Who Will Forgive the Forgivers? August 24, 2022
Posted by geoff in News.trackback
Seething over the college loan forgiveness nonsense.
When my kids were nearing college age, I told them, “Here’s how much I will give you for college. Now you figure out what you want to do.” My son joined the Navy to pay for college and save me the money (snif – what a guy), so I split the money with him. My daughter graduated in 3 years to avoid paying a 4th year of tuition.
They both made the tough decisions and endured significant hardship to make college affordable for themselves.
Now, in a time of record deficits and debt, we all get to pay for those who weren’t as disciplined as my kids.*
You know, IF I was going to be convinced to forgive any portion of student loans, it would be only for STEM graduates, where social sciences would not be considered eligible. It’s galling enough to have to pay off somebody else’s poor decision making, but even worse when you’re funding some weak sauce major at a party school.
*Full Disclosure: My daughter will, in fact, benefit somewhat from the loan forgiveness, because she hasn’t quite paid off her loans yet. She was paying them off faster than required, and was making payments even during the pandemic, when she didn’t have to. Now she looks like a chump for doing the right thing.
Innocent Bystanders 
“All debts are paid” according to Milton Friedman. Dan Bongino frequently repeats this quote and then adds, “by either the debtor or the person or people making the loan”.
In this case forgiveness means we are paying for this act of seeming generosity by Brandon.
Shorter Friedman via Heinlein: TANSTAAFL
It’s so Ayn Randian. You take the most useless people, who have been pampered with getting their vanity degree at some college, and make the productive and responsible folk pay for their indulgences.
Atlas gonna shrug.
It’s a direct and in our face violation of the eighth commandment.
Steve deace has a take on this which is incredibly wrong – he says it’s ok because the money is fake and it’s ok for a lender to forgive debt.
Or some such bit of stupid.
I was actually surprised at his position on it.
It’s hard to see how we don’t end up footing the bill, either through inflation or taxes or, more probably, both..
The moral hazard alone should stop this nonsense in its tracks.
Yep – if we completely unpin from any pretense of morality we’re done.
Bernie & the “democratic socialists” have infiltrated the democrat party, and free college education is part of their platform. It was also part of Stalin’s constitution.