| Your position seems to lack guiding or limiting principles. >"The positive externalities of an educated populace are massive." Forgiving existing debt does not increase the level of education of the populace. Conditionally forgiving future debts could, though there would be collateral effects. >"I think the choice is between: (1) punish people because it's fair, and live an objectively worse life because everyone around us is miserable and dysfunctional (2) tune policy to support people, and live an objectively better life because everyone around us is healthy, productive and creative." Failing to forgive debt is not a punishment, it's just holding people to their obligations. It definitely does support them, but the question would be why only support people who took on debt? Why not support the people who made different decisions too? >"Immiserating debt destroys lives, and destroyed lives makes all of us worse off." If you just want to forgive debt, why limit it to student loans? Why not forgive healthcare debts? What about consumer debt after Christmas? How about gambling debt? All of those make people worse off. |
Now we're on the same page! We should absolutely have universal healthcare.
> What about consumer debt after Christmas? How about gambling debt?
Religious holidays and gambling do not improve our society. An educated, healthy populace does.