The Prodigal Co-ed
“I sacrificed hard to finance my college education. I worked multiple jobs and scrapped and saved to pay tuition. Debt forgiveness spits in the face of my hard work. It’s not fair to forgive student debt when I worked so hard to pay mine off.”
This is the argument. Or really the primary one I hear from those who oppose debt forgiveness. It’s not solely a grievance against the fiscal onus it implies for taxpayers. It is, at its core, what I would say is actually a more emotionally-driven compliant. It’s a weird form of jealousy. It’s also a feeling I totally understand. This is a natural reaction, probably the most natural reaction for those who worked for years to finance their education or repay their student debt.
On a simpler level, it’s probably the exact same feeling I’ve had during pretty much any group project ever. In one of my Comms GEs in college, I spent more than 40 hours putting together an entire presentation on media literacy theory for our final because none of my assigned classmates were interested in contributing or even showing up for our study sessions. On the day of the final I showed up, exhausted, with wet hair, to deliver our oral presentation. I stood beside floundering group mates who had not studied or contributed and feebly improvised their way through their portion of the presentation. I didn’t want to throw them under the bus directly, but I certainly didn’t rescue them. I let them fail. I felt justified. Afterward, the professor, approached me and said “You did that whole project by yourself, didn’t you?” I admitted I did, and some of my frustration gave way to pride.
The point is, I understand, or at least I think I have an inkling of what it feels like to be hardworking and judge those who, from my perspective, are freeloading.
The debate over student debt forgiveness is one I follow only lightly. I’m squarely undecided on student debt forgiveness, so my mind is certainly not rigid on any of this. I have heard convincing arguments from those pro- and anti-, and as a practice I can debate them both. But if there’s one constant, it’s that the debate never fails to reminds me of the biblical story of the Prodigal Son. Every time, I hear whispers of this parable, like a hum under the conversation.
The short story as I understand it is the “responsible” son is pissed and jealous when his rascal brother is welcomed home with a feast and open arms after squandering his money. The good son is given no such feast or celebration, even though he’s done everything right, taken all the right steps. He feels like his “lazy” brother’s love and forgiveness is unearned while he’s worked hard to do right. But here comes lil bro, rewarded unjustly when he should still be in debt. How dare he. And how dare their Father for treating them so unfairly in respect to their behavior and work ethic.
I think I understand the hesitancies to cancel student debt. What other debts will the government cover? Why just for education and not for medical debt? How will the debt payments be funded? How will that impact individual taxes? At what point does government subsidy stop?
Is getting into debt for education more worthy than say, getting into debt for buying a home? People spend more than the recommended 28% of their income on housing all the time, and buy homes they can’t really afford (cue subprime mortgage crisis), and find themselves with a house that feels more a burden that a blessing. And lenders have been bit irresponsible in letting people move beyond what they know is an unreasonable loan given debt-to income-ratio of some borrowers. But how do you take that bet for education? What is a “reasonable” amount of education?
Of course, this parable is not the perfect complete metaphor for student debt cancellation. Because one son was described as a sinner, whose bad fortune could partially be attributed to his own bad choices.
But in modern times, the “lazy” student here is often maybe not so lazy, but moreso lacks a lot of the privileges available to white, middle- to upper-class households and prospective students. The “lazy” student maybe has endured a lot of challenges that prevented them from going to college, financially, emotionally, and otherwise. They probably don’t have parents, like I had, who co-signed on a credit card at age 18 so I could start building credit even before college. These are families who maybe don’t even know they need credit. They don’t have parents, like I did, with graduate degrees, who knew the system and pushed us toward the extracurriculars we’d need to be competitive candidates. Who were blessed with the discretionary time to drive us to practice tests for the ACTs, and got us enrolled in good schools with the right teachers. And, also, how can we be so certain the “lazy” student isn’t also working two jobs, and yet even still can’t afford tuition and housing for a 4-year degree? (This is a whole ‘nother problem that needs to be solved).
