So, AOC, an elected representative making 174+K per year, feels that the people she "represents" should pay off her student loan of 17K. This while she easily earns far more than the vast majority of them. Personaly, I feel that government paying off student loans is just wrong. It ignores questions of personal liability and is a slap in the face to the people who struggled to get through college debt free, and those who had loans and paid them off.
But for an elected rep to support the idea of forcing her constituents to pay off her debt is unconscionable. How anyone can vote for her is indicative of some sort of alternate universe. Not only is she economically and constitutionally illiterate, she is apparently morally bankrupt.
Thanks Tim!
Student debt forgiveness would overwhelmingly benefit the most well off in America, new economic research shows.
rom Sen. Elizabeth Warren to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, some of the most prominent progressive politicians in the country are pushing hard for widespread student debt cancelation. So, it’s fascinating to see a new study show that forcing taxpayers to pay down the roughly $1.5 trillion in government-held student debt is not a “progressive” policy by any stretch.
Note that just one in three American adults over age 25 actually has a bachelor’s degree. This population, naturally, holds almost all student debt. Yet college graduates typically make 85 percent more than those with only a high school diploma and earn roughly $1 million more over a lifetime.
So any government policy that forces taxpayers to pay off loans held by a relatively well-off slice of society is actually regressive, meaning it disproportionately helps the wealthy. You don’t have to take my word for it—this is the finding of a new University of Chicago study.
Economists Sylvain Catherine and Constantine Yannelis crunched the numbers to conclude that full student debt cancellation would be a “highly regressive policy” and award $192 billion to the top 20 percent of income earners, yet just $29 billion to the bottom 20 percent.
The Distributional Effects of
Student Loan Forgiveness
https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/BFI_WP_2020169.pdf
During these discussions, I often think back to the 70's when I went to college. That was when I first heard the government start seriously talking about making education affordable. At the time, my tuition and student fees at the state university were about $500/semester + books. I lived off campus, kids staying in the dorms were paying a bit more.
Being young and naive, I thought that government making education more affordable was a swell idea. What better investment can government make than in the skills of it's young citizens. And on the surface, that's a pretty good argument. But like supersonic dirigible flight, there are a few flaws in the idea.
When you dump an unlimited supply of money into a system, that system will find ways to "absorb" it. Tuition for the same school today is $7070/semester + 1,740 in student fees, or about 8,810.
I know there's been inflation since the 70's, but I think this exceeds inflation by a bit.
Anyway, student loan "forgiveness" is exactly the wrong approach to this and this boondogle is further complicated when AOC wants to have her constitutents, most of whom make far less. pay off her student loan. From what I've seen, she deserves a refund from her school. She can use that to pay off her loan.
they find ways to absorb it......never a truer statement Tim. Lets look at Ohio State's new diversity and inclusion program. It now has 132 employees with a budget of over 13 million dollars/year. Now some may ask how much more could they use in this burning of a big pile of dollars program. Nothing more than burning dollars to prove that bigots and racism comes mostly from the wok that dream up crazy ideas like this one. Bring back Woody Hayes and Bobby Knight and they could straighten the mess out in their first year.
On this issue I agree with conservatives. Anyway, it is not a progressive idea as MM pointed out.
But I understand the cry of young folks that the baby boomers are hypocrites. They argue that "Oh, so your generation can run up huge debt loads on all sorts of benefits that we young folks are saddled with, but when we ask for a benefit like subsidized education or healthcare benefits then you are suddenly conservatives!"
In addition to all the other discord in our country, I can see a generational conflict brewing.
So, the young don't want to pay the debts we've accumulated, but want to add to them with student loan forgiveness?
BTW, I have been and remain a deficit hawk.