I mean, arguably this is the issue with corporate bailouts— executives can take giant risks knowing that they'll reap the upside but be rescued on the public di

I mean, arguably this is the issue with corporate bailouts— executives can take giant risks knowing that they'll reap the upside but be rescued on the public dime if it goes south and they can convince us all that they're too big to fail and "no one saw it coming." (Even the one bank that was allowed to fail—Bear Stearns—seem to have had the execs do pretty all right by themselves: https://www.businessinsider.com/bear-stearns-where-are-they-now-2012-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/bear-stearns-where-are-they-...) I think in general I'm +0 on debt forgiveness for individuals. But it's not fair to speculate about the behaviours it would induce when we can observe already what related behaviours very much already induce. IMO the real losers in a debt-forgiveness scenario are the "responsible" ones who avoided doing something beneficial in order to not be overstretched— or maybe were even prevented from taking on debt by structural/classist barriers around credit-worthiness, job status, etc. For example, someone who now makes less money because they went to the cheaper state college, and has lived a simpler life afterward because they diligently paid it off every month. This person could be understood for feeling a bit crummy if they look over and a former peer who traveled far away for school, lived extravagantly, and rolled the debt forward for years now enjoys having it disappear in a poof.