Cosmopolitan pushes limp, faulty argument for student loan forgiveness
July 22, 2022
Cosmopolitan has another entry in that race to list all the people who would be so aided by student loan forgiveness that we just must do it. That is, take money off the taxpayers who pay or may not have benefited from a college education and then give that money to those who definitively have been to college. Those who have the debt to prove it. Taking money from those who have not to give to those who have is not known as a progressive move but that’s the way politics is going these days.
The cases – as ever – are less than wholly convincing of course. There are five anonymized carriers of student debt in the piece.
“It certainly wasn’t a life goal of mine to have a six-figure cloud of debt looming over me, “ “But now, six years after finishing undergrad and three years after completing my Master’s degree “ “Because I’ve chosen to pursue a career in nonprofit advocacy “
Someone who did 6 years – at least – of school to follow a low-paid profession thinks you should pay for the life choices. A wholly convincing argument we may or may not agree.
“a hefty price tag, somewhere around $140K “ “This debt has kept me from applying for jobs I’m passionate about because the salary wouldn’t allow me to support myself and pay more than $1,000 in student loans per month (the minimum payment) and it’s kept me from going on vacations with friends. “
Taxpayers should pick up the tab for an expensive education so that the recipient of that education can both take a lower paid but more exciting job and also go on vacation.
“Having recently graduated with my second degree “ We assume a Masters, although it’s not said. The undergraduate debt was $20k which seems an entirely reasonable sum to ask someone to pay for four years of their life’s experiences. “I’ll be paying this debt back for the rest of my life. “ The argument that you shouldn’t, that everyone else in the country should pay it for the rest of their lives through the tax system hasn’t exactly been made here.
“After completing my undergraduate and graduate degrees from a private university, I have $200K+ in student loans to pay off. “ “but saving for a house, wedding, and a family or buying a car or home are just not realistic to me at this point due to my student loan debt. “
Do tell, why should everyone else be asked to pay for your life choices? For if you’re not going to pay that debt then someone else, somewhere else, is going to have to. Debt relief would mean that someone else with less money to pay for their car, house, wedding or family – and they’ll not have two private university degrees to show for it either.
“My first experience with student loans came with my enrollment in law school. “ “It is counterintuitive to finish a rigorous graduate program just to be controlled by your debt for the next decade. “
Perhaps law schools should recruit from the more logically minded. If you gain something of value – a law degree – then it seems reasonable enough that you should pay for that thing of value that you receive. We do, after all, ask that you pay your mortgage when you buy a house, pay the car company loans when you buy a car. There is also that rather political point. The ask here is that other people must pay more taxes in order to make life easier for lawyers?
This is all less than convincing.
Cosmopolitan is ranked around No. 50 in the usual lists of news publishers in the U.S. It gains some 60 million visits a month from that position. It’s an influential outlet, as it long has been.
This piece suffers from the same problem that so many similar ones elsewhere have. If there were strong and convincing cases where student debt cancellation was justified. surely they’d have been reported by now. Instead, we seem to get as above, numbers of young adults pointing out that their lives would be better if everyone else – the taxpayer – had to pay some of their costs of living.