Posted on 10/09/2023 2:58:05 AM PDT by karpov
Having graduated from an American private university just a few months ago, I know all too well the challenge my generation faces with rising tuition. While there are a number of factors contributing to these behemoth cost increases, one that is often ignored by left-wing voices is the continual push to “cancel” or “erase” student debt. As anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows, debt is not an arbitrary instrument that can simply be “erased.” Despite the protests of my more liberal classmates, it is not “imaginary negative money”—an intangible that can simply be disregarded.
It is important to unpack what “canceling” student debt would actually do. To erase student debt would transfer the financial obligations of white-collar students to blue-collar workers, as well as to other students and former students who saved and sacrificed to avoid debt in the first place or pay it back early. Debt is real, and pretending that it’s not simply shifts the associated burden to those who neither agreed to it nor reaped its benefits.
Recent BLS statistics indicate that nearly 40 percent of the nation’s three million 2021 high-school graduates opted not to attend college. Such folks should not bear the brunt of debt incurred by other individuals.
Furthermore, proposals to categorically “cancel” student debt would inject approximately $1.8 trillion into the economy, unnecessarily overstimulating an already inflationary environment. From a policy standpoint, as well as from a moral one, “canceling” student debt is the wrong thing to do.
More pertinent to the rising costs of college, however, is the compounding effect on tuition prices that “canceling” outstanding loans would have. People make personal financial decisions in an overall economic environment.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
A tradesman has the capital cost of a very expensive pickup truck & tools.
A shopkeeper has the capital cost of store remodeling and inventory.
A college graduate has the capital cost of a college education.
The proposed Biden $10,000/$20,000 handouts are based not on Marxist “need” but were and are voter bribes.
Biden should have been arrested, tried in a court of law, and incarcerated. I asked repeatedly here before the 2020 voting that it be done.
1) Get the government out of lending for education. Make the colleges the lenders. It costs them nothing, since it is just delayed payment for services.
2) Allow students to seek funding from private sources if they can.
3) Eliminate government grants to colleges and universities in support of undersubscribed programs ( “xxx-studies” programs. ) Eliminate government grants to alternative funding sources.
4) Allow people to wipe out student loans via bankruptcy.
With these steps, colleges and universities will have to evaluate the students’ likely ability to repay. Some programs will die, because people educated in those fields will not be expected to be able to repay.
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