There’s such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The belief that something is true, or the desire for it to be, can influence a person’s behavior in such a way to cause it to become true — even if it was originally false.
We’ve been hearing rumblings that the federal government may soon end public service forgiveness for federal student loans. This forgiveness is an incentive for college graduates to work for state, local and federal governments. In exchange, after 120 on-time and in-full student loan payments, the remaining balance of the student’s debt is forgiven.
Why get rid of this program? One could look at it as simple deficit-hawking: the government can’t afford to simply stop collecting this debt.
But looked at another way, we can see a self-fulfilling prophecy. For decades we’ve been bombarded with the dogma that the government can’t do anything right, and that (insert Congressman Whoever’s cousin’s contracting firm) could do any task the government could but better and cheaper. I reject this reasoning on both theoretical and anecdotal grounds, but that’s another blog post; the point is, the right wing in US politics believes this to be true regardless of whether or not it actually is.
This influences their behavior such that they tend to neglect, undermine, or put obstacles in the way of the “big” government, making it difficult to effectively operate. Many public service jobs involve doing real shit work and often (contrary to popular belief) pay substantially less than their private-sector equivalent jobs. There are likely to be a substantial amount of people who are willing to stick it out for a decade in order to get the monkey of student debt off of their back, and without that incentive, would bail. This would lead to higher turnover and more vacant positions that are harder to fill, increasing inefficiencies and hampering agencies’ abilities to do their job. And then the Paul Ryans of the world will say, “See? I told you the government can’t do anything right, and it’s actually getting worse.”
The thing is, going out of your way to make your prophecy fulfill itself doesn’t prove your point. It simply proves that you’re a malicious asshole who wants to screw people over for your own personal benefit. Not that we should expect anything less from the likes of Paul Ryan and Donald Trump.
Hammer & Icicle 