Every four, or eight, years a new President takes the oath of office and gives a speech about how the country needs to unite around some common cause, thereby “rekindling” the American spirit. The causes always seem to change, but the rhetoric never ceases to amaze. The first 100 days typically brings a lot of “this and a lot of that”, however, “this and that” have considerably different meanings depending on whether or not you voted for the president who is sworn in to office. The new President has a list of items that he plans to address via “the pen and not the legislature.” One item on that list, student loan forgiveness, should be a topic of discussion for all Americans.
Those in favor of student debt forgiveness, or cancellation, point to the fact that the outgoing President used “the pen” to forgive student debt, but fail to mention that the forgiveness was restricted to disabled veterans, a relatively small number of people. According to a 2020 article in Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2020/02/03/student-loan-debt-statistics/?sh=2102afad281f) outstanding U.S. student debt, as of February 2020, was approximately $1.6 trillion dollars. There where nearly 45 million borrowers that owed, on average, close to $33,000. So, the question arises, how much of that debt, if any, will be forgiven? Since there are approximately 330,000,000 people in the U.S., minus the 45 million borrowers, the student loan debt per remaining U.S. citizen comes out to a “mere” $5,614. That number really doesn’t seem all that bad until you consider that the $5,614 amount applies to every U.S. citizen that does not currently have any student loan debt, even those who aren’t even a year old. But, hey, whose money is it anyway?
