Thread by @JewhadiTM

The Immorality of Student Loan Forgiveness and Free College

If you or your parents can afford to pay your way, you should. reason.com/2019/04/29/the…

https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1143216639158214657

Ironically, the push for "free" college is coming at a time when a historically high percentage—about 70 percent—of recent high-school graduates are already enrolling in college. College has somehow become so unaffordable and remote that more and more people are attending.

"This is the kind of big, structural change we need to make sure our kids have opportunity in this country," says Warren in a video she posted at Twitter.

But just like Bernie Sanders's routine and misleading invocation of "people with $300,000 in student debt," Warren's plan doesn't just misrepresent the impact of student loans on the individual level and the historically high availability of access to higher education;

it's one more step toward an America where the people who benefit from something get somebody else to pay for it. Above and beyond any financial considerations, that's a bad attitude to inculcate.

Warren's plan is of a piece with progressive Democrats pushing for more and more goods and services to be provided by the government regardless of citizens' ability to cover their own costs.

From a financial perspective, this sort of reflex is flatly unsustainable in a country that has already run up a $22T tab and whose rising debt service will cost more than Medicaid next year and more than military spending in 2023.

But there's also a moral argument to be made here: Why shouldn't we expect people who can pay for their own education, health care, and retirement to do so? And why shouldn't we expect people who benefit from something to fund all or most of their activity?

And despite claims that "we're crushing an entire generation with student-loan debt," the typical undergrad borrower is doing fine. About 70 percent of the Class of 2018 graduated with some debt, and their median monthly payment is $222.

The overall amount of student debt is gigantic—about $1.5 trillion—but when you break it down to what the typical borrower is actually on the hook for, the picture changes dramatically.

If college students have skin in their own game, they'll think more seriously about going to college in the first place and be more motivated to be serious and to finish.

There's nothing wrong with asking people who benefit from something to shoulder all or part of the costs.

Our national finances are falling apart largely because we keep insisting that all benefits be universal and that nobody pay their own way when it comes to big-ticket items such as health care, education, and retirement.

One result in those areas are markets that don't function as efficiently as they would otherwise. Another is a pervasive belief that we can always pass the costs of our choices onto other people.