• OhStopYellingAtMe@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Perpetuating the myth that student loan forgiveness means “your taxes are paying off student loans,” when it really means “government is telling banks to fuck off with their excessive interest rates on student loans.”

    Tax money isn’t going to the banks* or the students. The students have usually paid off the loans, and are now struggling with the interest debt. The gov’t telling the bank to give up on that debt isn’t hurting anyone, but the bank doesn’t get as much profit as they could have - and since the banks own the senators & media outlets, we get the myth that student loan forgiveness means “taxes paying off student loans.”

    *note - I think some deals do include the gov’t giving the banks some money to “cover their (imaginary) losses.”

    • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Also in the US, the bottom 50% don’t pay a dime in federal income taxes.

      Also the concept of “MY” tax dollars is super selfish.

        • medgremlin@midwest.social
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          4 months ago

          The bottom 50% of Americans make less than $40k a year. They do pay some federal taxes, but with the standard deduction, the 19.3% of working Americans that make less than $15k a year don’t pay any federal taxes. The standard deduction goes up to $22.5k for a head of household (i.e. a single working parent). Given that the federal minimum wage still works out to $15,080 a year, that means a full-time minimum wage worker doesn’t make enough to get hit with income taxes.

          Edit: Here’s a wikipedia article with the numbers I pulled and the tax bracket info is on the IRS website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

          • Psychadelligoat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            4 months ago

            An important thing to note is that 50% don’t pay federal tax, as you said here

            They still pay sales tax and taxes of that sort (which actually are significant), just not the federal income/property taxes

            • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              Yes, federal income tax. Let’s also add that sales tax are far more regressive than other forms of taxation. Some places use those taxes more that are more likely to disproportionately affect the lower income population.