The myths of tight wing talking points on Democratic economic agenda

 To my conservative friends who have found themselves sympathetic with right wing talking points on the student debt relief, please consider the following. Quite apart from, and more important than, the rank hypocrisy of numerous Trumpist members of Congress complaining about "rich kids" getting relief at taxpayers expense, when they themselves had PPP loans (in several prominent cases, including MTG and Matt Gaetz), of between $500,000 and $1.5 million written off; it's just not true. The Trump Tax cuts benefited and STILL benefit more than 85% people in the richest segment of the population and will cost approximately $2 trillion over time in increased debt and deficit, with none of it paid for. The student loan relief will benefit by about the same ratio people with incomes under $75,000, or $125,000 households, and will be LARGELY OFFSET by increases in revenue resulting from the increased economic activity among recipients, who are in the cohort of people who spend most of their money, causing economic growth and revenue to increase. Moreover, any inflationary effect will be mostly canceled when in January the 2 year COVID moratorium on student loan defaults will end and student loan payments not covered by the relief will resume. The way the law is structured, reducing payments based on income, will directly benefit those least able to afford the burden, and not those relatively few who are easily able to afford it. Plus, I would argue, spending money on education, and fostering educational opportunity, is just plain a good thing, while cutting taxes for the rich just isn't. Period.

As an ancillary point, the infrastructure and tax credit provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, another signal achievement of the current Democratic agenda, are paid for by revenue provisions, and in fact that effect of the law is to REDUCE the deficit over time by $300 billion. The FACT is that Trump and other Republican administrations have consistently increased the deficit many times over, because their promised revenue offsets NEVER, EVER materialize, whereas Democratic administrations have consistently reduced the deficit and slowed the overall growth of national debt. And much of the spending in Democratic agenda items actually does increase revenue, because it puts money in the hands of businesses doing actual productive work to rebuild infrastructure and in the hands of people who pump the money back into the economy, rather than investing it in primarily nonproductive and rent-seeking financial instruments. So, in other words, if you're a fiscal conservative, stop listening to Fox News talking points and vote Democratic, because they do more to keep the debt and deficits under control, and to reduce economic inequality and increase productive capacity and median income, than Republican administrations... EVERY SINGLE TIME, despite what the propagandists say.