American Politics 3.0 - Back to Brunch

[HockeyIlliterate]

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

why didn't you quit law school after two years?

Why would I? At the time, I wanted to be a lawyer. Your question really doesn’t make any sense to me.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

How about those of us that did? I had two options to complete my Masters and PhD, from two prestigious schools, but I chose the cheapest option, because of cost.

What are your degrees in? I ask because I’ve always heard that you shouldn’t pay for a masters or doctorate in any science program, and getting a PhD in a humanities program might, well, not be the wisest idea.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Frankly, I think Shakespeare had it right when it came to lawyers,

If you are referring to the “kill all the lawyers quote,” perhaps you are misinterpreting it.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

But for some reasons lawyers make a lot of money and can generate money that a lot of other professions can't, even though those other professions provide much greater value to society as whole.

Salaries for lawyers is generally bimodal, and not every attorney makes a lot of money. Many of them don’t make very much. The value that lawyers provide is subjective.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Just like lawyers have to pass the bar exam to practice law, there are certain constraints in place that you are forced to meet for certain degrees, and you have to pay that price.

If you want to get specific and really want to be educated about such things, no, not every lawyer has to pass the bar exams to practice law. See the Wisconsin diploma privilege.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

No, it isn't. It's the reality. Both parties are responsible for the #### show higher education is, so take your whataboutism and stick it. That is the weakest #### I heard to date.

I’m having trouble following your argument. You claim that you have been the victim of what your institution made you do and suffer as a result of their inaction, but then say that both parties are responsible. I’m not getting much of a sense that you think that you are responsible for much of what happened to you.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Yet we bailout those who intentionally wreck the system and punish those who have no say and are just forced to follow the rules put in play?

Can you please just answer the direct question that was asked?

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

This is so stupid I'm surprised you wrote these words. Yes, there are many programs that help the group you singled out.

Could you please name a few of them that are specific to said group?

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Conversely, those #######s in the 1% get gift-after-gift-after-gift to make their lives much easier. Where's your outrage to that?

You sound rather angry about all of this.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

I have a really good idea because I've been on all sides of this fence.

You being on all sides of the fence has no bearing on what my tuition was or what my loan amounts were.

When I went to school, the Pell Grant did not pay for the majority of the year’s schooling, even though you claimed that it did. So, no, you really do not know what you are talking about when it comes to my personal situation.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

The cost of education has skyrocketed out of control because of lack of regulation.

I don’t think that is necessarily the reason, but I doubt that you will be swayed by anything I write anyway,

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Yeah, my student loans are about the same as a lot of people's mortgage payments. Do I complain? Nope.

Respectfully, it really does seem to me that you are.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

But I recognize the situation many others find themselves in, and that they got screwed over, and I'm willing to support their efforts to see the system fixed, and that includes forgiveness of loans forced on people.

And I just completely disagree that student loans are “forced” on people.

Going to school is generally a voluntary decision. If you want to go to school, you take the risk that it will take longer than you anticipated to get the desired degree. Making these voluntary choices and then turning around and saying that something was forced upon you is just difficult for me to accept.

People always have options. They may not like them, but the options are there.

If, in your case, you had the option of bailing on a Phd (and perhaps the masters too?) or taking out $50k more in loans than you originally anticipated, you apparently decided that taking out the loans was the more advantageous decision. But no one truly forced you to make the decision the way you did, did they? And if they did, how did they do that?

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Completely different issue.

No kidding. But one that affects and could benefit everyone, as opposed to student loan forgiveness.

Look, I don’t think that we are ever going to agree on this issue. I think that most people who are advocating for student loan forgiveness are doing so because any such forgiveness would benefit them and because they don’t want to take responsibility for their previous decisions. Maybe you don’t fit into either of those categories, but, regardless, that is my view of the matter and it is unlikely that I can be persuaded to see it differently.

[rubecube]

Country is a God damn trainwreck.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1421237540825100288

[afc wimbledon]

Personally I have always favoured the idea that education should be free for jobs society needs, so the government works out how many plumbers of nurses or historians we need and that number of courses is free, if you want to pursue a degree that Canada doesnt actually need you have to pay for it yourself, that would frankly encourage Uni's to get the costs down

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

Personally I have always favoured the idea that education should be free for jobs society needs, so the government works out how many plumbers of nurses or historians we need and that number of courses is free, if you want to pursue a degree that Canada doesnt actually need you have to pay for it yourself, that would frankly encourage Uni's to get the costs down

I like it but who decides? You've got provincial governments making decisions based on who's in power. Notley will deem nurses important and Kenney will cut them. Sounds like a way to grease some palms.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

I like it but who decides? You've got provincial governments making decisions based on who's in power. Notley will deem nurses important and Kenney will cut them. Sounds like a way to grease some palms.

