Why is the idea of taxing the people who created the problem absurd? One, they’re the ones with wealth to tax. Two, their ignorantly optimistic mindset is responsible for the education bubble. Both generations prior and this current generation realized the value of working instead of pursuing higher education. Three, they benefited from it. The vast apparatus of higher education, professors, administrators, etc., aren’t staffed with millenials.

I'm not sure what you mean by "taxing the people who created the problem". Do we just tax people based on their age, and assume that anyone over 50 probably had their hand in this? Or do we test people to see if they ever gave bad advice to children, and give them fines? Who, exactly, will be paying the tax, and how do we identify these people?

Maybe I'm missing something, because this seems a bit too obviously absurd.

You wouldn’t literally tax people based in advice they gave; instead it’s a matter of using different funding mechanisms that are incident disproportionately on different groups. Funding stuff with debt is a de facto tax on future generations. Instead, you can e.g. tax 401k withdrawals above a certain amount, higher property taxes, taxes on pension withdrawals, etc.

You can say that not everyone who draws on a 401k contributed to the problem, but that’s besides the point. If you forgive the debt, then nobody who is going to bear the cost will have had anything to do with creating the bubble.

I think we're having parallel discussions here. It's painfully obvious that simply forgiving $1.3 trillion in debt without figuring out where the money should come from is not a good solution. So I guess what I'm saying is I don't think I hold the viewpoint you're arguing against.

I guess I misinterpreted your argument for taxing the "teachers, parents, and professors who lied to you".