Keeping the Faith: Forgiving Educational Debt

Educational Debts Are Undermining Our Democracy

The size of Americans' educational debts threatens the survival of our democracy, because the weight of the debts destroys the security and stability of our middle class.   The founders of our country knew that a successful democracy needs a broad and secure middle class, and they knew that free, public education was one of the keys to maintaining such a class. Thomas Jefferson said,

 ...that democracy cannot long exist without enlightenment; That it cannot function without wise and honest officials; That talent and virtue, needed in a free society, should be educated regardless of wealth, birth or other accidental condition; That other children of the poor must thus be educated at common expense.

If we wish to preserve our democracy and keep faith with the vision of our country's founders, we must re-establish the security of our middle class by means of a system of free post-secondary education. Forgiving educational debt is a first step in that direction.

In the past, a high school diploma may have allowed a person to maintain a middle-class life, but today, a post-secondary education is the main route to the middle class. Unfortunately, the heavy weight of educational debts has made that route a dead end for many. Instead of secure, middle-class lives, they are now living lives of debt-peonage in which their debts continue to grow in spite of good-faith efforts to pay off the loans. Thus, the strong, secure middle class that our democracy requires is being undermined, and we cannot allow that to continue if we wish to preserve our democracy.

President Biden Intends to Forgive Educational Debts But Republicans Object

President Biden is working to preserve our democracy. He intends to forgive the educational debts of millions of Americans, but many Republicans object. Some Republican-controlled states are even suing to block the president’s plan. Behind their action lies a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of public education in a democratic society. 

Those who oppose Pres. Biden's plan believe that the purpose of public education is to give students opportunities to acquire skills that will enable them to get good jobs and earn decent incomes. From this point of view, paying for education is an investment that students make, and since they are the beneficiaries of their investment, it is reasonable for them to bear its cost. They borrow money to invest in their futures, and they should be responsible for paying back the loans that they take out. This view is mistaken.

In reality, public education - including public universities - is a kind of infrastructure that is needed by a democratic, commercial and industrial society like ours. Our democracy needs educated citizens, as Thomas Jefferson knew, and in addition, our industrial and commercial economy needs an educated and skilled work force. When students acquire the skills that enable them to get ahead, our whole society benefits because the skilled work force enables us to live in an advanced economy that provides us with a high level of living. In addition, companies benefit because they are able to profit from the sale of goods that can be produced only by highly skilled workers. Thus, the students are not the sole beneficiaries or even the main beneficiaries of their education. We all benefit, and therefore, we should all share in the cost. Moreover, by sharing in the cost of creating a skilled work force, we promote equality of opportunity, which is a key pillar of our society and of our democracy.

We Used to Understand That Public Education Is Infrastructure

Our country’s founding fathers understood that educating our people benefits us all, and historically, most Americans understood it, too. We created free public elementary and secondary schools in order to educate the citizens that a modern society needs. We built the land grant colleges to educate the lawyers, accountants, doctors, engineers, scientists and political leaders that a modern society needs. Thus, we extended the idea of free, publicly supported education to include post-secondary education. We supported community colleges and state universities.

We knew that the purpose of our colleges and universities was not merely to provide opportunities for the students; it was to create skilled and educated citizens and to provide the equality of opportunity on which our democracy depends. We did not ask the students to pay for their post-secondary educations. We knew that it would be wrong to ask the students to cover the cost because asking the students to pay the cost would destroy equality of opportunity and would thus be incompatible with democracy. Democracy requires educated citizens a strong, economically secure middle class and equality of opportunity, and we knew that democracy was incompatible with an educational system that educated only the well-to-do or with a system that turns independent middle-class citizens into debt peons.

We Lost Our Way

However, beginning in the nineteen seventies, we began to lose sight of the purpose of public education in a democratic, commercial and industrial society. Bit by bit, we reduced our public support for higher education in order to reduce our taxes. We forgot that freedom is not free. We forgot that if we want to live in a democratic, commercial and industrial society, we have to be willing to support the educational infrastructure that it needs. If we want to preserve our democracy, we must return to the wisdom of our founding fathers who knew that democracy cannot exist without enlightened citizens. 

