It is well understood that the incidence of defaults on college debt is higher on people with smaller loans outstanding. These are marginally attached students to begin with. Remember that 40% of students who start college do not finish.
Yet, contrast this with where the “noise” is coming from on “free college” and the “college loan crisis.”
We have yet another example of a generally wealthy and elite population looking for goodies at the expense of the less well-off. The race for regressive redistribution continues, while people smugly celebrate the opposite. Listening to the term “free college” is like hearing nails on a chalkboard – not just for the economic challenge of it, but for the proud regressive redistribution that supposedly “progressive” policy advocates are calling for.
We can examine calls for “free health care” with the same lens as well.
There is a rich survey literature out there demonstrating that when Americans are asked if they want ‘free goodies’ from their government, they voraciously lap up the idea. When surveys ask them to put even a little skin into that game, support drops to statistical noise levels. Shocker. Not.
