The over borrowed saved again: It all sounds so good doesn't it?

By Frank Louis

Have you heard about Elizabeth Warren's proposed plan to forgive student loan debt up to $50,000? And both Social Security and Medicare are set to go broke?

I happen to teach at a State University and, this week, I surveyed (informally) my students regarding Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren's proposed plan to forgive student loan debt up to $50,000. Surely, this is not some scheme to gather votes is it?

Yet another government program established to pit the "Over Borrowed" against the "Under Borrowed" by punishing those among us who do not live their lives on an assumption that, throughout life, some government safety net will be thrown out beneath them just in the nick of time. Those of us who do not model success in life after the character Julia in Barrack Obama's film From Cradle to Grave, but after keeping our heads above water by swimming.

Unanimously, as I had anticipated, the students raised their hands. So, I had to ask "what about the people who, for what ever reason, had never borrowed the money in the first place? Shouldn't they receive a $50,000 credit also? If they meet the guidelines of earning under $100,000 annually (which, as a professor in a state university I certainly do), why wouldn't they?

Seriously. though How many of us out there are there? People who, rather than joining the ranks of the "over borrowed," opted not to continue to go into debt beyond their means. I could not be more serious here, I can tell you. We hear so much these days about concern for the "unbanked." What about we the "banked" who seem to always be kicked in the butt by government programs that support the "over borrowed" at the expense of those who try to live within their financial parameters?

So, we all got burned in the early 2000s by the "Housing Crisis," another manufactured disaster created by a government that rewarded (albeit it temporarily) those who fudged on their "no-doc" mortgage applications, causing a housing bubble that crushed many hard working, downpayment making folks who, because of their stage in life, happened to buy a home in the midst of this falsely inflated market. They have never been paid back to this day!

So, the liberals, the Left is doing it again: punishing those who make sound economic judgements and decisions. "Oh no" you may say. These people (whom I call the 'over borrowed') "took a chance on their educations and came out rosy." No, they came out "bailed out!" Let's get our language straight!

Yes, many of those who were in school, faced with decisions to just stay in school... complete that PhD, perhaps borrowing untold amounts of money (maybe $50K) that they really knew in their deepest-inner-selves that they would never be able to pay back, left to take on lesser employment. Yes, As someone who has taught in post secondary institutions my entire career, I can tell you our ranks are rich with example after example of this. I've met many people with Masters Degrees who surely would have completed their PhD had they known that that final $50K was going to be wiped clean. They were surely qualified academically to do so. Maybe they would have cured cancer or something.

Instead, they took seriously their financial realities and were forced to walk. Well, it is only fair that the millions of people out there who did not complete their educational goals because of that silly $50,000 they were short (and meet the criteria that they earn less than $100,000 a year) be written a check.

Or is there a very select class of people in our country who will just never deserve any form of "reconciliation" whatsoever?

Just curious.

© Frank Louis