Let's take a moment and consider that the good intentions we almost always assign to our own actions might just motivate others as well.
Yes, that will lead to occasional disappointment, but it's better than believing everyone else out there is just a bunch of grifters while we're over here trying to make an honest living.
With that in mind, I'll meander into the student loan debate. Or, more accurately, the wild collection of reactions to President Biden's decision to cancel up to $10,000 of student debt for everyone with individual incomes of $125,000 or less (or $250,000 for a household). There's was an extra $10,000 worth of forgiveness for people who qualified as Pell Grant recipients, which are people who "display exceptional financial need," according to the Department of Education.
First, it's a mistake to characterize people who owe on their student loans and are eager to accept this debt forgiveness as freeloaders.
For the record: I've got the good fortune to not hold any student debt and my wife and I are doing everything we can to help our kids get through college without student debt. So, nothing I write today is about benefiting me or mine.
Yes, students should have known when they accepted the loans that, like any other kind of credit, they will be a burden until they're paid off. That's pretty much become the American Way. People buy a boat they can't really afford but it seems the monthly payment is within reason; it's only later they recognize how painful it is to pay for a toy over the course of 10 or 12 years. It's immediate gratification and long-term pain, with loan-making businesses making fortunes on the transactions.
A lot of students simply do not comprehend how loans will get in the way of lives they want to lead. And universities rely on student loans as much as anyone. Student loans shore up a lot of university budgets, but it's the students who are on the hook for them.
I don't blame anyone who wants debt forgiven. If the bank that holds my home's mortgage miraculously offered to forgive the debt, I'd take it in a second (assuming no strings attached) even if intellectually I recognized I'd made a commitment to repay it when I took out the loan.
Fair criticism comes into play when loan-takers come to expect loan forgiveness and portray a lack of it as some sort of social justice issue. I listened to one discussion on Biden's loan forgiveness in which a speaker, who had criticized it as insufficiently targeted to help those most in need, said "It does show us that debt cancellation is possible."
I love "The Godfather" movies. In Part II, Don Fanucci shakes down a young Vito Corleone by demanding $200 each from the illicit activities of Corleone and his two buddies. For their protection, he says wants "just enough to wet my beak." But young Vito is wise enough to know once Fanucci's beak is wet, his thirst won't be quenched.
The appetite for debt forgiveness, i.e., an inefficient means of delivering free college, won't be satiated by $10,000.
For me, perhaps the most nonsensical part of all this is that the debt forgiveness plan seems to acknowledge the student loan system is, in reality, a failure. It's so flawed American taxpayers are forced to "rescue" its beneficiaries from its clutches. And yet the U.S. government continues the loan program, full steam ahead.
Well, not so much all taxpayers. The $300 billion bill for Biden's largesse will be delivered to our kids and grandkids as part of the national debt. And as much as they may wish otherwise, ain't nobody forgiving that.