No as you are not deciding on hiring them, its just a straight assesment as to how many Canada needs in 4 or 5 years time, it really wouldnt be political, employment Canada already collates those types of projections and it doesnt have to be precise down to the individual nurse, just a canada wide down to a few thousand or so figure

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

No as you are not deciding on hiring them, its just a straight assesment as to how many Canada needs in 4 or 5 years time, it really wouldnt be political, employment Canada already collates those types of projections and it doesnt have to be precise down to the individual nurse, just a canada wide down to a few thousand or so figure

Sure I really like the idea but not sure it's realistic. I smell trouble. Every faculty deems they're important and once you get money involved in anything, some numbers will be cooked to ensure for example, the school of business remains relevant. The powers that be will find ways to control information.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

Sure I really like the idea but not sure it's realistic. I smell trouble. Every faculty deems they're important and once you get money involved in anything, some numbers will be cooked to ensure for example, the school of business remains relevant. The powers that be will find ways to control information.

the universities have nothing to do with it, the department of employment would do what is has always done, calculate how many plumbers are going to retire, change jobs or be needed by an increasing population, same as they do now, ditto english teachers and nurses etc, its a rough average obviously, and from that figure the state offers however many places fully funded in whichever trade school or university qualifies for those subjects, there would be no guarentee that a student would pursue the field after their graduation, nor would there be anything stopping the rich or particularly driven from paying for themselves to attend 'privately' if you will, its just a way of ensuring the state offers kids a chance at a vocation with out it being a complete tax grab by the upper middle class as the concept of free tuition is.

[#-3]

The problem with the cost of education is simple.

Today my company posted an add for a $20/hour job with limited upward mobility. Second line of the add "post secondary education with 2 years experience".

If this is what employers are demanding to get low level clerical jobs, you'll end up with a lot of over educated people doing menial work unable to recoop their education investment. I'm all for a liberal arts education, but it should be seen as a societal investment, not a career investment. Therefore there needs to be low cost publicly funded options. The US is lost, and Canada is headed in the wrong direction.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

Personally I have always favoured the idea that education should be free for jobs society needs, so the government works out how many plumbers of nurses or historians we need and that number of courses is free, if you want to pursue a degree that Canada doesnt actually need you have to pay for it yourself, that would frankly encourage Uni's to get the costs down

The job someone is training for may not still exist when they finish school. I'd rather people train in fields they have passion for. Mercenary post-secondary sounds tremendously counterproductive.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

Personally I have always favoured the idea that education should be free for jobs society needs, so the government works out how many plumbers of nurses or historians we need and that number of courses is free, if you want to pursue a degree that Canada doesnt actually need you have to pay for it yourself, that would frankly encourage Uni's to get the costs down

While I get where you're coming from, this is actually impossible.

First of all, these predictions tend to be notoriously inaccurate even just 4-5 into the future. Just ask people with a biotech degree who graduated in the early two thousands. There was supposed to be tons of jobs in that field... Didn't happen. Oops, too bad for those who graduated with a useless tech degree.

The second issue is that nobody really knows what there is a demand for. Sure maybe nurses and plumbers, but it's extremely complicated to evaluate how many IT experts a society will want, and what those people should need to be taught.

It's also extremely difficult to guess what kinds of engineers are needed in the future. What if manufacturing starts to migrate back from Asia? What if it doesn't? If it does you need tons of certain types of engineers right now, if it doesn't you don't. If you don't have the right kinds of engineers, it's impossible for manufacturing to migrate back, but can you train people because you think it's going to happen? Should you train them so that could happen?

Then when you come to university degrees it becomes even more complicated, because there's no way to draw a direct line between jobs and educations, and there's no way to really know what kind of research will be important in the future. That's kind of the nature of research.

Of course people are also going to massively disagree on what's valuable. Is a study that discovers a way to mitigate racism in the school system valuable? That depends 100% on who you're asking.

There's also the issue that statistics don't often really even tell you what degrees are actually in demand right now.

