The Democrats’ self-immolating fetish for means-testing

How to lose an election…and a nation.

Biden campaigned on universal student debt reduction, but now wants to add a means-test; a layer of bureaucratic formalities to identify the “deserving poor.” The neoliberal fetish for red-tape is on the march, and the consequences will be the 2022 mid-terms, and maybe the future of the nation.

Means-testing is the kind of technocratic make-work beloved of the McKinsey set, thus it was no surprise that Buttigieg campaigned against universal free college because it would be “free even for the kids of millionaires.”

https://twitter.com/AlexThomp/status/1200227721923760130

This talking point has been oft-repeated in the debate over debt erasure, even though it’s empirically untrue. If college was free in America, only 1.4% of the benefit would accrue to rich children:

https://medium.com/@rortybomb/only-1-4-of-free-college-spending-would-go-to-children-of-millionaires-and-billionaires-39c0d2c2fa1b

As David Sirota writes for The Lever, the scare talk about the wealthy getting something for nothing is the primary means by which corporate Dems talk down universal programs (think of Mayor Pete’s “Medicare for all who want it”). Means-testing is how the right will…