Student loan forgiveness is a policy that seems to have a life of its own. The Obama administration — which, as a reminder, has been gone since 2017 — is behind modern student loan forgiveness, which has steadily transformed and grown in the years since. (The most recent efforts on this front took place last fall). primary. And, remember, the declaration of a national health emergency has become reason enough to simply halt payments — not forgive, but defer payments and freeze interest rates — on student loans.

All of this happened despite the fact that loan forgiveness is a policy in search of a problem. This does not correct the inequality lamented by the left because the better-off benefit disproportionately from forgiveness. So much for a distributional argument. Nor does it improve the level of education or access to higher education. These problems belong to the past and are “swallowed up” in the perspective of a policy of forgiveness. So no argument based on improving educational attainment. And that does not improve the functioning of financial markets; there is no need to insist on the efficiency of financial markets.

Indeed, the argument has always been the opposite: student loan forgiveness creates the expectation of forgiveness for future borrowers. This induces prospective students to borrow too much, get into financial trouble, harm their individual well-being, and reduce the overall functioning of the market. This is the kind of argument soulless economy types (eg, me) make. And the typical response is something like, “Yeah, that’s right. Why don’t you go back to your Eakinomics and find a real problem? »

So I’m (sort of) thrilled to report that CNBC has a story that says, “Americans think it’s more likely that some or all of the student debt will be forgiven than that the bills will resume in three months, according to a CNBC + Acorns Invest in You student loan survey. Specifically: “Only 29% of respondents ranked resuming student loans in the spring as the most likely outcome. More than a quarter believe the situation the pause is most likely to extend beyond May, while 14% of people expect full loan forgiveness and 28% expect cancellation.

It’s amazing, especially considering that over 40% expect at least one cancellation/forgiveness, while just over a quarter expect people to pay at all. Far from being a hypothetical problem, the expectation of future forgiveness is spreading like a pandemic.