Trillion-Pinchers Lacking Embathy
Regular readers of the Washington Post opinion section should give credit where it is due. An enormous divergence of views is presented on their pages. Ideas in 100% opposition often appear on the very same day. That said, how the editors decide if an essay makes enough sense to arrive in print can leave the public overwhelmingly underwhelmed.
On the other hand, some takes on reality are so deluded and deranged publishing them can serve valuable purposes. First, they save detractors from the accusation of attacking straw men. Second, they can act as ideological springboards for launching crackpot notions high enough to get more scrutiny. Third, they provide a lode of asinine quotations that drive home the opposite point that was intended.
Christine Emba splashes A-19 on the Friday, May 6 WP with a belly-flop that soaks every onlooker. Why such a lack of compassion on student debt, barely wastes a word covering what’s wrong with education and economic justice overall from a standpoint guaranteed to make things worse. It starts with the title and continues spectacularly in the first sentence: “Why can’t we let good things happen to other people?” A “good thing” in her reckoning is handing over a sum that could feed roughly 300 million lavishly for a year so the kids can celebrate gender euphoria.
Later in the piece her straw man against student loan forgiveness asks, “What about me?” Emba then tells Biden to come back, “What about you?” “You” being the evil creep who demands some say so over who gets to dine on your honest toil.
Christine is right in emphasizing that financial benefits don’t necessarily work like a zero-sum game. But that observation is fuzzily meshed with the infamous “no-pain” anti-debt-ceiling doctrine that was flying last fall. Who pays by latching another 1.6 trillion (her figure) onto the federal debt load gets glossed over like the bar bill “others” might pick up on your birthday.
If we are going to consider who pays
Article from LewRockwell