I tend to not be particularly impressed with student loan relief proposals. They seem politically popular, so that's good, but given the available universe of underserved groups who could be helped by redistribution, college loans seem to focus too heavily on middle and middle-upper income kids with high future earnings potential.
I'm becoming significantly more concerned, though, about their capacity to trap individuals into acquisitive life paths. If you graduate from school with a $600 monthly loan payment, you're not going to work for a non-profit. If you leave law school with a $900 monthly payment, you can't exactly decide to go off and be a writer.
This seems rather pernicious to me, and pretty poor as a social outcome. We don't want job lock. We don't want folks to be unable to change careers later in life. There's no reason to think that a 22-year-old is so wise that their decision to go to law school and assume a debt burden is a really fantastic choice, and will make them enduringly happy. They'll be able to pay off their loans, to be sure, but they'll have to be a lawyer to do so. If, at 30, they realize they should start inventing, well, that's too damn bad -- and the rest of us will never get to use their invention. And that doesn't seem optimal either for individual autonomy or economic growth.
