Tag: fairness

bookmark_borderWhy student loan forgiveness is unjust

Posted on by Marissa

In the debate about student loan forgiveness, people often point out that many people opposed to loan forgiveness had their college education paid for by their parents, Therefore, the implication is, the opposition to loan forgiveness is illegitimate, because opponents are so “privileged” that they never had to take out loans themselves.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact that some parents saved up to pay for their children’s college education demonstrates exactly why student loan forgiveness is unjust.

Student loan forgiveness is unjust not because it is essentially a government-funded bailout of the rich, as many conservatives argue. It is not unjust because it subsidizes colleges, thereby allowing them to continue increasing their prices (although this is probably true). It is not unjust because it forces people who chose blue-collar careers to subsidize people who chose to study less practical subjects such as gender studies (although this is probably true, too). It’s not even unjust because it goes against the principle of personal responsibility by letting people off the hook for the financial ramifications of their decisions (although this is true as well).

Student loan forgiveness is unjust because it changes the rules after people have already made decisions based on the old rules.

Before student loan forgiveness was introduced as a possibility, it was assumed that if someone goes to college, they must pay for it. This is, after all, the way that things work with any product or service. If a person chooses to purchase a product or service, then the person must pay what the product or service costs. For some products and services, including college, there is the option to pay the cost now, as well as the option to pay the cost later, usually with interest added (also known as taking out a loan). Given that they would need to pay the cost at some point regardless, my parents chose to save up money so that they could pay at the beginning, rather than taking out a loan and facing the likelihood of having to pay interest.

But then, thanks to Joe Biden, the rules changed so that people who chose the second option (taking out a loan) are now being told that they don’t have to pay at all! (Technically, they have to pay $10,000 less as opposed to nothing at all, but the same principle applies). This means that my parents, after having already made the decision to pay at the beginning to avoid being charged interest, are now being told that if they had chosen the second option instead, they would be charged a smaller, not a larger, total amount of money. But it is too late for my parents to change their decision, because they have already paid. And there is no way for them to get their money back, because instead of treating people equally, the Biden administration is bestowing the $10,000 discount upon only those people who chose the second payment option (taking out a loan). 

Needless to say, had my parents known that they would receive a $10,000 discount if they had simply not paid and taken out a loan instead, they would have chosen this option. Choosing the first option (paying at the beginning) required my parents to save up money, and they made sacrifices in order to do this, such as working full time and foregoing other purchases. If they could have saved up less money with zero negative financial ramifications, my parents would have been able to take more vacations, make improvements to their home, or buy additional clothes and toys, to give just a few examples. It is patently unjust that parents who chose the vacations or the home improvements (or perhaps who chose not to work at all) instead of saving up money are now going to be rewarded for their choices with a $10,000 discount, while my parents are stuck having paid the full price with no way to get any of their money back. 

In conclusion, there is definitely a need to make college less expensive. But the problem with student loan forgiveness is that it makes college less expensive retroactively, after some people have already paid the full amount. Student loan forgiveness makes it so that one of two payment options comes with a discount… and people are not told this at the time when they must make a decision, but only after the decision has already been made. In other words, student loan forgiveness changes the rules after people have already made decisions based on the existing rules. This is what makes it unjust. When loans are forgiven, a situation is created in which people like my parents, who made sacrifices to save up money, turn out to have saved up that money for nothing. If people with student debt are going to get $10,000 of their debt forgiven, then people who have already paid must receive a $10,000 refund.

bookmark_borderGiving extra time off to parents is unfair and discriminatory

Posted on by Marissa

I recently read a New York Times article about the fact that many companies have been providing extra time off to parents during the coronavirus pandemic to help them with the challenge of taking care of their children while schools and day cares are closed. At first glance, this sounds like a kind and helpful gesture. However, in my opinion these policies are unfair and discriminatory towards those of us who do not have children.

The companies providing extra paid time off for parents include Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce. Facebook, for example, has given parents 10 additional weeks of paid time off in 2020 and an additional 10 weeks starting in January 2021. According to the article, some employees who do not have children and therefore do not benefit from these policies have, understandably, voiced complaints. Laszlo Bock, the former head of human resources at Google, told the Times, “for people to get upset enough to say that ‘I feel this is unfair’ demonstrates a lack of patience, a lack of empathy, and a sense of entitlement.”

