“We have to stop punishing people for investing in their future. It doesn’t help any of us when people graduate buried under a mountain of debt,” she said, flanked by Ryerson students and Trinity-Spadina candidate Rosario Marchese.
Punishing people? In what way is demanding an interest payment on a loan punishing someone? Interest is what you pay to compensate a lender for losing the opportunity to do something else with the money they are lending you. Without such compensation this “loan” basically turns into a gift and the borrower turns into a charity case.
The distinction is important.
When a student is considering his/her course of study she/he must decide the best way to invest the money that he/she has borrowed. If he/she makes an unwise investment and has difficulty paying the interest then it is the fault of the student. To put it another way, the student is responsible.
If the student does not have to worry about paying interest then there is less of an incentive to invest wisely with what is essentially free money. Again, to put it another way, the student is not responsible.
In the NDP’s mind making someone responsible for their own actions is a punishment. To force someone to pay for the cost of their decision is somehow unfair.
In NDPverse no one should be responsible for themselves because then tough choices might have to be made and that is just too darn hard.