[loeg]

> People who have paid their student loan debt are in exactly the same situation they were after this forgiveness than they were before: that is, they have no student loan debt.

You're missing the point, either deliberately or on accident.

(Prefacing this with: we should keep and honor the terms of the existing PSLF program that students relied on when taking on debt.) There's no particular reason people with current loan debt, but ineligible for PSLF, should get a wealth transfer from other taxpayers with similar income, net worth, and expenses -- but no current student loan debt.

> People in the US are not punished for being financially responsible. They are rewarded for taking risks, but not punished for being responsible.

In fact, a hypothetical student debt forgiveness event like GP was discussing would punish those who responsibly paid off their student debts relative to similar-earning classmates who did not.

[31098347]

>In fact, a hypothetical student debt forgiveness event like GP was discussing would punish those who responsibly paid off their student debts relative to similar-earning classmates who did not.

Punish how? This word keeps being used but it does not fit any definition of punish I'm familiar with. I'm not being obtuse.

Some background of where I'm coming from: Worked 40+hrs/week for $7.25 to $10/hr from 2005 to 2009 to get a four year degree from a state school. Graduated with $35,000 in student loan debt myself and about $20,000 in debt through Parent Plus loans. My parents sent me some money for rent on occasion, but overall -- that's how I di it.

I also paid off all my student loans, and my parent plus loans.

If someone graduated with $100,000 debt because they partied all the time, didn't work, and tomorrow Biden just gave them a tax-free forgiveness....

I am not punished by this. At all. It has no impact on my life whatsoever. I made the best choice I could make with my circumstances, and I paid off my loans because at the time that was the best way to secure my future. The day before the party-guy got his $100k write-off and the day after, I wake up in the same house, with the same car, with the same job, with the same spouse. My life doesn't change at all.

[loeg]

> If someone graduated with $100,000 debt because they partied all the time, didn't work, and tomorrow Biden just gave them a tax-free forgiveness....

> I am not punished by this.

Imagine a fair and equitable spending program that distributed $100k to everyone. It's fair, and people with debt could use it to pay off their loans (you could even require it to be used to pay off student loans first). If your goal is to help people with loans pay off their debts, it is an effective program. It's also obviously fair.

Then, tax 100% of the distribution for people without student loan balances. This is the step that imposes a punitive expense, relative to a fair program, on people without student loans.

That's what these proposals look like. There's no particular reason recent college students as a group should be the sole recipients of a wealth transfer.

[omegaworks]

> Then, tax 100% of the distribution for people without student loan balances.

No one is proposing this.

[loeg]

Proposals to pay off student loan debt are the equivalent of this, as I have expanded on at length in the rest of my comment.

[omegaworks]

They are not, though. You wrote your comment as though every proposal is necessarily a tax on everyone that does not have student loans.

This is an entirely made up claim. A hypothetical strawman useful to only those that seek to victimize themselves when this topic comes up. Student debt is a contractual arrangement between the government and the borrower. It can simply be ended. The government has the power to do that without imposing a tax on everyone else.