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Only 13% of Americans have student debt whereas 87% don't. Obviously the number will be higher once you partial out minors, but we're still talking of a clear minority. In addition, most Americans with student loans have fairly moderate amounts of debt. So I am not sure if this group of debt-distressed individuals is large enough to warrant a bailout.
What about future trends? The papers are full of stories of falling college enrollment and a preference for majors with firmer financial pay-off prospects. So it strikes me as unlikely that past trends will increase as rapidly as they hitherto have.
Current programs exist right now which forgive debt even if you make payments of $0 over 20 years. These programs (IBR and PAYE) were put in place because they sound good, appeal to a specific voter demo, and have deferred costs which have yet to forgive any debt.
In order for large amounts of debt held by a small minority of debt holders to be forgiven, all we have to do is wait 5 or so years and those programs will already be required to forgive the debt. If nothing is done, large amounts of debt held by a small minority will already be forgiven. The small minority of student debt holders have already mostly accomplished what you express skepticism of their ability to do.
Additionally, the creditors, which I believe to be a far stronger and more powerful interest and lobby group, also want the debt to be forgiven because it being forgiven will mean the US government printing money and handing it to them for bad debts which will not be paid off otherwise.
The bail-out is already agreed to, all we're doing is waiting around until the programs already written and millions of people who already rely on them reach the terminus point of that agreement. And the longer it isn't addressed, the harder and harder it will be for any change of course.
For these reasons, the bail outs and debt forgiveness is coming.
Interesting, thanks.
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Despite being only 13% of the population…
….student loan debtors can still be a powerful self-interested bloc. Concentrated benefits vs. diffuse costs.
This could be used to argue in favor of a bailout: Only a minority of Americans carry student loan debt, so why not bail them out? It’s unfair that a minority of the population gets saddled with student loan debt, especially a minority that’s disproportionately women and BIPOC.
But what about the slave reparations bill? Why settle for disproportionately BIPOC when you can get 100% black? In the current American zeitgeist, blacks are at the top of diversity totem pole. Besides, do we really want to bail out a group (students with debt) which has privileged white women within it, not to mention white men? There's limited resources and limited political capital. The slave reparations bill benefits from being concentrated to a more coherent group which also happens to have social power, which in turn can be leveraged into political capital needed to move the needle.
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