Policy that ignores the real poor

This is Joseph.

I was reading Slow Boring and was struck by this passage about student loan forgiveness:

So while there are certainly lots of individual cases where debt relief sounds like an appealing idea, under the current circumstances the case for broad debt relief has become extremely weak. There’s basically no other situation in which progressives would talk themselves into this kind of idea, which is currently being propped up with some very odd math about the racial wealth gap.

It reminded me about the argument you always hear about gasoline taxes, even from most progressives, that they hurt the poor the most. Of course, the really poor do not own cars. For some reason the really, really poor are often neglected in the discourse. 

For example, a homeless person who does not own a car is not especially directly hurt by gas taxes. Now you might argue that there are indirect impacts on prices that a gasoline tax creates but, at some margin, there is always somebody hurt by tax relative to the benefits they receive. Goods would be clearly more expensive if we allowed the roads to collapse. 

In the same sense, bike lanes and good bus systems tend to help out the disadvantaged. Sure, there is a culture of entitled bicycle enthusiasts who are a bit annoying. But low cost transportation helps the very poor the most.

Similarly, the real contest with student loan forgiveness is whether other forms of support might be more effective. Food stamps, for example, probably have a larger and positive effect on the really poor as opposed to student loan debts.

Now, there is actually some evidence that higher education is harder to access for black students, leaving more debt and lower completion rates. This has real social justice issues. But I would argue that the best way to address this is some combination of broader reform (to prevent the most extreme student debt issues) and targeted support to encourage minority success. Now it is true such policies might come under legal fire, but that is hardly an excuse to them do a blanket policy. 

Now, full disclosure, I did have student loans, I paid them off, and I would much rather not have done so. I think high loans are a bad thing. But I am not sure that just forgiving loans whenever they get too high is a good policy. But, more importantly, it is not a policy that is aimed at the most disadvantaged. Look at the level of income challenges for people without a high school diploma, in Canada with a richer social safety net. These are likely the real poor (just look at unemployment and the jobs that they have). 

Similarly, one cannot go far wrong by improving transit services that the poorest and sickest among us need to use.