SOME 45 MILLION individuals in the United States owe $1.6 trillion in debt for college and graduate school tuition. They owe the vast majority of it to the federal government, so the obvious way to ease this burden on them, and a drag on the economy, is government-ordered debt cancellation, perhaps through executive action by President-elect Joe Biden after Jan. 20. Or so many Democrats urge, with Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pushing a plan to forgive up to $50,000 per borrower.
We hope Mr. Biden says no — and explains that such wholesale debt relief is actually the antithesis of progressive policy. Most benefits would flow to upper-income households, which, despite the undeniable burden of debt for lower-income families, actually owe a disproportionate share of the total dollars. Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults age 25 and over do not even have a college degree, though that includes some who attended, and paid for, college but did not finish. What’s more, those who finish college are better positioned than others to earn more, so it’s hardly unfair to expect them to draw on this “education premium” to pay their debt.
Sylvain Catherine of the University of Pennsylvania and Constantine Yannelis of the University of Chicago lend support to these points in a new analysis that emphasizes the value of debt relief to borrowers in light of real-world program rules and standard “present value” accounting. They find that debt forgiveness plans, whether universal or capped at $50,000 as Mr. Schumer and Ms. Warren propose, “are highly regressive, with the vast majority of benefits accruing to high-income individuals.” Even a plan capped at $10,000 would disproportionately favor upper-income Americans, though it should be noted that the specific $10,000 plan Mr. Biden floated during the campaign applied only to public-college undergraduate loans and phased out for households above $125,000 in income.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...50d384-34c9-11eb-8d38-6aea1adb3839_story.html
