The Life-Altering Differences Between White and Black Debt
b'Public policy in the United States often overlooks wealth. We tend to design, debate and measure our economic policies with regard to income alone, which blinds us to the ways prosperity and precarity tangibly function in people\\u2019s lives. And that blind spot can ultimately prevent us from addressing social inequality at its roots.\\n\\nTake the debate over student loan cancellation. Cancellation is often framed as an economically regressive policy \\u2014 an elite giveaway of sorts \\u2014 with the majority of benefits going to individuals toward the top end of the income distribution. But that distributive picture flips when you look at wealth instead of income. One recent paper found that if the federal government decided to forgive up to $50,000 in student loan debt, the average person in the 20th to 40th percentiles for household assets would receive more than four times as much debt cancellation as the average person in the top 10 percent.\\n\\nLouise Seamster is a sociologist at the University of Iowa whose work focuses on the intersection of wealth, race, education and inequality. She\\u2019s one of the sharpest minds studying the way systems of wealth creation and depletion shape everything from the benefits of higher education to the barriers to racial equality to the nature of democratic citizenship. And her cutting-edge research on the student debt crisis and the racial wealth gap served as a major source of inspiration for Senator Elizabeth Warren\\u2019s $50,000 loan forgiveness plan.\\n\\nThis conversation begins with a discussion of the student debt crisis in particular: what it\\u2019s like to live with crushing levels of debt, the debate over whether cancellation is fair to those who have paid off their loans, why you can\\u2019t truly understand the student debt crisis without understanding the wealth dynamics that undergird it, how loan forgiveness would alter the racial wealth gap, what an entirely different model for funding higher education would look like and more.\\n\\nBut this discussion is also more broadly about what it means to think in terms of wealth \\u2014 and its inverse, debt \\u2014 and what a radically different picture that reveals about the American economy and society.\\n\\nMentioned:\\n\\n\\u201cRacialized Debts: Racial Exclusion From Credit Tools and Information Networks\\u201d by Rapha\\xebl Charron-Ch\\xe9nier and Louise Seamster\\n\\n\\u201cAn Administrative Path to Student Debt Cancellation\\u201d by Luke Herrine\\n\\n\\u201cBlack Debt, White Debt\\u201d by Louise Seamster\\n\\n\\u201cStudent Debt Cancellation IS Progressive: Correcting Empirical and Conceptual Errors\\u201d by Charlie Eaton, Adam Goldstein, Laura Hamilton and Frederick Wherry\\n\\n\\u201cStudent Debt Forgiveness Options: Implications for Policy and Racial Equity\\u201d by Rapha\\xebl Charron-Chenier, Louise Seamster, Tom Shapiro and Laura Sullivan\\n\\n\\u201cPredatory Inclusion and Education Debt: Rethinking the Racial Wealth Gap\\u201d by Louise Seamster and Rapha\\xebl Charron-Ch\\xe9nier\\n\\n\\u201cRacial Disparities in Student Debt and the Reproduction of the Fragile Black Middle Class\\u201d by Jason N. Houle and Fenaba R. Addo\\n\\nBook Recommendations:\\n\\nThe Color of Money by Mehrsa Baradaran\\n\\nA Pound of Flesh by Alexes Harris\\n\\nThe Sum of Us by Heather McGhee\\n\\nThis episode is guest-hosted by Tressie McMillan Cottom, a sociologist and writer whose work focuses on higher education policy, popular culture, race, beauty and more. She writes a weekly New York Times newsletter and is the author of \\u201cThick and Other Essays,\\u201d which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and \\u201cLower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy.\\u201d You can follow her on Twitter @TressieMcPhD. (Learn more about the other guest hosts during Ezra\\u2019s parental leave here.)\\n\\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\\n\\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\\n\\n\\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rog\\xe9 Karma; fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.'