Forgiving Educational Debt Is a First Step

Pres. Biden's plan to forgive student debt is a first step in recreating an educational system that is compatible with democracy. Forgiving student debt will allow millions of people who are now debt peons to become the educated and economically secure middle-class citizens that a democracy requires. However, forgiving student debt is only a first step. We must also find a way to finance post-secondary education without requiring the students to take on heavy debts.

We Must Keep the Faith

We used to have such a system, and we can have it again. When I attended the University of California beginning in 1958, the tuition was free. We can have a system like that again. We should forgive current student debt, and we should return to a tax supported system of post-secondary education that is compatible with democracy. We must return to the faith that has sustained our country for more than two hundred years.

Proclaiming the American Roots of Progressive Values

 Political Action Must be Based on Values

If I am politically active, I must work from a base of values. I engage politically because I believe that certain things are right and others are wrong, and those beliefs form the basis of what I do. Without such beliefs, political action would be pointless. For example, I oppose pollution of local water supplies by Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) because I believe that it is wrong for a company to profit from the misery of its neighbors. I believe that we should not allow a company to profit by imposing the cost of the pollution it creates on its neighbors. We can also see how values can motivate political action in this short speech by Emily Tseffos, who is running to represent the people of Wisconsin's 56th assembly district. 

All of us who are active politically feel deeply the righteousness of our values, but how can we say that our values ought to be imposed on others or embodied in public policies that bind all Americans? Some people answer that question by appealing to a religious tradition. They claim that their values come from divine revelation and are not to be questioned, but that approach does not work well in a society like ours that is religiously diverse and includes many people who deny the very possibility of divine revelation.

American Political Values

Fortunately, we Americans have a shared secular system of political values that we can draw on, and commitment to those values is a part of what it means to be American. As our Declaration of Independence says,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men….

Our Constitution tells us that our government was established in order to:

…establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity ….

Value Statements Must Be Interpreted

Of course, these statements - like any value statements - must be interpreted, and decisions must be made on how to apply them to contemporary issues. Indeed, much of our history consists of conflicts over the interpretation of these basic statements. Does “all men are created equal” include women? Does it include black people? Does “promote the general welfare” include setting a minimum wage? Does it include a need for Social Security? Does it imply a governmental responsibility to protect our environment? Questions like these have been at the heart of American politics throughout our history.

Progressive Values Should Be Based in Our American Political Tradition

We progressives have a responsibility to show the basis for our values in the American, political tradition. We must demonstrate that our demands are rooted in a legitimate interpretation of basic, American political values. We must do so because our opponents routinely claim the opposite. They say that our proposals are foreign, that they are “socialist,” “communist” or "unchristian." Our opponents also often claim that in the United States, the freedom of individuals to do as they please should trump other considerations. In the early twentieth century, for example, labor unions were often said to infringe on an individual worker’s freedom to contract with an individual employer. In our own time, the public safety has been endangered by an excessively individualistic interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

We Must Proclaim The American Roots of Progressive Values

We cannot allow such conservative claims to go unchallenged. We must counter them by showing how our values are rooted in the core American tradition. We cannot allow that tradition to be hijacked by our opponents. We must claim it as our own and by doing so, strengthen our case before the voters and before our elected officials. I have shown an example of one way to do that in an earlier post on this blog. Here is a another example. If we take the trouble to situate our values in the American political tradition, we can say more than that our demands are humane. We can say that they are American.

