Top item on the New York Times's "The Morning" on August 25 had a photo and the headline, "Biden’s plan for student debt relief is an attempt to find a middle ground."

Okay, now, remember the old joke that went this way?

Rich man to woman at party, "Will you go to bed with me?"
Woman: "No!"
Rich man: "How about if I pay you a million dollars?"
Woman: pauses and thinks for a while, then says, "Okay."
Rich man: "No, how about for $100 instead?"
Woman: defiantly says, "No! What do you think I am?!"
Rich man: "We already know what you are. Now we're just haggling about the price."

Biden's plan for student debt relief is just that sort of thing. The debt relief requires forcing some people who don't owe the debt to pay it for those who do---and that's theft. Biden could have arranged that for all with student debt, but that would have been like paying the prostitute a million. So he arranged it for a smaller number, and limited the amount. The price falls, the amount stolen from others falls, but it's still theft.

1 Forcing some Americans to pay the debt incurred by others? A nice theory, but no. It's not being added to the national debt either. It was fictional money to begin with, created by a ledger entry, and it is simply being eradicated the same way it was created - a reversal of the ledger entry.

2 Fictional, Bill? Then why does the gummint figure it has to add thousands more IRS agents -- and those armed to boot? I'll just bet you your taxes go up next time around, as I expect mine will.

Of course, they're gonna have fun collecting on those taxes that occur because (as you pointed out long ago) when a debt is canceled (forgiven, or whatever you like to call it), it immediately becomes taxable income. These deadbeat college kids are suddenly going to become Republicans.

3 Bill, the colleges got the money and used it. Most universities are in the middle of a huge building boom - that doesn't sound like ledger tricks to me! Yes, there was no actual cash that changed hands. But the Universities will still get the money and that will eventually have to be paid for by someone. If nobody else future generations - or those who hold U.S. bonds.

4 If you lend money to someone and you sue them to recover it, the court will require proof that you lent it, and as part of that proof they will require proof that you possessed it to begin with. They will require you to show how you got it.

So the government lent money to the student. Where did they get the money? Did they sell Treasury notes and use the proceeds to make the loan? No. Did they render some valuable service and use what they were paid for that service to make that loan? No. Did they sell some gold and use the proceeds to make the loan? No.

They simply wrote two pieces of paper. One to the student which said "You owe the government $100,000,” and another to the school saying, "You now have $100,000.” They transferred imaginary money from the student to the school by means of ledger entries, even though the money did not yet exist. It exists for the government only when the student pays it, but it exists for the school when the loan, even though unpaid, is created.

By cancelling the loan, they wiped out the imaginary money, but the school already received the benefit of spending it, and the economy (GDP) already grew from that expenditure. The disappearance of that fictional money which created that growth is not reflected in economic reporting, which is just one of many ways the government lies to us.

There is a method of bookkeeping called the "accrual method.” In this method you take the sale of a multi-year sales contract and count the income for all five years as if it occurred today. You will not receive the money now, but will receive it over a five years span, or may not receive it at all, but on your books it is all shown as current income. It is completely legal and is considered as 100% ethical. Money that you will not receive until four years from now, and may never receive at all, is reported to your stockholders as current income. Real money? Sure. It’s as real as the student loans are.

5 BUT Bill it IS real money in that it will come to rest on the shoulders of future generations. It's not fictional - it's retroactive money. In the end someone gets stuck with the bill.

6 No one will get stuck with the bill. The loan was created with two pieces of paper as I detailed above, and it is undone with two more pieces of paper. One to the student reading, "You no longer owe $10,000," and a memo to the US Treasury, "Remove $10,000 from the balance owed."
Who is paying anyone anything in that scenario?

7 Sure the university spent some money. It was fake money. That's the whole problem with our economy. Most of it is fake. The entire economy is a scam. Stock market is 200 times larger than it was just ten years ago. You think we're producing 200 times more goods? Of course not. It's where a lot of the fake money went. A lot went into buying houses. You thing my $173,000 house is really worth $1,000,000 today? Of course not. It just means I am eligible for almost $800,000 in fake money if I want it.

8 Yeah Bill; it's musical chairs. Eventually the music will stop and someone won't have a seat. The longer it goes the fewer chairs will remain.

It's generational theft. We are stealing this wealth from the future. History will not be kind to us.

9 But I disagree nobody will get stuck with the bill. Society in general will pay. It is that reasoning that excuses this kind of thing in the first place - a victimless crime. But there are millions of victims who may not have even been born yet. We stole the future from our posterity by doing this. They are getting stuck with the bill, whether we realize it or not.

Otherwise we have an economic perpetual motion machine. Nothing, nothing whatsoever, comes from nothing.