Blanket student loan forgiveness is redistributing wealth upward

[Act_of_Reparation]

131. I'm suggesting quite a few things.

The most germane, I suppose, is that graduate school is expensive, and getting through it is more difficult for low-income students than middle and upper class students. This creates a disparity in the graduate student body which, in turn leads to a disparity in our pool of academics. I shouldn't have to explain why diversity in academics is important, but just in case it bears repeating: diversity widens perspective. We, as a society, need underrepresented peoples in medicine, sciences, and social sciences, as this where our health and public policy decisions ultimately originate. Underrepresented people need a voice at that table, and locking them out for financial reasons is harmful to them.

For a concrete example, let's look at medicine and how it has failed underrepresented patients. There's piles and piles of research showing black patients experience worse health outcomes than white counterparts, in part because they are treated by doctors who do not understand their lived experiences and are consequently less empathetic towards them. It could be reasonably argued that it would be better for black folks if there were more black folks in medicine. We should therefore encourage more black people to enroll in medical school, and one way to do that is to remove some, if not all, of the financial burden associated with it.

I'll leave you with this: my institution has cooperative relationships with clinics in the poorest, most remove regions of my state. We work with a guy, a pediatric hematologist/oncologist. He treats kids with bleeding disorders, and anyone with childhood cancer. He's the only such specialist in a three-county radius. He has patients -- all of them extremely low-income -- who have drive as far as three hours one-way to visit his office.

That's not acceptable. I think if you ask any of these patients' parents what they'd rather have, a slightly lower tax burden or lifesaving pediatric care within reasonable driving distance, I think they're gonna go with the doctors.