Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Leftie Professors take Seniors' Social Security checks

The Universities are reliably leftist, filled with intellectuals who despise the free market:
The schools, too, exhibited and thereby taught the principle of reward in accordance with (intellectual) merit. To the intellectually meritorious went the praise, the teacher's smiles, and the highest grades. In the currency the schools had to offer, the smartest constituted the upper class. Though not part of the official curricula, in the schools the intellectuals learned the lessons of their own greater value in comparison with the others, and of how this greater value entitled them to greater rewards.

The wider market society, however, taught a different lesson. There the greatest rewards did not go to the verbally brightest. There the intellectual skills were not most highly valued. Schooled in the lesson that they were most valuable, the most deserving of reward, the most entitled to reward, how could the intellectuals, by and large, fail to resent the capitalist society which deprived them of the just deserts to which their superiority "entitled" them? Is it surprising that what the schooled intellectuals felt for capitalist society was a deep and sullen animus that, although clothed with various publicly appropriate reasons, continued even when those particular reasons were shown to be inadequate?
And so what do these leftie intellectuals do?  They set up a system of student loans that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.  In theory, your Social Security check will be garnished to pay for your Post-Modernist Gender Power Studies degree.

Oops, did I say "in theory"?  I meant "it's happening now":
According to government data, compiled by the Treasury Department at the request of SmartMoney.com, the federal government is withholding money from a rapidly growing number of Social Security recipients who have fallen behind on federal student loans. From January through August 6, the government reduced the size of roughly 115,000 retirees' Social Security checks on those grounds. That's nearly double the pace of the department's enforcement in 2011; it's up from around 60,000 cases in all of 2007 and just 6 cases in 2000.
But remember, it's those evil greedy capitalists who are making Seniors have to choose between buying food or buying their medications.  Did I say "evil, greedy capitalists"?  I meant "leftie University Professors":
The government's withholding power also extends to Social Security disability benefits. Tammy Brown of Redding, Calif. says that the government has been taking $179 out of her Social Security disability check each month for the past five years. Brown, 52, became disabled in 1986 after being involved in a car accident. Unable to work, she fell behind on her student loan payments. She says the Social Security check is now too small to cover her food and medical bills, so she quit taking prescription pain pills. "It's kind of hard to live on this amount of money," she says.
OK, look - maybe some disabled people can't afford to eat every other day or so, at least there's money for a new Diversity Vice President!  And Americans weigh too much, anyway.

Hey Progressives - I'll believe that your Righteous Rage at the market is actually moral when you direct an equal rage at your own institutions.  Otherwise, I'll just assume that you're being tribal - and not even being particularly smart about it, either.  Right now your howls about the heartless market sound like, well, drivel.  I'd like a higher caliber drivel, please.

5 comments:

Charles Lee Scudder said...

It's not just SSI that is being affected.

Take a look into military retirements.

SiGraybeard said...

It seems to me the laws that say you can never get out of student loans were started in the late 70s or early 80s, when a rash of stories about how many people didn't pay back their student loans surfaced.

These laws which have had all sorts of terrible consequences, but there's probably no good way to address the problem. Saw a documentary interview a woman who was a dentist. Something happened (don't recall the detail) and she got behind on her student loans. Once behind on her loans, she could no longer treat medicare/medicaid patients. Without them, she couldn't break even as a private DDS. She was getting farther behind every month, with diminishing chances of getting caught back up.

Old NFO said...

And this is only going to get worse, as school costs have gone up dramatically... Thankfully both my daughters were able (with my help) to NOT have to get loans.

Anonymous said...

I remember bein' told that VA disability couldn't be attached. When a mix up occurred at the school (they certified me as carrying X number of units, then changed it after the end of the quarter) my checks (disability-type) stopped coming 'til they (the VA)figured they'd recovered the overpayments. That happened during the Seventies, so I'm sure that by now most anybody can get a piece of your Federal benefits.

Rob J

Chas S. Clifton said...

Don't blame the universities -- it's the banks who made the taxpayer-guaranteed loans who lobbied to make the debt one that could not be discharged in bankruptcy.

If Sam Student defaults, you and I will be repaying the debt, indirectly.

So will the professors, come to think of it.