When people debate whether to forgive some or all of the $1.75 trillion in student debt weighing on millions of American families, opponents often argue that it would be wasteful and unfair: Too many relatively well-off, well-educated people would benefit at the expense of all taxpayers, many of whom never had the desire or opportunity to attend college.
Reasonable as this might sound, it¡¯s the wrong way to think about a policy that could actually do a lot of good, for both individuals and the broader economy. It relies on a misleading concept of who counts as rich and ignores the extent to which the debt itself is a manifestation of unfairness.
True, if one looks at the U.S. population by income, most student debt is owed by the highest-earning half of households. By one estimate, this group would receive about three quarters of the forgiven dollars (in present-value terms) if all the debt were canceled. This has led economists and politicians to label the policy ¡°regressive.¡±
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