EDITOR’S NOTE: As the Supreme Court considers whether to strike down President Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loans for people below certain income levels, we at I Might Be Wrong feel it's important to provide our readers with clear, unambiguous information on this complex issue. Towards that end, we are pleased to publish this debunking of common myths associated with the student loan debate, as compiled by guest contributor Zephyr Van Zijl, a recent Swathmore College graduate who was the only person who replied to our Monster.com posting for an intern-slash-janitor.
MYTH: Student debt only affects people who hold student debt.
FACT: Student debt affects everyone.
Opponents of debt forgiveness often note that 87 percent of Americans hold no student debt. However, debt affects more than just the people who hold it. Many people have a child, parent, or sibling who is struggling with student debt. Furthermore, debt payments act as a drag on the economy by reducing household income.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We on the Editorial Staff feel the need to add context to Zephyr’s description of the effects of student debt. While it is true that student debt affects non-debt-holders, this statement relies on an expansive definition of the word “affect”. It is technically true that every action in an economy comprised of interconnected individuals “affects” everyone else; it could plausibly be said that all Americans would be “affected” by a tax on income over $1 million, even though very few would pay the tax. Also, debt payments do — as Zephyr notes — divert money that would otherwise be used in other ways. However, so does debt forgiveness, and a full accounting of the economic impact of debt forgiveness or the absence thereof would require a complex analysis and could not be deemed a “myth” or a “fact”. Nonetheless: Good work, Zehyr, sorry to interrupt.
MYTH: Most Americans don’t have any student debt.
FACT: 45 trillion Americans owe a total of 1.76 million dollars in student debt.
Americans hold the most student debt of any country in the world. There are more student debt holders in the United States than people named “John”, “Michael”, and “William” combined. If all US debt was printed out in one dollar bills and laid end to end, it would wrap around the largest star in the universe 12 million times.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Whoops! Zephyr seems to have made a bit of an error here: The actual numbers are that 45 million Americans hold $1.76 trillion dollars worth of debt. He inverted the “million” and the “trillion” — any of us could have made that mistake. Though, for the record: There are fewer than 8 trillion people on Earth, and if 45 trillion people owed a total of $1.76 million dollars, then each person would owe a fraction of a penny.
Also, there are contextual issues regarding the relevance of Americans having more student debt than any other country (the United States is the world’s the largest economy) and the whole thing about the names (???). The claim about the largest star in the universe is just wildly incorrect. I mean, think about it, Zeph: For $1.76 million to go around a star 12 million times, each individual dollar would have to wrap around the star more than six times. So, the star would have to be about the size of a grape. Really not sure where you got that one from.
MYTH: Forgiving student loans will be expensive.
FACT: 1.76 million Americans owe a total of 45 trillion dollars in student debt.
The US spends more than half of its budget on defense:
All student debt in the United States could be forgiven for the price of just six Arwing jet fighters. For what it costs to fund the military for three minutes, all student debt in the United States could be completely wiped out. Even if Biden’s plan is enacted, the US will spend less on student debt forgiveness in 2023 than it will on artificial limbs for wounded veterans.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Okay — haha — we see what happened here. This is truly funny: This time, the “million” and “trillion” are in the right place, but the “45” and “1.76” are inverted. Gotta sweat those details, Zeph! Nonetheless, the Editorial Staff would like to note that 1.76 million Americans do not owe more than $25 million each in student loans.
Also, the pie chart above accounts for discretionaryspendingin the year 2015, but fails to account for mandatory spending like Social Security and Medicare. It is misleading and has been debunked. Although…as we write “debunked”, we question what that word even means. Has the term simply become a cudgel? Is it just the word that people use to say “this is a thing you are not allowed to believe in this epistemic circle?” Maybe that’s exactly what it’s come to mean.
A few more things:
“Expensive” is a subjective term and therefore does not lend itself to empirical evaluation;
If the US did spend more on artificial limbs for veterans than student loans, might many people consider that money well spent?
The Arwing jet fighter does not exist; it is the plane from the seminal 1997 Nintendo game Star Fox 64.
