Virtually no one argues that college costs bear any resemblance to reality. Why college costs skyrocket each year and always exceed general inflation has been the subject of many books and is thus beyond the scope of this article. But the short answer is this— college prices are not set in anything even close to a free market. The federal government provides the money and guarantees student loans. There is no incentive for colleges to run a lean operation. In fact, they are overly bloated enterprises, incredibly top-heavy with deans and other administrative positions. Most continue spending millions on new concrete structures on campus with little regard for cost.
Charles Payne of Fox Business pointed out that no bank would give an 18-year-old a $200,000 loan for a four-year degree in pottery. Yet the federal government will. But Payne took issue with something else. The Left has been trying to wipe out student loans for years. It’s not a new issue. However, the topic got the most press when Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were trying to outflank each other on this in the last Democrat presidential primary campaign of 2019-2020. Joe Biden remained steadfastly cool at best to the concept, though White House Press Secretary Jenn Psaki has been teasing the idea of a major announcement soon.
Enter a new take from far-left progressives and Squad member Rep. Pramila Jayapal—canceling student loans is social justice. What? Payne remarked, “the whole thing is a sham” and took viewers through the reasoning in a recent appearance on “Fox and Friends.” He laid out the fact that 70% of this debt is owned by whites. Payne noted Jayapal’s district is only 4.8% black, yet her biggest donor is Microsoft, a so-called progressive company where a scant 3% of its managers are black.
Payne cited data showing those with college degrees can expect to earn over $3 million in their lifetimes. Contrast that with $900,000 in average lifetime earnings for one who completes only high school. Why should the poorest in society foot the bill for richer folks who made a choice to borrow money to go to college? It’s exceptionally regressive, the exact opposite of progressive policy!
It was a refreshing perspective by Charles Payne, himself black, to have some data and explain that he doesn’t hear loan forgiveness come up in his own conversations with other black voters. Crime and safe streets top the list of what is on black voters’ minds.
Conservatives often get lambasted for being frugal with taxpayer money and opposing ideas like wiping out debt. Traditional moral, ethical, or even contractual arguments like, “you took out the loan – you pay it back” get lampooned by the liberal media mob. Heartless. Cold. Those are the labels liberals pin on conservatives. And now, apparently, racist, at least if leftists get their way.
Just check out some recent tweets. On April 2nd Sen. Warren tweeted, “canceling student debt is a matter of racial, economic, and generational justice.” Sen. Schumer tweeted on March 4, “Today would be a great day for Biden and Harris to cancel student debt.”
But would it truly be great? Setting aside the fact that millions who already worked hard to pay off their debts could become a mob of their own and demand justice, is this idea even remotely good economics? The answer is no, according to an analysis by the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics. This scheme is destined to disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans.
The study concluded erasing all student loan debt would deliver $192 billion to the top 20% of earners in the U.S., but only $29 billion to the bottom 20% of U.S. households. Further, the study found under a universal loan forgiveness program, the average person among the top-earning borrowers would receive $5,944 in forgiveness, while those with the lowest incomes would receive $1,070 in forgiveness.
No matter. Never confuse economic facts with today’s progressive politics. If you oppose wiping out student debt, even though it was taken on by people of their own free will, you risk being branded a racist.
Jeff Szymanski works in political communications at AMAC, a senior benefits organization with nearly 2.3 million members. He previously taught high school economics for 15 years.
We hope you've enjoyed this article. While you're here, we have a small favor to ask...
Support AMAC Action. Our 501 (C)(4) advances initiatives on Capitol Hill, in the state legislatures, and at the local level to protect American values, free speech, the exercise of religion, equality of opportunity, sanctity of life, and the rule of law.
Donate Now
The USA has Federal Debt deficit of about $30-Trillion , so how can Congress even consider forgiving college loans by more debt dollars. One of the big college problems has happened in the last 30-years when College Presidents, coaches, professors started getting paid huge salaries some in the $Millions and most do not do as good as the generations before them.
Forgive student loans is a bad idea & would only be a potical play to gain some younger votes this year. It is a personal choice to go to college & to take out loans to continue. I did this & I worked part-time and summers to save money to go to college. I know some people that dropped out for a while in order to make enough money to continue education at a later date. This is too close to Socialism, & so what is next that the govt. will forgive what people owe on a car or their house. Stop this nonsense: And go back to the American Way “LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS” & take responsibility to pay back your debts and loans as our parents & grandparents did.
One of my sons went to college and law school. When he graduated, the first thing on his agenda was to pay off those student loans, which he did. After that, what he made was his to spend where he wanted to. Under this potential forgiving of student loans, will he get his money back? NO! Paying their own loans back is a good lesson in taking responsibility for their actions.
Great!!!
And what about students like my son who worked their butt’s off on various part time jobs while in college to pay their tuition as they went? My son graduated with a four-year degree from a state university without taking any loans and owed absolutely nothing when he graduated! He has the pride of knowing that he accomplished his degree on his own. No loans to pay back or forgive!
What will this tell hard working students, like my son, that have the self-determination and initiative to sacrifice and work hard for what they want? This is yet another example of the slow, systematic destruction of our great republic!
I earned an associates degree, a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree without student loans. If I can do it anyone can. Forgiving student loans is a slap in the face for those of us who didn’t fall for the debt trap.
Cancelling student debt will assure the kids of the super rich will have their bills cancelled because none of them got anything out of college except how to not work and pay their bills like everybody else in history has had to do. If they screw us on this one, they ( Congress will pay!!!)
