How do we feel and how does it matter more than someone's bank account? It starts to, if it determines what we're going to do next, when provided certain incentives and systems in which to behave.

Yes, loan forgiveness isn't a perpetual system (as in my example), for the student receiving it. Obviously. It's perpetual if you do that for every class into the future.

And yes, I said openly in my preface that the picture I'm painting is to illustrate the point of incentives and policies -- not to say at all that student debt holders are underperformers. You miss my point if so.