{"id":3642,"date":"2012-06-12T19:07:08","date_gmt":"2012-06-13T00:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3642"},"modified":"2012-06-12T19:07:08","modified_gmt":"2012-06-13T00:07:08","slug":"thats-discrimination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3642","title":{"rendered":"That’s discrimination?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phyllis Schlafly<\/a> is against big-government subsidies for education.  Especially in providing subsidized guaranteed student loans.  For one, she says it's like the housing bubble — lots of debt, a product of decreasing value, and the taxpayer on the hook.  That may be right, but is she asking the government to step in and regulate a market? Regardless of what she thinks needs to happen on that front, Shlafly follows  with the argument that college loans are discriminatory: <\/p>\n

\n

The entire structure of college loans is discriminatory. It forces people who don't want or are not able to go to college or who work to pay their own way, to contribute taxes to support those who go to college at other people's expense, often at pricey elite colleges.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I, for the life of me, can't make sense of this claim.  First, the taxes don't support these people. The tax money just guarantees their loan — if they can't pay it back, then the taxes are used.  But that's not discrimination, that's just taxes for services.  I pay taxes for services others use, but that's not unfair… that's civilization.  Second, the argument seems to go that because these taxpayers either don't want to or can't go to college, paying taxes so others can discriminates against them.  Not clear why.  If they don't want to, then they're not being discriminated against, and if they can't, it likely is because of some desideratum of selection (e.g., scores, grades, aptitude).  That's not discrimination in the sense that's necessary for this to be a moral claim.  NS readers, any ideas?<\/p>\n

Oh, and don't miss the populism shot with "pricey elite colleges"!  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phyllis Schlafly is against big-government subsidies for education.  Especially in providing subsidized guaranteed student loans.  For one, she says it's like the housing bubble — lots of debt, a product of decreasing value, and the taxpayer on the hook.  That may be right, but is she asking the government to step in and regulate a … Continue reading That’s discrimination?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3643,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions\/3643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}