‘Widen the Racial Wealth Gap’: Economist Breaks Down Effects of Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness

An economics professor from Johns Hopkins University said during a Tuesday CNN appearance that President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt would make the racial wealth gap wider and make inflation worse.

“The issue is debt cancellation might reduce the racial wealth gap between two rich doctors, a rich black doctor and rich white doctor, but it actually widens the racial wealth gap overall, because disproportionately the people who hold student debt that went to college are white, and the 87% of Americans that didn’t go to college are disproportionately people of color,” Marc Goldwein, who also serves a senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told CNN host Poppy Harlow.

Goldwein offered alternatives to debt forgiveness that could address the “racial wealth gap.”

“A more targeted approach would focus on fixing income-driven repayments and more importantly on getting college affordability in the first place,” he said. “That means pushing colleges to accept more AP credits and transfers from community colleges, more no-frills degrees, cutting out some of the administrative waste. That’s what we really need to make college affordable, not send a $10,000 gift to people that already have, in many cases, already advanced degrees.”