by Doug Casey, Casey Research:

Warren is, of course, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts. She’s also running for president.

And like many fellow Democrats, she’s full of wacky ideas. Most recently, she made waves by saying she wants to forgive more than $1 trillion worth of student loans if she becomes president. She also wants to issue reparations to African Americans, which could also cost trillions.

These sorts of ideas used to be considered extreme. A candidate would get laughed out of the race for suggesting them. But those days are over.

A recent poll found that just 27% of Americans oppose Warren’s debt forgiveness plan. As for reparations? Well, fellow Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris both support the idea.

Of course, not everyone’s a fan of these ideas. Doug Casey is one of those people. Below, Doug tells me why these ideas are not only ridiculous but destructive. He also tells me why he thinks Warren is part of a much bigger problem.

Justin: Doug, what do you make of Elizabeth Warren’s plan to forgive student loans? Surely, student loans are a major problem.

But I’m not sure this is the best solution. What do you think?

Doug: Well, it makes perverse sense that she’d suggest something like this. After all, a new Democratic presidential candidate enters the race every day now. I think we’re up to 22 candidates now. But who’s counting?

They seem to be competing with each other in an actual freak show. The Evil Party is trotting out its most bizarre nomenklatura, each trying to outdo the other in being socialist, black, queer, transgender friendly, or a professional female. By which I mean a female who parades as a female for a living. They’re vying over who has the most outlandish, rabid and nonsensical ideas about how they’re going to transform the very nature of what’s left of the United States.

Meanwhile, the Stupid Party, the right wing of the Demopublicans, populated by neocons, has-beens, and assorted non-entities, seems mainly interested in hyping the stock market with phony money, and looking for a major war somewhere in the world.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) kind of set the tone for all this. It amazes me that a 29-year-old Puerto Rican bartender comes from out of nowhere, apparently as a result of an actual casting call, and now everybody in the country takes her ideas seriously.

Perhaps the most stupid of her ideas is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). This basically amounts to unlimited printing of dollars.

All these other candidates have to call her bet, raise it, and wait for the next player to reraise. They all have some signature goofball idea at this point.

Justin: Or two goofy ideas in the case of Elizabeth Warren.

Doug: Right. Let’s start with the notion of forgiving student debt.

The idea of everybody going to college should be a non-starter. Instead it’s being sold as some kind of human right. In today’s world, it only extends adolescence, in a Petri dish where impressionable kids are indoctrinated by their Marxist-leaning profs. Students incubate in the fetid academic womb for four years. I understand – it can be fun. Drink, party, do drugs, get laid, sleep in, go to the gym. Repeat daily. Don’t worry about the cost, because it’s financed on the Never-Never plan. Sweet.

Some people hang around another eight or even ten years. They become perpetual students and generally don’t learn things that have actual value in the real world. Soft pseudo studies like sociology, political science, psych, gender studies, or English come to mind. I won’t even mention economics, where you not only learn nothing of value from Keynesians, but most likely the opposite of the truth. You don’t have to even think about your loans till you’re out. Then maybe get some kind of government employment to have them forgiven, or further deferred. Great way to waste your life at public expense. With the approval of both your parents and society.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in these subjects, you can learn far more by reading independently, quite frankly. But knowledge isn’t the object with this game. It’s a credential, and credentialism is a fraud. I can’t even find my diploma from Georgetown. I only wish I’d had good counsel in high school. I wouldn’t have misallocated four years of time and a lot of money that way. But today the mistake of college is far, far worse than it was in the ’60s.

There’s much more I can say about education. But there’s absolutely no reason why there should be $1.5 trillion worth of student loans outstanding. It’s not a sign of a well-educated country. It’s evidence of stupidity and corruption.

The fact is that if you’re worth anything, you educate yourself. Sitting in a classroom for six hours a day listening to professors drone on doesn’t constitute an education, especially today when almost all of the professors are cultural Marxists. College doesn’t just present zero value today. It offers negative value.

Having said that, I hasten to make an exception for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) degrees. For those subjects, it’s very helpful to learn in a formal structured environment, where labs are available.

The vast majority of people shouldn’t go to college. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have marched off to college. I would have used that money and time to do something much more productive, interesting, and fun than college.

But getting back to Elizabeth Warren. Forgiving student loans would be disastrous. First of all because it would encourage more kids to go to college.

Second, forgiving loans shields people from the idea that their actions have consequences. These people wanted to go to college to get a piece of vellum. They borrowed money for it. They’ve found it’s of very little value. Now, they want somebody else to pay the consequences. I say, Tough! It’s now time to pay the piper.

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