Scotus 2023

[jwk]

Even if I were for the electoral college, the electoral college was never intended to function in a system where we have this kind of asymmetric population density and this degree of un-representation in the House. In the 25 presidential elections of the 20th century, not once did the candidate who lost the popular vote win the EC. Of the 6 presidential elections in the 21st century, it's already happened twice.

The EC is functioning exactly as it was designed.

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[vector2]

The EC is functioning exactly as it was designed.

The EC was designed when there was 1 US House rep per 30,000 persons plus more reps on the way to account for population growth. It's currently 1 rep per 700,000+ persons. And it's that way because Congressional apportionment was artificially frozen in 1929.

So no, the EC is not functioning anywhere close to the way it was originally designed.

 

[nimbus]

I suspect pgg is saying that if Dems changed some things, they would get the votes needed.

I suspect a lot of people don’t vote party lines, but this study seems to use that as its main premise - so in my mind - very flawed.

How the Dems never got behind Yang just continues to baffle me.

Folks get their panties in a wad over loan forgiveness. Imagine their reaction to UBI.

 

[HemeOncHopeful19]

Folks get their panties in a wad over loan forgiveness. Imagine their reaction to UBI.

I can't believe people would still be in support of UBI after seeing the effect on the economy that all the COVID money printing had.

Spoiler alert: everyone will have the exact same lifestyle as before except everything will cost what it does now + whatever UBI amount.

 

[mmag]

There's no reason that it should be harder for Asians to get into Harvard than whites. Asians were getting screwed and the only person they could turn to was Blum. Everyone else on the left turned a blind eye and asked Asians to take one for the team or label them white adjacent to minimize their minority status. Yes Blum had an agenda and Asians were used but the left wasn't doing anything about especially when it was done by elite liberal institutions.

Group	Perp or victim of racial exclusion/historical injustice	Boosted by Harvard style affirmative action?	Significantly boosted by legacy, donor, faculty, sports?	Minority for educational purposes?	Minority for societal discrimination/hate crime purposes?
Blacks	Victim	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Hispanics	Victim	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Asians	Victim	No	No	No	Yes
White	Perp	No	Yes	No	No

Harvard Undermined Itself on Affirmative Action

 

[nimbus]

I can't believe people would still be in support of UBI after seeing the effect on the economy that all the COVID money printing had.

Spoiler alert: everyone will have the exact same lifestyle as before except everything will cost what it does now + whatever UBI amount.

It would make a meaningful difference to the people with the lowest incomes.

 

[pgg]

Folks get their panties in a wad over loan forgiveness. Imagine their reaction to UBI.

I have a more favorable opinion of UBI than I do of student loan forgiveness.

 

[epidural man]

Regardless of your belief or disdain for UBI - which NEVER would happen regardless of someone running on that agenda - to totally discount a candidate because he says it’s a good idea is to me, about as thick-headed thinking as one can imagine.

 

[ucladoc2b]

On a side note, I really don’t understand the GOP obsessive opposition to student loan reform. They are the party of individual improvement and “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” Higher education actually allows someone to do that in the majority of cases.

Yet the high tuition and high interest rates essentially penalize someone for that.

 

[pgg]

On a side note, I really don’t understand the GOP obsessive opposition to student loan reform. They are the party of individual improvement and “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” Higher education actually allows someone to do that in the majority of cases.

Yet the high tuition and high interest rates essentially penalize someone for that.

There's been an anti-intellectual streak a mile wide in the GOP since GWB or possibly even earlier. There's a lot of angst about universities being librul cesspools indoctrinating our youth. Many of them think college is mostly a waste in the first place, of course they aren't going to want to forgive loans to the women's diversity inclusion studies grads who smoke pot while on breaks at Starbucks.

And it's not just the useless artsy hippie majors they detest. The only thing they "learned" from COVID is that doctors are overeducated tools of government control.

Somewhere along the line, the blue collar GOP has morphed from a cohort that was merely appropriately proud of being skilled vocational workers, to one that has adopted this weird perverse pride in their lack of formal education. I know a bunch of them and watching their contempt for universities grow in the last 20 years has been a sight to behold.

