Let’s take on example from that article. Hopefully nobody thinks I’m cherry-picking. Student debt and its forgiveness is a topic that interests me.
“Erase student debt: $1.4 trillion”
If a person borrowed to attend a state school they probably have debt ranging from $5k-30k (based on my quick research). Average college debt in the US is about $29k. Obviously people who didn’t go to college wouldn’t benefit. So already there is a disparity that, generally, probably advantages people from families with higher incomes. People who are $200k in debt certainly win out over the person with $10k in debt. But $10k debt is a very manageable amount and I don’t know what benefit to society there is by forgiving such a small amount. And if we only forgive, say, the first $30k you’re leaving a lot of people struggling who may not be from well-to-do families but foolishly got themselves into tremendous debt.
When people keep racking up debt in the future, do we forgive it again? Do we add the $600b more (proposed in the article) to cover costs for state schools? If students keep racking up debts at private schools in the future, then too bad?
The proposal to build 15 space stations is probably the best one. We should have done that one.