As a real life examples, a friend of mine who studied Asian cultures got hired to BioWare. Are those two things related, or did she get the job because her hobbies include making games, creative writing and IT and really the degree was a waste of time? You can't look that up from a statistic.

The answer is yes that education mattered, BioWare wanted someone to help make their games more appealing to Asian markets, but also kind of no because they weren't specifically looking for it at that time, but just realized that she was someone they wanted to hire when she told them what she can do.

There's a surprising amount of jobs in business for people with cultural studies backgrounds in general, but there isn't really a statistic for it. There's no one job description for "people with cultural studies background who end up working in international business". You can't know that this consultant in this company was hired for this reason and this other one for that other reason.

Does "the society" need to sell games to Asia in the first place?

The long term trend in work has always been towards increased specialization. Every year there are more jobs you could never have thought of would exist some day that somebody is willing to pay good money for, and every year a higher percentage of jobs are in these hard to define categories instead of straightforward things like plumbers and nurses.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by #-3

The problem with the cost of education is simple.

Today my company posted an add for a $20/hour job with limited upward mobility. Second line of the add "post secondary education with 2 years experience".

If this is what employers are demanding to get low level clerical jobs, you'll end up with a lot of over educated people doing menial work unable to recoop their education investment. I'm all for a liberal arts education, but it should be seen as a societal investment, not a career investment. Therefore there needs to be low cost publicly funded options. The US is lost, and Canada is headed in the wrong direction.

There are just too many degrees. I hire accountants out of school (B.Comm) and pay $35,000. And every time I post an ad, I get 150+ applicants. $35,000 sounds low, and it is, but we subsidize them into the CA program, so that's a perk. I recently hired someone who moved from Toronto, graduated U of T and said in Toronto, the same job pays less than $30,000. Imagine accruing debt from U of T, living in Toronto and making less than $30,000. But that's the fact of life right now. Too many degrees, it's an employer's market. They can choose from anyone, degrees, good GPA, good experience for low wages. And with COVID, the number of applicants is even more. Universities charging more because they can and employers playing less because they can. As Wastedyouth mentioned, symbols of success to get that degree. The undergraduate degree trap.

[afc wimbledon]

I think you are all missing my point, I am not suggesting the purpose of free education is to precisely fill job vacancies 4 or 6 years later, the idea is that funding all post secondary education is expensive and mostly benefits the middle and upper class at the expense of the working class who for various reasons are never going to go to college, its not much different than giving home owners tax deductions on mortgages.

All post secondary education doesnt benefit society and I dont want my taxes to pay for some middle class kid to piss away 4 years on a degree in socials in order to get a job that 20 years ago he could have got with grade 12, the point of limiting free tuition to subjects both vocational and academic is to ensure that working class kids get their education at trade school paid for, which is far more useful to Canada than University degrees, and limit what we are asking the taxpayer to fully fund to courses that are of some use to the country at least.

This would force the Universities to scale back in may areas and drastically reduce the cost and flexibility of degrees that are of little vocational use,, thus enabling an older student group to pursue say Art History in their 40's cheaply over 10 years for their own interest.

We need to reduce the number of kids that go to Uni frankly back down to 20% so that employers no longer ask for bull#### degrees for jobs that dont need them.

The real issue isnt the cost of a degree, its that we are demanding everyone have a degree for all and every job, this turning todays BA into a new form of really expensive Grade 12, University always used to be expensive but at least 50 years ago so few people went to Uni they all got well paying jobs that covered their loss of earnings at the end because their BA indicated they were in the top 10 or 15%, now you need a Masters or Phd to show that.

[Fuzz]

https://apnews.com/article/robotic-p...1a0f6491e55c29


On second thought, perhaps sending robot dogs out to scan homeless people isn't the most humane way we could handle things...

[Lanny_McDonald]

This is getting unwieldly, but is a good discussion. Hopefully we can keep this together as it becomes a little fragmented.

Originally Posted by HockeyIlliterate

Why would I? At the time, I wanted to be a lawyer. Your question really doesn’t make any sense to me.

Ah, so you understood there was a means to an end and it was beneficial to stay in school, take out the loans, and complete the degree. You recognized the lift it would provide to you and your future, so you did the smart thing and completed the degree, accepting the cost of education and compared to the lift that education would provide. Because had you quit because of the cost of education, like you have recommended here, you would have been saddled with that debt and then a burger flipper's salary to rely upon. There was benefit to completion.