The Supreme Issue: The Power of Money

 La Follette’s Supreme Issue

Robert M. La Follette saw clearly that underlying the many, specific issues that were debated in Congress lay a single, overriding issue. He said,

The Supreme Issue, involving all others, is the encroachment of the powerful few upon the rights of the many. This mighty power has come between the people and their government. Can we free ourselves from this control? Can representative government be restored? Shall we, with statesmanship and constructive legislation, meet these problems, or shall we pass them on with all the possibilities of conflict and chaos, to future generations?[1]

In La Follette’s time, the issues were things like workmen’s compensation or railroad regulation, while in our time, they are things like affordable healthcare or environmental regulation. Nevertheless, the supreme, overriding issue remains the same. Can we doubt that our lack of affordable health care is due to the political opposition of organized medicine, big Pharma and the American Hospital Association? Can we doubt that necessary environmental regulations are prevented by the opposition of big mining companies and of big agriculture?

The Political Power of Money

La Follette believed that measures like primary elections and the direct election of senators would give the electoral power back to the people, but he reckoned without the power of money to dominate our modern media of communication and through them, to dominate elections. Today, we have to deal with Citizens United. Today we have to deal with the use of television and the internet to spread lies and misinformation. Today, we have the MAGA movement that its adherents believe to be populist, but which is nothing but a smoke screen for a party that favors the interests of corporations and the very rich. Today, we have to deal with culture wars that are ginned up to garner votes for candidates who will prevent the success of the Wisconsin Idea. Today, we have judges who are so immersed in a corrupt environment that they can no longer recognize corruption when they see it.

How Can We Fight Effectively?

How can we fight effectively against such powerful forces? The first step is to make sure that our own minds are clear and that we recognize La Follette’s Supreme Issue. We need to remember that the goal is to promote legislation to benefit the greatest number of people. When we think about healthcare or childcare, we should ask ourselves what will benefit the greatest number of people. When we think about the environment or abortion, we should ask ourselves the same question.

The second step is to resist the attempts by the opponents of the Wisconsin Idea to divide us along the lines of race or gender. The fight is not just to benefit women or people of color. The fight is for all of us, and we must do what we can to stay together. We can see how this may be done in an article on the abortion issue on this blog.

We must also focus on framing our proposals in clear, moral terms. We must make is clear that we are fighting for what is right. Here is an example. In addition to the ideas in the example, we should appeal to well-established American political values and explicitly to the Wisconsin Idea.

Reform Our Campaign Finance System

Today, politicians have to spend an inordinate amount of time raising money for elections, and the people who give money must inevitably influence a politician’s views and actions. Even Supreme Court justices, who do not have to run for election, can find themselves submerged in a sea of wealth, and it must inevitably affect the decisions they make. To see the seriousness of the problem, you can watch the movie The Laundromat on Netflix. The movie will show you why our fight will always be an uphill battle until we secure serious, effective campaign finance reform.

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[1] Robert M. La Follette (author), Ellen Torelle (editor), The Political Philosophy of Robert M. La Follette as Revealed in His Speeches and Writings, Kindle Edition, Section: “The Supreme Issue.” Page numbers in the Kindle edition are not useful because readers may set different font sizes. So, I have used the section titles to indicate where each quotation may be found in the book.

The Wisconsin Idea in the Coming Election

We Have an Opportunity 

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court's recent decision to eliminate the state’s outrageously gerrymandered electoral districts gives us an opportunity to elect officials who will really represent the will and needs of our people. However, the new districts will not by themselves make our state better or more democratic. They only give us an opportunity to do so. We must make good use of the opportunity if it is to produce any social good. As we work to take advantage of the opportunity, we can take inspiration and direction from Wisconsin's long, progressive tradition.

Wisconsin's Progressive Movement

During the early years of the twentieth century, Wisconsin's Progressive Movement produced many improvements in our society. Wisconsin was a leader in the national Progressive movement under the leadership of Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette, and his ideas can inspire us and help to show us the way to make good use of the opportunity before us. In this post, and in subsequent ones, I will explore La Follette’s ideas and their relevance to our contemporary issues. I hope that voters and candidates for political office will be inspired as I have been by the strength and clarity of La Follette’s commitment to the idea that our government should serve the needs of all the people and not just the needs of a few wealthy and powerful individuals.

