Forget the First 100 Days — Biden Should Cancel All Student Debt on Day One

You really want to restore the soul of the nation? Free everyone of their six-figure albatross.

Michael Arceneaux
LEVEL

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President- elect Joe Biden answer questions from the press at the Queen in Wilmington, DE on November 10, 2020.
Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.

As much as I have talked about my private student loans over the course of two books and countless articles, you’d think I would be a lot happier about finally reading the words, “Congratulations! Your private student loan is paid in full.”

Up until 2020, there hadn’t been a single year in which the burden of the debt attached to those loans didn’t reduce me to anger and tears of frustration at least once. In several of those years, those moments took place on multiple occasions — and were followed by dark, depressive periods. I could not have predicted that the economy I was going to graduate into in the late 2000s would make financial circumstances even more volatile. Nor could I have foreseen that the lender would be as mean and merciless as legally allowed.

All I knew was that I wanted to have the kind of opportunities usually enjoyed by people who often don’t know how good they have it. To not have my destiny determined by the socioeconomic class I was born into. I wish…

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Michael Arceneaux
LEVEL

New York Times bestselling author of “I Can’t Date Jesus” and “I Don’t Want To Die Poor.”