Divine

 There is a scene early on in the movie Rocky where the titular character decides not to break the thumbs of a dock worker who has gotten behind on his payments to Rock's boss. He figures that if the dock worker's thumbs are broken, then there's no way he can repay his debt. Later, when he relates this to his boss, Mister Gazzo, he is berated for such an action. "Let me do the thinking," he is told just before he is left once again standing out on the curb. 

In this model, the dock worker is anyone being crushed by student loan debt, and Mister Gazzo is all those companies charging ridiculous interest on those loans. However, this time Rocky is Joe Biden and he happens to also be President of the United States. When he decided to forgive student loans, it's Mister Gazzo who is left standing out on the curb. 

The high cost of education is evidenced in the eighteen percent rise in tuition and fees over the past ten years. Interest rates for loans on those costs range from just over three percent to fourteen percent. The average student loan is paid off in twenty-one years. Companies that hand out these loans suggest that you could be out of the shadow of their loans in ten or eleven years. The reality is twice that. In true loan shark fashion, most institutions allow a six month grace period in which the newly minted college graduate looks for a job. If you're lucky you find a starting position somewhere that will pay you enough to compete with the interest rate they locked in when they started school. When they were a teenager, for the most part. 

So, there are some people who would like to blame the ones who took those loans in the first place. Like those who got themselves into home loans they couldn't afford before the housing bubble burst. Paying interest upon interest is a game only the house wins. College graduates enter the work world without any choice about stimulating the economy. They are, for give the allusion, stimulating Sallie Mae. Or any one of the multitude of creditors who are happy to sign you up to a lifetime of repayments. 

Then along comes Joe Biden, with an idea based on most every left-leaning type who has looked at the situation over the past twenty years. How about we just release these wage slaves, and get them back to living lives out of the shadow of their education? Of course, there are those who would argue against spending the money to hang these same people with a new rope who insist that it's not fair that some people paid off their student loans themselves, and there are plenty of people who didn't even need that assistance in the first place. What about them?

Well, as many people who have experienced this question, I can say, "So?" I was extremely fortunate. My parents were very clever with the extra money they had and negotiated two college degrees for their sons. The third went on tour with a rock band from his hometown, missing the trifecta. But that doesn't mean any of us view this move by the federal government as a slap in the face. It is a realization of the potential of our government and its power. Used for good. 

And we didn't have to break any thumbs.