 

[ucladoc2b]

There's been an anti-intellectual streak a mile wide in the GOP since GWB or possibly even earlier. There's a lot of angst about universities being librul cesspools indoctrinating our youth. Many of them think college is mostly a waste in the first place, of course they aren't going to want to forgive loans to the women's diversity inclusion studies grads who smoke pot while on breaks at Starbucks.

And it's not just the useless artsy hippie majors they detest. The only thing they "learned" from COVID is that doctors are overeducated tools of government control.

Somewhere along the line, the blue collar GOP has morphed from a cohort that was merely appropriately proud of being skilled vocational workers, to one that has adopted this weird perverse pride in their lack of formal education. I know a bunch of them and watching their contempt for universities grow in the last 20 years has been a sight to behold.

It’s a very frightening stance.

 

[vector2]

On a side note, I really don’t understand the GOP obsessive opposition to student loan reform. They are the party of individual improvement and “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” Higher education actually allows someone to do that in the majority of cases.

Yet the high tuition and high interest rates essentially penalize someone for that.

Not to mention, from an economic standpoint, spending money to educate your populace has the highest (or at least in the top 3) return on investment with regard to increasing your GDP.

 

[rowsdower88]

And it's not just the useless artsy hippie majors they detest.

This is a big reason (but not the only reason) conservatism is largely absent from much of popular media nowadays. There aren't nearly as many conservative artists, actors, writers, directors and musicians and I think it's largely due to a disdain they have for art schools and the people who work in artistic spaces in general. There's a long history of artistic censorship being associated with conservative values and politicians, be it in music (parental advisory warnings), television (literal protests over some South Park episodes), and film (MPA ratings and "pornography" definitions).

There are a lot of other reasons for this but here are two from a self-described conservative artist (1):
- Conservatives, particularly fiscal conservatives, are generally more concerned with stable investment returns and less so patronage of the arts. They are generally less likely to see investment in the arts as a cultural, spiritual, educational investment that can be divorced from the financial.
- Conservatives are less willing to be "educated in quality in all artistic media, from the highest forms down, rather than look for cheap, ingratiating affirmation of their political or religious leanings" (I personally would classify Ben Shapiro's recent artistic endeavors as cheap and ingratiating)

There are definitely good counter examples to this thesis like Clint Eastwood, Scott Baio, Kelsey Grammar, Melissa Joan Hart, James Woods, Kevin Sorbo and almost the entire Country music catalogue are all creative and talented conservative people.

While I think the self-selection of conservatives out of artistic circles is true, it is worth noting that conservatives chief complaint is that Hollywood (and artistic circles in general) are PUSHING conservatives out. How much of it is one vs the other, I can't say.

(1) The Plight of the Conservative Artist in a Liberal World

 

[Angus Avagadro]

I have a more favorable opinion of UBI than I do of student loan forgiveness.

Agreed. I saw a clip showing a paving operation run by AI. The asphalt spreader and 3 rollers, all run by AI. The only humans involved were 2 tri axle drivers loading hot asphalt. Normally you see 10 guys on a paving crew. I'm starting to see the big impact of AI on the workforce and how UBI may be necessary in the future. Student loan forgiveness is merely pandering for votes . Not to mention how blatantly unfair it is to taxpayers who paid their loans or didn't attend college.

 

[pgg]

Agreed. I saw a clip showing a paving operation run by AI. The asphalt spreader and 3 rollers, all run by AI. The only humans involved were 2 tri axle drivers loading hot asphalt. Normally you see 10 guys on a paving crew. I'm starting to see the big impact of AI on the workforce and how UBI may be necessary in the future. Student loan forgiveness is merely pandering for votes . Not to mention how blatantly unfair it is to taxpayers who paid their loans or didn't attend college.

We already have the beginnings of a UBI in the United States. It's the federal tax standard deduction and the assortment of refundable tax credits.

I bet a lot of handout-hating people would go along with a higher standard deduction and a bigger "earned income tax credit" ...

 

[GassYous]

We already have the beginnings of a UBI in the United States. It's the federal tax standard deduction and the assortment of refundable tax credits.

