That’s a good argument for not engaging in another trillion dollar war, but not necessarily for spending a trillion elsewhere.

Also: why is it particularly bad for 20-somethings to carry debt? They’re 40 years from retirement.

> Also: why is it particularly bad for 20-somethings to carry debt?

Opportunity cost. Not making that risky but high upside potential career move at 26 because you have a $1k/mo debt payment to make is going to severely impact your total earnings far more than any other time of your life.

The advantage of youth is mobility, flexibility, and ability to take on risk. You give a lot of that up with a high debt load at that age.

So you think we should use public policy to shift debt load onto older people, who have family obligations and a much more limited window of time to ensure financial security After the conclusion of their working years, so that 20-somethings can start companies?

If we are going to have a society worth caring about and living in then we have to have shared burdens. Sometimes I’ll help pay for something I’ll never use for the benefit of others. The go it alone mentality leads to a shitty society. It’s proper, right and just for society to provide universal higher education for qualified people. It’s beneficial to everyone that this be the case.

Besides, in the U.S. a great generational theft has occurred. The older folks benefitted from much higher public support for their higher education. Now they vote to defund higher education and this has led to penury for large numbers of recently graduated college students.

If it's proper, right, and just for society to provide higher education, is it also right and just for them to subsidize tuitions for expensive private schools rather than local state schools?

It depends on the society and how it is structured. Generally, no.

How do you reconcile that position with a belief that we should forgive student debt? Do you have an estimate as to how many of those dollars will have gone into the pockets of elite schools?

I didn’t say it was bad for them to carry debt. It’s bad for them to carry a lot of debt.

Yes, it was not a great argument for spending a trillion dollars on student loan forgiveness. Mostly I was pointing out how out of whack the moral priorities of the U.S. are. There is very little debate or angst over spending a trillion dollars on a useless war. But somehow spending a trillion dollars on student loan forgiveness makes everyone think about moral hazard. You mentioned morality and so I took things a bit further than what you did.

My problem with college subsidy isn’t moral hazard; it’s that it’s regressive.

It’s partially regressive (not all of the money to fund this would come from regressive taxes) but it’s in everyone’s interest to have an educated society that isn’t unduly debt burdened once they leave college. We all benefit from this. So forgiving this debt palatable to me. It’s why I don't mind funding k-12 education even though I don’t have kids.

It's regressive no matter how it's funded, because the benefits are structurally determined to impact primarily families of means. The wealthy attend expensive colleges. If college tuition were free, that would remain the case.

I believe you are using the word 'regressive' incorrectly then. Of course, just forgiving all student loans will disproportionately help some who don't need it. But in the U.S. we've decided against universal, public higher education for those who are qualified and thus inequities will occur no matter what happens. It's disproportionately the case that the wealthy get into schools with the best connections. Those tend to be private schools. Such is what happens when a society starts down the path toward Ayn Randian utopia.

It will disproportionately help the well-off, period; not just "some of them". The dominant distributional effect will be to shift dollars that could have been spent on services, tax relief, or debt relief for less-advantaged households to far-better-advantaged households. It's pretty simple to see why; it's the same reason why the mortgage interest deduction is regressive.

I don't see how advocates for this policy can escape that logic without declaring math irrelevant.

If we want to improve access to and financing of higher education in the US, we should radically expand Pell Grants, not write a 12-figure check to wealthy families.