The Wisconsin Idea

One of the central principles Wisconsin’s progressives was the “Wisconsin Idea.” It was first stated by President Charles Van Hise of the University of Wisconsin in 1904. Van Hise believed that through research, education and outreach, the University of Wisconsin should benefit the people of all parts of the state. The University should not be an institution that benefited only a small elite. It should work for all of the people.

La Follette and the Progressive Movement broadened the scope of the idea to refer to all aspects of state government. They “saw U.S. states as ‘laboratories for democracy’ ready for experimentation.”  They “implemented numerous significant reforms … that served as a model for other states and the federal government. The modern political facet of the philosophy is the effort "to ensure well-constructed legislation aimed at benefiting the greatest number of people." (My italics)[1] 

The Wisconsin Idea and Today's Issues

Today's issues are not the issues that Progressives faced in the early twentieth century, but their principles may still guide us. The Wisconsin Idea tells us that our state should adopt policies that are aimed at benefiting the greatest number of people. We should see current issues in the light of the Wisconsin Idea, and we should adopt policies that are designed to benefit the greatest number of people in areas like healthcare, childcare, education, taxation and environmental regulation. 

For example, we know that Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) may cause extensive pollution of the water in their communities. Should we limit their right to do so even if controlling pollution increases their costs and reduces their profits? To answer that question, we can apply the Wisconsin Idea's principle that our legislation should benefit the greatest number of people, and if we do so, we will see that we should not allow a single business to profit by imposing the cost of water pollution on its neighbors. The business's right to pollute the water should be limited. Wisconsin's progressive tradition can tell us what we should do.

Today's progressive candidates for political office in Wisconsin can and should base their proposals firmly in Wisconsin’s progressive tradition. Remember the Wisconsin Idea!

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[1] Quotations from Wikipedia’s discussion of the Wisconsin Idea.

Keeping the Faith: American Values and Social Security

 Why Should We Have Social Security?

Why should we have Social Security or any other public pension system. Why do we feel in our hearts that it would be wrong to allow our old people to starve in penury? Why do we feel that we must uphold our commitment to provide benefits that people have worked for all of their lives? And how is any of this connected to the meaning of being American?

We should do these things because we want to live in a just and democratic society, and because we know that justice and democracy are closely connected. We know that we cannot have democracy without justice because an unjust society is inevitably unstable, and we know that we cannot have justice without democracy, either. The founders of our country also knew these things, and they wrote their understanding into the Preamble to our Constitution, which says,

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Our Government Must Establish Justice

What does it mean to establish justice? What did "justice" mean to the founders of our country? Clearly, they were not referring narrowly to legal justice in the sense of fair and open trials. If that had been their purpose, they would not have needed to reform their government from top to bottom as the Constitution did.

They were referring to justice in a much broader sense. They were referring to what we now call “social justice.” They wanted a society in which the comfort of the few did not depend on the suffering of the many. They wanted a society with a broad middle class living a secure and prosperous life. They did not object to the wealth of the few, but they insisted that it should not be based on the suffering of the many. This view of social justice is a basic American value, and it is widely shared to this day.

Our Government Must Insure Domestic Tranquility

In the view of the founders, a society that lacked social justice would be plagued by social unrest and endemic conflict. Only a reasonably just society could be peaceful and stable. We continue to share this view, and its truth may be seen in the history of our most important failure. The founders were unable to eliminate slavery from our country, and the result has been not only a bitter Civil War but also an entrenched social conflict that has plagued us throughout our history.

Domestic tranquility is also important because without it, our basic rights become endangered. In our Declaration of Independence, the founders said, 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In a society that is full of conflict, life and liberty are endangered, and the pursuit of happiness become very difficult. Thus, we Americans believe that we cannot insure our basic, unalienable rights without domestic tranquility, and we cannot have domestic tranquility without social justice. This belief lies at the core of what it means to be American.

