Hello and welcome to another virtual episode of the City Journal podcast. My name is Rafael

Mangual. I am your host and I am joined today by two of my brilliant Manhattan Institute

colleagues, Neat to Arnold, who's a Paulson policy analyst here at the Manhattan Institute

focusing on education and Jared Dieterly, a legal policy fellow here at the Manhattan

Institute, who does kind of a little bit of everything,

Jared. I feel like you're sort of a bit of a renaissance man on the legal team, contributing to

amicus briefs, doing regulatory notes, but also just, you know, contributing to our anti-regulation

agenda here. So the reason we've got you both on, as you know, we've been doing a couple of

episodes on City Journal's Affordability Agenda Package. And I thought you guys had some really

interesting pieces that I wanted to talk about. And so that's what we're going to talk about today.

So, Neutu, I want to start with you because your piece hits on something that has become a big chunk of a lot of

individuals' budgets, particularly in large American cities, and that is student loan payments.

And the more people I have met in the professional classes, it seems like all of them have

that one thing in common, which is that massive monthly bill in excess of $1,000

where they are paying off their college debt. And it just seems like, well, hey, you know,

if affordability's an issue, maybe not everyone actually needs to go down this route. And I thought

your piece made an excellent argument. So why don't you take us through it a little bit?

Thank you. I mean, for a lot of people, higher education is the first time that they really run

into affordability issues, whether they take on student loan debt or they don't. They just see the

high price tag. And I think you bring up a good point that this is an important issue to talk about because I think oftentimes it's easy to look at other issues, you know, health care, groceries, and those are all important. But higher education is something that is affecting a lot of younger people. And I think it's very easy for them to feel like their

interests are not being paid attention to. And so that's what my piece does. I argue that

addressing affordability on higher education is both a policy issue, but also messaging. I think something

...