Also how much interest have we paid collectively on that 1.5 trillion? If we've paid that much already then what? Can't we just consider it an investment with a negative adjusted return and move on?

In other words macroeconomics doesn't make sense to me in a lot of ways.

> Prior to the Affordable Care Act, a majority of student loans originated with a private lender but were guaranteed by the government, meaning taxpayers foot the bill if student borrowers default. In 2010, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated 55% of loans fell into this category. Between 2011 and 2016, the share of privately originated student loans fell by nearly 90%.

There are two scenarios. In the first, the government simply prints the $1.5T. That's newly created money. $1.5T has been added to the economy overnight. It's been created, not destroyed.

The second scenario is where the government takes the money from somewhere else (maybe taxes). The money is removed from somewhere (someone's assets), but the exact same amount of debt is also removed. The net is zero - neither creation or destruction, just rearrangement.