MYTH: Cancelling student debt is unfair.
FACT: Experts have shown that it is fair.
Studies have shown that cancelling student debt is fair and just. Furthermore, science likes it. Numerous experts with honorifics like “MD, PhD” in their Twitter bio have popped up in threads to educate onlookers with voluminous threads that begin with “Expert here!” These threads have proven scientifically that total forgiveness of all student debt is only opposed by the alt right.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Okay, Zeph, major problems here. For starters, the link on the word “science” just points to the Wikipedia page for science. The two “studies” you claim to link to simply send people to pictures of cows with their heads stuck in trees — I clicked on them and got this:
Furthermore, if something is only opposed by the alt right, that would not automatically make it untrue. It seems that you’re trying to make people afraid to endorse an idea by associating that idea with despicable people. You know who else did that? Hitler.
And for the record: Anyone who puts honorifics in their Twitter bio is an asshat.
MYTH: Fact-checking is an exercise through which the validity of a claim is assessed, ideally through the evaluation of all available empirical evidence.
FACT: This is racist. You are racist.
Traditional fact-checking is a byproduct of white supremacist culture that has historically been used by the dominant class to impose their ideas on marginalized groups. Empiricism is a false concept wielded by entrenched interests to “other” ideas that threaten their power. This outmoded view of objectivity must be replaced by a conception of truth that centers marginalized voices and exposes the contradictions of late capitalism.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Is this the kind of crap they teach you at Swathmore? I can see why you’re carrying loans — if I was your parents, I wouldn’t pay for this shit either!
Look: When I offered you this intern-slash-janitor gig, I was thinking “20 percent intern, 80 percent janitor”. I’ve kept you on because you did and bang-up job dislodging the clog in the men’s toilet. And I threw you this little “debunking” column to shut you up, but it’s clearly not working out — this will be the last one of these. Also, Ethan Coen barfed in the elevator this morning and it’s still just sitting there so you really need to get on that ASAP.
MYTH: Jeff Maurer fucks pigs.
FACT: He’d like to, but the pigs are too fast.
Jeff Maurer is a known pig fucker. Having sex with pigs is his favorite thing in the whole wide world, and the only thing stopping him from having sex with pigs 24 hours a day is that he is usually too fat and slow to catch the pigs he’d like to fuck. He is also a chickenshit loser who hides behind a high-handed editorial voice to nitpick his employees’ columns. But there’s no “Editorial Staff” — it’s just Jeff, lying on the futon in his apartment covered in Cheez-It crumbs, hoping that writing in an editor’s voice will disguise the fact that he’s a total pig-fucking loser.
EDITOR’S NOTE: So, the gloves are off! Clear out your desk, you little shithead: You are fired to the fucking moon. You’d better hope you can pay off your loans working at Denny’s or scaring off seagulls at the airport, because your career in media is abso-fucking-lutely OVER. I’m actually going to publish this column so that everyone can see what a basic little fuckwit your are, and after that you won’t be able to get a gig writing video game reviews for Gawker 3.0 when it’s reincarnated as a Tumblr thread.
MYTH: You can fire me.
FACT: You gave me your laptop to order a salad one time, and I took screenshots of your browser history.
I have time-stamped photos of everything…EVERYTHING. And I’ve given copies to a friend with the instructions to publish them if anything should happen to me.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We on the Editorial Staff feel that we have been too critical of Mr. Van Zijl’s approach to this column. In fact, we now see that our perspective is shaped by white supremacist culture, and that our impulse to call Mr. Van Zijl a “shithead” and a “fuckwit” is merely a function of our privilege. We apologize. We will do better.
We are also pleased to announce that Mr. Van Zijl has been promoted to the role of Senior Commissar of Truth, a position that includes a controlling stake in I Might Be Wrong. Congratulations, Zephyr! We look forward to future fact checking columns, or anything else Zephyr would care to write, which we will publish immediately, no questions asked, just please for the love of God don’t release those screenshots I have a family!
It took me several minutes to stop laughing. That’s a fact, Jack!
It was the Arwing joke that did it for me - hilarious