This is a class war – and people with 21st century versions of monocles and top hats are winning. People who have college loans to repay are, on average, quite well off. This is not surprising: Only one in three Americans of working age are college graduates, and college graduates earn more money than those with only high school diplomas. The same goes for people who go to college but do not get a degree. Writing off college loans is first and foremost a government donation to people with above-average incomes. If you know anything about higher education, you will not be surprised to learn that the people with the most college debts are the people with the highest incomes. These big loans usually do not come from financing a liberal arts degree at an Ivy League college: elite schools have a lot of money of their own, which is why, for example, the vast majority of Princeton graduates end up with no student debt at all. while the small share that gets loans usually ends with less with debt less than $ 10,000. Advocates posted a sign in front of the White House in June 2021 calling on Biden to sign an executive order to cancel student debt. Paul Morigi / Getty Images for We The 45 Million In contrast, large loans are usually intended to finance postgraduate studies, especially vocational training: law school, medical school, MBA and other preparations for highly paid careers. Americans sometimes forget where the money is in our economy: Your local CEO does not have Jeff Bezos’s money, but he makes almost $ 20,000 a year more than the typical architect, earning just $ 100,000 on average in 2020. with the Office of Labor Statistics. This guy can afford to pay off his student loans. So does his lawyer ($ 126,930 average salary) and the local nurse ($ 117,670), who earns about as much money as the typical aerospace engineer ($ 118,610). The vast majority of Princeton graduates complete a four-year degree without any student debt. They are the graduate students who usually accumulate the highest student loan debt while also earning the most money. Corbis via Getty Images Policy analysts, including progressives, who take the time to execute the numbers consistently come to the same conclusion: Any college loan write-off program that is seriously considered disproportionately benefits high-income individuals. A study by Sylvain Catherine of the University of Pennsylvania and Constantine Yannelis of the University of Chicago found that a universal debt relief program would benefit top 10% earners five times more than those at the bottom. Limiting forgiveness to $ 50,000 — or even $ 10,000 — would have similar effects, providing far more benefits to the affluent than to those who struggle. As the scholars point out, this is largely because large student loans go hand in hand with high incomes. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, your local principal earned just $ 100,000 on average in 2020. He or she can afford to repay this student loan. Shutterstock Poor Americans will not benefit much from forgiving college loans for the same reason they do not benefit from income tax cuts – the same affluent people who pay the most income tax also have most of the college debt. Freezing repayments since the COVID era has already offered $ 200 billion in benefits to relatively high-income borrowers. That’s $ 200 billion out of the pockets of U.S. taxpayers – including low-income taxpayers. If we want to ease the debts of the poor, we could pay off the credit card balances of 20% of US households with the lowest incomes for half the money. For $ 200 billion, we could buy a $ 350,000 home for every homeless person in the United States. Instead, we transfer this money to the “poor, struggling” personal injury lawyers, suburban dentists and generously compensated McKinsey scorpions. Freezing payments since the COVID era has already provided $ 200 billion in benefits to relatively high revenues. That $ 200 billion could buy a $ 350,000 home for every homeless person in the United States. Agence France-Presse through Getty Images Democrats know the power struggle is in the suburbs, where most affluent, university-educated professionals live. Forgiving student loan debt is one way to buy their votes. Getty Images Why; Because Democrats prefer to use your money when buying votes. In the United States, cities are Democratic and countryside is Republican – the real political battle is in the suburbs, where these wealthy college-educated professionals live and vote. Democrats are willing to help the rich get richer, as long as they vote the right way. Kevin D. Williamson is the author of “Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of” Real America “.
