U.S. To Forgive at Least $108B in Student Debt in Coming Years
The most earnest attempts to help are again struck down by the law of unintended consequences.<p>From the article, for the 8 million people currently in default the average outstanding balance is &lt; $10,000.  For the people enrolled in the income-based repayment plan the average outstanding balance is &gt; $67,000.  So it seems if the marginal cost of borrowing more is 0, people are going to borrow more.<p>I think the real story is that it&#x27;s difficult to have government subsidies for students without putting some form of price controls on the schools.  What we see in practice is that the subsidies cost the government (which is fine -- that&#x27;s what a subsidy is) but the value is being captured by the school, not the student.