Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Bernie Sanders Student Loan Debt Plan: Unworkable

The Democratic presidential aspirants are having a cash-giveaway arms race, coming up with creative ways to shovel public funds into the pockets of likely primary voters, and Senator Sanders's plan is to forgive all college debt, some $1.6 trillion of it.

Sanders's plan would write off all of the student-loan debt on the federal government's books - because what's $1.6 trillion these days? - but not all of the student debt is government held.

The median amount of student-loan debt is less than $10,000 - about 100 months' worth of the average cable bill - and most borrowers pay 5 percent or less of their monthly income in loan payments.

A third of all student debt is held by those in the highest income quartile, whereas those in the lowest quartile hold only 12 percent.

Worse, Sanders's plan creates permanent perverse incentives for young Americans to take on even more debt.

Which means that if the Sanders plan were passed, then the most likely result would be that we would see record student debt just a few years down the road. America's colleges are run by reasonably clever people.

The Sanders plan would mean paying $25 to the federal government every time you traded $5,000 worth of stock - or five times what you'd pay the typical online brokerage in fees.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/bernie-sanders-student-loan-debt-plan-unworkable/

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