What are your degrees in? I ask because I’ve always heard that you shouldn’t pay for a masters or doctorate in any science program, and getting a PhD in a humanities program might, well, not be the wisest idea.

Psychology. The terminal degree afforded me the opportunity to teach, then the opportunity to the executive suite, and leadership roles in multiple areas in government. Education, especially humanities, are transferable to many industries and open doors that most people would not have opportunity to even knock on.

If you want to get specific and really want to be educated about such things, no, not every lawyer has to pass the bar exams to practice law. See the Wisconsin diploma privilege.

Yes, but most states require you to be a member of the bar to practice law. You don't just to get to hang a shingle out and start providing legal advice. There are accrediting bodies that regulate many professional jobs. Law is one of those, just like psychiatry.

I’m having trouble following your argument. You claim that you have been the victim of what your institution made you do and suffer as a result of their inaction, but then say that both parties are responsible. I’m not getting much of a sense that you think that you are responsible for much of what happened to you.

I am responsible for what happened to me to a point. My responsibility as a student is to complete my work in a timely manner. Part of the contract you engage in with an institution is they will have their faculty grade your work in a timely manner. I absorb information very quickly and work through assignments just as quickly. The faculty played rope-a-dope with me and held back final grades for KAs, preventing me from moving on to the next, then comprehensives, and then dissertation. So the amount of time wasted waiting for faculty to assess my work and provide feedback equated to a year of required content, then another year in dissertation. To me, the institution did not live up to their end of the contract and made it such that I had to stay in school for an extra 18 months, meaning an extra two years tuition. This was unnecessary and punitive IMO. Never should have been allowed and I should not have been saddled with that debt.

Can you please just answer the direct question that was asked?

It's a gotcha question. You seem to think that debt is negative regardless of its use. If you can't see the larger benefit of someone buying a home rather than paying for loans they can't even re-negotiate the interest rate on, then that's on you and no one else. The major difference to the over all economy is obvious. No one gains a larger benefit out of this except the predatory interests (and this includes Sallie Mae and Navient) who hook these people, promising a better life, but saddling them with crippling debt. I’d rather forgive those federally backed loans and have that money channeled into the pockets of consumers who drive our consumer-based economy. You want to fix social security, get more people in the workforce who pay into social security. You want to fix unemployment, drive up demand for products and services by making sure there are more people with more disposable income. You want to keep America a leader in the world, get people educated to level that puts our standard above all others.

You sound rather angry about all of this.

Angry isn’t the right word. A point of frustration or annoyance? Yes. The government has really helped in a Ponzi scheme and accepts no responsibility for it. They let lenders set their interest rates, multiples of that for mortgages, and then set unreasonable rules for payment. When the government is borrowing money at less than a quarter percent, they should be able to provide similar relief to those who have loans. Instead they hold the line firm and force borrowers into non-negotiable terms which makes the situations worse. These loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy and terms never change unless you go to private lenders, whose programs are even worse.

What really annoys me about the student loan Ponzi scheme is the promise of loan forgiveness in specific programs. The government entered into a contract with individuals to forgive those loans should they meet 120 continuous payments as defined by the program. Even when people meet the requirements of the program, living up to the contract they signed, those loans are not getting forgiven. That ain’t right. These people went into jobs servicing the public on the promise that they would get benefit after 10 years. But the government is not following through on that promise. Those people that have worked hard to keep the government functioning for all of us are getting screwed. The vast majority of them took less in salary because of this benefit. This is a wrong that needs to be righted, at minimum, or the whole system needs to be burned to the ground.

You’re right, I don’t know your situation directly, but I do know the way the schools have used funding and abuse the student loan programs to their benefit.

Respectfully, it really does seem to me that you are.

I’m not complaining about my particular circumstances. I'm lucky enough to be very comfortable and can pay my loans even though they would be oppressive to most freshly graduated students. I’m complaining about the overall system and how it has been abuse (and continues to be abused) by schools around the country.