A few years ago on This American Life I heard a sociologist talking about a super interesting phenomenon detailing how Americans view hard work vs luck.
When we are successful, we attribute it to our own hard work. When we are unsuccessful, we shrug and blame bad luck. It’s the total inverse for the grace and credit we show others, believing any of their success can only be attributed to luck, but their failure is a result of poor behavior and life choices.
In the matter of our own success, we don’t even consider ideas of fortune or dumb luck or grace. We think it’s 100% our own sole effort. Which is a major blind spot that makes it hard for us to extend grace to others who just must not be working hard enough. This bootstrapped-to-wealth philosophy is one America salivates over, and while this is a story that does occasionally play out, the reality and frequency with which it happens paints a quite different picture.
The indisputable fact remains: there are hard workers who are poor just as their are hard workers who are rich. We need a massive redefining of what hard work means and who qualifies as a hard worker. Proto-prog-mo Hugh Nibley said:
“An idler in the Lord’s book is one who is not working for the building up of the kingdom of God on earth and the establishment of Zion, no matter how hard he may be working to satisfy his own greed. Latter-day Saints prefer to ignore that distinction as they repeat a favorite maxim of their own invention, that the idler shall not eat the bread or wear the clothing of the laborer. And what an ingenious argument they make of it! [I] pointed out to [the Saints] that the ancient teaching that the idler shall not eat the bread of the laborers has always meant that the idle rich shall not eat the bread of the laboring poor, as they always have. ‘To serve the classes that are living on them,’ Brigham Young wrote, ‘the poor, the laboring men and women are toiling, working their lives out to earn that which will keep a little life in them. Is this equality? No! What is going to be done? The Latter-day Saints will never accomplish their mission until this inequality shall cease from the earth.’ [But Saints] have always been (mis)taught that the idle poor should not eat the bread of the laboring rich, because it is perfectly obvious that a poor man has not worked as hard as a rich man.”
If you love Jeffrey R. Holland like I do you might remember his 2015 address called The Other Prodigal. I read it and likened it to the way we treat others who maybe have less that us, or at least who have less good choices available to them.
“This [good] son is not so much angry that the other has come home as he is angry that his parents are so happy about it. Feeling unappreciated and perhaps more than a little self-pity, this dutiful son—and he is wonderfully dutiful—forgets for a moment that he has never had to know filth or despair, fear or self-loathing. He forgets for a moment that every calf on the ranch is already his and so are all the robes in the closet and every ring in the drawer. He forgets for a moment that his faithfulness has been and always will be rewarded.
No, he who has virtually everything, and who has in his hardworking, wonderful way earned it, lacks the one thing that might make him the complete man of the Lord he nearly is. He has yet to come to the compassion and mercy, the charitable breadth of vision to see that this is not a rival returning. It is his brother. One who has heretofore presumably been very happy with his life and content with his good fortune suddenly feels very unhappy simply because another has had some good fortune as well.
Who is it that whispers so subtly in our ear that a gift given to another somehow diminishes the blessings we have received? Who makes us feel that if God is smiling on another, then He surely must somehow be frowning on us? You and I both know who does this.”
I don’t claim to understand everything about taxation and fiscal policy, and how a tax like this would work to actually pay the debt for students. I do believe in trying to be a follower of JC, so often really try to examine it in the light of WWJD? The answer here is, I don’t presume to know. He was a political radical (and if you share my Mormon faith, our beloved prophet of the restoration was a political radical, too).
So this isn’t about the right answer. Instead, this is a call for us to examine our emotions and rid ourselves of any devilish jealousy and to 1)assume the best about others and 2)celebrate their successes.
We always talk about mourning with those who mourn, which is 100% a Christlike virtue, but I think we need to work a little bit harder to rejoice with the hard work, good fortune—and even sometimes dumb luck—of others.