Thwarted by the conservative-leaning court, Biden told reporters that his administration would pursue student loan relief through a different avenue, the Higher Education Act.
Why does it need to be fair? By that logic, we should never change a ton of things, such as tax codes, simply because they’re not retroactive (“how dare the government offer a rebate on solar panels after I’ve already paid full price!”). There isn’t really a good way to make something like student loan forgiveness retroactive and to try and do so would make it excessively expensive.
Why should we hold back on doing a good thing just because it doesn’t help 100% of people ever?
I do agree with you about the core of what you’re saying, that in the end it’s a good thing to help people. For sure. But when talking about public funds you have to keep in mind priorities. In this case I can see how this doesn’t seem like a priority to some people, money is not unlimited and these funds could be used for something else. I would personally be more on board if this program targeted students who are about to get loans, I just think it would have more value to society in general than helping someone who is 10 years into their loan and not struggling financially.
Now as I said I’m not an expert on US public finance so if you tell me that these funds couldn’t be used somewhere else anyway and would be wasted in less important projects then sure I’d revise my opinion.
The argument against your argument is that often the admin costs of means testing exceed any dollars saved. I don’t know the metrics for this, but that certainly is a factor.
Why does it need to be fair? By that logic, we should never change a ton of things, such as tax codes, simply because they’re not retroactive (“how dare the government offer a rebate on solar panels after I’ve already paid full price!”). There isn’t really a good way to make something like student loan forgiveness retroactive and to try and do so would make it excessively expensive.
Why should we hold back on doing a good thing just because it doesn’t help 100% of people ever?
I do agree with you about the core of what you’re saying, that in the end it’s a good thing to help people. For sure. But when talking about public funds you have to keep in mind priorities. In this case I can see how this doesn’t seem like a priority to some people, money is not unlimited and these funds could be used for something else. I would personally be more on board if this program targeted students who are about to get loans, I just think it would have more value to society in general than helping someone who is 10 years into their loan and not struggling financially.
Now as I said I’m not an expert on US public finance so if you tell me that these funds couldn’t be used somewhere else anyway and would be wasted in less important projects then sure I’d revise my opinion.
The argument against your argument is that often the admin costs of means testing exceed any dollars saved. I don’t know the metrics for this, but that certainly is a factor.