Worried about the stock market? Its like my proctologist told me last week, “This too shall pass.”
I’ve been hearing a lot about college loan forgiveness lately. It’s a very complicated issue the results of which could have some positive and some negative effects. But whenever this issue comes up I think about the 20 year old prospective lobsterman in Maine. Stay with me!
For some reason, many young men from Maine aspire to one day become lobstermen, owning their own boat and everything, despite it being one of the most physically demanding and dangerous jobs in America. But the State of Maine makes it extremely difficult to do. First, the kid has to enter a two year apprenticeship, providing evidence of a minimum of 1,000 hours of work therein. Then he has to be sponsored by an existing lobsterman, then he has to submit a lengthy and costly application, after which he must wait—sometimes years—before being granted a license. But to make serious money as a lobsterman, you really need to have your own boat, an even costlier obstacle. But even after buying the boat, becoming a successful lobsterman will require a lifetime of grueling work. Those who make it through this gauntlet of training and bureaucracy can make a six figure income—a rarity in Maine. Those who are unfortunate enough to get injured lose everything. So…what does this have to do with forgiving college debt?
Are there any plans in Washington to forgive the $80,000 loan this 20 year old kid from Maine took out to buy that lobster boat? Why not? Is the profession of lobsterman not as valuable to Americans than that of investment banker, lawyer, architect, physician, teacher, salesman?
I fully acknowledge the fact that the cost of a college education has gone up to ridiculous heights over the years, partly because we have convinced millions of high school kids that anything short of a college education will render them unemployable, but mostly because universities are governed as much by greed as any other giant business. I also fully acknowledge that predatory lending practices in the college tuition space have been epidemic and shameful. Additionally, it is a huge problem for our economy that an entire generation have found themselves burdened with college debt to the point where they have opted out of the consumerism that is vital for our continued economic vitality. So, I am open to some form of relief. However, I find it particularly galling that the same government which helped CREATE the problem by making cheap loans available to practically anyone who could fog a mirror are now stepping in to fix the problem they were instrumental in creating!
Then there is the issue of fairness. My understanding of the plan being proposed by Senators Sanders and Warren are that the loan forgiveness will be blankit and NOT means tested which current forgiveness and forbearance plans are. That struggling teacher with $50,000 of college debt making $45,000 a year will get her loan forgiven—-but so will that young podiatrist making $200,000 with $100,000 worth of debt. In addition, the fact of the matter is that this debt forgiveness plan will go down in history as one of the biggest tax-payer giveaways to upper middle class white people since the mortgage interest deduction! The vast majority of the beneficiaries of this largesse will be white kids from suburbia. Once its done, what possible objection can anyone make to whatever reparation package gets introduced for African Americans? I can hear old Al Sharpton now, “So you guys were more than happy to bail out all the white kids with college loans but nobody wants to hand out $50,000 payments to black folks??”
Which brings me back to my lobsterman. What about him and people like him, men and women who decided against college in favor of a trade? Kids who decided to become electricians, plumbers, carpenters, roofers, truck drivers and…lobstermen? Did none of them have to take on debt?
I am not persuaded that blanket debt forgiveness is the answer. I would prefer targeted relief for those most hamstrung by the debt load, using some formula of amount of debt in relation to income etc..As far as those parents like me who financed our kids education? What about us? That’s in the past. There’s nothing that can be done about that. To resent the fact that this relief came too late to help me is both foolish and petty.
Blanket debt relief sets up an already overdrawn government as the savior, the Santa Claus of last resort. It also pays off the debts of both the wise and the foolish, that plucky kid from the projects desperate for a better life along with the entitled and pampered kid from Connecticut who spent $150,000 getting a French Poetry degree and partying like a rock star for six glorious years.
What could possibly go wrong?
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