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Canceling Student Loans Is Bribery and Inflationary

In one of my favorite movies, Cinderella Man, the Great Depression forces down-and-out boxer Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe) to go on relief—what we know today as welfare. Returning to the ring, he wins a large sum of money, goes back to the relief office, and then repays the money given him by the government.

Sounds fake, right? Just a made-up scene for a film to put the hero in a good light?

But it actually happened. Ashamed of having to go on relief, the real-life Braddock repaid what he regarded as a debt he owed to the government once his earnings increased from fighting in the ring. He did so secretly, but later the press found out and made headlines of his gesture, increasing his popularity among Americans.

Few Americans today pay back the welfare benefits they’ve received. The great bulk of them, I suspect, lack the means to do so, and for those who become financially successful such a thought probably never enters their mind.

Which brings me to Joe Biden’s 1.6 trillion proposal to cancel student debt. “Not only will plumbers be paying for the educations of rich lawyers and activists with junk degrees, everyone will be paying for it through higher inflation,” Monica Showalter writes at the American Thinker.

$1.6 trillion is the kind of number that’s been out there in the five or six federal spending packages that Democrats have moved through Congress dating from the Obama era, and the real reason why inflation is so high all over the place. Biden is blaming Putin and Big Oil for the current inflation, but those are smokescreens. Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, as Milton Friedman has famously said, so the $1.6 trillion debt forgiveness will have to be financed by more money printing from the Federal Reserve. Net result? More inflation baked into the cake to filter down through society.

Moreover, Showalter rightly opines that such a move is unconstitutional. “The whole thing would be done with Joe’s pen and phone, bypassing the democratic process entirely by getting around Congress, which constitutionally holds the power of the purse.”

Like many of us, Showalter also wonders if Biden’s move is an attempt to draw younger voters back into his camp. Cancel federal student loan debt, the argument goes, and out of appreciation young people—and even not-so-young people who are still paying off their student loans—will vote for Joe Biden and his party in the upcoming elections of 2022 and 2024.

Don’t fall for this ploy. This administration isn’t acting out of compassion for you who are carrying student debt. This is, pure and simple, a bribe for your vote. If this proposal carries and your loan is forgiven, good for you, I guess. Just keep in mind that the president and his crew are hoping to buy your vote.

Next, know that this loan money doesn’t just vanish. Someone has to pay the bill, and that someone is the U.S. taxpayer. Your parents, your grandparents, your friend and relatives, will all be paying to get you off the hook. And you’ll be paying too for years to come, because $1.6 trillion will only increase the rate of inflation.

And please don’t tell the rest of us that you were too young and dumb when you accepted these loans or that you were somehow tricked. You embarrass yourself with that argument. You were old enough to sign on the dotted line. You were old enough to vote, to drive a car, to have a bank account all your own. You were old enough, in other words, for the rest of society to consider you an adult.

So have some pride and accept some responsibility for your decision to go into debt. Otherwise, you are allowing your government to label you as infantile. George Washington was a surveyor on the frontier at age 17; Thomas Edison was 21 when he filed for his first patent; this year, British-Belgium teen Zara Rutherford, age 19, became the youngest woman to fly solo around the world. Compared to such men and women, do you really want the government to serve as your mommy and protector?

Reject the nanny state. Whatever happens with your student loan, cast aside that dependence on the government. Be your own person, and strive to make a life by your own efforts.

Image Credit: Piqsels