The average four-year college graduate who takes out loans ends up with less than $30,000 in debt. That typically translates into monthly payments of about $300 — or about 7 percent of the starting salary of a brand new college graduate (which is more than $50,000 a year). Over time, this percentage declines, as the graduate receives raises. No wonder the overwhelming majority of college graduates repay their loans on time.

I happen to have been an example — of a college graduate who did not deserve to have his loans forgiven. I grew up in a middle-class family that was doing fine but needed financial aid. My dad worked as a high school teacher, and my mom worked at a local college. I went to Yale with the help of extended family members who pitched in, a scholarship and student loans. In today’s dollars, I graduated with about $22,000 in debt.

And I certainly did not enjoy repaying it. I remember grumpily writing the checks. It was a meaningful amount of money for a young journalist. It also became a monthly reminder of how bureaucratically frustrating the Yale financial-aid office had been for my parents and me. If some politician had suggested canceling my debt, I might have signed on to the movement.

But it would have been a silly movement, one that conflated the real struggles of poor and working-class young adults with the mild discomforts of the professional class. The same is true today. A recent Brookings Institution study by Judith Scott-Clayton found that the loan-default rate for borrowers with a bachelor’s degree was less than 8 percent. The default rate for borrowers without any degree was a miserable 40 percent.

I understand why sweeping ideas like “cancel all debt” or “free college” seem appealing. And I know that some four-year college graduates really are struggling. But this country has too many big problems to start showering the upper-middle-class with enormous government benefits.

The right approach is a debt-forgiveness program that helps families who really need it. People whose income is below a certain threshold should have some of their debt forgiven (expanding the income-based repayment programs that already exist). And federal financial aid should expand too, with a focus on poor, working-class and truly middle-class families.

Congressional Republicans, unfortunately, have shown no interest in these issues. Now that Democrats have the House, let’s see what they can come up with.