Having seen the fanfare, perhaps it’s best if we have a look at under the hood at what little Clinton has actually published regarding her latest “bold” attempt to “help” the college student. For example:

A smaller proportion of millennials today are starting new ventures as compared to their predecessors.[12] This is not for a lack of desire—more than half of America’s millennials say they want to start a business—but barriers like student debt and a lack of access to credit are holding young people back.[13] Hillary is committed to breaking down barriers and leveling the playing field for entrepreneurs and innovators who are launching their own start-ups. Hillary will allow entrepreneurs to put their federal student loans into a special status while they get their new ventures off the ground. For millions of young Americans, this would mean deferment from having to make any payments on their student loans for up to three years—zero interest and zero principal—as they work through the critical start-up phase of new enterprises. Hillary will explore a similar deferment incentive not just to founders of enterprises, but to early joiners – such as the first 10 or 20 employees. Additionally, for young innovators who decide to launch either new businesses that operate in distressed communities, or social enterprises that provide measurable social impact and benefit, she will offer forgiveness of up to $17,500 of their student loans after five years. https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2016/06/27/hillary-clintons-initiative-on-technology-innovation/

In fact, most federal student borrowers are already eligible for income based payments, minimal payments are always preferable collection-wise to deferment, and the plan is for a deferment of payment, not a suspension of accrual of interest. Moreover, such a plan does nothing to assist in capitalizing any business, especially as the loans render the borrower (and likely his family) unable to borrow any further funding.

Can I run a lemonade stand and get a 1/10 of the cost of my Bachelor’s degree forgiven? That would be a great question, but you won’t find any answers from the candidate, because the whole scheme is largely just lemon meringue pie (I won’t say “in the sky” because there is nothing really grand or elevating about the comments).

I think most “innovative” and “entrepreneurial” business initiative is simply cannibalistic, as I suggest above, much like the finance sector really does NOT increase our domestic production. The mass of Americans can’t do Algebra, their core problem being the inability to understand use of symbols, which would likewise preclude them from becoming effective programmers. We don’t need high tech jobs… we need jobs sweeping streets, and growing food. We need more doctors and engineers. We need more manufacturing jobs.

We are well on our way to the future that H. G. Wells described.  Fruit, anyone?