Tag: spending

student loan relief

The pause in federal student loan payments during COVID has been a golden opportunity to chop down the debt. In March 2020, Congress stopped charging interest on the loans when it suspended the monthly payments. The moratorium is slated to continue through June. The zero-interest loan means inflation actually eroded the value of the debt,…

Male hand drawing growth graph. Coins on white table

Our new research associate, Diana Horvath, and I wanted to see whether the current high rates of inflation were hurting the poor more than the rich or vice versa.  Indeed, researchers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics did such an exercise for the period 2003-2018. They found that because of differences in spending patterns the average annual increas…