Suckers

We're hearing a lot about the trials and tribulations of millennials—how their situation is financially stagnant, and of course, how they're deeply in debt due to their borrowing to attend expensive colleges and universities.

Leaping at the opportunity to buy votes, many Democrats, and virtually the entire democratic socialist wing of the party, have decided that college debt forgiveness is the answer. You'd think that those loans were forced on the poor kids who agreed to them, that there were no other alternatives to a high priced education, that augmenting the cost of college (e.g., via work) wasn't possible, and that choosing a degree with few job prospects wasn't a decision that would have long term consequences for paying down the debt incurred. None of that is true, but democratic socialists believe that taxpayers should pay for the indebtedness of others.

David Harsanyi comments:

Perhaps being a well-read and well-rounded person with a fine arts degree is more important to you than an engineering degree[*] and a big paycheck. That’s fine. That’s a choice.

Psychology, the seventh-most popular major in the United States, is also the 160th most useful major in making a living. Humanities degrees, honorable as they might be, are the least useful degrees for making a good living. They are also, by far, the most popular majors in colleges today. Then again, only around 27 percent of college graduates find jobs related to their majors.

If there were a healthy, properly incentivized economic structure in higher education, banks wouldn’t be handing out loans to students without any thought to their future earning potential. There isn’t.

So we're told that the debt burden is just too great for the millennial "victims" of the rapacious banks and that rather than working hard to pay off a debt they voluntarily accepted, they should be freed from that debt. But why stop there? How about the millions of people who must have a car to go to work, but are burdened by a car loan. The taxpayers could step in pay the bill. And mortgages? Why not? How about credit card debt, you know when you put that vacation to Thailand you've always dreamed about on your credit card and then, whoa, you realize to have to pay for it after all? Phuket!

But according to some candidates for president, millennials are "victims" and therefore have a right to free stuff. After all, you're a victim even if you never seemed to consider that loans would have to be paid off. And free stuff? No need to repay your debt, the taxpayers will comp you for it.

I wonder how a hardworking millennial, who worked two jobs and eschewed unnecessary expenditures (the vaca to Thailand comes to mind) to pay off his or her college debt, will feel when other millennials are given a get-out-of-debt-free card. Can anyone spell s-u-c-k-e-r.

But maybe the real suckers are the taxpayers who vote for Democrats who then demand that taxpayers pay for someone else's college education.

FOOTNOTE:
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* I think it's worth noting that it's a whole lot less work, a whole lot less study, and a whole lot easier to get a fine arts degree than it is to get an engineering degree, but I suppose that another matter altogether. Of course, that's the reason engineering grads get the big bucks and generally can pay off their college debt with relatively little difficulty.