I'd much rather a politician sell my money to forgive student debt than to fund war, corporate tax breaks, and bank bailouts. It'd be a positive change of pace.

If student loans could be discharged banks wouldn't lend to unworthy creditors. Because the bank gets paid back written in blood you might as well just provide as many as people will sign for. Doing useless degrees in particular seems like a better deal from the financing side. If this were normal debt and the degrees people got were useful, maybe yes.

Throwing money at the first does not preclude throwing money at the other three as well.

It's not one-or-the-other. This is still America; you'll get both. There will be more wars, more corporate tax breaks, and more bank bailouts. You can count on that.

We've wasted $6 trillion (!!!) dollars on the "War On Terror". Forgiving $1.6T in student debt that shouldn't ever have existed if government policy had been properly implemented (appropriate funding levels of higher education institutions) seems like good policy; those student loan servicing dollars will go back into the economy for goods and services they otherwise wouldn't.

Fixing poor public policy in this case isn't subsidizing weakness; it's correcting an economic inefficiency. Somewhere between 60-70% of Americans support government funded higher ed; this is simply enacting it a bit later, retroactively (and based on polling, the support is there).

To put this into perspective, it ($1.6T) is less than 3 years of US military spending at current funding levels [1]. Pain is to be expected as the country unwinds poor decisions (education and healthcare in its current forms). Macro economic decisions should not be made emotionally, so squash the desire to argue moral hazard. We've burned up far more dollars as a country on far worse decisions.

Disclaimer: Sanders supporter, no college, no student loans

[1] https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-military-budget-components-ch...

>Fixing poor public policy in this case isn't subsidizing weakness; it's correcting an economic inefficiency.

If the government doesn't first fix higher education for people graduating highschool from now into the future, then they're not accomplishing anything. They're just buying votes.

I expect that to be a part of this initiative. It would not make sense to do otherwise.