 I wanna take a look at an article published in NPR by Chris Arnold, who states what I think is pretty obvious. Canceling student loan debt would be great for the economy. Now, this isn't the first article that features an economist that talks about the benefits of student loan debt cancellation. I believe it was MarketWatch that talked about this previously, but I mean, this is something that is obvious. If you eliminate that huge monthly payment that a lot of millennials have, of course that increases their purchasing power and as I've stated before, I would love to stimulate the economy and buy more things if I didn't have to worry about this student loan debt that I currently can't foresee ever paying off. Like a lot of us take on this debt expecting to never pay it off and to have it until the day we die. And that means that we're going to have to make decisions. Like if you are a millennial, you may not be able to purchase a car or a house because you have what is basically a monthly payment that you will have forever that is as high as some mortgages. It's just, it's unacceptable that our generation doesn't have the luxury of affordable college that the previous generation had. So of course, economists are seeing that this would be beneficial and they're talking about it. So let's get to the article here. Presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders want to tear up your student loans and set you financially free. That's popular among voters, especially those struggling to pay off this debt. Other Democratic candidates have more modest plans but economists say the dramatic proposals from Sanders and Warren to free millions of Americans from the burden of student debt could boost the economy in significant ways and help combat income inequality. Warren would forgive up to 50,000 for most people. Sanders would go further with total loan forgiveness but with these plans, having a price tag north of one trillion such legislation would come with plenty of risks. The reason debt forgiveness could have a big impact on the overall economy is that a generation of Americans is making major life decisions differently because of student loans. In the short term, it would be very positive for the housing market says Lawrence Yoon, the National Association of Realtors Chief Economist. He says his group surveys show that student debt has people delaying home ownership by five to seven years. The effects would go beyond the housing market. William Foster is a vice president with Moody's which just had a report on student debt forgiveness. There have been some estimates that US real GDP could be boosted on average by 86 billion to 108 billion per year, which is quite a bit he says. That's if you had total loan forgiveness. Foster says it wouldn't have to be total forgiveness to see significant results. And he says it could also help address rising income inequality. Foster says most of these loans are from the federal government and it could forgive them but that would mean giving up the 85 billion in annual revenue it's currently collecting on these loans. And he says that would result in a wider fiscal deficit. Now to put this into perspective for you, this is not some far left activist economist. This is someone with a relatively conservative estimate about the impact that this would have on the economy because some of the risks that he talks about here they're not even applicable to both Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren's plans. So he talks about a possible moral hazard where if we cancel student loan debt for this generation, then future generations are going to take on more student loan debt because they're going to expect their loans to be canceled one day too. Except the problem with that being a risk is that both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are proposing free college. So we're not just going to solve this problem for the current generation with student loans. We're going to make this a non-issue moving forward. Now on top of that he is correct that the student government does hold a lot of these loans. Now yes, that will mean that they will be losing some revenue if they choose to cancel this. And he argues that they'd likely have to raise taxes to make up for that lost revenue, which means that working class people would likely have to pay higher taxes and they'd be effectively subsidizing the student loan debt cancellation of high income borrowers like doctors and lawyers. But what Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are proposing is to raise taxes on elites, not working class Americans to pay for things like student loan debt cancellation. So even the pitfalls that he brings up are not applicable to these plans. The benefits are enormous. Canceling student loan debt would lead to a huge boost because of course, if you have more money you are going to spend that money. Unlike rich people, when working class Americans have money in their pockets, they spend it. But rich people, what do they do? They sit on that money, it doesn't get reinvested back into the economy. So that's why trickle down doesn't work. But if you truly want the economy to grow, you have to make sure that we put money in the hands of working class Americans. Because increasing their purchasing power is better for everyone. We can actually buy the products that capitalists produce. So if capitalists want us to buy the shit they make then they have to acknowledge that we need more purchasing power. Now they're already cutting our wages. They're already taking away retirement options. So this is really the least that they can do to make sure that we get a little bit of a break. You've got to go further but this would obviously be huge. And not to mention the mental relief that this would yield to a lot of people who are experiencing a lot of stress because having a lot of debt, I mean that's incredibly stressful. I feel the stress of having a lot of debt. And when I think about it, it kind of freaks me out because I mean, that's a lot of money to owe and a huge monthly payment that a lot of us again don't really foresee ever paying off. So these milk toast solutions that centrists come up with like Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg of like capping the percentage that you're paying each month, that's not good enough. Just cancel it. And Elizabeth Warren's plan, even though I credit her for pushing Bernie Sanders to do better here, her plan is not good enough. Just cancel it all because whichever way you choose to proceed here, if you go about this legislatively, then let's say you propose a bill and you want to cancel 50% of student loans. Well, when you end up finishing negotiations, you're going to come away canceling like 25%. So if you don't go into the negotiations saying I want to cancel 100% of student loans, you're not going to get what you want, right? So aim high and try to get the best that you can get. Don't undercut yourself before negotiations even begin. But still, Elizabeth Warren does get credit from me for proposing student loan debt cancellation because few candidates are even talking about this. Wayne Massam is actually the first to talk about this, but Bernie Sanders, he just, he took that policy and made it better. And of course, this is what we need to do. This is why young people disproportionately support Bernie Sanders enthusiastically so because he's the only one that doesn't just care about us, but who has a plan that really would grow the economy in a substantial way.