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.