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You Purchase it, You Pay for it

A radical concept: if you take out a loan, you have to pay it off. 

Well, it’s a radical concept to the far-left presidential candidates anyway. Bernie Sanders came out swinging this morning on Twitter, arguing that all 1.6 trillion dollars of student debt in the U.S. should be forgiven.

One of my personal favorites:
 There's quite a bit to unpack in this gem of a tweet, so let's dig right into it.

Yes, I am free. I'm free even if I graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. The same way that I'm free when I go to the grocery store and buy a candy bar for a dollar. When I make purchases by my own free-will, by definition, I am free. Even if those purchases put me in a huge amount of debt. 

 When you are free, you have the ability to make decisions for yourself. You don't have freedom from the consequences of those actions.

I am still free even if my debt prevents me from "pursuing my dream". When you voluntarily incur a debt, you are responsible for the consequences that accompany the payment of that debt.

Additionally, college is supposed to be a financial investment. Those with the "dream" of becoming doctors pay the high price tag for medical school knowing that their investment will be profitable and they will easily be able to pay off their debt. If you "don't make enough to cover student loan payments", maybe you should have thought about that before you made a poor investment by going to a university that you cannot afford and majoring in a subject that doesn't pay.

I will graduate with my bachelor's with no debt. I chose to attend a cheap university and got the vast majority of my tuition and room and board paid for via scholarships, even if it meant that I wouldn't be attending my "dream school". Because of this, it irks me when college students act as if they had no option other than to attend a university that cost them $200,000+. A significant portion of college students made financially responsible decisions similar to mine. Should students like this be punished and forced to subsidize the education of those who made a careless investment?

Bernie closes out this masterpiece of a tweet by proclaiming, "there is no freedom without economic freedom". This seems ironic coming from a socialist, but when Bernie says economic freedom he isn't talking about the freedom to use the products of your labor however you please. He means freedom from the consequences of your actions. A type of freedom that is only possible if the government interferes with somebody else's actual economic freedom by forcing them to use their property to pay for a debt that they didn't sign on to.

If you purchased it, pay for it. It's not that complicated.






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