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I believe you are using the word 'regressive' incorrectly then. Of course, just forgiving all student loans will disproportionately help some who don't need it

I believe you are using the word 'regressive' incorrectly then. Of course, just forgiving all student loans will disproportionately help some who don't need it. But in the U.S. we've decided against universal, public higher education for those who are qualified and thus inequities will occur no matter what happens. It's disproportionately the case that the wealthy get into schools with the best connections. Those tend to be private schools. Such is what happens when a society starts down the path toward Ayn Randian utopia.

tptacek 9y ago
It will disproportionately help the well-off, period; not just "some of them". The dominant distributional effect will be to shift dollars that could have been spent on services, tax relief, or debt relief for less-advantaged households to far-better-advantaged households. It's pretty simple to see why; it's the same reason why the mortgage interest deduction is regressive. I don't see how advocates for this policy can escape that logic without declaring math irrelevant. If we want to improve access to and financing of higher education in the US, we should radically expand Pell Grants, not write a 12-figure check to wealthy families.