I understand why they may feel differently. I respect that they have the right to feel how they feel. But I find their feelings to be selfish, destructive, and illogical.

To be clear, there is a lot of room to debate whether loan forgiveness is the right decision and if it is the right decision, what form that loan forgiveness should take. I'm not on the "forgive all debt" train but do think some amount of forgiveness is warranted and would be healthy. But the argument of "I suffered so my neighbor should suffer as I did" is not a logical, loving, or Christian argument.

I don't think "it's not fair to people who already paid their loans" should have any place in this conversation. That is a sunk cost. The decision needs to be forward-thinking, "is this the best decision for America moving forward" should really be the only question considered.

Yep.

If people were mad that they raised their kids at a time before the child tax credit, should that have factored into its adoption 30 years ago? No. And it wasn’t.

DePaul will rise again with MU football.

The DePaul Blue Phoenixes

Whatever Muggsy said + 1 inch

Second, as far as free college goes, there is ample example of what happens when college is totally free. My children went to Southern Illinois University and SIU, for years, had a program called MAPP, which provided free educations to very disadvantaged youth. While it was an incredible program and some people benefitted heavily from it, the drop-out rate after freshman year at SIU for years was way too high. There's a lot of reasons for that but one was somebody gave you something for free and because you didn't have skin in the game, you didn't care.

Lenders feel the same way, which is why downpayments on real estate ALWAYS are required! You have to have skin in the game.

So let me ask you this. Did Goose and Rocket's kids not care about their education because their parents paid for their college? Or are they the exception as "great Americans"?

In all seriousness, I've heard this argument before and I don't buy it. You are essentially arguing the sunk cost fallacy again. That people need a sunk cost in order to be motivated to educate themself. You say they need skin in the game. I think they have it. Chance at an education and a better paying career. That's their skin in the game. Not a sunk cost that's already gone.

What I think you may be conflating, is that putting any sort of barrier around a college education helps weed out the motivated students from the unmotivated ones. Cost is a huge a barrier for a college education (especially today). Remove that cost and yes, you will see some who go to college despite not having the stomach for it because why not? And those students are more likely to drop out. But they would have dropped out even if they had to foot the bill themselves. The (sunk) cost isn't what drives students toward graduation. It's a barrier that makes one pause and consider, "do I want to do this?". Of course, I'd argue it's too big of a barrier now and a lot of people who do have the drive are being kept out due to lack of resources.

And if making college free leads to the graduation rate lowering, so what? Yes, some will go despite not having the drive for it and they will drop out. But I'd be willing to bet that a significant portion of those who didn't think college was for them but go because it's free, end up rising to the challenge and persisting anyway. The graduation rate may go down but total graduations would go up. I don't think that would be a bad thing.

I said before that despite my thoughts above, I don't know that free college is actually a good idea. My concern more lies in the economics of it and concern that it would result in worsened product due to budget constraints. But I don't think the skin in the game argument is a good one.

Vert no matta... I started playing the "old man game" at about 21 after my 3rd knee surgery.
5'10' and on a really good day, with the right shoes and the wind behind me I could touch the rim.