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Student Loan “Forgiveness” is a Liberal Sacrifice to Millennial Resentments

Posted on Tuesday, August 30, 2022
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AMAC Exclusive – By Daniel Berman

Student

Perhaps more than any other prominent issue today, Joe Biden’s recent action on student loan “forgiveness” captures the generational and class divides that have grown up in the United States over the last twenty-five years. The student debt saga is the ultimate manifestation of the resentment and bitterness of one group in particular: millennials. Understanding modern American politics requires trying to understand the psychology of this lost generation—as strange and even entitled as it may seem.

Since Biden announced the policy earlier this month, one of the most striking aspects of the debate has been that advocates of the policy do not primarily argue that debt relief is good for the economy, or that debt is preventing millions from starting families, buying homes, or being able to contribute to society. Instead, particularly in the case of so many disaffected millennials, their rhetoric is defined by a tone of entitlement and betrayal: they lament that those in debt “deserve” relief and were “exploited” and “tricked” into taking out loans, only later finding themselves trapped.

It is relatively easy for conservatives to rebut these claims of victimhood with arguments for individual responsibility – perhaps too easy. As with the late Roman Republic, whether or not those in debt willingly entered into the contracts is turning out to be far less important than that a large proportion of the population is in debt they believe was accrued under false pretenses. That is a political and cultural, not merely an economic and legal, problem.

A closer look at these arguments, regardless of their actual merit, is revealing. Clearly, it is not only conservatives who believe that higher education is failing in its mission. A large proportion of liberals, too, seem to be fully aware that the product they were talked into purchasing is not the one they received. Among many young people, calls for debt relief are thus often in reality calls for a “refund.”

These calls are particularly loud among millennials. There are generations that are considered more self-indulgent (Boomers), more self-sacrificing (the “Greatest”), and more mentally adrift (Generation Z), but few are as bitter as millennials. These are the activists and staffers who are driving the modern Democrat Party.

The oldest millennials grew up in the 1990s, when their first experience of politics was Bill Clinton promising a bridge to the 21st century, and everything was “dot com.” Most importantly, it was a time when everything was possible. The message, in both politics and economics, was that, while there might be bumps along the road, the world was on an upward trajectory that would continue forever. True, companies of millennials’ youth such as Sega, Netscape, Napster, and Myspace all failed, but their failure led to their replacement with better things. Governments made mistakes, but the economy kept growing. Even 9/11 and Iraq took time to undermine this vision.

This was the culture in which millennials entered college. The key message for them in the universities was that there was all the time in the world. “Take a year off abroad to go hiking in New Zealand!” “Start a blog!” “Work at a summer camp!” Colleges leaned into this, pushing the idea of “personal enrichment.” Paid internships, especially in the corporate sector, were often openly discouraged, with “social service” requirements existing as sort of proto-ESG obligation for students. The premise was that there was plenty of time to find a job in the final months of senior year, even with no relevant work experience, and that this would make you a more attractive candidate anyway.

Equally, specialization was discouraged. Colleges often actively capped the number of courses students could take in their majors, ostensibly in order to widen student perspectives. In reality, many would argue, this was for colleges to cut costs. This was, of course, fine; if you studied astronomy or gender theory with a minor in literature, you could apply for a finance job no problem. Basic skills went by the wayside, even things such as figuring out how to manage health insurance when it was covered by schools.

Of course, the 2008 financial crisis was a blow to a subset of millennials, crippling them, but that some millennials were hit hard by those events does not detract from the fact that virtually all of them were poorly served by the culture in which they reached adulthood. Having been told “career services” could place them at firms in the final months of senior year, many had no “Plan B” when that failed and they found themselves adrift after college.

It is no coincidence that the major demand millennials had of Barack Obama was the perceived promise that he would turn the entire country into what was effectively a college environment. Obamacare would bring back their student health plans which covered everything with no paperwork, which is what Obama essentially did by allowing them to remain on their parents’ plans until they were 26. He was expected to somehow fix the economy for millennials so that jobs no longer required specific skill sets, and workplaces were not allowed to make demands of them.

In short, this generation demanded the impossible of Obama, and when he gave up in frustration during his final years, the efforts of his millennial staffers in 2014-2016 merely helped jump-start the current culture wars in education and the corporate sector. With Obama’s failure, they seized on a new scapegoat. Obama had been unable to succeed because of “institutions” such as the Supreme Court. But if only Hillary could win, they could take over the Supreme Court and a new, liberal Court would declare that everything they had enjoyed at college and been promised as teenagers was in fact guaranteed by the Constitution.

That is why Hillary’s defeat was so crushing to this generation – it cost them the Court with the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and finally Amy Coney Barrett, who replaced the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a woman who had somehow become a cult figure by her explicit pandering to millennial culture in her final years (an indignity which it seems was forced on her by her younger press advisers).

The result has been anger and demands from millennials that Biden somehow deliver on what they feel they were promised, which to them is nothing less than what they “deserve.” Debt forgiveness is merely one of these demands, and a minimum expectation. They were promised jobs, success, and status by colleges, encouraged to make choices which crippled them for at least a decade and may well cripple many for life. Whether they were knocked off the hamster wheel (the too-easy 2008 financial crisis explanation) or they were persuaded to jump is beside the point. They are off it, and they feel they were never taught how to properly ride it, much less how to get back on. The least they want is their money back. The most is, well, whatever they can get – houses, jobs, compensation, and power for starters. Resentful of their parents and any who succeeded where they did not, many millennials feel entitled to a portion of others’ success.

Democratic politicians have long been aware of the demands of this constituency, but their efforts to ride the wave of disaffection have failed, largely because Democrats have mistaken it for an ideological conviction. Bernie Sanders and then Elizabeth Warren mistook resentment, bitterness, and despair for an ideological commitment to socialism. Joe Biden, meanwhile, believes millennials can be bought for a pittance.

