“It’s not fair,” I said to my mother about my older brother being able to do something (I can’t remember what) that I wasn’t allowed to do. I was about 7 and he 14, so it’s understandable to an adult that he was allowed to do more than me. But my mother’s first response was, “Life isn’t fair.” This didn’t appease me at all, so she added, “When he was your age we didn’t have television.” Addicted as I was (and am) to TV, that made me feel better.
The benefits we receive in life often depend on luck and have nothing to do with fairness. There’s no fairness in the fact that some people are born into rich families, or have very good looks, or artistic ability, or mathematical intelligence, or athletic prowess. My mother was right, life isn’t fair.
Some of the unfairness concerns timing. People who graduated during the Great Recession of 2008-2009 were still disadvantaged in their career attainment twelve years later compared to those who graduated either before or considerably after the recession.
Laws regarding corporations create unfairness, too. Owners of corporations have limited liability, so they can retain all their non-corporate wealth while the corporation goes bankrupt, leaving behind disappointed creditors and toxic waste.
We all suffer also from the misdeeds of prior generations. People whose families have lived for generations by the seaside will need to move as the sea rises because past generations have put too much CO2 into the atmosphere.
On the other hand, we also benefit from the activities of past generations. We have medical knowledge that enables people to live longer and healthier lives. We have the ability to travel by train, car, and plane. We have the internet for amusement and scholarship. (Imagine when people had to actually go to the library to get information!)
Changes in tax laws can also help or hurt a person. For two years I didn’t have to pay any federal income tax because a law from the Reagan era exempted workers from the income they earned overseas if they worked there more than 330 days but not more than two years. I taught in Scotland for a year, which included parts of two tax years. Subtracting my Scottish income from my taxable income made me too poor to pay federal income taxes in either year.
Rich people received a windfall from the tax bill passed during the Trump administration, but now may have to curtail tax cheating because the IRS workforce will soon increase. But, economists predict, the capture of national wealth by the captains of finance will continue to exceed the earnings of those who do the actual work that makes investments profitable.
Those who now have student loan debt will receive up to $20,000 in debt relief that was unavailable to prior student debtors, many of whom struggled to pay off their loans. Is this unfair? Yes, it’s as unfair as any of the other examples cited above. It’s just another example of life in general being unfair. But it’s not unfair to baby boomers, because we went to public universities when they were well supported by the states. Student debt today results primarily from the reduction of state support for higher education.
Some people claim that the reduction of college-loan debt is unfair to those who never attended college. But there are government programs at the federal level and in many states for apprenticeships in such fields as manufacturing, construction, health care, IT, cosmetology, and transportation. If students in these programs are nevertheless burdened by significant student loan debt, they should be included in loan forgiveness to reduce the unfairness.
The longer-term solution is for the federal government to step in where the states have faltered regarding both education and training. Forgiving some loan debt is one way of doing this. A better way is for the federal government to give the states block grants with specifications for their use, targeting not only higher education but also training of all sorts. States would then support needed programs well enough to make it unnecessary for students at universities and those in training programs to take out significant loans in the first place.
People for whom such programs come too late shouldn’t complain. First, a sure way to make your own life miserable is to be envious of others and consider yourself a victim. In addition, many of those who paid off their loans are benefitting from other government programs, such as tax deductions for mortgage interest. Most benefit also from continuing subsidies for the use of their cars (a topic for another occasion), and almost everyone benefits from better healthcare than previous generations. Finally, (let’s not forget) we have TV.
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