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Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

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Is Student Debt Forgiveness ‘Fair’? 3 Ethics and Philosophy Professors Weigh in

David DeCosse, director of religious and Catholic ethics and Campus Ethics Programs, quoted in Grow, from Acorns + CNBC.

“I think there’s a mistaken sense in our culture that says any contract you get into, just because you agree to it, is fair and just,” he says.

“I am completely in favor of personal responsibility, but we’ve taken that as an interpersonal norm and made that a broad societal normal by which we measure almost every social problem in this country, and it doesn’t work,” he says.

“We never hear these complaints about incredibly rich people who get all kinds of tax breaks,” DeCosse says. “We never hear the same argument about their failure to exercise personal responsibility. It’s always the poor, weak, persons of color, who get dumped on.”

David DeCosse, director of religious and Catholic ethics and Campus Ethics Programs, quoted in Grow, from Acorns + CNBC.

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