Why the battle over student loans makes a lot of folks squirm

Folks like Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf, who feels funny about receiving an interest rate subsidy to cover his loan payments. I'd feel funny too. Certainly, there are plenty of people in tough shape financially who could use the help. But not everybody - and yet the proposed extension of student loan rates at 3.7 percent is all inclusive.

From President Obama's speech this week:

When we graduated from college and law school, we had a mountain of debt, both of us. That means when we got married, we got poorer together. We added our assets together, and they were zero. And then we added our liabilities together, and they were a lot. We paid more for our student loans than we paid for our mortgage each month when we first bought our small condo in Chicago. And we were lucky to land good jobs with a steady income, but we only finished paying off our student loans about eight years ago.

From Friedersdorf

Obama earned degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. His wife, Michelle, graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School. Once you've done that it doesn't matter how much you've borrowed. You're in the one percent. The Obamas ought to have been writing those checks every month, because to subsidize couples with four graduate degrees from Ivy League schools between them -- in a country with impoverished immigrants and struggling high school dropouts and hard-pressed single mothers -- is perverse. That Obama offered up his own story in that way is a testament to our collective loss of perspective on this.