Dorf! Lessons in Self-Awareness

Jeffery Dorfman-Via Forbes

From time to time, a publication founded by a funny-faced multi-millionaire publishes something so tone-deaf and utterly detached from reality, that I feel a visceral need to subject the author to champagne-boarding until they admit supply-side economics is bunk.  The publication I speak of is none other than Forbes.  Today’s author is Jeffrey Dorfman P.H.D. and he explains to us why the student debt crisis is no biggie because people also owe auto loans.

The purported crisis of mounting student loan debt is one of the most overhyped problems of this young century. We were treated to thousands of news stories when student loan debt went above $1 trillion in total, more as it continued to rise, and a growing avalanche of stories designed to create sympathy for these poor indebted college graduates (and drop-outs). Yet, auto loan debt in the U.S. has now reached $1.1 trillion, up 30 percent from its pre-recession peak, without a similar mountain of press warning of the imminent catastrophe. This divergence in media coverage and analysis tells us much about how the student debt crisis is more manufactured than real.

Don’t worry everybody, even though these are two separate loans, for two separate purposes, with limited overlap, the comparison is still great.

The average college graduate who has any student loan debt graduates with between $25,000 and $30,000 in student loan debt. On a standard ten year repayment schedule, this means a monthly payment in the range of $280 to $330 per month. The average new car loan in the second quarter of 2015 averaged $28,500, was for five years, and carried a monthly payment of $483 month. Payments on student loans and auto loans both take up almost exactly the same percentage of income.

This argument is on shaky ground.  First, Dorfman is talking mean not median.  In both cases, the mean is likely driven higher by expensive outliers.  Second, I don’t think I know a recent college graduate, who can pay $483 a month for a car payment without major assistance from family.  Most recent college graduates that I’ve met are lucky if they can afford a 10-year-old Civic.  Third, there is not 100% overlap here.  I would speculate that someone buying a $20,000-30,000 car probably is, at least, employed full-time. Auto loans and student loans are also inherently different.  Auto loans can be forgiven in bankruptcy, cars can be repossessed, and the debt can be settled.  Student loans are not usually forgiven until full payment or death.  Furthermore, if they are also carrying $30,000 in student loans in a job that doesn’t even pay $12 an hour, they aren’t getting any new loan for much at all.

I'm Not Sure You Understand the Concept of Free Speech

One of my interests is free speech, particularly on college campuses, so when I found a Washington Post editorial titled Trigger warnings, colleges, and the ‘Swaddled Generation’, I took interest.  The editorials premise was that leftists everywhere are suppressing speech on college campuses.  It has been about nine years since I have studied on a college campus, so maybe I am out of touch with what is going on, and I certainly believe that there are attempts by the left to suppress free speech and silence unpopular ideas.  Largely, people only really believe in free speech when it's not something that personally offends them.  The problem I have with the editorial is that the examples of this suppression they give are unconvincing.  The first example given is trigger warnings, a concept that I find rather bizarre, but not exactly stifling either.

This was the case recently at Georgetown University when Christina Hoff Sommers , resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “Who Stole Feminism?,” was greeted by sign-carriers warning: “Anti-Feminism,” with the room number of a “safe space.”