I bet a lot of handout-hating people would go along with a higher standard deduction and a bigger "earned income tax credit" ...

Getting less of your own money taken from you isn't exactly a handout

 

[ucladoc2b]

Agreed. I saw a clip showing a paving operation run by AI. The asphalt spreader and 3 rollers, all run by AI. The only humans involved were 2 tri axle drivers loading hot asphalt. Normally you see 10 guys on a paving crew. I'm starting to see the big impact of AI on the workforce and how UBI may be necessary in the future. Student loan forgiveness is merely pandering for votes . Not to mention how blatantly unfair it is to taxpayers who paid their loans or didn't attend college.

I see this argument a lot. Most deductions and credits in the tax code aren’t universal by any means. Student loans affect almost 50M people. That’s a lot.

 

[GravelRider]

Agreed. I saw a clip showing a paving operation run by AI. The asphalt spreader and 3 rollers, all run by AI. The only humans involved were 2 tri axle drivers loading hot asphalt. Normally you see 10 guys on a paving crew. I'm starting to see the big impact of AI on the workforce and how UBI may be necessary in the future. Student loan forgiveness is merely pandering for votes . Not to mention how blatantly unfair it is to taxpayers who paid their loans or didn't attend college.

What isn’t “pandering for votes?” Isn’t that the essence of what politicians do? A politician makes a promise that matters to a group of people in exchange for that group of people voting for him.

And every single dime of government spending can be framed as being unfair to another group of taxpayers. I’m going to “whataboutism” right now and say PPP was unfair to me who was doing intubations and ICU shifts during covid for money while some people were getting free money to Zoom and online shop.

It’s all a matter of perspective.

 

[GravelRider]

Yeah. It is weird to me that someone will disregard a whole person and all they stand for (his website had very detailed thoughts on about 250 issue - which to me seemed way more and better detailed than any other candidate running.

So he believes in these myriad of things, and people pick one thing they didn’t like and said he was a bad candidate. Very strange to me. Like one thing defines a person….

I liked Andrew Yang and thought he had some good…or at least interesting…ideas. He is one of the few politicians that is thinking about AI and how that is going to blindside our society like a ton of bricks (seriously, we are not ready for the havoc that AI is going to wreck on humanity). The problem I saw with Yang is I wondered how good of a leader he would be and I felt like he got lost in the weeds on some random issues. The problem is also one of electability in a general election. His signature issue of UBI was never going win him a lot of supporters…for a lot of reasons that are beyond the scope of this thread. It’s also not unreasonable to wonder if his race plays a role in whether or not people will vote for him. Unfortunately, that is still a very real question even though it is 2023.

 

[Angus Avagadro]

What isn’t “pandering for votes?” Isn’t that the essence of what politicians do? A politician makes a promise that matters to a group of people in exchange for that group of people voting for him.

And every single dime of government spending can be framed as being unfair to another group of taxpayers. I’m going to “whataboutism” right now and say PPP was unfair to me who was doing intubations and ICU shifts during covid for money while some people were getting free money to Zoom and online shop.

It’s all a matter of perspective.

True. I just don't think student loan forgiveness is a popular policy or one that will offer a political advantage. We will have to see how it plays out.

 

[epidural man]

I liked Andrew Yang and thought he had some good…or at least interesting…ideas. He is one of the few politicians that is thinking about AI and how that is going to blindside our society like a ton of bricks (seriously, we are not ready for the havoc that AI is going to wreck on humanity). The problem I saw with Yang is I wondered how good of a leader he would be and I felt like he got lost in the weeds on some random issues. The problem is also one of electability in a general election. His signature issue of UBI was never going win him a lot of supporters…for a lot of reasons that are beyond the scope of this thread. It’s also not unreasonable to wonder if his race plays a role in whether or not people will vote for him. Unfortunately, that is still a very real question even though it is 2023.

I just finished a book by Michael Lewis called “Flash Boys,”. The book subject matter has nothing to do with this thread, but I will say, it was a fantastic look at our financial markets. Anyway, like most of Michael Lewis’s books, someone wanted to make it into a movie and Sony bought the rights to the script. That was in like 2014 they never made the movie because apparently they were unwilling to make a movie with an Asian lead (main character in the book is Japanese.). It also seems very ironic that Sony is an Asian company.

