> These days, anyone can get a free K-12 education, and then loans for college. Generational wealth is not required.
Our system is based around competition, where advantage compounds. How do you square this circle? In the case of two identical people, one burdened with student loans and one not, the one without the burden will win in the market due to being able to allocate more capital.
Amortized over a large population, this creates a systemic effect where those privileged with generational wealth will tend to be over-represented in the set of "winners" the system produces. This seems irrefutable to me. Obviously there will be anecdotes of exceptions, as there will be in any amortized system.
You'll get just as good a college education with a loan than without a loan. And employers don't care if you took a loan.
Besides, there's no evidence that someone with generational capital will be better at investing than one without. In fact, the arc is:
1. first generation makes the money
2. second generation spends it
3. third generation starts over