“Canceling” Student Debt

https://x.com/JoeBiden/status/1711126823201919437?s=20

I do not have much faith in the current US political system, or it’s leaders. Republican or Democrat, the parties have reduced US politics to a least common denominator battle for a very slim portion of the electorate.

I am motivated to write this by the “canceled” in recent language from the Biden White House in relation to the Student Loan Forgiveness program. The US Department of Education’s estimates show the Student Loan Forgiveness program will cost US taxpayers $305 Billion dollars over the next 10 years. And the present value of the thirty year cost of this forgiveness is $379 Billion dollars.

Debt is not cancelable. Someone received money from someone else with a promise to pay it back. Then they were told they do not have to. Therefore the original lender is out that money. In this case it is the US taxpayer who is on the hook because the Federal government is absorbing the debt and passing it onto taxpayers. But addressing the whole truth and discussing hard things is not how US politics are done these days. In an world of increasingly short-time-frame attention spans, short tweets and 12 second video clips is what sells American politics.