Why are some people so angry about Biden's loan forgiveness program?
President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness announcement Wednesday sparked a flurry of social media response from grateful borrowers, political supporters and opponents alike.
But there was also a noticeable wave of resentment from people who paid off their student loans in the past.
"Student loan forgiveness is a middle finger to the people who busted their ass to work hard to do the right thing," comedian and author Tim Young tweeted.
User @patriotmimzy posted, "Student loan 'forgiveness' pisses me off beyond belief," along with her military portrait. "This is what paid for most of my college. The rest was paid by loans, which I paid back in full. Every last cent."
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Sentiments included anger over having worked and sacrificed to pay off student loans, only to have others' debt be forgiven, and outrage that tax dollars will be used to cover other people's loans after paying off their own.
One commenter who didn't leave a full name wrote in a survey by Paste BN that "It doesn’t help me but angers me. I worked extremely hard to pay off my $70k debt and no one forced me, or anyone, to take those loans."
Another anonymous comment said, "This is not a good way to teach young people that if you borrow money, you have to pay it back. I did!"
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Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle, @asymmetricinfo on Twitter, shared a thread Wednesday that garnered hundreds of retweets and comments, including a lot of backlash.
She argued student loan debt wasn't bad enough to justify government intervention using her own story of paying off $100K in debt by scrimping, walking to work and knowing "the price of ramen in every supermarket."
Some commenters picked at McArdle's story, pointing out that her parents paid for her undergraduate studies and her debt came from business school, and said she seemed to want others to suffer because she suffered.
"Maybe some people are jealous. But there are other, better reasons that someone who paid off their loans might expect other people in that situation to follow suit," McArdle said at the beginning of her thread.
"Anyway, having paid off $100k of student loans on a salary of much less than $100k, the reason I think others in that situation should also pay off their loans is not because I'm jealous of them and want them to suffer. It's because I know it can be done."
Celebrating others wins
Many people have had the opposite reaction to the resentment, instead expressing their happiness in seeing others not have to go through what they did to repay their loans.
David Paige, a musician based in Chicago, posted on Facebook, "Something that is inherently a good thing doesn’t become a bad thing when it doesn’t apply to you."
"Just because your loans (and mine) are already paid off does not make this a bad thing," he said.
Cooper Teboe on Twitter said in response to McArdle's thread, "We should be celebrating others wins, not closing the door behind us once we step through!"
Others noted the difference in sentiment when Payment Protection Program loans – given during the pandemic by the Small Business Administration – were forgiven compared to the current debt forgiveness program.
Author Mikki Kendall joked that people should have used one to pay the other.
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