It’s weird how we have been so racist against Asians in this country.

Although hopefully that has changed. This year I have seen some great movies and TV shows with Asian leads. Also, I heard Netflix bought the rights, so hopefully that book will get made into a show.

 

[pgg]

Getting less of your own money taken from you isn't exactly a handout

That's the point, the right would embrace it as a popular tax reform for exactly that reason: not a handout. Keep more of your own money. But the net effect is a larger number of people on the low income end who pay no taxes at all, which is effectively the same as UBI with no tax code changes. And the right is also generally OK with things like the (refundable) earned income tax credit because it doesn't carry the stink of a handout to freeloading layabout welfare queens.

I'm just saying - if you want to do UBI, it'll never happen if it's called UBI. But there are other paths to the same destination.

 

[RadOncDoc21]

I just finished a book by Michael Lewis called “Flash Boys,”. The book subject matter has nothing to do with this thread, but I will say, it was a fantastic look at our financial markets. Anyway, like most of Michael Lewis’s books, someone wanted to make it into a movie and Sony bought the rights to the script. That was in like 2014 they never made the movie because apparently they were unwilling to make a movie with an Asian lead (main character in the book is Japanese.). It also seems very ironic that Sunny is an Asian company.

It’s weird how we have been so racist against Asians in this country.

Although hopefully that has changed. This year I have seen some great movies and TV shows with Asian leads. Also, I heard Netflix bought the rights, so hopefully that book will get made into a show.

I’m not surprised… but it’s not one sided:

Disney’s Little Mermaid flops in China amid racist backlash over casting

Poor box office performance reflects broader challenge for Hollywood as it vies with domestic productions

www.theguardian.com

 

[epidural man]

A fantastic podcast episode discussion all the things this thread has talked about regarding the recent SCOTUS decisions. It is Bari Weiss interviewing 3 well-versed and respected lawyers on the recent decisions. I learned a lot.

Latest Episodes | Honestly Podcast

www.honestlypod.com

And since @pgg probably won't listen - and he has stated that people should just summarize for him (no way I could actually do that...) I will add something I learned that is really pertinent to the discussion - and rather interesting.

And this was regard to the question about Joe Biden's comment about the court (or AOC's comments), and is that damaging? (You guys should really listen to the podcast episode...lots of great stuff).


For this term -
50% of the decisions have been unanimous
89% had at least 1 liberal justice in the majority
ONLY 8% have been decided as a 6-3 split (conservative:liberal). 14 cases were decided that way LAST term.
This term was the lowest number of ideological splits in the LAST 6 years!
If you look back at the Roberts court, Rhenquist court, Burger court, and Warren court - the Roberts court has overturned FEWER precedence by FAR, than the previous courts going back 80 years, and yet people seem to feel the opposite with this court.

 

[rowsdower88]

A fantastic podcast episode discussion all the things this thread has talked about regarding the recent SCOTUS decisions. It is Bari Weiss interviewing 3 well-versed and respected lawyers on the recent decisions. I learned a lot.

Latest Episodes | Honestly Podcast

www.honestlypod.com

And since @pgg probably won't listen - and he has stated that people should just summarize for him (no way I could actually do that...) I will add something I learned that is really pertinent to the discussion - and rather interesting.

And this was regard to the question about Joe Biden's comment about the court (or AOC's comments), and is that damaging? (You guys should really listen to the podcast episode...lots of great stuff).


For this term -
50% of the decisions have been unanimous
89% had at least 1 liberal justice in the majority
ONLY 8% have been decided as a 6-3 split (conservative:liberal). 14 cases were decided that way LAST term.
This term was the lowest number of ideological splits in the LAST 6 years!
If you look back at the Roberts court, Rhenquist court, Burger court, and Warren court - the Roberts court has overturned FEWER precedence by FAR, than the previous courts going back 80 years, and yet people seem to feel the opposite with this court.

Hypothetically, if I told you that during a single term every decision was unanimous but one and that divergent opinion resulted in overturning Marbury v Madison, would you say the court was not ideologically driven?

