All this is my own opinion, coming from a non-US person, so it’s all based on what info I’ve seen and read.

Afaik, the PPP was intended to protect wages of workers forced to shut down. If it had achieved that at any kind of reasonable success rate (I’d personally be happy with ~80%+ as a minimum) I could agree with the idea.

But that wasn’t the result. The result was the vast majority being put into the pockets of the very rich, with little to no oversight, challenge or penalty. I can’t read minds, but what I like to do is look at results and work backwards to determine intent.

The result of PPP was large amounts of money funnelled to the people who least needed it. I also assume that the government has enough people on payroll who understand legalese and bill writing enough to write in protections to ensure the money is spent as intended or to reclaim it if it wasn’t. I have not heard about this happening.

So to me at least, this seems like it was an easy way for both parties to pay off their donors while winning media points for “helping” the average person.

Given that, I don’t see a reason why a similar amount of money couldn’t be used to assist with the massive student loan debt, which I will freely admit is only a bandaid at best - the entire educational system needs reform around costing.

But at the very least I think it would be a net benefit to the economy. Instead of money being spent repaying loans that increase a figure on a spreadsheet, the money would be spent on consumer goods, housing - all the type of stuff that drives jobs. Hoarding money like a dragon tends to hurt the economy and businesses at large.

My $0.02