I should preface this by saying, I used to be a financial aid director, in a previous career.

The statistics you see about student loan debt and who has it are all correct. What you don’t see it who is actually making monthly payments, and for how much. Even before the pandemic, no more than 50% of federal student loans were ever in repayment status. This means that a lot of the poor people who get fleeced by for-profit schools are not actively paying their loans. That means poor people, in general are not repaying their loans.

Debt forgiveness does provide a minor benefit to people who are not in repayment, but it does not change their material conditions. They have absolutely no more money to put towards their basic needs. If we forgave the debt of a working-class person making $125 payments loan forgiveness, it would make their life slightly less burdensome, but would not make that much of a change to their material conditions. However, if you give a young professional couple loan forgiveness, we’re talking about easily an extra $1500 in their bank account every month. This would dramatically increase America’s wealth inequality, and probably be the largest driver of gentrification this country has seen