The point I’m trying to make against the “my tax dollars” folks is that WE (the students) pay taxes too. Before I went to college I was making $30k. Now I’m making $100k. So I pay about $20k taxes in a year from withholding (not counting sales/property tax).

So 1: In most cases, unless you flame out or picked a dead end / passion career, your income goes up after college, thus the government gets more tax revenue.

2. If I got the $10k loan forgiveness (which would have actually stopped at 7k for me specifically) that is still only half or less of what I pay in taxes in a year. Give it a 5 year total of 100k in tax revenue and 7k would have been literally 7% of my own taxes across 5 years. YOUR tax dollars didn’t have to do anything. And if you want to say “well it all goes in a pool, it’s not just your tax dollars” then that was my argument about servers and OT not having tax. So now MY tax dollars are being stretched even further, while you get bonus income that I can’t possibly achieve because I’m salary (or commission, or my work doesn’t allow OT, or whatever reason).

If the government was smart it would be investing in its citizens. I got a full ride thru community college from government programs, and Pell through my bachelors. It probably took the government 1 year to recoup all its money and now it enjoys significantly boosted tax revenue from me. And because I’m not the “me me me” type like some of yall, the same could be said for trade/vocational school too.