The notion of cancelling student debt sounds like a compassionate idea at a quick glance but examining this idealistic notion of “student loan forgiveness” gives us plenty of reason to hit the brakes.
It is important to recognize that a person’s debt is not something that can simply be “canceled” or “forgiven,” which are misleading words carefully chosen to avoid public scrutiny. The burden of debt doesn’t simply disappear with the wave of a magic wand. It is instead transferred to someone else.
In this case, the burden of debt would be transferred from individuals who agreed to take on a financial loan for the benefit of receiving a higher education. It is important to recognize that there was a received benefit. The debt incurred is associated with both a received benefit (education) and an agreed upon low-interest financial commitment to be repaid over time (loan).
It is unconscionable and morally wrong to remove the burden of debt from those who agreed to take it on and place it on the shoulders of those who neither agreed to pay the debt off nor received any benefit for taking on the debt. This is an egregious notion that removes all responsibility from the willing debtors and transfers it to those of us who pay taxes. It is an obvious and fiscally irresponsible ploy to buy votes at the expense of the already overburdened taxpayer during an inflationary crisis and time of global instability.
Ted Bennett
Scarborough
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