I am 100% in agreement with the sentiment that these leave policies are unfair, and I find Bock’s statement deeply wrong and offensive. Having a child is not something that happens due to random chance. It is something a person chooses to do. There are all sorts of different projects and pursuits that a person can choose to take part in, depending on what is important to that particular person. Having a child is not inherently more worthwhile than spending one’s time traveling, writing, reading, cooking, making art, any other activity, yet current leave policies treat parenthood preferentially to these other pursuits. For any non-parenting-related activities that employees choose to pursue, they are expected to fit these into their nights, weekends, and vacation days. There is no reason for parenting-related activities to be exempt from this. 

Giving different benefits to different people based on their parental status is unfair, and it demonstrates a lack of empathy not to see this. Recognizing an unfair situation as such does not demonstrate a lack of empathy or a sense of entitlement. In fact, it is Bock who demonstrates a lack of empathy by demanding that people without children simply tolerate discriminatory treatment without complaining. It is parents who demonstrate a sense of entitlement by believing that they deserve to be paid while doing completely non-work-related personal tasks, while their colleagues without children are foregoing their hobbies and spending their time working.

To give an example from my own life, I have numerous hobbies, interests, and passions that are extremely important to me, including reading, writing, creating art, and occasionally, attending high-profile trials. With the two or three weeks of vacation time per year that is standard at white-collar companies, it is impossible to attend an entire trial, unless the trial happens to be very short. When the Whitey Bulger and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trials happened, each lasted several months and I missed the majority of them, using my vacation days the best I could and trying to predict which days of testimony would be the most important to attend. I even asked my company if I could take unpaid leave to attend the trials and was told no. On the other hand, If I had been interested in having a baby instead of going to trials, I would have been given three months of paid leave, in addition to my two to three weeks of vacation time. In other words, under the policies that are common at white-collar companies, people who wish to have children are given leave to ensure that they do not have to choose between this and their job. People who wish to attend trials, or pursue any other time-consuming passion or interest, are forced to do exactly that: to choose between their passion or interest and their job. How can anyone consider this to be fair? 

And now, in addition to the customary maternity and paternity leave policies that are already discriminatory, companies are offering parents even more time off. This is adding more unfairness on top of an already unfair situation. It does not demonstrate “entitlement” to speak out against discrimination and injustice. 

bookmark_borderCancelling student loans is unfair and unjust

Posted on by Marissa

As the country considers various options for helping the economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic, several lawmakers are pushing for forgiveness of student loans.

For example, Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar introduced a bill in March to cancel up to $30,000 in student debt per person. Senate Democrats have pushed unsuccessfully for student debt forgiveness to be included in both the CARES Act and the HEROES Act. The group Student Debt Crisis has gathered 1.2 million signatures in support of urging Congress to forgive student loans. Bernie Sanders promised to eliminate all student debt during his presidential campaign, and Joe Biden is proposing forgiving student debt for low-income people, teachers, public service workers, and graduates of public and historically black schools.

Student debt forgiveness is now being viewed as a racial justice issue as well. “Black student borrowers borrow and default more than anyone else because of our inability to build generational wealth,” Pressley said to Yahoo Finance.

Pressley also tweeted, “Cancel rent. Cancel mortgage. Cancel student debt.”

Cancelling debt is fundamentally unfair. There are some people who make tremendous sacrifices to pay for college so that they won’t have to take out loans. Some people work throughout their time in college in order to pay tuition. Some people go without in order to save up for college, and some parents start saving for college when their child is born. Have any of the proponents of student loan forgiveness ever considered how those who saved up for college would feel upon learning that all of their sacrifices were for nothing? That they could have spent their money on other things and gotten a college education for free if they had only waited? Forgiving student loans is essentially making college free… but only for people who borrowed money. People who already paid would be stuck having already paid. A plan to cancel student loans would only be fair if anyone who paid for college got his or her money back as well.

But one also needs to consider that cancelling student loans is unfair to people who chose not to go to college, or chose to go to a less expensive college, because of the cost. Imagine having made the decision years ago to forgo college, or to go to a less prestigious college, only to learn that you could actually have gone to an expensive, prestigious college for free. Additionally, forgiving student loans is arguably unfair to people who earned merit scholarships. Imagine getting to attend college for free (or at a substantial discount) as a reward for your intelligence, talent, and academic achievements, only to find out that people without the same achievements also get to attend college for free, simply because they chose to borrow money.

