In Today's TH, Mr. Goldberg had to say about student loan forgiveness that "according to formula that exclude the well-off, has very few broader economic benefits". He may be at risk of sounding completely insane to those of us who know like I know the sun will rise tomorrow that our lives would be completely different if able to save, invest, or just spend even a few hundred dollars each month over the last twenty years, never mind the $1100-$1500/month some of my former classmates pay. There are 45 million people in this situation.
Debt forgiveness has been an effective way of stabilizing economies that hamstrung or cornered themselves since before Hammurabi. Forgetting who "deserves" what for a moment (whatever that even means anymore), who do you suppose is best poised to make social beneficence of a $1.7 trillion direct-to-REAL-economy bailout other than the most educated? Considering the tens of trillions in new money created since February of this year ,to say stimulus money is better spent anywhere else is to cast aspersions on the value of education itself. It is to say that at least American education is not undervalued but actually worthless. Firstly, if it is worthless, that only strengthens the point that I was sold an inferior product, mislabeled goods, which if it were under the auspices of the FDCA would entitle me to sue for recompense and damages...which I would. But, as a person who makes a living being literate I expect Mr. Goldberg to agree that it's not worthless. Mr. Goldberg provides a service, pays taxes, presumably spends at local grocers etc., and somewhere there's Uber driver that doesn't have to compete with Mr. Goldberg because Mr. Goldberg is using his degree. For all of these reasons Millennial's financials' today represent trapped value, deadweight loss, potential productivity stuck under the boot heel of debt-service lasting decades, pulling up the ladder while inequality grows. The only type of debt that can't be erased by bankruptcy adds that extra layer of tar at the bottom of the pit. The smell never really comes off.
It's hard to take seriously concerns about finer points of the "moral hazard" of student loans in a time when negative interest rates has free money being force-fed to the same people that pocketed billions while crashing the economy, and then looted the taxpayer's treasury to pay for it, in a time will the luxury cruise ship industry gets a Covid bailout but the people don't, in a time when PPP
... keep reading on reddit ➡
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