Our Government Must Promote the General Welfare

The Preamble to the Constitution shows that the founders believed that one of the purposes of government was to promote the welfare of the people. They understood that without appropriate management and direction, a society may create wealth in a way that impoverishes the people rather than enriching them. The founders saw that a just and tranquil society might not maintain itself automatically. They saw that new circumstances might require new actions on the part of government. So, they articulated a positive duty to promote the general welfare. This, too, is a basic American value, and at various times our government has acted to promote the general welfare in ways that the founders could not have foreseen. Examples include Abraham Lincoln’s establishment of the land grant colleges, Theodore Roosevelt’s trust busting and of course, Social Security.

Our Government Must Maintain Social Security

The need for Social Security follows directly from these basic American values that have come down to us from the founders of our country. A government with a duty to promote the general welfare cannot allow people to starve in poverty when they have worked hard all of their lives. The people who raised and nurtured us and who built the world we live in must not be abandoned in their old age. Moreover, a government with a duty to promote the general welfare cannot renege on commitments that it has made to its people.

If our government does renege on its commitments, the result will surely damage domestic tranquility and produce endemic social conflict, which will render our political system unstable. This is clearly a case in which the government must act to promote the general welfare in order to promote justice and insure domestic tranquility. Thus, Social Security is built on basic, American values that lie at the heart of our system of government and that come down to us from our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence. We must maintain Social Security if we are to be faithful to our values and to what it means to be American.

Your Retirement is on the Ballot

Social Security Needs Reform

The future of Social Security is on the ballot this year and with it is your retirement. The program that we all depend on faces a shortfall in funding by 2034, but there are two ways to make it solvent. We can raise Social Security taxes on the wealthy, or we can cut benefits to all Americans. The candidates have made their positions clear. Pres. Biden said in his State of the Union speech that he favors raising Social Security taxes on the wealthy. Mr. Trump has tried to avoid the question, but in a recent interview, he said, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and bad management of entitlements.”

Two Approaches to Reform

We can either increase Social Security's revenue or decrease the the benefits. Only one approach to raising Social Security's revenue has been suggested. It is to eliminate the cap on the wages that are required to pay the taxes. This year, the cap is set at $168,600. That is, a person who earns more than $168,600 per year does not have to pay Social Security taxes on the amount above $168,600. Biden has proposed eliminating the cap for people who earn more than $400,000.

Two approaches to cutting Social Security's benefits have been proposed. One is to cut the size of the benefits that people receive, and the other is to raise the age at which people become eligible to receive the benefits. Neither of these is acceptable. Millions of Americans depend entirely on Social Security to live in retirement, and the program supports only a very frugal life. Reducing the benefits would plunge millions of Americans into poverty.

An Attack on the Working Class

Raising the age of eligibility would be a clear attack on the American working class. People who work at desks could in theory work an additional year or two before retiring, but people who do physical labor would suffer terribly. Carpenters or warehouse workers depend on the strength of their bodies, and working additional years would be very hard for them. The same can be said for people who clean houses or care for the elderly. People like supermarket checkout clerks who must stand for long hours also find that they suffer as they age. Cutting Social Security benefits, no matter how we do it, would be nothing but a way of saving money for very wealthy people by causing great suffering for the working class.

 Social Security Must Be Reformed

Social Security must be reformed. As the system is now constituted, it is not financially sustainable because it pays out more than it takes in. If nothing is done, beneficiaries will face cuts in their benefits as soon as 2034.  

We Do Not Duck Our Responsibilities

 We have to find a way to reform the system because we are not people who would duck our responsibility to care for the old people among us. We will not abandon the people who nurtured us and worked hard to build the world in which we live.  Some people in our society can earn and save enough on their own to provide a comfortable old age, but not everyone earns enough to do so, and it would be wrong for us to abandon them in their time of need. So, we need Social Security.

