By David M. Hodges
Some prominent Democrats have recently increased their clamoring for student loan forgiveness. A news item I heard today had Senator Schumer suggesting $50K forgiveness by executive order. I’d like to urge you not to support such a big giveaway to a select portion of Americans.
In truth, government shouldn’t be giving money away to anyone without first liquidating some government assets to pay for it. And, since government debt is so massive and continues to grow, even funds from asset sales really ought to go to creditors rather than anyone else. But, of course, we are past the point where any realist thinks the debt will ever be paid down or paid off. At some point, the government is going to have to simply declare its debt null and void and start over. Ideally, it would do this at the same time it passed a balanced budget amendment and abolished the national bank.
Still, even though paying down the debt and selling off government assets to pay for giveaways are off the table, you who have been elected to represent us citizens (and it should be emphasized that it is only citizens whom you represent) still need to govern with an even, unbiased hand that never specially favors one class of citizens over another. Student loan forgiveness would do just this, and the greater the dollar amount chosen the greater would be the unfair favoritism.
Therefore, if you insist on proceeding with a giveaway of freshly created debt-based currency, you must ensure fairness by making citizenship alone, not heavy student loan borrowing, the sole criterion on which you base the giveaway. If you decide that every citizen who owes money on student loans should be forgiven $50K of their loans, then the only equitable way of achieving your end would be to send a check for $50K to every citizen. If you wish to spin this to sound less irresponsible and insane than it is, consider calling it “profit-sharing in the American enterprise” a la Max Keiser.
Again, please do not support any selective giveaway to a certain portion of Americans who happen to have a lot of student loan debt. To a great extent, larger student loan debts indicate higher long-term earning potential, so student loan forgiveness is even more regressive in its effects than would be a nationwide tax on groceries and other life essentials. (As for cases where the higher long-term earning potential is never realized, the current income-based repayment options already take care of that.) If you insist on responding to high student loan debts with a government giveaway, do so fairly by giving an equal amount of money to every U.S. citizen. Any other course of action is just theft from one group of citizens to enrich another.
