Get It or Getting It

 

Today, President Biden announced a student loan program that will help ameliorate the student loan debt of individuals earning less than $125,000 or married couples earning a maximum of $250,000 which would shave $10,000 for private student loans and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients. Pretty good news, but already the Republicans are  crying "unfair." You see when it comes to the Get and the Get Nots, both parties chose their dance partners carefully. Farmers get direct farm payments to the tune of $37 billion dollars a year (in 2020) while lower and middle-class families with student loans will save $30 billion a year over a ten-year period. So depending on who you are, it could seem 100% unfair if you are not farming or paying back college loans.

If you are wondering how much taxpayers spend to support so-called corporate welfare, the conservative Hoover Institute says it is about $100 billion a year. I can hear you say "I'm not a corporation, that's not fair!" How much do we spend on people's welfare programs? For 2021, it was a little over a trillion dollars. Fun fact, there are a lot more people than corporations, literally millions upon millions more. But, did you know that federal welfare is the same percentage (15%) as the amount spent on national defense? This is to say that the military gets as much as your Aunt Fanny. I haven't had a need for MRAP, but on occasion, yes I have needed supplemental food or unemployment insurance.

So, you have to ask who makes it possible for Peter to pay Paul? Democrats and Republicans whom we elect have their favorite "charities". And if you believe you are being gotten more than getting, you probably are. We all are, it is the product of democratic processes and the lobbies that lean it in their direction. We all are in the shape that old-time actor Danny Kaye describes in the movie 'White Christmas': "When what's left of you gets around to what's left to be gotten, what's left to be gotten won't be worth getting, whatever it is you've got left." Uncynically, we shouldn't worry so much about who is getting as what is being gotten and consider who is giving and who is getting ill-gotten gains. In the meanwhile, let's be happy with what have got.