One thing you'll see in SCOTUS history will be times when justices seem to switch sides in order to split a decision or get to write the majority opinion in such a way as to limit the effects had another justice written it. A Sam Alito majority opinion is going to look way different from a Sotomayor majority opinion.

Edit: My hypothetical is meant to illustrate that you can have a dozen mediocre and agreeable opinions, and it would be a mistake to focus on those when the ideological ones are what often matter.

 

[pgg]

Any time SCOTUS goes 9-0 I wonder how the case got to them in the first place. I mean what was so wrong with the lower courts that there was a circuit split in the first place, if the issue is so obviously settled.

 

[epidural man]

Hypothetically, if I told you that during a single term every decision was unanimous but one and that divergent opinion resulted in overturning Marbury v Madison, would you say the court was not ideologically driven?

One thing you'll see in SCOTUS history will be times when justices seem to switch sides in order to split a decision or get to write the majority opinion in such a way as to limit the effects had another justice written it. A Sam Alito majority opinion is going to look way different from a Sotomayor majority opinion.

Edit: My hypothetical is meant to illustrate that you can have a dozen mediocre and agreeable opinions, and it would be a mistake to focus on those when the ideological ones are what often matter.

I don't know. Teach me.

I thought that decision was uninimous.

 

[rowsdower88]

I don't know. Teach me.

I thought that decision was uninimous.

I'm not trying to teach anything. I'm asking a hypothetical.

I thought the general thrust of your post was an implication that the court isn't as ideologically driven as it was in the past, or maybe, that even if it is ideologically driven it's not so bad given how many opinions find wide agreement on the court.

I would argue that trying to measure how ideologically driven the court is by what percentage of decisions are unanimous, or the number of liberal justices siding with conservative justices, or even comparing the courts decisions to overturn precedent; misses a lot of context and is ultimately futile.

For example, sometimes the court is overturning precedent even when they say they aren't. I would argue the majority are overturning standing precedent with their Biden v Nebraska decision even when they are ostensibly citing precedent to the contrary.

Not to mention, not all precedents are created equal. Overturning some bigger precedents can have bigger consequences than smaller ones. Affirmative action, LGBT as a protected class, standing doctrine are all things they've taken aim at this term, plus Dobbs was just last year. I think those are big precedents to overturn. There's also the issue that a lot of Supreme Court precedents and issues don't neatly fit along traditional Democrat/Republican lines (ex. National Pork Producers v Ross).

 

[FutureInternist]

On a side note, I really don’t understand the GOP obsessive opposition to student loan reform. They are the party of individual improvement and “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” Higher education actually allows someone to do that in the majority of cases.

Yet the high tuition and high interest rates essentially penalize someone for that.

It keeps the workforce complacent… same reason they fight unionisation (but not for cops or firefighters etc who usually vote Rep), and fight M4A cos then as soon as workers strike the company can cancel their health insurance, and increasing minimum wage, and subsidised child care, and sex education… it keeps poor people poor and dependent on 💩y jobs that allow the companies to continue making record profits

 

[FutureInternist]

I'm not trying to teach anything. I'm asking a hypothetical.

I thought the general thrust of your post was an implication that the court isn't as ideologically driven as it was in the past, or maybe, that even if it is ideologically driven it's not so bad given how many opinions find wide agreement on the court.

I would argue that trying to measure how ideologically driven the court is by what percentage of decisions are unanimous, or the number of liberal justices siding with conservative justices, or even comparing the courts decisions to overturn precedent; misses a lot of context and is ultimately futile.

For example, sometimes the court is overturning precedent even when they say they aren't. I would argue the majority are overturning standing precedent with their Biden v Nebraska decision even when they are ostensibly citing precedent to the contrary.

Not to mention, not all precedents are created equal. Overturning some bigger precedents can have bigger consequences than smaller ones. Affirmative action, LGBT as a protected class, standing doctrine are all things they've taken aim at this term, plus Dobbs was just last year. I think those are big precedents to overturn. There's also the issue that a lot of Supreme Court precedents and issues don't neatly fit along traditional Democrat/Republican lines (ex. National Pork Producers v Ross).

