Joe Biden continued on his disaster of a presidency the other day by announcing plans to cancel student debt (you can read the specifics here). Many see this as a good thing; “yay, no student loans!” If you are one of the ones who made a poor fiscal decision by paying for a degree that earns you less than you spend, then you may be ecstatic, but the hardworking profit-makers who will bear the brunt of this burden feel quite a bit differently. To illustrate, I have developed a few comparisons to help us see how foolish this is.
- Canceling student debt is like everyone taking out a car loan, but 10% of them don’t know how to drive, so when they crash the car they get their money back.
- Canceling student debt is like when you go out to dinner with 9 friends and you agree to split it evenly, but when the check comes that one friend says he lost all his money gambling so you have to pick up his slack.
- Canceling student debt is like the opponent basketball team losing 90-100 going into the 4th quarter, but then they complain that the deficit is too large so the refs give them 10 points, and now you’re left tied after building a sizable lead.
- Canceling student debt is like when you and your friend go to a Zac Brown Band concert, but he goes to grab a snack during “Chicken Fried,” so the venue gives him a free ticket to see them again and you get punished for planning your snack schedule appropriately.
- Canceling student debt is like when you take out a loan to pay for your college tuition, so that you can learn a skill that someone will pay you to do. You then take this skill into your daily life and utilize it to pursue profit for the better part of ten years, eventually paying off the loan like a good, industrious American. Meanwhile, someone did the same thing as you, taking out a loan to attend college, only they do not use their education nor their degree appropriately, so they cannot pay off their loan, and the government has to bail them out. Only, they bail them out at your expense. So you were responsible and paid off all your loans, but someone else was irresponsible and couldn’t, and now Joe Biden and the democratic party decide that you should pay off their loans, not them. Oh wait…
Economics is a zero-sum game. Debt is never “forgiven”, it is simply transferred. And now the hardworking men and women who grinded for years to pay off their student loans will suffer the consequences of the actions of those who couldn’t.
The opinions expressed within this piece represent the views of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jefferson Independent.