There are essentially three objections to blanket student debt relief under the current circumstances:
- It will feed inflation;
- It is Robin Hood in reverse–it takes money from the poor and gives it to the rich; and
- Given that the “government” doesn’t bear the burden of making these payments–taxpayers do–this is an unjustified redistribution of wealth from taxpayers who either didn’t go to college, or who worked hard and paid off their student loans, to people who knowingly entered into a contract that they had reason to believe was in their best interests. The government didn’t require other taxpayers to pay my mortgage; why should student debt be treated differently? What public purpose is served by this handout other than enriching whiny millennials at our expense?
As to #1, the debt waiver was tied to an end to the repayment moratorium, so the net effect will not be inflationary. Biden addressed #2 by limiting relief to the poor and the middle class. There is still no satisfactory answer, in my opinion, to #3, so the best you can say about this plan is that it could have been worse.
One would hope that the administration would make some meaningful efforts to reduce the cost of college in order to avoid this problem manifesting itself in the future. One would also hope that the beneficiaries of this windfall would be enthusiastic about it and will go to the polls in November. My suspicion, however, is that nothing further will be done on costs, and that the lucky millennials will just complain that it didn’t go far enough instead of counting their blessings and voting Democratic in the midterms.