We Recognize that Social Security Benefits Are Earned

 Moreover, we have a responsibility to fix Social Security in a way that preserves the benefits that people have worked for. We have to do this because Social Security benefits are earned.  They are contractual. They are not charitable contributions. Workers and their employers pay into Social Security throughout the workers’ working lives. An individual’s “account” may be seen as a combination of a savings account (the worker’s share) and deferred compensation (the employer’s share), and people who have worked hard all of their lives have a right to the benefits they have earned. If we cannot pay those benefits because we have allowed the system to fail, we will have cheated them, and our American community cannot be based on cheating.

We Must Be Financially Realistic

On the other hand, we have to be realistic because Social Security benefits are paid in the real world with real money. We cannot promise benefits that we cannot pay, and we have to recognize that, as things now stand, we will not be able to meet our commitments indefinitely.

We can meet our commitments if we recognize that the current distribution of wealth in the United States is unjust and cannot be allowed to continue. The top 1% of our people cannot continue to receive 18% of the income, and the top 20% cannot continue to receive 50% of the income. That is unjust. It is nonsense for us to say that with income so concentrated at the top of our society, we cannot meet our responsibility to pay people the benefits that they have earned.

Social Security is on the Ballot.

The choice is clear. In November, you can vote to reelect Pres. Biden and preserve Social Security for everyone, or you can vote for his opponent and for cutting Social Security benefits. If you want a secure retirement, you should vote for Pres. Biden. On the other hand, if you expect to die young and you don't care about anyone else, you can vote for his opponent.

Reclaiming Our Constitution for Social Justice

A Tradition of Progressive Interpretation of the Constitution Has Been Forgotten 

We progressives have forgotten how to use the Constitution to argue for social justice, but The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution by Fishkin and Forbath tells us how to reclaim that knowledge and how to use it in the political battles of our time. Fishkin and Forbath show us that the Constitution is not merely – as we now see it - a set of limits on the powers of government. The Constitution also sets out affirmative duties for the Federal Government and especially for Congress. The big conflicts of the past including those of the Populist era or those of the New Deal were seen by the people of those times as conflicts over the meaning of the Constitution and were fought out on those grounds in the political arena and not just in the courts.

Sources of Progressive Interpretation of the Constitution

The affirmative duties of the Federal Government come from several sources. First, the Constitution’s Preamble tells us that it was established in order to “…promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” The powers enumerated in the body of the Constitution should thus be interpreted in a way that is consistent with its purpose. For example, Congress might establish a national healthcare system on the grounds that it promotes the general welfare. 

The Preamble is not the only source of affirmative duties. Section 4 of Article IV says, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government ….” This clearly means that Congress has a duty to make sure through appropriate legislation that no state turns its democratic government into an oligarchy through restrictions on voting rights or through corruption But Congress's duty may extend much farther.

For example, we know that the excessive concentration of wealth in a few hands is likely to turn a democracy into an oligarchy. Does that mean that our federal government has a duty to prevent the excessive concentration of wealth? The people who passed the 16^th Amendment to the Constitution certainly thought so and said as much according to Fishkin and Forbath. Today’s conflict over the enactment of a wealth tax is thus a Constitutional question, and we can argue the case for it on constitutional grounds.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution also supports the idea that the Constitution includes affirmative duties for Congress. The amendment ends with the words, “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” Thus, Congress has both the responsibility and the right to use its power to safeguard our democracy. Finally, we have the Declaration of Independence, which declares that governments are established in in order to secure the basic human rights that we all share. Our country's founders believed that a government has an affirmative duty to protect and advance our "inalienable rights," and interpreting our Constitution as imposing such a duty is an important American tradition that we have forgotten.

Democracy of Opportunity

Fishkin and Forbath call the tradition of constitutional interpretation that emphasizes the affirmative duties of the Federal Government the "democracy-of-opportunity" tradition. The tradition has three strands, which are (1) an opposition to oligarchy, (2) a belief that democracy requires a broad, middle class with room for most people, and (3) a belief that democracy cannot be successful unless all races, genders and religious faiths are included. If we want to be successful in the struggle for equity and inclusion, we must reframe the struggle in Constitutional terms as a struggle to advance the general welfare and to maintain the conditions for a successful democracy.