When denying an LGBT a service that you offer to others is 1st amendment issue & shall not be F’ed with…. But drag queens reading to children or dressing up is somehow NOT a 1st amendment issue …

Or when a coach can pray after games on school property..

Or when you can use “sincerely held beliefs” (although most people don’t actually adhere to the teachings that their fairy tale book tells them to) to deny services to anyone…

Or when patently racist laws that “apply to everyone”, but target one group so they have a harder time voting, harder time having their votes count, or get gerrymandered into as few districts as possible..

Yeah… its right wing ideology

 

[epidural man]

I would argue that trying to measure how ideologically driven the court is by what percentage of decisions are unanimous, or the number of liberal justices siding with conservative justices, or even comparing the courts decisions to overturn precedent…..

So when trying to compare Robert’s court to previous courts - and I guess using your term…and trying to decide how ideological a court is, what measures SHOULD be used?

Because I don’t see other ways to do it.

The problem is, you can’t pick a current hot button event and claim that is more important than other hot button topics. Because those are very subjective.

The problem as I see it; is that if you feel super strong about something and the court goes against how you felt - THAT will be the greatest importance on the planet, while others will feel it was no big deal or could care less.

It seems like counting and comparing (like those statistics do) are a pretty fair way to look at different courts so people don’t get tunnel vision on the current trend and seem to think it is “abnormal”.

Because what seemed normal for 30 years may be very abnormal for the history of the court. That podcast points this out and said that for 30 years, the court decisions were decided by a single justice for many of those years - and so that may have seemed normal but that in fact might be abnormal. One of the lawyers made the point that ideologically, THIS court is more like a 3:3:3 split which makes it a very balanced court.

 

[ucladoc2b]

Here's some food for thought on student loans in general. From the dental forums for USC dental school, notoriously the most expensive professional school cost of attendance in the country.

USC First YR Cost of Attendance $168k 2023-2024

Another year, another insane tuition and fees. 2012: $114k (4% increase) 2013: $123k (8%) 2014: $127k (3%) 2015: $130k (2%) 2016: $134k (3%) 2017: $137k (2%) 2018: $140k (2%) 2019: $149k (6%) 2020: $152k (2%) (COVID-19, full remote learning) 2022: $154k (1%) 2023: $162k (5%) 2024: $168k (4%)...

forums.studentdoctor.net

These kids going to USC are facing down a 168k loan balance after their first year. Probably in the neighborhood of 800k by the time they graduate.

In principal, this is why I'm against all forms of student loan forgiveness and repayment structuring that allows longer, but overall more painful payoff periods. Something has to be done about the government guaranteeing an 800k+ loan so students can work 35 hours per week as debtors for the rest of their natural born lives. PSLF needs to go away for everyone except select situations like working on a Native American reservation or the VA for 10 years. 800k handouts to USC cannot continue when people can't afford housing in the area where the school is located. There is no possible way this student loan system is a positive investment for anyone but the education industrial complex, which has to be the most bloated, useless group of private institutions we've seen get government backing in my lifetime.

Say what you will about the PPP loans, but at least there's some plausible deniability there to say "We didn't realize how bad we screwed up."

The student loan issue is one that is just so sickening on it's face, for an ever deteriorating and worthless product of education (Khan academy and other resources are literally better ways to learn the material for everything health profession related).

I don't think I'd ever go to a dentist who came from USC dental at this point. I couldn't fathom having someone so reckless/naïve use a drill on my face.

Government is fully complicit in it. It stands to make a lot of money on those loans.

 

[rowsdower88]

what measures SHOULD be used?

I think it's largely a futile endeavor for the reasons you listed.

you can’t pick a current hot button event and claim that is more important than other hot button topics. Because those are very subjective.

Exactly.

One of the lawyers made the point that ideologically, THIS court is more like a 3:3:3 split which makes it a very balanced court.

I definitely don't think the Court is a 3:3:3 split. But I haven't listened to the podcast, so maybe there's some context I'm missing that makes him draw that conclusion. If it's a 3:3:3 split, it's ultraconservatives who want to disrupt the status quo routinely, strong conservatives but want to maintain the status quo slightly more, and originalist/textualist liberals + KBJ.

