First, an educated populous brings the entire economy up. It creates new markets, new fields and industries, and more opportunities for everyone. It also takes a large chuck of the workforce into offices, labs, and around the world instead of competing with you for your machining job at the factory, which would devalue your role and result in lowering your wage, if you got the job at all.

Second, the only reason for the massive amounts of student debt is due to universities massively inflating the cost of an education to milk the government of their federal student loans. This doesn't address that directly, but it applies pressure on the government to reign in these bloated tuition and book costs that universities are pushing.

Third, if we're so afraid Joe the Plumber and the rest of the Working Class might have to help his fellow man with 3 cents of his annual tax rate, then increase the tax on the wealthy controlling class to cover it instead. The same tax bill will mean waaaaay less to them.

Edit: for clarification, that was a rebuttal to Graham's comment, not yours, OP

I don't eat corn either. Or drive a hybrid. Or have a child with food insecurity. I have never been impacted by a flood or hurricane. I won't qualify for medicaid and my Social Security will be less than I have contributed. We could do this dumb line of thinking all day.

They want people like myself to get angry at this because "I made the decision to not go into debt because of the debt part and these people without care for the outcome just jumped into taking on debt and now want us responsible people to cover their tab."

It's supposed to play on some sense of "fairness" and "I played by the rules, why do you get to just make new rules for yourself to succeed while I'm stuck in a worse life because I stuck to the original rules?" It works with a lot of people. Even I'm kinda bitter about it, but that doesn't mean I don't want people to get educated without going into debt. I just wish I was born 10 years later than I was so I could benefit too!! :P

I’m out here working and no one paid for my college but me (well, and …). Dammit, why are we still making people do this? Where can I sign up to help get next generations off to a good start without crippling debt?

That’s the problem though. They want none of their pennies to go to anyone else for anything. Loosely they might pay for someone else’s whatever if it’s their choice, or maybe if there’s groveling involved. They use mental excuses like “someone that’s lazy, doesn’t meet my made-up standards, doesn’t look, speak, or think like me”… or any other metric by which they subjectively view others to judge whether or not those others get their money. Yet somehow they expect roads, water, schools and all the other services that keep their town and state to miraculously keep functioning and not look like a decrepit village on a dirt road in a destitute nation.

Just waiting for the day. We're gonna have a lot of parties to throw in the next 5-10 years.

Because if we help them pay off those predatory loans, they're less desperate and less likely to accept a bullshit job to avoid starvation and homelessness. Can't have people having options, like those afforded to educated folks.

Don't accept his premise. It's completely incorrect. Statistics show that the vast majority of people getting student loan relief are not ultra wealthy, or even mildly wealthy, or Wealthy by any definition. Wealthy people don't need student loans. It's overwhelmingly people of lower middle class background or currently working in lower middle class jobs will receive student loan debt relief. People either just above just at or just below the poverty line.

Yes exactly!! We should stop giving billionaires massive tax breaks on their yachts and private jets give them to ordinary citizens for higher education.

The bigger private unis already have endowments big enough to coast on indefinitely. Cornell has $9B for a student body of 25k. Harvard has a $51B trust fund for a student body of 30k. MIT has $24B across 12k students.. When schools are this obscenely rich, tuition is a drop in the bucket.