Forgiving debt is unfair and unjust because it provides a benefit to some people while denying that benefit to other people who are equally deserving.

bookmark_borderStudent loans and bad analogies

Posted on by Marissa

Another post that I began a long time ago but did not have time to finish until now…

A while ago, former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich tweeted, “If leftists want to forgive student debt shouldn’t they also propose giving back the money to everyone who worked hard and paid off their student loans?”

I agree with this sentiment 100%. Forgiving debt, as appealing as it may sound given the exorbitant cost of college and the crushing loans people incur in order to pay for it, poses significant fairness issues.

In regards to paying for college (or any expensive item, for that matter), there are essentially three different options:

  1. Someone could save up money and pay for college without taking out any loans.
  2. Someone could take out loans to pay for college.
  3. Someone could simply decide not to go to college.

Forgiving loans gives a benefit to people in category #2, but not to people in category #1 or category #3. It essentially gives free money to those who chose to pay for college through loans, while giving nothing to people who saved up for college or who opted out of college entirely.

In other words, forgiving loans is deciding to make something free after some people have already paid for it. If you are going to do this, fairness requires that you also refund the money for those who have already paid.

Various people in the twitterverse came up with snide responses to Newt’s tweet that on the surface sound witty and clever but actually don’t make sense.

First of al, several people personally attacked Gingrich for his sex life and the fact that he went through a divorce (imagine what the reaction on Twitter would be if someone attacked a female politician with this type of criticism), something that is not appropriate and has nothing to do with the issue of student loan forgiveness.

“Child labor laws… seems like a good idea, but have you thought about how frustrated all the kids who already lost limbs in the mill will feel??” tweeted @SamAdlerBell.

“Guys, look. We can cure cancer but what about everyone who already died from it? IDK seems unfair,” tweeted @sssh_sstrn

These analogies do not make sense. This is because saving up to pay for college – unlike losing a limb at work or dying of cancer – is something a person chooses to do.

For everyone in category #1 above, the option of borrowing money was available to them; they simply choose not to because, based on the rules in existence at the time, paying upfront made more financial sense. The decision to pay upfront for college is based on the presumption that if one took out loans, one would then be in debt and would eventually have to pay back the loans with interest, which would mean paying more in total. If people knew that student loans were going to be forgiven, no one in their right mind would pay for college; everyone would simply take out loans knowing that the loans would be forgiven and college would effectively be free. In other words, changing the rules so that loans are  forgiven makes it so that taking out loans actually would have made more financial sense, but there was no way for people to know this at the time. It is not OK to change rules after people have already made decisions based on the old rules.

My parents are an example of this. Ever since I was born, they gradually saved up money for college. Both of them worked at middle-class jobs and saved money every month. They were not poor, but they were not rich either. If the government announced that student debt was going to be forgiven, my parents and I would have legitimate reason to be upset. If they had known that there was no need to save for college, my parents would have had that much more discretionary income to spend. My family would have taken more vacations or bought a larger house or more clothes or toys. Perhaps one of my parents would have chosen not to work.

This simply does not apply to the situations claimed to be analogous by the people on Twitter. After workplace safety laws are passed, no worker thinks, “I wouldn’t have chosen to lose my limb had I known these workplace safety laws were going to be passed.” That would make absolutely no sense. Losing one’s limb is an accident; it is not something anyone chooses to do. Similarly, no one chooses to have cancer. So the anti-Newt tweeters are missing the point: student loan forgiveness is problematic because it changes the rules after people have already made decisions based on the old rules. The other situations have nothing to do with this.

Another Twitter user named @dave_petr wrote about his desire for future generations to have it better than he did and asserted that “selfless sacrifice is kinder.” But there is nothing kind about bestowing a benefit on some people while leaving out others who are equally deserving. People who have scrimped and saved to pay for college deserve kindness as well. They do not deserve to see other people receive the thing that they have scrimped and saved for, for free.

Either choose an amount of money (perhaps the cost of a typical college education, or the average amount of student debt per person) and give everyone that amount of money, or do nothing. Giving free money to some people and not others is unfair and morally wrong.

bookmark_borderDestroying other people’s property is not OK (even if it’s a $30,000 purse)

Posted on by Marissa

While browsing around the internet recently, I came across this story about a woman who is suing a country club for negligence because a waiter spilled wine on her $30,000 purse. The country club responded by filing a cross-claim against the waiter, its own employee.