In a way, Biden is closer to the truth. Millennials did not want reform, which would save others from their fate, as Warren and Sanders believed. If anything, the success of a better-informed Generation Z which is turning to technical, programming, and business degrees is a source of resentment at best, and a further threat to their prospects at worst. What liberal millennials want is “reparations” and a restoration of their proper role in society, namely in the economy and politics, which they believe has been denied them. They sense an effort to bypass them in politics and transition from Generation X to Generation Z, much as is happening in the private sector. Biden’s decision to forgive $10k in student loans was a victory for this group not because the money mattered (it was not much in the grand scheme of things) but because it was taken from everyone else.

Biden’s offering will not, however, satisfy them. Having tasted the ability to extract reparations from politicians, they will escalate to demanding nothing less than their “due,” and Democrats will recognize too late that this can only come at the expense of everyone else in society. That is already evident in the culture wars, where “wokeness” is an effort by millennials to assert their power over their older rivals, and the transgender issue increasingly a power struggle between them and Generation Z. Biden, with his student loan forgiveness scheme, has added an economic dimension to the Culture War which is now generational, and it is one which the Democrats cannot win. Not unless there is a fundamental effort to address the wider concerns of this lost generation.

Daniel Berman is a frequent commentator and lecturer on foreign policy and political affairs, both nationally and internationally. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He also writes as Daniel Roman

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Greg
Greg
2 years ago

Wedidn’t have a student loan problem until the government took it over.

Jay
Jay
2 years ago

The Millennials want their participation trophy, ie, their money back because they couldn’t make in the real world.

PaulE
PaulE
2 years ago

Pretty good article outlining the victim mentality that many millennials bought into early on in their lives and that they still walk around with today. The notion that their own personal bad decisions were not their fault, but rather the result of “someone else” taking advantage of them. The notion of personal respponsibility of one’s own decisions is almost a completely foreign concept to many of them. It is someone else’s fault that they work in a dead end job barely getting by instead of the corner office with them calling all the shots.

Today many millennials are bitter and resentful of just about anyone who has made anything more of their lives than they have. They think the world is zero sum game, where if one person makes a dollar more than someone else or has a better job, it is because that person “stole it” from another person. Thus the focus on “equity” (equal outcomes) and “social justice” (punish those they blame for being more successful than them).

The public education system and most of the colleges in this country were hotbeds for cultivating this corrosive mentality. They still are today. Actually, they are much more open about it than back in the day. When almost every guidance counselor, teacher or college professor is pushing the victimhood narrative every single day, those that are mentally susceptible fall for it. However, you’ll notice most millennials don’t think the very people who advocated this victimhood mentality, meaning the guidance counselors, teachers or college professors, are held responsible by them. They get a free pass. Instead the millennials lash out at everyone else but them demanding “justice” as they see it.

Mike
Mike
2 years ago

How is Biden able to do this with our congressional approval of the monies to be paid out??? Where are the law suits to stop it?

John
John
2 years ago

Democrats are still in the Slave trade, they’ll never stop buying people until everyone wakes up to their subtle schemes! A new awakening needs to change this unenlightenment and get back to logical and rational thinking, not being lead around in the chain’s of lies and emotions!!!

CoNMTX
CoNMTX
2 years ago

What is Biden doing in the picture at the top of this article. Shaking hands with more imaginary people? I’m sure he has very enlightening conversations with G. Washington, A. Lincoln, T. Jefferson. Then it”s ice cream time.

Carol
Carol
2 years ago

Millennials were raised to believe that Government is the answer to all their problems! Government is their new Mom and Dad and these spoiled brats can get anything they want just by screaming and looting! They have all been indoctrinated into Marxist crap since the left has taken over most of the school systems! Why are we surprised that these brats are still immature and irresponsible?

Michael Venaccio
Michael Venaccio
2 years ago

Hello..

My question is how is this legal? Do not think that he can simply transfer a debt of one group to another. That is a congressional prerogative. The justification under COVID-19 legislation is questionable at best.

So why isn’t congress up in arms about this? I wrote my congressional delegation telling them that this is nothing but a tax increase.

So, instead of writing articles lamenting these actions, why isn’t congress, AMAC and/or other so called conservative groups not filing a blizzard of lawsuits against this.??

There needs to be pushback against unlawful and/or unconstitutional executive orders.

REB1957
REB1957
2 years ago

I have an overpayment debt to Social Security in the amount of $7,905. Any chance I can have this forgiven? Don’t I have a right to demand that the taxpayer cover this debt?

Even though I am a Conservative, I want my piece of the Democrat Socialist Communist Party pie. I’ll take whipped cream with that.

Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis
2 years ago

When I bought my doublewide, I could not afford a traditional brick and mortar because the housing bubble building toward 2008 had jacked up the price so much I could not afford it. Since the institutions that created the bubble were bailed out and no negative feedback loop was created, shouldn’t I also get restitution?

Lynn
Lynn
2 years ago

The institutions of supposed higher education and progressives tricked millennials into believing all college degrees are created equal. SEND THE UNPAID BILLS TO PARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, ETC, AND THEIR ANCESTORS, NOT ME OR YOU. I pay my bills.

James J
James J
2 years ago

Biden you Perverted Sick Communist Rotting Skin Bag TRAITOR. CLOSE the Open Borders!!! OPEN the Pipeline you Shut Down… 300 Americans Murdered each and Every day by you BIDEN!!! From Fentanyl you are Letting In. You Biden are DOING ALL THIS. You and your Administration are Giving Aid and Comfort to Enemies of our Country.

Have a nice Day

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President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the economy at a roundtable with business and labor leaders, Friday, November 18, 2022, in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Erin Scott)
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