Canceling Student Debt Is a Handout to the Upper Class

First, it's worth noting that people with college degrees are more likely to both be employed and, on average, are better paid than those who never attended college. People who attend college are also more likely to come from comparatively affluent households in the first place.

Second, it's worth asking: Who has $50,000 worth of school loans? Not, for the most part, struggling dropouts from state schools. No, large student loan values are heavily associated with professional schools that produce graduates who, on average, go on to be fairly well-compensated.

The single largest source of student loan debt is MBA programs, as Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Adam Looney has noted, and MBA grads average more than $73,000 in earnings their first year out of school. "The five degrees responsible for the most student debt are: MBA, JD, BA in business, BS in nursing, and MD," Looney wrote in 2020. "That's one reason why the top 20 percent of earners owe 35 percent of the debt, and why most debt is owed by well-educated individuals."

What Warren wants, and what Biden appears to be considering, is a massive program of government aid that would disproportionately benefit doctors, lawyers, well-paid medical specialists, and comfortably salaried individuals with advanced business degrees.

But for some reason, you don't hear Warren and Biden talking about their plan to give huge amounts of money to corporate lawyers and junior associates at hedge funds.

But a program to forgive $50,000 per borrower would come in at around $950 billion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. This would be in addition to the cost of the current pause on student loan repayment, which has already cost more than $100 billion.

Warren's pitch for a presidential program to help "working people" is a trillion-dollar bailout for the upper-middle class. They're just looking out for the little guy.

Illegally funneling money to a well-paid, well-off cohort that just happens to vote increasingly for Big Government? Now that's something a champion of working people can really feel good about.

https://reason.com/2022/04/28/elizabeth-warren-wants-joe-biden-to-deliver-a-massive-illegal-handout-to-the-well-off/