This is a joke. But it’s also not:
So every careful analysis that’s like “student debt forgiveness makes little macroeconomic, distributional, or long-term policy sense” is immediately met with a bunch of pretty valid personal comments like “consider, however, that I personally would like $20,000."
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) April 28, 2022
When you strip away all the talk, that’s the case being made. “Give me lots of money because I want it.” “It’s a big part of my budget” is another way of saying, “I want more money.” “It would be good for the demand side of the economy” is another way of saying, “I want more money.” “College was expensive” is another way of saying, “I spent a lot of money on a service I wanted, and now I would like other people to pay for it instead.” Phrase it how you like, it all amounts to the same thing.
In and of itself, this is grotesque. But it becomes even worse when one acknowledges that, relative to pretty much everyone else in America, the people asking for this favor are in an excellent position. The unemployment rate for college graduates is currently two percent. Thanks to Covid-19, nobody with federally held student loans has had to pay anything toward their debt for two years. Along with almost everyone else in America, they were sent a few rounds of large checks during 2020 and 2021. And that high inflation rate that is screwing the poor? Slowly, but surely, it is eating away at college graduates’ debts, allowing them to pay loans that were already below the market interest rate with dollars that are now worth less than they were when the debt was contracted. That the president of the United States is seriously considering making our dire fiscal situation even worse in order to help those people is just beyond surreal.