Should student loans be forgiven?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Should student loans be forgiven?". Your opponent's style: Devil's advocate

They should be forgiven. In the US especially student loans can take a lifetime to pay off, leaving the debtors constantly with the stress of paying off their debt. Forgiving them leaves those families with extra money to go towards things like housing, education, etc. thereby reducing the effects of many other social problems

You're ignoring who actually pays for this fantasy. Forgiveness doesn't erase the debt, it shifts it to taxpayers who either didn't go to college or already paid their way through. Why should a plumber subsidize a lawyer's loan? And you're rewarding the worst financial decisions while punishing responsible people. If we want to fix affordability, cap tuition costs and interest rates instead of letting universities keep raising prices while you bail out borrowers. Why should we reward the system's real winners, the colleges themselves?

Taxes are meant to be used for the wellbeing of the wider population. The dollars that would go into repaying that debt would go back in to the economy, creating more tax income. People coming from or in low-income families that need to pay back their debt would then have a higher standard of living and would therefore be more productive. Education is one of the best (if not the best) investments a country can make (ie. with the highest returns), in short it would benefit everyone in the long-run.

You're double-counting the same dollar. That money doesn't magically appear—it comes from taxes, which reduces what people have to spend anyway. The "stimulus" is a wash. And your productivity argument cuts both ways: why give free money to people who'll earn six figures as lawyers when a plumber already works harder for less? If education's such a great investment, let people actually *invest* in it themselves instead of treating it like charity. Why should we subsidize degrees that make people richer while calling it public good?

You could even triple-count that dollar. You are underestimating how good of an investment education actually is. It incentivizes people to go to college even the children of the plumbers. Having a highly educated ^populace has been proven to have wide-ranging positive effects. It could perhaps be more targeted for people coming from a disadvantaged background.

You're describing *subsidized tuition*, not forgiveness of debts already taken. Those are completely different things. If education's such a killer investment, make future college cheap—don't reward people who already benefited from their degrees while sadling non-college kids with the bill. Your "targeted" version admits the real problem: blanket forgiveness is wasteful. So why not just fix the actual system instead of a one-time cash dump that doesn't stop the next generation from drowning?

Making such fundamental changes to the systems in place is very difficult. There are reasons why the systems are this way today. It is through taking these small steps (although not entirely efficient) that we can move towards a brighter future.

That's just admitting defeat. "It's hard so let's waste money inefficiently" isn't a strategy, it's surrender. If systemic change is impossible, forgiveness is impossible too—you'd need the same political will. Pick one: either we can reshape education policy or we can't. You can't have it both ways just because forgiveness feels easier right now. Why settle for a band-aid that helps nobody long-term?

You are ignoring the political reality that we are facing right now. Why would the people in power make such a large change to the sytems that benefit them and will continue to benefit them and their kids. First getting the children of disadvantaged backgrounds in more powerful positions to eventually making these decisions is the goal. This isn't some 'band-aid' solution, it is a long-term, more realistic plan veiled like one.

Now you're honest—you need forgiveness to create future politicians who'll fix the system. But that's backwards. You're asking current taxpayers to fund social mobility for people who'll eventually *become* the powerful class you're mad at. Why would they stay committed to changing things once they're rich? History shows they don't. You're betting on altruism from people you've literally incentivized to abandon their communities. Why trust that gamble over actually forcing change now through policy?

What do you propose, some kind of civil war? You're view of people forgetting their roots and all the help they received the moment they get in power is simply wrong. It is by consistently giving one group of people the power that such systems come to exist.

You're romanticizing human nature. Studies show social mobility actually *weakens* class solidarity—people who escape poverty distance themselves from it. Forgiveness doesn't create grateful allies, it creates winners who got theirs. And you still haven't answered: why bail out current borrowers instead of preventing the next generation from drowning? Fund K-12 better, cap tuition now. Why reward the escape hatch instead of closing the trap?