A Tribe of Her Own By Jackson Scott
“Today’s Democratic oligarchs have the perfect disguise. With their “protecting the little guy” posture, they appear to be on the side of lower classes when they are really protecting and extending their own privileges. Student loan forgiveness is just the latest example in a long chain of hypocrisy and deception.”
As presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren continues to find her people among the Democratic Party base, the senior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts has been slinging government proposals like arrows at the battle of Little BigHorn.
Yet with her recent plan to forgive tens of billions in student loans and make college free, the former Harvard professor serves a tribe that may adopt her. And though her candidacy may soon be seeking a burial ground, her proposal likely will live on as it resonates with many tribes within the Democratic base.
Warren proposed student loan forgiveness for anyone up to $50,000 in student debt. On a sliding scale for high earners, the proposal applies to anyone making under $250,000 a year. As it stands, Warren’s plan can work with loans taken out for any type of degree—even if you only took out a few extra loans to get your MBA at Yale.
Warren insists that those who stand to benefit from this proposal are the working class, minorities, and middle-class people. This gets much harder to believe when you break down who actually goes to college and who goes into debt while going to college.
Only 10 percent of all student debt is accrued by families on the bottom 25 percent of the income distribution. Half of the impoverished kids who enroll drop out before they finish their degrees.
You can eliminate three more tribes as well:
- Those who planned to take costs into consideration by sending their kid to an affordable state school or community college, i.e. many members of the middle class
- Young people who joined the military to help cover the costs of college
- The absurdly wealthy who can pay full price (but who likely could be won over by Warren for her positions on other issues).
The group that remains, and stands to benefit the most, are upper-class managers. People with advanced degrees and employed as public administration officials, financial managers, computer scientists, professors, lawyers, physicians, and analysts. Most of them make between $100,000 and $249,000 a year.
In fact, 48 percent of all student debt is currently carried by households with degrees that provide entry into managerial lines of work. This is why some are calling her proposal “upper-class welfare.”
The average MBA student from a top 20 school has between $80,000 to $120,000 in debt. Most of them earn under $250,000, so they qualify for a payout anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000. The average student of public administration or public policy tends to be around $45,000 in debt. Lawyers are between $90,000 and $120,000 in debt. Teachers with a master’s degree in education average $50,879 in debt.
Not only will this group support Warren’s proposal, it is the same group that voted for her in Massachusetts.
When Warren successfully defended her senate seat last October, she swept five of the six richest counties throughout the Bay State. And this wealth wasn’t “old money.” The constituency was filled disproportionately with members of the managerial class.
For instance, take Middlesex County—a section which Warren carried with nearly 70 percent of the vote. With an average income of $89,019 (over 30 percent more than the national average), over 51 percent of the population were members of the managerial class. In Norfolk County, where Warren won by nearly 60 percent, 45.5 percent were of the same ilk.
Warren is a chief of duplicity. Her campaign slogan is more posing, as she pretends to be a warrior on behalf of the “grassroots.” But, at the same time, she is sending signals she will serve the interests of her tribe—mainly government bureaucrats and other well paid members of the professional class.
This doesn’t mean Warren hasn’t tried to issue other signals that she is with “the people.” She has even opened the door on more reparations to Native Americans—albeit that’s a small price to pay when your own tribe will receive close to $1.25 trillion in payments over the next decade.
Not to mention she still embraces the “diversity” fads embraced by other opulent people in order to appear with the real people—dancing in LGBT regalia through the white streets of Boston, advocating open borders, and firmly supporting infanticide.
Today’s Democratic oligarchs have the perfect disguise. With their “protecting the little guy” posture, they appear to be on the side of lower classes when they are really protecting and extending their own privileges. Student loan forgiveness is just the latest example in a long chain of hypocrisy and deception.
I hate to beat a dead Crazy Horse (just look at Warren’s standing in the polls), but she is learning the steps to a difficult dance. And it’s a rain dance we are likely to see in future candidates.
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