#econtwitter is bad because it insanely overrepresents very progressive, always online, Anglophone, applied micro folks, who journos and political staff listen to because they are so available. With student loans today, the problem of this bias is super clear.
The interest pause in 21/22 and the forgiveness cost the same as *10 years" of a fully funded Canadian style parental leave policy in the US. Is there any person of any politics in America who prefers the student loan policy to this?
A white shoe lawyer three years in with a stay at home spouse will get, including the interest pause, 20-40k. Two first year lawyers at median get 40-80k! On equity, efficiency and dynamic incentives it is a joke.
Obvious policy here is Australia style income based repayment. Pay 1% of income on $ above 30k, up to 10% of income. Limit loans to programs/schools with very high non payment conditional on demographics. Problem solved. Much cheaper, better on efficiency, equality and dynamics.
Seriously, public engagement and idea sharing on social media can be great for academics. But particular implementation dominant among high-profile-on-Twitter Econs is so bad it has lowered my opinion of the research of many of the participants whose political bias seems so clear
One other issue - same bias is disaster for many other policy areas beyond student loans. Ask someone at the FTC, especially one who actually cares about policies to reduce monopoly power, about craziness there. There's a difference between actual experts & "experts say that..."
(To clarify, btw, the US *already has this*, though w/o the penalties for ripoff programs. Roughly, 10% of discret. income is max until debt retired or 20 yrs, or 10 yrs for pub service jobs. Hire Mitch Daniels to implement Purdue-style cost-control, and really problem solved.)
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
