I’m grateful on their behalf, Mr. President."
"Thousands of your students are unable to earn enough money to pay off their loans? Good to know."
"Good point, what Harvard Law grad is making less than $120K/yr?"

Chuck Ross on Twitter - ".@SenWarren  on the student debt relief: “This is the first step. We deal with the debt, we deal with payments going forward, and now it's going to be up to Congress to make sure that we do more to hold the colleges and universities accountable.""
"She made $400k to teach one class at Harvard decades ago. She’s part of the problem"

Meme - "It's interesting when people believe their suffering should be experienced by others: "I paid my loans!" "I worked through college!" "My dad hit us and I'm fine!" What in your heart makes you want someone else to go through that?"
This is a spectacular leftist triple fail. Science tells us spanking works and isn't harmful. Of course the anti-spanking crowd will just result to begging the question (claiming if you were spanked and think spanking works, this shows that it is harmful) and ad hominems (claiming that people who "want" to spank kids need help). So much for following the science

Student loan forgiveness is regressive whether measured by income, education, or wealth - "Medical school graduates typically owe six-figure student loans but that doesn’t mean they are poorer than high-school graduates who did not go to college... student debt is concentrated among high-wealth households and loan forgiveness is regressive whether measured by income, educational attainment, or wealth. Across-the-board forgiveness is therefore a costly and ineffective way to reduce economic gaps by race or socioeconomic status"

Meme - "I BEAT CANCER!
...
If they suddenly find a cure for cancer now I'm gonna be so mad.
This comic is about student loans."
"Bad analogy. Hey I paid off my loan, but I'll be mad if all taxpayers (including me) have to pay off everyone else's. It's not an uninvited disease, it was a commitment to repay a loan."
"Did you sign a contract to get your cancer and does it transfer to someone else who didn't want cancer when you get cured of it? No? Then this is a ridiculously stupid argument, as are all arguments in favor of student debt forgiveness."
New Student Debt Changes Will Cost Half a Trillion Dollars
Of course to leftists, loan forgiveness is free. Probably because you can just print money to "pay" for it

The Relationship Between Work During College and Post College Earnings - "Prior research suggests that undergraduates employed during term time are less likely to graduate. Using transcript data from a large multi-campus university in the United States, combined with student earnings data from state administrative records, the authors find that traditional-age students who worked for pay during college on average earned more after leaving college than similar students who did not work. This post-college earnings premium is on par with the benefit from completing a degree, even after controlling for demographic and academic achievement characteristics, across various student sub-groups, and including models that account for selection bias. Implications of these findings for theories of education and social stratification, and for educational policy are considered."

Student loan debt complainers get called out with PPP loan receipts - "There are few things the internet enjoys more than collecting and dropping receipts. So it's natural folks went digging once the complaints of student loan debt forgiveness began popping up on our Twitter feeds. At their disposal? A searchable database of PPP loans forgiven by the government."
Being unable to foresee covid and the massive governmental overreaction to it and to be able to absorb the shock of the government-mandated lockdowns shows a patent lack of personal responsibility

Ben Shapiro on Twitter - "Government: Shut down your business.
Businesses: But what about our employees?
Government: Here are grants to keep them employed.
Two years later:
Government: Ha ha you rubes you took grant money like greedy pigs so now you can't oppose us wasting $500B on student loan bailouts
The White House's current naming and shaming campaign against businesses that kept people employed with PPP money is just the latest reminder that there are ALWAYS strings attached, and that the government has plenary power to ruin you both financially and reputationally.
Meanwhile, the same douchebags attacking businesses who took government cash to keep their employees going (forced by government shutdowns!) are saying that the "continuing covid emergency" justifies bailing out predatory college lenders and irresponsible student borrowers."

Ben Shapiro on Twitter: "The internet is a place filled with stupid and dishonest people. So, for example, http://TruthOrFiction.com -- and half the Left-wing blue checks -- are saying I took PPP money. This is a lie. Here is their supposed proof via ProPublica:
So they found a person named Ben Shapiro who applied for and received a loan in Los Angeles in 2021. Here's the full screenshot -- notice the same amount. As you may know, I am not a real estate agent or broker.
In short, Twitter is filled with gullible rubes who will believe nearly anything based on a partial screenshot."

Ben Shapiro on Twitter - "Unfair to people who don't live in hurricane zones to constantly bail out people who live along the Gulf Coast."
"You voluntarily taking out a student loan to major in theater arts and then unsurprisingly failing to pay your debts is not quite the same as being hit by a hurricane. Also, there is a good case to be made that taxpayers subsidizing people to live in risky flood zones is not actually good public policy."

Credit Supply and the Rise in College Tuition: Evidence from the Expansion in Federal Student Aid Programs - Federal Reserve Bank of New York - "We study the link between the student credit expansion of the past fifteen years and the contemporaneous rise in college tuition. To disentangle simultaneity issues, we analyze the effects of increases in federal student loan caps using detailed student-level financial data. We find a pass-through effect on tuition of changes in subsidized loan maximums of about 60 cents on the dollar, and smaller but positive effects for unsubsidized federal loans. The subsidized loan effect is most pronounced for more expensive degrees, those offered by private institutions, and for two-year or vocational programs"

Student Loan Debt Statistics: 2022 - "Most student loans — about 92%, according to a July 2021 report by MeasureOne, an academic data firm — are owned by the U.S. Department of Education"
Liberals keep going on about predatory loans and greedy banks. But can the "predatory" government really be trusted to solve their problems? Of course, if lenders had eligibility criteria for student loans, they would then be bitching about "racism", "discrimination" and not "investing" in education which benefits the whole country.