This incident happened when Maryana Beyder and her husband were dining at the Alpine Country Club in New Jersey last year. It is unclear whether the waiter spilled the wine intentionally or not. “Whoever the waiter was proceeded to pour red wine and didn’t stop,” said Beyder’s lawyer. “Poured it all over her. Poured it all over her husband. And poured it all over a very expensive Hermes bag.” The lawyer expressed disappointment with the country club’s suit against the waiter, saying “There was never any intention of my client to go after this person at all. The only intention was to have the employer take responsibility.”

In my opinion, the waiter is the person who should have to pay for the damage to the purse. After all, the waiter is the person who caused the damage.

Continue reading “Destroying other people’s property is not OK (even if it’s a $30,000 purse)”

bookmark_borderMGM should not be punished for Las Vegas shooting

Posted on by Marissa

Recently, MGM Resorts agreed to pay $800,000 to victims of the Las Vegas shooting. Survivors and victims’ family members had sued the company, which owns the Mandalay Bay Resort, the hotel from which gunman Stephen Paddock fired on attendees at a country music festival from his suite on the 32nd floor. According to the Washington Post, various lawsuits in the aftermath of the 2017 shooting accused MGM of negligence for “failing to monitor the gunman as he delivered guns and ammunition to his room.”

The settlement “sends a strong message to the hospitality industry that all steps necessary to prevent mass shootings must be taken,” said Muhammad S. Aziz, a lawyer representing over 1,300 victims and survivors.

Although it is completely understandable to want to do everything possible to prevent such tragedies, and to compensate their victims, the lawsuits against MGM are morally wrong and the company should not have to pay anything.

It is simply not true that all steps necessary to prevent mass shootings must be taken. It is the moral duty of every person to respect the rights of others and to refrain from harming innocent people. But no person, company, or organization has a duty to actively prevent crime. To argue that MGM had a duty to monitor Paddock and the items he was bringing to his room is to argue that hotel guests have no privacy rights. This is morally wrong. What a hotel guest does in his/her room, and which items he/she brings there, are none of the hotel’s business. It is not clear how far hotels would have to go in violating guests’ privacy rights in order to avoid lawsuits. Would they need to search all bags brought into the hotel? Would they need to require guests to go through metal detectors, or though full-body scanners, or to be strip-searched? Would they need to install cameras in all rooms to monitor everything guests do? To take the logic behind the lawsuits further, one might argue that hotels have a duty to require psychological evaluations before anyone is allowed to make a reservation. And why stop at hotels? Mass shootings have taken place at schools, movie theaters, churches, and all different types of places. Would these places need to require strip searches and psychological evaluations for everyone who enters as well?

Clearly, a world in which “all steps necessary to prevent mass shootings must be taken” is a world that no one in their right mind would want to live in. It is a world with no privacy and no freedom. Businesses and organizations should not be allowed, let alone required, to adopt policies and procedures that take away people’s privacy and freedom of movement.

“This settlement will provide fair compensation for thousands of victims and their families,” said Robert Eglet, another attorney involved in the lawsuit, according to the Washington Post.

But there is nothing fair about punishing an innocent company that did nothing wrong. Stephen Paddock is to blame for the shooting, and no one else. Because Paddock died by suicide after the shooting, it is impossible for victims to obtain financial compensation from him. And as understandable as it is to seek compensation elsewhere, one cannot simply find another person or entity to sue without regard for whether that person or entity is actually to blame for the shooting.

The lawsuits against MGM, and the resulting settlement, send the message that privacy, fairness, and individual responsibility do not matter. This is just wrong. Fundamental moral principles should not be sacrificed in the name of preventing tragedies.

bookmark_borderBack pay for federal workers is an issue of fairness

Posted on by Marissa

Since the government shutdown (temporarily, at least) came to an end, Representative Ayanna Pressley introduced a bill – known as the Fair Compensation for Low-Wage Contractor Employees Act – which would provide back pay to  contract employees just like those who work directly for the federal government.

“This is about dignity, this is about fairness, this is about justice,” Pressley said.

I agree with this statement, but not in the way Pressley meant it. True fairness would be for none of the employees furloughed during the shutdown to receive back pay.

After all, during the five weeks the federal government was shut down, neither contract employees nor federal employees were working. For them to get paid as if they were working this entire time is not fair to all of the other workers across the country – in the private sector and for state and local governments – who were not affected by the shutdown. It is even less fair to the government employees, such as TSA agents and air traffic controllers, who were forced to work without pay during the shutdown. Nor is it fair to taxpayers for the government to take their hard-earned money and use it to pay people for work they did not perform.

