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The good, even visionary, news in Ontario's recent budget was elimination of student debt to cover tuition, for all families under $50,000 of income and many above. It amounts to "free tuition." It doesn't matter if there's no new money provided to do it, or if it's "just moving money around," as the opposition says. It doesn't matter because a fateful dynamic was finally confronted.
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2400 B.C.: The king of Lagash, part of ancient Sumerian civilization in what is now Iraq, declares a general cancellation of debts. Peasants have come under great economic pressure with the rise of agriculturally based empires. It is the peasants who panic and the monarch who gives them relief, showing that debt hasn't yet become the source of an indelible moral stain, unlike our own time. Debt happens and if it becomes too heavy, the government simply cancels it.
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