Reads of the Week: Federal Student Loans, the Housing Crisis, and Vaccine Passport Bans
Each week, we’ll be featuring opinion pieces from the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. Do you dream of having bylines like these? Learn more about how the Writing Fellows Program can help boost your writing career!
The Federal Student Loan System Isn’t Worth It for Students or Taxpayers by Neetu Arnold (Summer 2020) in Newsweek
President Joe Biden’s administration still hasn’t decided whether it should forgive student loan debt. Despite Biden’s pledges on the campaign trail, the reported exclusion of debt forgiveness in the upcoming White House budget proposal means the proposition will likely not happen anytime soon. Biden himself seems reluctant to forgive student loans broadly, breaking with progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who fervently advocate for large-scale loan forgiveness. Meanwhile, conservative politicians have produced several alternative bills focused on efficiency and transparency in the federal student aid system.
But no simple policy of debt forgiveness will stop the same problems from happening again. It will only encourage more students to make poor decisions about taking on debt. Even improvements in the efficiency and transparency of the federal student loan system won’t fix all or even most of the problems it has caused for American higher education, American taxpayers and students themselves…
Help Homebuyers By Expanding Supply by Nolan Gray (Fall 2015) in City Journal
When you move to a place like California, you get used to joking about absurd housing costs with the folks back home. But this housing horror story recently came from the opposite end of the line. Family members in Lexington, Kentucky, report that a nearby listing immediately prompted a line of eager buyers and ended in a bidding war of cash offers. The home ultimately went for 20 percent above the asking price and 76 percent above the 2020 assessed value. All this in a town that once bragged about its affordability.
That’s just an anecdote, sure, but the data aren’t much more encouraging. According to the Case-Schiller U.S. Home Price Index, prices jumped by 13.2 percent over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. This price escalation has played out in high-cost states such as California, where prices rose by over 17 percent. Yet even in historically affordable states like Texas, homes are now selling for well above list price, with Austin experiencing the most acute year-over-year home-price increases in the US…
In a Rush To Ban Vaccine Passports, Texas Is Violating Private Property Rights by Billy Binion (Spring 2018) in Reason
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has positioned himself as more than a Republican, but as a true conservative. It was with that framing that the leader of the Lone Star State signed a law to ban private businesses from setting their own terms of service when it comes to helping customers. “Texas is open 100 percent,” Abbott said in a clip posted to Twitter. “And we want to make sure that you have the freedom to go where you want without limits.”
He will not extend that same freedom of association to individual actors who have their own enterprises…