It's hard to imagine a worse policy. It penalizes responsible behavior while doing nothing at all to address the root causes. Are we stopping making more of these loans? Of course not!
No it doesn't. That is a ridiculous thing to say.
The people who received the cancellation have been paying on their loans for either 10, 20, or 25 years (depending on the degree type).
Someone who received public loans to attend university and who spent 10, 20, or 25 years paying them off at which point the rest was cancelled isn't really irresponsible.
Aid should be merit-based. Both statistically and in my experience growing up at average and poor public schools <5% of the population is gifted and talented at the level where going to college would be a value gain for both them and society. Giving ~50% of youth a perverse incentive towards higher ed is obviously turning out to be destructive for both them and the institutions.
• Gets people talking about higher education payments.
• Eases the financial burden of higher education for some. It should be all, but this is still objectively better than none, provisionally.
• Provides good publicity for the political party more inclined to do anything about the root causes (Democrats).
This is not only illegal but morally wrong, though.
If your city mayors’ initiatives improve your local library, this will make people who visit the library like the mayor more. This doesn’t make improving the library immoral or unethical.