There has been a discussion recently about student loan “forgiveness”.1 A Twitter lady made an interesting statement:
I have to say I agree with her. I indeed want people to suffer.
When I was a boy, I was playing baseball in our side yard when my dad came out and said not to play there because the ball could go through the picture window on the side of the house. I assured my dad that I would be careful, and he shook his head and went back into the house.
You can probably guess what happened. The ball went through the picture window. I lost a whole summer’s allowance paying for that picture window. And my dad did it, of course, because he wanted me to suffer.
Of course not. He wanted me to learn the lesson: “do stupid tricks, win stupid prizes”. Buying that picture window was my “stupid prize”.
In our society, it has been pitched to us that if we don’t go to college, we will end up flipping burgers at McDonald’s2. But to facilitate that, our government has made the decision to give adolescents, who are not old enough to take a drink, smoke a cigarette, or buy an “assault weapon” six figures of money simply for having a pulse. Doesn’t matter what degree program they take.
So if you want to get a bachelor’s in “Gender Studies” from a prestigious university, well, the sky’s the limit. You don’t have to worry about paying for it, well, until you graduate, and you are the barista at Starbuck’s2 trying to make ends meet and paying off a $75,000 loan.
So yeah. I want you to suffer. I want you to pay back every penny that you voluntarily borrowed. And I want you to complain to your friends who are planning to make the same mistake you did about what your life is like, pour encourager les autres, so the same thing might not happen to them.
No loan is being “forgiven”. Someone else (taxpayers) are going to be in the hook.
There’s nothing wrong with flipping burgers at McDonald’s or making coffees at Starbuck’s