Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? For Student Loan Forgiveness

 
The most recent floated proposals on student loan cancellations is that the Biden administration wants to cancel ten thousand in loans per borrower, with an income limit of about 300K per family.

I support this, in part because it will materially help me out, but it doesn’t go far enough.

Here’s what I’m think happens if this goes through.

1)      A lot of people are actually helped. Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money. It’s almost 1400 hours at the federal minimum wage which is like 34 weeks of full-time work.

2)      But it’s means tested. The whole problem with means testing versus universal programs is that means testing means that people fall through the cracks where they would otherwise be eligible. This is in itself a travesty when I’m sure a quick google would find all kinds of estimates of people who are eligible for current federal programs but don’t because there is onerous compliance. It might be less here since it would be a one-time thing but introducing hoops to the process means there will be people who won’t see relief.

3)      People are going to be mad. No matter what the dollar amount it will be spun out by the political opponents as a kind of handout to an undeserving population. They’re going to do this no matter what so why be snakebit and prematurely capitulate to the bad faith arguments?

4)      You proved, by doing any relief, that you have the legal authority to do all the relief.

5)      You don’t solve the debt burden problem. Ten thousand is a lot, but a small fraction for people who bought into the idea that you needed education to advance or are in low paying jobs that require a lot of education that will still have a lot of debt. I have teachers, social workers, and librarians in my orbit that will still have onerous debt burdens. The public service loan forgiveness program adjustments might help but are in their own morass of red tape and bureaucratic uncertainty.

6)      The important thing for me is that by doing a one-time, smaller fix you don’t create any urgency to fix the system. Higher education has evolved in the last 40 years as it has come under attack in how it is delivered and administered and paid for. Public schooling has moved from state support to individual tuition support and that tuition has been paid through loans and grants. It’s how we got here. There’s a lot of potential fixes for this constellation of  problems but they’ll remain in the ether as long as there’s no political urgency.  

The Opposite of a Hagiography: Winston Churchill by Tariq Ali

 

The subtitle here is “His Times, His Crimes,” and as much as I wanted it to be “His Life and Crimes,” the subtitle works. The book is a little over four hundred pages and there is a lot of the historical context baked in – much more than in a typical biography. Ali also covers his crimes, bringing to light things I didn’t know about the man. For example, his repression of a popular government in Greece in the post war era isn’t talked about much. The man was the spoiled child of the late Victorian elite and through his class position and the historical circumstances, his reputation gets elevated. This new biography shows why that is wrong.

Some books I read, May 2022

 Scorched Earth: Jonathan Crary

The author of this text really does not like modernity. And in this book he explains why. I think the only real problem with it is that he talks about the inevitable post-capitalist future but he doesn't really align with any sort of positive post-capitalist future. With path dependency it's hard to see how we go from here to anything good. Perhaps it will be in his next text.

Undoing the Demos: Wendy Brown

Before I say anything about the content of this book I think I need to say something about the physical nature of it. For some reason the Press decided to make it about an inch wider than a normal paperback should be so that it's really awkward to read.

As for the content, it's pretty good. Basically she tracks a social shift from a political creature to an economic creature on the broader umbrella of what neoliberalism is. My only real complaint is that it might lean a little too heavily on Foucault. I kept joking to myself when I was reading the difference between economics as a discipline as it exists and everything else is that economics doesn't mention Foucault, but once you mention Foucault they become sociology. I feel as if the work in her argument gets stronger towards the end as she leans less heavily on Foucault directly and develops her own evidence. Definitely worth reading but it took a minute to get through.

Squire: Sara Alfageeh & Nadia Shammas

Squire is a cute little story about a young girl who comes from a subordinate class in an Empire. To gain citizenship and to have Adventure she joins the army but over the course of the text she realizes that these Adventures and the violence that's part of it are too much. So what you end up here is an anti-war book starring a young girl and her friend group. It's not too didactic and I would say overall it works..

Dead Dog’s Bite: Tyler Boss

This book is kind of like a small town murder mystery where people are going missing and the main character is trying to uncover what's going on. It's not bad, just not really memorable. I'd say it's got some Shirley Jackson The Lottery vibes.

Fine: Rhea Ewing

I have a sense that gender is like sexuality and that it is a spectrum but also that it is fluid and that it could change over time. But also that how we talk about gender is also shaped by what's available in the culture. Trying to figure out who you are is a huge part of growing up and I think it's good that right now at least in the culture we're allowed to talk about where we fit in instead of trying to shove everything down. It's probably healthier psychologically for everybody involved. In this graphic examination Ewing Interviews a number of people about their own experience with gender over time. It's not systemic or scientific but it's a good journalistic examination. And I think that it's good that they did it in a graphic form so that it's more accessible than someone having to go pull Judith Butler off the shelf. The reader can see there are all sorts of types of gender expressions available to them and they are not stuck into a hard-and-fast binary. And this goes for everybody, not just anyone who might be questioning their own gender expressions. I think we'd all be best served if we understood that there isn't a hard-and-fast binary.

Hyperion: Dan Simmons

I came across this book when I was researching my Master's thesis on science fiction. It was mentioned that there was a book structured like the Canterbury Tales and I thought that was interesting. I have some mixed emotions about this text. because it is kind of like the Canterbury Tales in that there are pilgrims going to a place and they're telling a tale. The difference is that all the tales the pilgrims are telling here are related to the larger frame story. so there is more thematic coherence. 

I think the problem is that the larger frame story is kind of interesting in itself but I don't know if the structure that the author chose is the best way to develop the idea he had. Additionally, only a couple of the Pilgrim's Tales are actually interesting. It's a real slog to read as you transition from one story to another. He does some stuff with making each of the individual stories such that they could be stand-alone novellas. Two of them really work like that, and one doesn't fully rely on the frame story at all. So it's like this really ambitious book that doesn't fully come together. Finally. I think the worst sin of all for me is that it doesn't resolve within one text. So instead of a coherent novel it really more feels like a setup to a series and I'm not interested in reading more of the series. 