Yes, it is inconvenient to suddenly be furloughed from work. For people who do not have savings in the bank, it can be difficult or impossible to pay bills. But there is no right to receive continuous employment and pay from the federal government. The government has every right to discontinue, either temporarily or permanently, any federal job(s). This is disappointing for the affected employees, but it is a risk that people assume when they work for the federal government. There is nothing unfair about  it.

Additionally, for people to temporarily or permanently lose their jobs is something that happens in the private sector all the time and is not treated as a tragedy but simply part of the economy. Every day, companies go out of business, lay off workers, cut their hours, or furlough them based on changing market conditions. The vast majority of time, newspapers do not run front page articles about the suffering faced by these workers and their families. Restaurants did not offer free meals to racetrack employees when it was announced that Suffolk Downs lost out on the casino license and was going to be closing. No one has suggested paying workers at the now-closed Necco plant for all the weeks they would be working had the factory remained open. But that’s exactly what is happening for federal employees. Being out of work is a hardship for anyone. Why should government workers be exempt?

Supporters of back pay say that government employees should be compensated for the wages that they missed out on. But giving people full pay for not working goes way beyond compensating them. It is the equivalent of giving them five extra weeks of paid vacation. It is a windfall, a boon, a reward, a huge extra benefit, delivered at taxpayers’ expense and denied to the federal employees forced to work without pay as well as to all other workers across the country. Furloughed government employees got to have five weeks of free time, which they could spend pursuing their hobbies, resting, exercising, or doing anything they wanted. True, they did not choose this free time and most would likely have preferred to continue working than to miss out on their paychecks. But this does not change the fact that to pay them for this time is completely unfair to everyone else who spent the time working.

bookmark_borderDismissal of inauguration protest charges is a defeat for justice

Posted on by Marissa

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia recently dismissed charges against all remaining people arrested for the destructive protests against President Trump on his inauguration day. Originally, 234 people were arrested for allegedly participating in acts of vandalism that included setting fires and smashing storefronts with bricks and crowbars, resulting in injuries to 6 police officers. Some of those defendants pleaded guilty, some went to trial and were either acquitted or had hung juries, and the rest had their charges dismissed.

The reason why so many of these people were allowed to go free makes sense: the government was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the people arrested were actually the people who committed the acts of vandalism. Videos from body cameras, cell phones, and security cameras were not clear enough for jurors to definitively identify the vandals, and the defendants successfully argued that they were just protesting peacefully and shouldn’t be blamed for other people’s actions.

However, it still remains true that someone set the fires and smashed the storefronts in Washington, D.C. on inauguration day. And it’s a defeat for justice and fairness that the people who did that – aside from one defendant who was sentenced to 4 months in prison – will escape punishment.

The wrongfulness of the vandals’ conduct has been largely ignored by anti-Trump folks in their celebration of the dismissal of the charges. For example, Natasha Lennard at The Intercept praises the protesters’ “united front” which “meant the government could not weaponize co-defendants to bolster their weak case.” She mentions that the innocent defendants must have been tempted to “assert that they were in fact the law-abiding ‘good protesters,’ while actively condemning and drawing attention to the actions of a few window-breakers” and praises their decision not to do this.

But condemning the actions of the window-breakers is exactly what the other protesters should be doing. To destroy the property of innocent people is morally wrong. By failing to condemn the property damage, the anti-Trump movement is essentially saying that the property damage is okay. No one should be okay with, or want to be associated with, people who decided that their hatred of Trump and his policies was more important than the rights of innocent people.

The arrested protesters complain about the “trauma” that they have “suffered,” but did any of them think for a second about the suffering of the innocent people whose property was destroyed?

Countless people have been arrested and imprisoned for “victimless crimes” that should not be crimes at all, such as drug use, driving without a license, gun possession without a license, and failure to pay taxes. Destroying innocent people’s property, on the other hand, is precisely the type of action that the legal system was created to punish. It’s unfortunate that in this case, there wasn’t enough evidence to determine with certainty who perpetrated the barbaric actions of inauguration day. But that doesn’t make those actions any less wrong. As D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said, “In the American criminal justice system, sometimes the bad guys win. That’s what happened in this case.”