‘Black Swan’ Author Says Colleges—Not Taxpayers—Should Pay for Biden’s Student Loan Wipeout

Economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the bestselling book “The Black Swan” that deals with the extreme impact of rare events, has criticized President Joe Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness plan.

Taleb, whose book argues that systems should be designed to be “antifragile” and build resilience when subjected to stress from adverse events, said in a post on Twitter that the cost of Biden’s “debt jubilee should be borne by universities, not taxpayers.”

The White House says Biden’s student loan forgiveness scheme is estimated to cost $24 billion per year, or $240 billion over a 10-year period. Projections by the Penn Wharton Budget Model and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget put the figure at between $330 billion and $500 billion over a decade, respectively.

Under Biden’s sweeping forgiveness plan, taxpayers will absorb up to $10,000 in outstanding student debt for individual borrowers earning less than $125,000 per year or $250,000 for married joint filers.

Republicans have panned the debt wipeout as unfair to people who sacrificed to pay off their student loans or never racked them up in the first place but now have to foot the bill for other people’s debts.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) walks back to his office in the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Aug. 3, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

“President Biden’s student loan socialism is a slap in the face to every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, and every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces in order to avoid taking on debt,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement.

“This policy is astonishingly unfair,” McConnell added.

Taleb did not weigh in on the fairness of the forgiveness scheme itself but aimed his