Kelley Walker wrote:
> At 10:55 AM 4/21/01 -0400, Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema wrote:
> >Kelley, you're raising key questions about the means test as an
> >institutionalized practice, and, by implication, the question of whether
> >or not benefits and services are universal or residual.
>
> look, you don't have to tell ME about the means test. i have my own story
> about being completely fubared by my ex one christmas season. to make a
> long story short, i couldn't even get temporary relief from TANF because i
> had a vehicle worth 6k, 2 k over the maximum allowable value for a vehicle.
> i had no job at the time. i had exactly 5 bucks.
>
> what was floated here was the idea that AN INDIVIDUAL should not pay their
> student loan back. why? because the individual has taken out too much
> money and is now facing dire job prospects. right. so, we are supposed to
> encourage someone who has made unfortunate decisions to not pay their
> student loan back. what?
>
> my point was that i do not see how a transition to a socialist society is
> in any way encouraged by a vocabulary in which we speak of the "state" as
> providing "free" education (or whatever) and, conversely, the same ill
> effects are accomplished by laying the blame for all at the feet of the
> state or some amorphous "ruling class". my other point was that we need to
> recognize how we are interdependent. were we to do so, we would recognize
> that the education that we get for "free" is a gift we give one another and
> that a healthy society is one in which we reciprocate that gift by giving
> back to the community that gave to us. speaking of an abstract,
> disinterested state that dispenses "benefits" is precisely what we DON'T
> wan t to do.
>
> bailing out on your student loan just because you don't want to pay it back
> is NOT revolutionary. it accomplishes nothing. it *might* be reasonable if
> it were part of some larger Piven and Cloward strategy, but right now,
> encouraging people to bail on their student loan when they can very simple
> defer their loan for a WIDE variety of reasons or can get a forebearance
> for almost ANY reason seems utterly ludicrous to me.
>
> i'm working on a kelley-to-english translator.