We allow people to offer a dishonest critique of the argument for cancelling student debt based on false powerlessness.
Because it would relieve millions of people from the burden of debt. This is an objective good.
And since this is debt held by the federal government, the loss is not taken by an outside source. Nor does it have any direct impacts on schools or other loaning agencies.
Virtually every concern voiced about writing off student debt comes from secondary effects. Effects such as the future behavior of schools and lending agencies. And in particular, what this means for students in school now and those planning to attend university in the fall.
All of these concerns are relevant and honestly, quite important. They are also secondary. They aren’t the substance of the primary. Nor are they necessarily the outcome.
For instance, if everybody is behaving rationally, there is no reason to think forgiving past debt held by the federal government should have any impact on schools at all. As in zero.
And if there is? Whose fault is that really? The debt isn’t theirs.
There is neither a cost nor benefit to the school. Period. But if they did raise rates on current students, they will have chosen to exploit current and future students. The burden is 100% on them.
If we consider university behavior as a reason not to do something, we can also consider university behavior as a reason to punish that behavior.
If they exploit students, punish them. Or better yet, prevent them from exploiting in the first place. Stop pretending Universities are helpless.
Similarly, the impact on future students can be easily addressed; both now and in the future.
Nothing precludes us from taking complimentary actions that address any of these secondary concerns.
The problem is when we use secondary concerns as equal to primary ones for the purpose of opposing an action. It is dishonest, even if unintentional.
I support canceling debt immediately and addressing the substance of these concerns. Which can be done in tandem. But they need not be strings attached to the primary—precisely because they are tangentially, rather than directly relevant.
Cancelling debt is simple. And the president can simply zero it out. The administration can also deal with borrowing and set new standards for the future. And Congress can cap expenses on education and actively drive the cost of education down.
Most of the cost of higher education has come from decreasing state funds while also offering no pressure to prevent the transfer of cost to the students.
In short, students have the least amount of leverage in the equation. Meanwhile, states have been starving their public universities and the federal government has chosen only to offer money to students without pressuring schools to keep rates down.
So it is doubly disingenuous to blame potential debt cancellation for the last thirty years of exploiting students. Students have been exploited by predatory practices, universities have shifted costs, and states and the federal government, which started this crisis, run around pretending they have no role to play now.
You may not think cancelling debt is good policy. But don’t hang your hat on the specter of future exploitation as if we aren’t presently choosing to allow them to exploit. Or as if tomorrow’s exploitation must be worse and we can’t do anything about it. Every bit of that is false.
Cancel debt now. Fix the student loan industry. And dramatically change the cost of university education. Every bit of that is doable. And necessary. So let’s stop pretending we can use the exploitation of students as a reason not to cancel debts. It is a lie.