The argument against student loan forgiveness is that there are better ways to spend the money, like on universal childcare, than on people with college degrees. Basically any social program you can think of will give a higher return to society. The only reason to support student loan forgiveness over these other programs is for votes.
Any solution to a problem that's existed in the past is going to be unfair to those who had the problem in the past. That can't be an argument against doing something now. Some blue collar workers could turn around and use the improved system to go back and get degrees, and an improved economy from less people in debt will indirectly help others.
didn’t feel like they could afford the loans, so went to work instead.
That's me, I did that. If I'm what's stopping it I don't think loans for horrible interest rates should be given to a jobless teenager and if you took that risk that's too bad you didn't make better investment decisions. Those loans did more harm than good and canceling them now will help reverse that a bit.
"You can only help people if everyone gets the exact same amount of help", is the dumbest argument on the planet. And I'd challenge you're premise that blue collar works are paying for white collar workers to go to school. With progressive taxation, really it is upper middle class and wealthy people that are paying for that school regardless of education background. Very little of that money is coming from the blue collar workers that aren't brining in a lot of money. If $2 of Joe the cashiers taxes go to paying for education but $20,000 of random rich guys taxes go to bettering education, I really don't think that is such an unfair system like you make it seem. The lack of a debt burden on a large subset of society ends up benefitting everyone, including the janitor or cashier.
Fortunately everybody's mind keeps jumping from one body to the next, like in the Infinite Hotel problem, so as to escape the bodies being thrashed by the trolley.
“Unfortunately, due to a system malfunction that is the direct result of safety deficiencies and cost cutting measures that place immense pressure on overworked frontline employees to pay lip service to safety but cut corners thanks to metrics pressures designed by management, the trolley went out of control, killing several people. We have sacked some unimportant people as scapegoats to appease the public and will conduct an internal investigation that will result in shuffling things around, some new titles and safety posters, but no real change. Should this be insufficient and the event not blow over quickly we will quietly change our name to something equally as forgettable as the previous one and the public will conveniently forget about us in short order.”
That’s how you solve a trolley delimma. Signed, Management.