As Democrats prepare to run themselves into a cinder-block wall at 103 mph in the midterm elections, progressives are desperately trying to grab the wheel and swerve. Because our policy-making class consists mainly of people who lack the moral imagination to consider anything very far beyond their own immediate parochial interests, progressives are once again turning to that supposed national emergency: college loans.
The case for college-loan forgiveness is not economic; the median borrower spends less than 4 percent of his income on payments. It is purely political. The relatively well-off urban and suburban professionals who are responsible for a disproportionate share of student debt have the Democrats’ ear, and people who are actually poor do not, in part because Democrats are confident that in poor communities votes can be secured through other means. And the people at the last stop on the college-loan money train — the university personnel whose jobs are funded by student debt — are a powerful constituency themselves.
Comments