National Student Loan Default Rate [2022]: Delinquency Data - "At a rate of 26.33%, Arts and Humanities majors who attended non-selective schools are the most likely to default on their student loans... 54.4% of law degree holders are delinquent in their student loan payments at least once... 76.3% of indebted borrowers with undergraduate degrees in manufacturing, construction, repair, and transportation aren’t late to make student loan payments."
Clearly all degrees are created equal so student loan forgiveness is a good idea

Meme - "My issue with taxing the rich is that they'll still be rich.
if elon musk paid 99% wealth tax, he'd still be worth $2.6 billion. at 99.9% he'd still be worth $260 million
seize & redistribute the wealth"
Many leftists don't love the poor. They just hate the rich

Hong Kong investors warn of action over HSBC dividends | Financial Times - "Retail investors in Hong Kong have threatened legal action against HSBC and will attempt to force the bank to hold an extraordinary general meeting, after it was pressured by UK regulators to cancel its dividend due to the coronavirus crisis.... “Many of them use this as their retirement plan. They rely on the dividend to pay for their living expenses after their retirement, so this will actually hurt them a lot,” Matthew Chung, an adviser at Surich, said of the payout suspension."
From 2020
Is it better to blame "greedy retail investors" than "greedy companies"?

Strict Labor Market Regulation Increases Global Unemployment, Study Shows - "Tight labour market regulation increases unemployment all over the world, finds a study of 73 countries by the University of Bath. The study, published in the Journal of Comparative Economics, is one of the first to cover not only industrial countries but also developing and transition countries. Based on data for the years 2000 to 2003, the findings suggest that if, for example, Italy (a typical country with strict regulation) had enjoyed the same flexibility in labour market regulation as the United States (a typical country with flexible regulation), its unemployment rate might have been 2.3 percentage points lower among the total labour force, 3.4 percentage points lower among women and 5.6 percentage points lower among young people. “The adverse labour market effects are probably due to lower investment by domestic firms as well as lower foreign direct investment inflows caused by stricter labour market regulation.” said Dr Horst Feldmann, from the University’s Department of Economics & International Development, who carried out the research. One area of labour market regulation that appears to have particularly adverse effects on unemployment are stringent hiring and firing rules... “Women often take a career break to have children and later on try to get back into employment. Young people are just entering working life. “Therefore, it is plausible that both groups are more strongly affected when employers are reluctant to hire staff due to stringent labour market regulation.” Another type of labour market regulation that appears to raise unemployment on a world-wide scale is military conscription, the study finds. “A main reason may be that conscripts leaving the armed forces after the end of their service have difficulties finding a job because they did not gather the skills and work experience that employers are looking for.”... “The longer the conscription period, the more severe this mismatch is likely to be. According to my findings, this effect is the strongest among young people. This is obviously because conscripts typically are in this age group. “This is the first time the effects of military conscription on the labour market have been analysed.”"
Leftists will just blame "greedy companies"

Universal Credit ‘benefits trap’ means some people are only £3.29 an hour better off if they work - "Buried in a government-commissioned report published this year is a clue to the reason some employers are finding it so difficult to attract British workers to lower-paid jobs. Universal Credit (UC), the author said, “can act as a disincentive” to those in the jobs market because working age people “do not believe there is sufficient reward” if they try to stand on their own two feet. It is the latest version of the so-called “benefits trap”, in which potential employees choose to stay at home, living off generous welfare payments, because working for a living would make them only marginally better off."
Of course, leftists say even more generous benefits are needed and if employers cannot afford to pay enough to entice people to get off benefits it shows they're exploiting employees and/or that the jobs don't deserve to exist in the first place

Meme - ZUBY @ZubyMusic: "People like to talk about 'wage gaps', 'income gaps', and 'wealth gaps'... But they never about 'skill gaps', 'effort gaps', and 'talent gaps'."

The grandchildren of China’s pre-revolutionary elite are unusually rich | The Economist - "“The land ownership system of feudal exploitation by the landlord class shall be abolished.” So read China’s agrarian reform law of 1950. Land was seized from the better-off and given to poor farmers, whose share of farmland rose from 14% in 1947 to 47% in 1954. Liu Shaoqi, who was president during the Mao era, called it the “most thorough reform in thousands of years of Chinese history”. Hundreds of thousands of landlords were murdered. Tens of millions of people died in a famine when farms were collectivised. Yet the surviving descendants of the old elite have prospered. By 2010 they were again richer and more educated than the Chinese average, according to data gathered by an international group of academics. Adding new evidence from cities to previous work, which looked at rural areas alone, the authors now find that the elite’s grandchildren have even out-earned Communist Party members... elites born before 1940 were 7% likelier than their contemporaries to have finished secondary school. Their stigmatised children were 3% less likely to have done so than others their age. By 2010 the children of old elites earned 5% less than other Chinese.  But things flipped back. Descendants of the old elite born between 1966 and 1990 were 6% more likely to finish high school than their contemporaries. In 2010 they earned 12% more than other Chinese. They even earned 2% more than party members.  The researchers found that the old elite’s grandchildren are more enterprising and work longer hours than the descendants of those who had lower social standing."
There's this common claim that if everyone were to start off on an equal footing the rich would become rich again. Presumably the commies will say China didn't take away the landlords' advantages for long enough, which is why they're still ahead

Rap Game Edward Bernays on Twitter - "The designer of AOC’s “Tax the Rich” dress is dating a dude worth $100 million who’s a descendent of the Lehman Brothers 😅 They’re dabbing on us, y’all 🤡"

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