One of the latest schemes is to go after student athletes from high school and give them a fractional scholarship for their sport, forcing the student to take out loans to cover the rest. They are preying on the dreams of athletes who never seem to weigh the potential outcomes. The vast majority of these athletes have no potential to turn their sport into a career, and because of the time commitment to practice and compete, they turn into crappy students who are at the bottom of their classes, if they pass at all. If these students come out with a degree, it is a useless one and they are at the bottom of class lists, making that degree all but useless. Ah, but the kid got to “play” for another two to four years. This Peter Pan stuff needs to stop. This is the type of stuff that should halted immediately and institutions that use these practices be sanctioned or put out of business.

And I just completely disagree that student loans are “forced” on people.

Going to school is generally a voluntary decision. If you want to go to school, you take the risk that it will take longer than you anticipated to get the desired degree. Making these voluntary choices and then turning around and saying that something was forced upon you is just difficult for me to accept.

Education is the surest way to upward mobility. For people who live in poverty or depressed economic conditions, education is the only way out. So yes, if these people want to better their lot in life, they are forced to take out loans to better themselves.

People always have options. They may not like them, but the options are there.

That sounds like someone who has never had never come to realize their privilege or the state of others. I try and look at the issue from the condition of others. After working at an HSI I got to really understand the problem from a very different perspective. I got to understand how transformational education was to entire communities, not just individuals, and also how predatory and punitive these programs can be. For people that really have choice for upward mobility, the system is clearly stack against them and is designed to keep them where they are, or locked into long-term poverty.

If, in your case, you had the option of bailing on a Phd (and perhaps the masters too?) or taking out $50k more in loans than you originally anticipated, you apparently decided that taking out the loans was the more advantageous decision. But no one truly forced you to make the decision the way you did, did they? And if they did, how did they do that?

Seriously? You do know that you only get benefit from a degree if you complete that degree. Come on. You understand this. You only get to use certain degrees or become a member of a profession if you complete those degrees and meet ALL requirements of the degree. So yes, the schools have on the hook and you can’t get off. If you choose not to complete the degree you still carry that debt, and you get marginal benefit from that degree. So yes, you have to complete or you just waste your money and don’t get ahead. Not much of a choice there. You have to play by their rules. It’s their game.

Look, I don’t think that we are ever going to agree on this issue. I think that most people who are advocating for student loan forgiveness are doing so because any such forgiveness would benefit them and because they don’t want to take responsibility for their previous decisions. Maybe you don’t fit into either of those categories, but, regardless, that is my view of the matter and it is unlikely that I can be persuaded to see it differently.

I don’t disagree that there are SOME who would use this dodge. But these people will find a dodge no matter what. These are the type of people would just say #### it and then go on welfare. The vast majority of people aren’t like that. They want to be good contributing members of society. They want to go on and start their lives. But the way the system is setup is punitive ad prevents those people from doing just that. So while Wall Street continues to get theirs, Main Street continues to take it in the tail pipe and pay for the already rich’s expansion of their share of the economic pie. I want to see what the economic power of 42 million Americans spending that disposable income looks like. We’ve already tried trickledown economics, its time to try giving average Americans the break and watch the economy spring to life.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

There are just too many degrees. I hire accountants out of school (B.Comm) and pay $35,000. And every time I post an ad, I get 150+ applicants. $35,000 sounds low, and it is, but we subsidize them into the CA program, so that's a perk. I recently hired someone who moved from Toronto, graduated U of T and said in Toronto, the same job pays less than $30,000. Imagine accruing debt from U of T, living in Toronto and making less than $30,000. But that's the fact of life right now. Too many degrees, it's an employer's market. They can choose from anyone, degrees, good GPA, good experience for low wages. And with COVID, the number of applicants is even more. Universities charging more because they can and employers playing less because they can. As Wastedyouth mentioned, symbols of success to get that degree. The undergraduate degree trap.

This is gold.

It’s the same exact argument used to justify the exploitation of “unskilled” labour only now you’re applying it to people who actually went and got a post secondary education. Newsflash GirlySports, the reason you pay people such a low wage is because you choose to do so.

[GirlySports]

Yes, I'm not denying that. It is exploitation. The exploitation happens wherever there is demand and the demand is now in post secondary degrees.

As for wages, that's the market rate. We have to be competitive and if we cannot offer more salary than we offer perks, like healthcare, vacation, addition education etc..

But we can tell by the trends that every job we post, we get over qualified people. I called it 'breaking ties'. If you have hundreds of equal applicants, how do you break ties? You have to raise the bar higher and higher.

