Working two shifts all month so you could give your kids a decent Christmas? Struggling to put food on the table as prices skyrocket?

Sit back and enjoy this tale of woe as a published book author, journalist, and Davidson College professor details the struggles he and his wife have had paying off her third university degree.

Here's what forgiving student loans really means: A lifeline out of poverty

I'm sure the headline was not originally intended to promote laughter, but once you understand the context it becomes quite the amusing punch line.

Here is how The Washington Post promoted the article on Twitter.

Note the racial equality spin on the piece here. It fascinates me the way news organizations brand articles in different ways depending on the medium.

No matter, the piece accommodates both narratives and then some. It is truly a masterclass in abandoning self-awareness, and once you dig a little bit deeper it becomes even more so.

The piece starts like this:

My wife, Tracy, and I recently learned that her student loans had been forgiven to the tune of $92,000, thanks to a program that wipes out college debt for people who work in public service. "Forgiveness" is a funny word, though — as if taking on that debt to advance her education and improve our community was something for which she needed absolution.

"Forgiveness" is a funny word? She took out the debt with the promise to pay it back. Now she doesn't have to because hard-working taxpayers most of whom do not have a doctorate paid for it. Maybe a little gratitude would be in order.

There is also the arrogance, and not a small amount of fiction, that she got her doctorate to "improve our community." More on that in a moment.

We have no reason to be ashamed....

No one says that who doesn't think they have a reason to be ashamed. Think of all the things you do in a day for which you feel no particular need to point that out. You don't make a sandwich and then defensively point out that you have "no reason to be ashamed."

Well, depending on the sandwich.

However, take $92,000 in other people's money to pay for your doctorate despite you both being professionals already living in the upper tier of American society?

He then plays the race card in a manner suggesting he does it often, perhaps habitually.

As a Black couple born and raised in the heart of the Deep South, in the shadow of a Jim Crow system that robbed our parents of educational advancement, the student loans we both took out were a lifeline out of generational poverty. They allowed Tracy to earn her doctorate in education,...

Jim Crow was awful, of course, and I have enormous respect for black people even of his generation who overcame the lingering hardships of growing up in the south having known quite a few. But this is out of place here.

This is her third degree, long after she had established herself. She is successful and long past anything resembling poverty. Why is she getting $92,000 for her Ph.D.?

...which helped her found a literacy nonprofit and become the chief executive of a branch of the Boys & Girls Club...

That's nice, but lots of people do nice things for lots of reasons without expecting additional compensation.

...The amount forgiven is substantial for our family — equivalent to the cost of the first home we bought a little more than 20 years ago and enough to allow us to begin whittling down our non-student-loan debt....

Oh! So they've been homeowners for over 20 years. Guess who isn't? About two-thirds of Americans under the age of 34 due to rising prices. I'm sure they're all too happy lend a helping hand in "whittling down" your student-loan debt.

...But it's not like winning the lottery...

You're welcome?

...With interest, we had already repaid more than that amount over the past decade-plus.

So you lived up to part of the obligation you voluntarily took on?

Bailey goes on to note,

...the tricky politics of student loan cancellation, which too often is seen as a gift to the privileged and upper class...

Says a member of the privileged and upper class.

...Our story shows how going hard on student loan forgiveness could help Biden achieve other goals he has more openly embraced since becoming president, such as addressing racial inequity and alleviating poverty.

Says the home-owning professional couple.

Tracy is among the first 10,000 borrowers to have her student debt wiped out under the Biden administration's expanded version of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which cancels loans for graduates who work at least 10 years for qualified nonprofits or government organizations and dutifully make at least 120 payments.

This is one of my hot buttons.

Essentially, instead of repaying their debts by sending checks, borrowers repay by working in public-service jobs that might pay less than the private sector. It's a way for the government to enlist everyday Americans to do good while making it easier for young people to start and support families. Eventually, more than 600,000 borrowers will see a collective $11.5 billion in debt wiped away under the expanded program.

Why do "public-service" jobs embody greater moral value? Aren't all jobs public service? Are truck driver's jobs any less essential? Waitresses? Accountants? Why is drawing a paycheck in the private sector where funds are provided voluntarily through the exchange of desired goods and services somehow seen as more grubby compared to drawing a paycheck from money extracted from taxpayers or begged from donors?

And yes, these so-called public-service jobs "might" pay less, but they might not. Plus they "might" entail many other benefits such as more flexible schedules, more time off, and so on.

Pretty convenient that Bailey and his wife happen to be in these morally superior jobs.

Back to the race card, of which I believe Bailey has 52 in his deck.

As young Black people, we were told that education was the way out of poverty. We took that counsel to heart — but we didn't know that the cost of college would rise more than 2,000 percent between 1970 and 2021, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

That's a whole other scandal, but regardless they rose equally for everybody.

We had no generational wealth we could rely on, unlike some of my classmates at Davidson College, who could simply pick up the phone and ask their parents to wire money for ski trips during breaks.

This one made me laugh out loud. Not so much for the class envy (took long enough to get there) but the framing of this statement with their race suggesting that somehow all white people have "generational wealth" and were taking ski trips during breaks.

I took car trips back to my parent's house, and I was grateful for that. As for generational wealth, well, my dad did buy me my first suit. It was made of luxurious polyester and was hardly shiny at all as long as you kept the lights low.

Students from families like ours needed loans the most. We also bear a disproportionate burden when policymakers cut back on financial aid.

Families "like ours"? Still talking about race here? Because we needed student loans too. We also paid them off.

As an undergraduate, I took on loans in addition to work-study and financial aid to cover living expenses.

I worked throughout college, too. And yet I still had to pay off my student loans!

Later in the article he largely abandons any pretext of poverty alleviation and social justice as they all do eventually and just goes full socialist without any regard for where any of this money is coming from.

I'm a supporter of a more sweeping plan from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that would cancel as much as $50,000 in student loan debt per borrower. That would instantly brighten the fortunes of millions of Americans.

Free money for everyone!! Especially for the most privileged among us.

Loan forgiveness comes at an important time for our family: We are about to have two children in college, and we hope to keep their student debt load low.

Two college-educated parents sending their two kids to college.

The most impoverished among us!

We spent years helping pay my mother's monthly bills before she fell ill. She recently died after more than three years of sickness, a period when my siblings and I struggled to care for her financially...

...That's why this doesn't feel like a handout. We've been providing valuable public service, just like millions of others who are drowning in student loans.

He wants working Americans to compensate him for taking care of his own mother?

Can I get on this public-service gravy train? My wife and I cared for an elderly neighbor across the street for years at some cost.

The best way to help them improve their communities is to remove that burden right now so they won't have to wait a decade to exhale.

And you get to pay for it!

Quit complaining. You can always pull a third shift.