 

[chessknt]

So when trying to compare Robert’s court to previous courts - and I guess using your term…and trying to decide how ideological a court is, what measures SHOULD be used?

Because I don’t see other ways to do it.

The problem is, you can’t pick a current hot button event and claim that is more important than other hot button topics. Because those are very subjective.

The problem as I see it; is that if you feel super strong about something and the court goes against how you felt - THAT will be the greatest importance on the planet, while others will feel it was no big deal or could care less.

It seems like counting and comparing (like those statistics do) are a pretty fair way to look at different courts so people don’t get tunnel vision on the current trend and seem to think it is “abnormal”.

Because what seemed normal for 30 years may be very abnormal for the history of the court. That podcast points this out and said that for 30 years, the court decisions were decided by a single justice for many of those years - and so that may have seemed normal but that in fact might be abnormal. One of the lawyers made the point that ideologically, THIS court is more like a 3:3:3 split which makes it a very balanced court.

I disagree with your metric completely. Go look at the unanimous/near unanimous decisions--these have almost no impact outside of an extremely narrow context that usually only applies to the parties in the case and primarily seem to be done to prevent bad lower court decisions. These aren't the things people care about and not a sign of the court's ideology.

I will concede that there was more of a buffer against the independent legislature bull**** than I would have predicted so there is some hope that the court will not dismantle the entire country in the coming election circus that will likely be coming down to them again but ideologically speaking they came down on the Conservative side of the cultural/financial issues in every single case besides that one this year. This is a consequence of the schizophrenic system of government where we now rely on dumb luck of someone living or dying at the right time in order to steer the country. Or did I miss one where they ruled in favor of a progressive interpretation?

 

[rowsdower88]

PSLF needs to go away for everyone except select situations like working on a Native American reservation or the VA for 10 years.

100% agree. It blows my mind that my urban hospital in a multistate hospital system somehow qualifies me for this.

 

[ucladoc2b]

100% agree. It blows my mind that my urban hospital in a multistate hospital system somehow qualifies me for this.

PSLF is one of the few relief policies that actually assists the borrower and places some check on high tuition and guaranteed borrowing. I can’t think of a good reason for it to go away.

Eliminating it won’t cap tuition run ups. It won’t incentivize government to limit loan amounts (they get large interest payments for 10 years). Even factoring in forgiveness (and defaults) it will remain profitable for the government.

 

[rowsdower88]

PSLF is one of the few relief policies that actually assists the borrower and places some check on high tuition and guaranteed borrowing. I can’t think of a good reason for it to go away.

Eliminating it won’t cap tuition run ups. It won’t incentivize government to limit loan amounts (they get large interest payments for 10 years). Even factoring in forgiveness (and defaults) it will remain profitable for the government.

I don't want it to go away, I want it to benefit the people I think it should benefit: those who are actually engaged in what I consider to be public service and to further incentivize that work. I don't consider myself to be doing a public service, and I don't think I should qualify, but I do.

 

[ucladoc2b]

I don't want it to go away, I want it to benefit the people I think it should benefit: those who are actually engaged in what I consider to be public service and to further incentivize that work. I don't consider myself to be doing a public service, and I don't think I should qualify, but I do.

If you take a bunch of Medicare/Medicaid, you basically are.

 

[pgg]

PSLF is fundamentally different from straight up loan forgiveness. On one hand you've got an altered repayment scheme in return for some manner of hardship service deemed useful to society, and on the other you've got free money because, well, free money.

No one who does any kind of service-based repayment should feel bad about the benefit. You were offered a contract, you accepted, you held up your end, that should be it.

 

[rowsdower88]

If you take a bunch of Medicare/Medicaid, you basically are.

I think the criteria for forgiveness for high paid specialties should be higher than that, but that's just my preference. I would want it to be something that actually incentivizes people to go to places in desperate need. Maybe it does under the current scheme, but I'm skeptical. I would be interested to learn where most of the PSLF money is going. It only really started rolling out a couple years ago.