My first accounting job I ever got was during my 2nd year of my undergraduate degree over 20 years ago.I would not qualify for it today as full 4-year degrees now apply for that type of job. And soon, 4-year degrees will not be enough, you'll have to have experience, or promise more schooling, or rock the interview. As a candidate, you have to win tiebreakers.

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

There are just too many degrees. I hire accountants out of school (B.Comm) and pay $35,000. And every time I post an ad, I get 150+ applicants. $35,000 sounds low, and it is, but we subsidize them into the CA program, so that's a perk. I recently hired someone who moved from Toronto, graduated U of T and said in Toronto, the same job pays less than $30,000. Imagine accruing debt from U of T, living in Toronto and making less than $30,000. But that's the fact of life right now. Too many degrees, it's an employer's market. They can choose from anyone, degrees, good GPA, good experience for low wages. And with COVID, the number of applicants is even more. Universities charging more because they can and employers playing less because they can. As Wastedyouth mentioned, symbols of success to get that degree. The undergraduate degree trap.

The beginning of virtual every accountants career is a joke because the CPA (CA before) require them to get hours at certain positions. It's basically a scam by the big accounting firms so they can get cheap labour to work long hours because people need to fulfil their CPA hours. Once they finish their CPA, I'm sure they all leave or get raised to a proper salary.

[HockeyIlliterate]

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Because had you quit because of the cost of education, like you have recommended here, you would have been saddled with that debt and then a burger flipper's salary to rely upon. There was benefit to completion.

Sorry, but I’m not recommending that people quit in the middle of their education.

What I’m recommending is that people seriously look at what the debt load will, or could, be BEFORE starting college or grad school and then determine if their desired degree, or school, or whatever, is worth that debt load.

And if the math doesn’t work out, then figure out an alternative plan. Work for a while. Take night classes. Go to trade school. Go into another field (look, I’ll be honest: I didn’t go into law to help people, I went into it for the money; others should do the same for their chosen career).

But to take out loans and get a degree from an expensive (or even a cheap) school in a field that has limited economic upside is just a bad idea all around, and far too many people do that. And then they whine about their debt load and ask for taxpayers to bail them out.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

I am responsible for what happened to me to a point. My responsibility as a student is to complete my work in a timely manner. Part of the contract you engage in with an institution is they will have their faculty grade your work in a timely manner. I absorb information very quickly and work through assignments just as quickly. The faculty played rope-a-dope with me and held back final grades for KAs, preventing me from moving on to the next, then comprehensives, and then dissertation. So the amount of time wasted waiting for faculty to assess my work and provide feedback equated to a year of required content, then another year in dissertation. To me, the institution did not live up to their end of the contract and made it such that I had to stay in school for an extra 18 months, meaning an extra two years tuition. This was unnecessary and punitive IMO. Never should have been allowed and I should not have been saddled with that debt.

Anything I say in response to this would likely br seen as rude, out of touch, or offensive, so I’ll just say that yes, that does sound like a raw deal.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

It's a gotcha question. You seem to think that debt is negative regardless of its use. If you can't see the larger benefit of someone buying a home rather than paying for loans they can't even re-negotiate the interest rate on, then that's on you and no one else. The major difference to the over all economy is obvious.

It isn’t a gotcha question.

It is asking why are the people who are clamoring for loan forgiveness also saying that they will just go back into debt once this debt is gone?

They say that their debt is keeping them from buying a house, or starting a family, or whatever. But they don’t think that a mortgage is going to keep them starting a family or doing something else?

They want to have a house and be an adult? Why not first pay off your existing debt like adults do?

Also, as I recall, you can consolidate your student loans, which is a form of “renegotiating” the interest rate. But the whole idea of negotiating an interest rate is bizarre to me. You don’t negotiate your credit card interest rate, or your mortgage rate (yeah, you can refinance, but the rate at which you do so is largely what it is), or your car loan or so on.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

No one gains a larger benefit out of this except the predatory interests (and this includes Sallie Mae and Navient) who hook these people, promising a better life, but saddling them with crippling debt.

Using the word “predatory” reminds me of what people said of the mortgage bankers during the housing crash, when people making $30k were given mortgage loans to buy $400k houses. Sure, that was stupid, but the debtor was the one who signed the note and took out the money, only to then claim that they shouldn’t be held responsible for their own actions. Much like some of those asking for loan forgiveness are doing now.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

When the government is borrowing money at less than a quarter percent, they should be able to provide similar relief to those who have loans. Instead they hold the line firm and force borrowers into non-negotiable terms which makes the situations worse. These loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy and terms never change unless you go to private lenders, whose programs are even worse.