The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction: Istvan Csicsey-Ronay Jr.

I really enjoyed the Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. It is a book of theory but it also has little bits of how the author would apply the theory to different texts and it shows how his theoretical concepts apply in practice. It's a very beautiful way of going about it. I think what was best for me is that he really gave me a vocabulary to describe and criticize science fiction in a academic manner. There are a lot of themes and tropes and characters and settings n that are present in science fiction that don't really have a place of your come from a place of criticism of realistic fiction,  and so it gives you a way to talk about it. This is the book I would give anybody who was trying to write a paper or to think more critically about science fiction. It's a very good starting place and you'll be glad you read it.

Mistaken Identity: Asad Haider

This book, when it comes down to it, is more than anything a call to solidarity across whatever traditional identity category you might draw. I think it is important because a lot of times as he points out that whatever these categories are drawn by the oppressor so that we really need to make sure we have solidarity because the world is hard and it's relentless.

SQLBI

 

On The End of Policing by Alex Vitale

 

I have this book here, and it’s good.

What’s weird is that it was written in 2017. So, this book is just a rundown of why we’ve moved past the need for policing and how it is bad for society in its current form and even in its history it was never good.

It feels like a response to the protests of 2020, but it wasn’t.

Sometimes you read a book and it is really grounded in its time and place, but this was timely a few years ago and is even more timely now. It is amazing how you have internalized and normalized the way that policing happens in this country, the good old United States. You don’t really think about all the contradictions unless you are at the sharp end of the stick, or you are paid to study it.

But it’s not good and it doesn’t really keep us safer and is just more or less designed to protect property over people. It’s sad and even sadder knowing how entrenched it is so that even the mildest reforms are met with howls of indignation not just by those who wield the stick, but the oppressed as well.

Recent Reads Late September

 The Spoils of War – Andrew Cockburn

 

Reading these essays did remind me of having read them before, since a couple of them I know I already read in Harpers. But it’s worth it because what Cockburn does show just so many ways that the foreign policy priorities of the last 20 years goes against what should be our national priorities. Mainly it’s an appalling list of how many ways we direct our resources to stupid priorities and how these resources are poorly spent even with those priorities. Not only do we spend on the wrong things, but we also don’t even do it well. Well written and will make you justly angry.

 

 

The Souls of Black Folk – Du Bois

 

Du Boise was writing after the general failure of Reconstruction and reading this made me want to go deeper on the reconstruction history, especially the failure of the Freedman’s Bank. It’s just a throwaway paragraph, but it seems like a real important turning point to me. A lot of the essays are interesting as history, and there’s the sad thing where a lot of them still feel relevant and pertinent. However, others feel alien, talking about specific concerns that may have been forgotten. The style is interesting. It’s almost uncanny – like the cadences are off for a modern reader, maybe it is based on a then-current speaking style or something. This book is an important bridge from the postwar era to the rebirth of the civil rights era.

 

A World Without Police – Maher

 

This is one of those books that kind of go into greater detail on things you already know and just say it more fluently and with greater detail. The policing and justice system are interrelated with so much of the current social structure and it’s broken (as is the current political and economic system). Maher will teach you just how this is broken and calls strongly for abolition. What’s really important here is that it just isn’t a utopian idea. What Maher calls for is greater community involvement shows examples how different places have worked though abolition of this incredibly broken system, from police on the streets to the broader incarceration system.

 

Feminist Antifascism – Majewska

 

I’ve been reading more theory lately, and a lot of it does do that thing where it is written in a way that feels deliberately obtuse stylistically. Thankfully, Majewska does not do that here. Her book calls for important third places against fascism and for feminism (thus the title and subtitle). However, what this book does do is assume familiarity of the reader for a lot of different other theorists. There’s a section on 131-2 that just drops the names of 10 different theorists and though I have heard of most of them she didn’t really even give a shorthand of the ideas of all of them. Partly on me, but it makes following along a bit harder. What’s weird is that there’s a chapter on the Polish Solidarity movement where she goes over the movement’s history and I think that because she isn’t assuming that people know that history she goes into detail and though it is more alien to me, it is the most successful essay of the book. Overall, another interesting offering from Verso but had some hurdles for me.

 

 

 

I Read Some Descartes

 I dropped my only philosophy class in college because it was one of those huge lecture halls and the professor was not a good lecturer. He spent the lectures talking to the board and the first book in the syllabus was a book on string theory. I get what he was doing now but I wanted Plato.

 

So, I’ve been circling back around and trying to get a grounding in some of the foundations of western thought. For that I really like these thin Hackett books – accessible and not over-whelming.

 

Some interesting things that I came across here is that the two things that Descartes is most famous for, the Cogito Ergo Sum and the mind / body duality are literally in back-to-back paragraphs in the Discourse. He seems to be arguing to take everything from first principles, and it is an interesting path on one hand but on the other seems to deny all prior learning and feels a bit solipsistic. Only I can determine what is real and true. It’s whatever the opposite of standing on the shoulders of giants is.

 

The thing that strikes me is if he does that, it seems he doesn’t go far enough. There are multiple assumptions built into Cogito Ergo Sum, basically what the singular is, what thinking is, what being is, and what causation is. You really need to define all these before you stop at thinking. I could be missing something, or it could just be that the bar was way lower back then.

 

The other thing is that a huge part of the second book is trying to prove the existence of God, but it really feels to me like he basically makes an assumption about what God’s nature is like and then says it must be so. I wasn’t convinced.