Vox has a discussion of the student loan forgiveness program. It seems to me there's a parallel between this program and proposal for reparations, most notably reparations to black Americans.
In both cases, at least part of the rationale is to redress wrongs which people have suffered in the past, and to recognize and mitigate the damage currently being suffered. (There is a difference--in the case of slavery the people who would receive the benefits would be the descendants of those wronged; in the case of student loans those who took out the loans would receive the forgiveness. I'm assuming the death of the borrower wipes out the loan obligations, which isn't totally clear.)
In both cases, there's the problem of fixing the problem which caused the damage. In the case of loan forgiveness, it may have been a bad loan from the start, based on fraud or misjudgment by the lender or the borrower. Or it may have turned bad by subsequent events--illness of the borrower, economic hardship, failure of the college, etc. In the case of slavery the damages resulting from slavery have carried forward.
Biden seems to be trying to correct the problems in student loans, although I get the idea there's skepticism about the effectiveness. So there's the fear that students will end up with bad loans in the future, and that colleges will raise tuition anticipating future forgiveness. In the case of reparations it's not clear to me that the various proposals really address the ongoing problems. IMO that's the big weakness of reparations.
