Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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President Joe Biden waved a wand Wednesday and canceled $300 billion of student debt ("Biden wipes out $10K of borrowers' college debt," front page, Aug. 25). This is the biggest heist from the American people in history. Some 40 million will now have student debt reduced or erased. Those of us who went to college, earned scholarships, worked at menial jobs and paid off our loans look like saps. But the real chumps are the millions who chose not to seek higher education because they saw no way to meet burgeoning college costs. Under Biden's plan, plumbers, FedEx drivers and ordinary laborers will be forced through higher taxes to pay the cost of educating those whose debt will be eliminated.

This decision also sets a dangerous precedent. Liberal candidates in future elections will see the promise of student loan forgiveness as a campaign issue. Hopefully, enough Democrats will see that this is clearly a "vote buying" exercise and overrule the progressive left that encouraged this debacle. Hopefully, this heist will boomerang and mobilize a commonsense coalition in November.

Ronald F. Eustice, Burnsville

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Before all of us baby boomers go bonkers over Biden's student loan forgiveness plan, please consider this: When I attended college in the early '70s, I was able to pay all my expenses — tuition, books, transportation, etc. — by working a 20-hour-a-week part-time job. We must realize there's no way our kids and grandkids could possibly do this, even if they attended a public institution like the University of Minnesota. To me, allowing the cost of higher education to inflate to the level it has is one of the great failures of our generation. If an increase in our taxes provides relief and helps others afford homes and start families, I say that's the least we can do.

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I was one of those students who worked nights, weekends and summers to pay my way through college, with no financial help from my parents. But tuition for my last and most expensive semester was $700. Granted, that was in 1980. But using the Federal Reserve inflation calculator, that comes to a little over $2,500 in today's dollars. In-resident tuition and fees at the University of Minnesota are $16,108 a semester. $10,000 in loan forgiveness is a drop in the bucket.

Judy Matysik, Minneapolis

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Ever since the 1930s, the U.S. government has given subsidies in the form of payments or tax breaks to some sectors of the economy. Current recipients of subsidies include agriculture, the auto industry, health care and the fossil-fuel industry. The purpose of a subsidy is to support important components of the economy or national infrastructure. As a nursing professor, I know that an investment in our youth is an investment in the health of our nation. Therefore, I deeply support my tax dollars going toward student debt relief.

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I find it very interesting that nowhere in a reader's self-pitying, woe-is-me letter ("Adulting in debt," Aug. 24) does she mention that she might have had a little something to do with the $100,000 student loan debt that she's whining about. She's an RN but somehow got out of college not knowing how much money she would make? Must have thought the job paid $500,000, I suppose.

Hers is exactly the attitude that makes people like me and my two college-graduate kids so opposed to this so-called relief.

Richard Hughes, Deer River, Minn.

Thanks for seeing me, doc. I know you have over 5 million patients you're trying to sell snake oil to but I was wondering if you had anything for the nausea I am suffering from after reading a story in the Aug. 25 Star Tribune. You see, the story was about your comparison of the state mask mandate to the Nazi persecution of Jewish people in Germany during the 1930s ("Jensen again compares COVID rules, Nazi Germany"). It seems since reading your quote I have vomited three times. Not even Dramamine seems to help. I looked up the causes of nausea on the Mayo Clinic website and there was nothing about the misuse of figurative language by incompetent politicians, so I am not sure what to do. Oh, you say that one of the causes of nausea is fear. Well, that makes sense because after reading your quote I am afraid of you becoming the most powerful person in our state with a platform to express your hateful and destructive opinions. Oh, you think voicing these fears and getting them off my chest might help. I am willing to try anything, doc, so here I go.

It's hard to believe a person as highly educated as yourself would make such a dangerous comparison knowing the atrocities the Nazis committed. But to your political benefit and our misfortune, most of the Greatest Generation has passed on, because if you made this comparison 50 years ago I am certain you would've been run out of the state.

Wow, doc! You were right. I do feel better. Maybe you shouldn't quit your day job.

David Luiken, Plymouth

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I am reacting to U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips' comments in the Star Tribune about Jensen's comments at the Republican Jewish Coalition event on Tuesday night. First, I was there; he was not. The fact that he might have heard a recording made undercover by one of the attendees does not take into account the entire context of the meeting nor the personal discussions I and others had with Jensen. That Jenson received a standing ovation from an almost entirely Jewish audience should tell you none of us felt his comments were offensive about the Holocaust.

Third, I am personally incensed about Phillips' comments as my father-in-law in World War II found and liberated the Dachau concentration camp. He was honored four years ago at Auschwitz and in Israel with one of the people he liberated in a special ceremony with President Benjamin Netanyahu and many other government officials. Our whole family is acutely aware of the Holocaust.

For the Democrats to obtain audio from our meeting (specifically marked as no press permitted) and misquote Jensen about the meaning of his statements is not honorable and is typical of a political stunt. Then for Phillips to pile on with his comments is disgusting. Phillips' apology for his comments is acceptable at any time.

Harley Feldman, Chanhassen

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Jensen compares pandemic-related mask requirements to Kristallnacht, and then cries foul when many find his analogy offensive. He bellows: "You don't get to be my thought police." No, we don't. But we do get to vigorously respond in the public marketplace of ideas. So here you go, Scott: Your analogy tells me all I need to know about your judgment, temperament and analytical skills. Sure, you think Minnesota public officials overstepped their bounds by requiring masks in various public settings, for temporary periods during the worst of the pandemic. But mask requirements are a standard public health measure, adopted at some point in nearly every nation on earth. Reasonable people can disagree about whether such measures are a good idea in every situation. Reasonable people, however, do not make their case by comparing globally recognized health regulations to the monstrosity of the Nazis.