I don’t disagree that the interest rates should probably be lower than they are.

But…

If you want the loans to be dischargeable, then you should also expect the creditors to be much more strict in who they give the loans to. You want $75k to study art history? No. You want $300k to major in Spanish and Native American studies? No. You want $80k to study accounting but you can’t get above a C in math classes? No. The entire current system would have to completely revised, and I suspect the resulting outcome would not help many minorities, poor, or even the middle class.

Also, of course the loan terms are non-negotiable. You want the money? You accept the terms. No banker is going to negotiate student loan terms with an 18 year old anyway.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

What really annoys me about the student loan Ponzi scheme is the promise of loan forgiveness in specific programs. The government entered into a contract with individuals to forgive those loans should they meet 120 continuous payments as defined by the program. Even when people meet the requirements of the program, living up to the contract they signed, those loans are not getting forgiven. That ain’t right. These people went into jobs servicing the public on the promise that they would get benefit after 10 years. But the government is not following through on that promise. Those people that have worked hard to keep the government functioning for all of us are getting screwed. The vast majority of them took less in salary because of this benefit. This is a wrong that needs to be righted, at minimum, or the whole system needs to be burned to the ground.

Yes, the program that you speak of has been a disgrace in terms of management and follow-through and that needs to be changed and addressed.

But that program is not equivalent to outright forgiveness for everyone.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

One of the latest schemes is to go after student athletes from high school and give them a fractional scholarship for their sport, forcing the student to take out loans to cover the rest. They are preying on the dreams of athletes who never seem to weigh the potential outcomes. The vast majority of these athletes have no potential to turn their sport into a career, and because of the time commitment to practice and compete, they turn into crappy students who are at the bottom of their classes, if they pass at all. If these students come out with a degree, it is a useless one and they are at the bottom of class lists, making that degree all but useless. Ah, but the kid got to “play” for another two to four years. This Peter Pan stuff needs to stop. This is the type of stuff that should halted immediately and institutions that use these practices be sanctioned or put out of business.

I don’t disagree.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Education is the surest way to upward mobility. For people who live in poverty or depressed economic conditions, education is the only way out. So yes, if these people want to better their lot in life, they are forced to take out loans to better themselves.

Respectfully, I think that those who are bright, have good grades, and who come from depressed economic conditions can get a scholarship (or several) that would likely eliminate the need for them to take out any loans. At the very least, surely they can find at least one college that will show them the money.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

I got to understand how transformational education was to entire communities, not just individuals, and also how predatory and punitive these programs can be. For people that really have choice for upward mobility, the system is clearly stack against them and is designed to keep them where they are, or locked into long-term poverty.

Then perhaps the answer is for targeted policies to address these issues, instead of just blanket loan forgiveness for everyone regardless of their economic background.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Seriously? You do know that you only get benefit from a degree if you complete that degree. Come on. You understand this. You only get to use certain degrees or become a member of a profession if you complete those degrees and meet ALL requirements of the degree. So yes, the schools have on the hook and you can’t get off. If you choose not to complete the degree you still carry that debt, and you get marginal benefit from that degree. So yes, you have to complete or you just waste your money and don’t get ahead. Not much of a choice there. You have to play by their rules. It’s their game.

I’m not going to go into this any further because any comments would likely just antagonize you.

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

I don’t disagree that there are SOME who would use this dodge. But these people will find a dodge no matter what. These are the type of people would just say #### it and then go on welfare. The vast majority of people aren’t like that. They want to be good contributing members of society. They want to go on and start their lives. But the way the system is setup is punitive ad prevents those people from doing just that. So while Wall Street continues to get theirs, Main Street continues to take it in the tail pipe and pay for the already rich’s expansion of their share of the economic pie. I want to see what the economic power of 42 million Americans spending that disposable income looks like. We’ve already tried trickledown economics, its time to try giving average Americans the break and watch the economy spring to life.

I think that there are other ways to accomplish your goal without mass student loan forgiveness.

[Amethyst]

#1) Yes, you can negotiate your mortgage rate.

#2) If the system is that you need to either go into massive debt to get an education or some bank tells you what you can study, then the system should be torn down and re-built.

[surferguy]

Lindsay Graham has announced he has COVID.