We know it’s hard for millennials to hear – especially considering how badly screwed so many of them are after racking up ridiculous loan balances into the 100s of thousands of dollars – but there isn’t a compelling moral argument for forgiving student loans.
While Democratic politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders like to wax poetic about unleashing an entire generation from the shackles of debt slavery, in reality, Americans with student loans largely include middle-class people – or at least, people who were raised in the middle class.
The argument ‘well they bailed out the banks’ isn’t really an argument: it’s just another example ‘of whataboutism’, a sin that the left is constantly accusing President Trump and his allies of committing.
And as the world waits to see whether Joe Biden will embrace some of the progressive agenda pushed by politicians like AOC and ‘the squad’. Biden has suggested that loan forgiveness of up to 50k per borrower could be on the table as an early-stage priority. But is that just lip service? Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell.
A recent study from Smartest Dollar offers some more insight on the Democratic mindset when it comes to debt-forgiveness. It found that COVID-19 forbearance programs have actually improved the picture in terms of the share of student loans in forbearance. What’s more, the study gets right to the heart of the issue.
Why do Democrats want to forgive student loans? So they can essentially deliver a massive handout to their political base.
The analysis found that borrowers in coastal states tend to have the most student loan debt. While borrowers in California and Oregon have average student loan debts above $35,000, those in the South and East Coast states like Maryland, New York, Georgia, and Virginia have even higher debt burdens.
Though a handful of southern states land among the states with the highest average student debt burden, the top 20 is mostly populated by blue and purple states.
Anybody out there think that’s just a coincidence?
