Mike Rowe talks with Justin Hart about the government’s response to covid.
The Administration last extended the [student-loan-repayment] moratorium through December when it announced its student loan write-off in August. Few borrowers needed it. The unemployment rate among college grads (1.9%) is similar to pre-pandemic levels. A Federal Reserve study in May found that “borrowers have seen their financial positions improve during the pandemic,” owing in part to generous government transfer payments, including $3,600 child tax credits and $3,200 in stimulus checks. Delinquency rates on auto loans and credit cards are below pre-pandemic levels.
The two-and-a-half-year pause has saved the average borrower $400 a month, which many have saved, invested or used to pay off higher-yielding debt. Yet it has also cost taxpayers $155 billion to date since interest isn’t accruing on student debt that Uncle Sam is financing with debt that carries increasing interest rates. This latest extension would start in January, and if the litigation isn’t ended by June 30 payments would be delayed for another 60 days after that. This could cost another $40 billion.
None of this money has been appropriated by Congress. The Administration cites the same legal justification—the 2003 Heroes Act—for extending the payment moratorium as it has for canceling debt outright. It claims the law allows the Education Secretary to waive any regulatory or statutory provision related to the federal student aid program during a national emergency.
Also decrying the opportunistic exploitation of covid ’emergency’ powers is Elizabeth Nolan Brown.
Jeffrey Tucker justifiably admires Dr. Joseph Ladapo.
David Henderson laments the damage done to society by covid hysteria and lockdowns.
Vinay Prasad tweets: (HT Martin Kulldorff)
Marty [Makary] is right; he [Fauci] funded 0 RCTs [randomized control trials] of masking; 0 of masking kids; 0 of bivalent boosters, etc. most of his policy recommendations lack data. Bizarre to be so confident and claim you are science itself.
James Harrigan and Antony Davies ponder the war on poverty. Here’s their conclusion:
We fought a war on poverty in the United States, and the bureaucracy won. Yet, poverty in the United States is not extreme poverty, not by a long shot. And extreme poverty in the rest of the world is vanishing, bit by bit, day by day. And for that, we have economic freedom to thank.
Scott Lincicome reports on the continuing economic damage done by protectionism.
John Stossel looks back on the Plymouth pilgrims’ failed experiment with socialism.