What a wonderful synopsis of this marxist democrat attempt at fleecing Real Americans again!
The idea of forgiving student loans is both stupid and ludicrous!
IF you want to educate these misguided young people, teach them that if you borrow money, YOU also pay it back!
Especially if your buying a useless object of any type including a useless degree!
Time for the liberal snowflakes to get a dose of reality and honestly instead of the democrat bullsh**
If its so important for Warren, Jaypal, and Schumer to pay of student loans, why don’t they use their own money to do so? What are the odds we ever see that happen?
The government needs to stop borrowing money to pay for programs so they can get reelected.
If they keep this up you won’t have to worry about a college education, you’ll be standing in the government bread line to get something to eat.
The school system, including higher education has been taken over by the left. Tenure began with professors voting for people with their same values. After a number of years, nearly every professor at a school is on the same page. I don’t know what all the schools do with all the money collected for tuition, but I suspect many of them have a stockpile of money. Not that it’s directly related to this, but a wonderful series of movies, God is not dead, give some insight into the education system.
If the student debt is forgiven aka canceled, will a 1099-C be filed on the amount of the cancelation?
Yes, and adding an interest penalty, reflect the bad debt on their credit reports and ban them from ANY government assistance going forward too!
Majority of high school graduates is barely literate what is it they study in higher ed institutions do they graduate from them and are they employable ?
They are going to use my tax dollars to pay someone else’s debt?? How about paying of my credit cards also? Same thing.
Count me in. The government could pay off my mortgage and other bills. That would be sweet. Honestly, it is totally irresponsible to accumulate debt then expect someone else to pay it.
Whatever happened to: “YOU borrowed it, YOU pay it back”
Ha……lol…..these are politicians! They spend and lie,and excuse themselves from abiding by laws they pass!
fIMHO: About all free education will do for the country is produce a lot of people with worthless degrees to support the government welfare programs. If you don’t put some skin in the game, the degree won’t be worth having and will soon have little to no value in life, particularly in someones working life. But that’s what the liberal extremists want, full socialism and government support; as they say “you’ll own nothing, and be happy!” That doesn’t work well in my mind and we’ll no longer have a USA.
That’s exactly what it’s done thus far.
He’ll NO
I went to college in my 40’s. Many of the “kids” I was around on campus were too busy playing to actually put effort into the studies. Guess their parents were paying the bills! And that gave them more years to not take any responsibility for their actions, no need to work….
If the government truly was interested in helping young graduates they would go back to the universities and demand they payoff the student loans with the funds they excessively overcharged the student. Also, if I understand correctly delaying the payment because of Covid doesn’t stop the I interest from running all the delay is doing is running up more debt for the borrower.
if they forgive college debt, what about reimbursing the folks that went into business for themselves and had to buy equipment, or trade schools where they had to buy tools for their profession. Several worked as apprentist at lower wages to learn a profession, where is their compensation. Why reimburse only the ones that took a 4 year party course at colleges that do not even teach them to think, just get leftist indoctrination. The so called elite wanting the rest of us to pay for their debt. I contracted for and paid mine, going through many useless courses to get to the gist of the education I signed up for. They took the college route to be able to make more money than those that went directly into the work force. So use the big money to pay your debt. Or sue the colleges for false advertising and useless degrees.
If canceling current student loans on degrees that didn’t give them their dream jobs but gave them an expensive piece of paper occurs, then everyone who got degrees that they paid in full already should also be reimbursed, since after all, we were not supposed to afford that degree either. Most of the people complaining about their unpaid student loans, didn’t get degrees in specific needed areas but chose areas of study, that would never contribute/ help to a well paid career. They just want that expensive piece of paper to gain a supposedly higher entry level job. Problem is that there’s only so many jobs in any given field and no job is a prefect job.
Allen: I know this is a late response to your comments, but I just wanted to share my opinion based on what you said. The reason why the forgiveness of college debt is even being discussed is because AOC doesn’t want to pay her bill that she signed on the dotted line for. She has brought this up for persuasion & discussion the last 2+ years because she was NOT paying her monthly payments back, she was caught at it, it was announced on tv stations, she was questioned about it, said she wasn’t making enough money to pay the loan back, but she did have to catch up on the back payments at that time. It’s amazing that she had the money, big bucks, to pay her boyfriend manager from her DNC funds, every month. It’s amazing to me that 3-4 loud mouths in Congress have that much “pull” to have a President, or make a President, decide to forgive college debts for thousands of people. What if the loans are not government loans?, then I guess those people with loans are disqualified. Who is paying the government back then?, we are, us taxpayers are going to cover their lazy asses.
If colleges quit paying full professors for doing little work while writing books and columns and quit pushing a Marxist social and economic agenda, they would be able to make tuition more affordable. Most of the “prestigious” universities have multiple millions of dollars in their endowments as well.
Plus, their “education” doesn’t prepare their graduates for REAL jobs. It’s a bunch of leftist propaganda. How many people will get jobs related to “gender studies, ” radical lesbianism,” etc ?
Don’t people get it. NOTHING the government does is FREE. Someone else had to work to give the government money to give it to you. Don’t be lazy and dependent on the government. If you want something then work for it. the last time I checked about 50% of college graduates could not find a job in their field of study. Why do we need more college educated folks unemployed?
My generayion was taught, you go into debet, you pay back a certen amount. No if’s ands or buts. Kyle L.