Punishment is a consequence for your actions.

You would be paying regardless of your own decisions. You are not being punished, you are being forced to contribute. If that's the way your fellow citizens vote, that is how it will be (though I doubt it will happen soon).

> Punishment is a consequence for your actions.

Right. That's why I said I was being punished for choosing to avoid loans. It's what makes loan forgiveness such a moral hazard: we discourage people for making the financially prudent decision to avoid crippling debt.

If I had instead borrowed money to finance my education, I could have gotten it forgiven and avoided this punishment.

Come on, that's so disingenuous. "Punishment," as the word is most commonly used (and defined), implies a harm is being inflicted due to some fault or bad act by the punished.

You can say it's "unfair," or "undeserved," or like you say below, that it "discourages people from making a financially prudent decision". But no one wants to "punish" you -- that would be absurd.

No, you are not. Not in any sense of the word.