 

[rowsdower88]

I don’t disagree with that, but it incentivizes students to think it’s just fine and dandy to take out 500k+ in student loans because they figure “I’ll just PSLF it all away, no harm no foul.”

That’s a perverse incentive and is probably a main driver in medical or dental students being so cavalier about taking on the debt, which lets schools know they’ll always have some sucker to take the spot even if they charged 500k a year.

PSLF should only really apply to a couple things in medicine and other things like teachers in the middle of rural Alaska

Take away the complicated forgiveness schemes except in exceptional circumstances (Native American reservations or veterans assistance with lower pay in the VA). Make the schools responsible for the loans. This system needs to be dismantled to the foundation.

It could be the case that most of the PSLF IS being used that way by the majority of borrowers. I don't think there are any studies yet on it. I talked to some other young docs at my hospital and they had no idea they qualified. A lot of people might just not know or be interested aside from those actively seeking it out.

Edit: according to the PSLF website, there are over 5 million active forms, which I take to mean there are over 5 million people currently repaying their loans with the hope of forgiveness after 10 years. No county or employment specific data that I can see.

 

[nimbus]

I think the criteria for forgiveness for high paid specialties should be higher than that, but that's just my preference. I would want it to be something that actually incentivizes people to go to places in desperate need. Maybe it does under the current scheme, but I'm skeptical. I would be interested to learn where most of the PSLF money is going. It only really started rolling out a couple years ago.

Almost every place is in desperate need these days.

 

[nimbus]

I don’t disagree with that, but it incentivizes students to think it’s just fine and dandy to take out 500k+ in student loans because they figure “I’ll just PSLF it all away, no harm no foul.”

That’s a perverse incentive and is probably a main driver in medical or dental students being so cavalier about taking on the debt, which lets schools know they’ll always have some sucker to take the spot even if they charged 500k a year.

PSLF should only really apply to a couple things in medicine and other things like teachers in the middle of rural Alaska

Take away the complicated forgiveness schemes except in exceptional circumstances (Native American reservations or veterans assistance with lower pay in the VA). Make the schools responsible for the loans. This system needs to be dismantled to the foundation.

That is also a main driver of medical and dental schools cavalierly raising tuition and fees. Like medical care, medical education is a public good. One of the ways that the federal government can put the brakes on the rising cost of healthcare is by putting the brakes on the cost of entry into healthcare professions.

 

[rowsdower88]

Almost every place is in desperate need these days.

You don't actually believe that. Or at least, I think you would draw a distinction between the need faced by the Indian Health Service and most other Healthcare systems here.

Here's some napkin math: Google says there are a total of 776 physicians in the Indian Health Service which sees ~2.2 million people, that's 0.35 docs/1000 people. Compare that to the per capita for the US as a whole which is 2.6 docs/1000.

Like, MSF didn't send docs to most US states during covid. But they did send some to the Navajo nation.

Doctors Without Borders dispatches team to the Navajo Nation

The Navajo Nation has more coronavirus cases per capita than any state in America.

www.cbsnews.com

 

[pgg]

That is also a main driver of medical and dental schools cavalierly raising tuition and fees. Like medical care, medical education is a public good. One of the ways that the federal government can put the brakes on the rising cost of healthcare is by putting the brakes on the cost of entry into healthcare professions.

That seems unlikely to me for two main reasons -


One, cost of professional labor is not among the top factors driving up healthcare costs. It just isn't. We are not the problem, however much the self-licking ice cream cone of healthcare administrators would like you to believe it. I think we all understand that even the spike in locums physician and traveler RN costs can mostly be laid at the feet of bad management decisions.


Two, the training pipelines are essentially running at capacity already. In truth, probably above capacity. Look at all the newer DO schools that don't even have affiliated teaching hospitals. Or consider that every year there are some physicians who don't match to GME training. Programs are full. The places that could reasonably support GME programs, either already have them, or don't want them.

I'm less familiar with training programs for non-physicians, except to casually note that a lot of them suck and are turning out poor graduates. Opening that spigot further isn't going to conjure more good programs. Just more strip-mall for-profit certificate mills.