[agitator]

Because if you for example you held off on buying a house to pay off loans, and the day after you saved up enough for your down payment, your buddy Jeff, who ignored his loans, racking up interest, making questionable financial decisions, suddenly gets his loans payed off and now is competing in the housing market with you and everyone else, and home prices rise as a result, pushing your first home out of reach yet again, you are going to be pretty pissed off.

[IceMetalPunk]

On the other hand, if my other buddy Alice was unable to pay her loans and struggling to pay for food without debt collectors knocking at her door, and now doesn't have to deal with that anymore, that'd offset my ire.

In fact, in a case like that, you should be pissed off at Jeff, not at the people helping everyone which happens to include Jeff.

[agitator]

So why not a tax return for all lower income brackets?

Why should someone with a B.A. be fed and not someone with only a high school diploma?

[IceMetalPunk]

It's not about feeding people with a degree. It's about reducing the punishment they had but shouldn't have. Ideally, higher education wouldn't cost extra, or at least not excessively so. But since it does, these efforts are to counteract that existing punishment, nothing more or less.

[Ekaros]

Should those specially seeking education be capable of doing reasonably simple calculations before taking massive amount of loans? It is not like the information of anything related was exactly hidden.

[IceMetalPunk]

Who said anything was hidden? Most high school graduates in the US understand that going to college almost certainly means a lifetime of debt. But they also recognize the opportunity cost of being uneducated, which they deem a greater cost than the financial cost of loans. And please don't claim that's invalid, because (a) I agree, which is why I did it, and (b) claiming it's invalid implies that money is the only thing of importance in a person's life, which is kind of dystopian a view.

[Ekaros]

So they made a decision that opportunity > debt. Thus I see no reason to have others pay for their decisions. They freely chose that option. They should be adult enough to live with it and not ask for handouts with tax payers money.