Uh, in my upper middle class DC suburb you were socially looked down on if you didn't go to college, and no one taught us even basic finance. I have friends who's parents literally put the forms in front of them, told them to sign it so they could go to college. They didn't know what they were signing, now they're possibly on the hook for the rest of their lives
So "forced"? Not with a gun to their head, but when every authority figure, parent and friend you've ever trusted tells you to do the thing at 17...
If one could make a case for it, I wouldn't mind in these specific scenarios of parents coercing their children to sign contracts that the financial burdens be transferred to their parents (parents who often tend to help pay such bills anyway). But is that what people generally propose as a solution?
Sure, nobody forced them to take out loans, but for me, the propaganda all throughout high school was "If you want a high paying job, you need to go to college!" and then was told not to worry about the costs and student loan payments, the higher paying job will pay for itself.
Four years of every adult you trust. Your parents, teachers, counselors, and other school faculty. The same message. Go to college. Go to college. Go to college. Don't worry about the loans, the higher salary will pay for it. It's an investment. It doesn't even matter what you get a degree in, employers just like to see you had the discipline and sense of responsibility to complete it.
And then we get out of college, and then we find out we've been lied to. We were children and the adults that we were supposed to trust were lying to us. The degree didn't guarantee a job by any means. Worse yet, many jobs require the degree, but then pay $20/hr, while you're trying to pay $700+/month in student loan payments.
And then dickheads like you come in and pour salt on the wounds.
In short, people with an attitude like yours need to get fucked. Children are being lied to by the adults they trust, and then getting blamed for not being able to handle the responsibilities they took on based on the lies.
Why keep calling these people children past the age of twelve? There's a term for that period. Adolescence. It's supposed to imply some level of growth in independence and the ability to discern reality.
Yes, these adults gave these teenagers terrible advice. But the fact of the matter is, they can see exactly how much they would have to pay, with a job that they had no guarantee of. Teenagers of the current age have stopped listening to that advice. If you are stuck with the loans now, all you can do is call out mom, pop, and teachers for misleading you, but also yourself for believing them.
I won't convince you because you've got your anecdotes. Though I'd say if a public school counselor, parents and teachers all tell a 17 year old it's "college or bust", it's laughable to argue "ah, those teenagers should have been rational, informed consumers of professional training and eschewed the advice of every trusted adult in their life".
If you change "sell yourself into loan slavery for 30 years" with "create pornography" or "drink alcohol" or "enlist for war" or "buy guns" or "any number of age restricted things" suddenly everyone is all up in arms about how the 17 year old cannot be trusted to make an informed decision.
But when it's in the service of the finance industry - bam; all gone!
It does not take professional training to see the price tag of a student loan and to question if one can reasonably pay it off in the future. Certainly, someone equipped with the skills needed to be accepted into a college that costs so much should be able to do the math required on that calculation.
The point is that the majority did question it. It's a very uncertain proposition which is why they sought after the advice of people they trust with more life experiences and knowledge.
I think the fact that student loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy is a nod to the fact that everyone involved knows that the people taking them are largely uneducated about what they are.
Bro, when did you last look at the cost of college, the 70s?
I went to a community college and then transferred to a state college that was also in my town, so I didn't have to pay absurd dorm expenses. I worked 30-35 hours a week while going to college.
I still came out with ~$45K in loan debt.
And you're proposing even the possibility of a four-digit loan?
> when you have low or zero income.
Have you missed the part where adults are lying to children and telling them that the high salary their degree will earn them will pay for the loan?
I think a four digit loan is already on the high end when one also needs to get a car, find a place to live and to rent, with no savings. You arguing that it is consistently much higher makes my case against taking loans stronger, not weaker.
>Have you missed the part where adults are lying to children and telling them that the high salary their degree will earn them will pay for the loan?
Lying to teenagers who should, at some point, use their own judgment. You signed a paper for the loans, yes? Were you able to calculate that it would equal 45K or more of debt? How did you, yourself, think that you would manage to climb out of that debt with a job that you did not have, and would only have a chance of getting four years after graduating?
This is the bill of goods sold by the for-profit colleges themselves (all colleges are for-profit even if non-profit, the people profiting are the administration and staff, which balloons to consume all revenue).
We could reduce student usury by demanding that all loans be paid back at a maximum percentage of income for a set number of years. If the degree isn't worth 5% of expected job salary for 15 years, too bad. Obviously the numbers can be adjusted but the whole sale pitch is "spend $X, get a leg up on the pile and make twice $x yearly". Just codify that, and suddenly the loan companies are on the hook for $500k loans for basketweaving degrees that produce baristas.
They make 12-15 dollars an hour. That's 2400 dollars a month. That means at 30% of income (rental maximum in most areas), they can afford $720. (This assumes that they can work 40 hours. Their hours are often variable because they need two jobs - places mostly hire part time to avoid needing to give out health care.)
There are only a handful of apartments in the area that will rent a two bedroom for 1400. (I assume a roommate.) So, considering a moderate cost of living area, you are unlikely to ever make it out of sharing an apartment as nearly every job paying more than $30 an hour in this city requires a bachelor's degree.
Look around your job. How many people don't have a four year degree? It is near impossible to make it up the ladder without one.
The people I know making lower wages typically rent or live in places with not such a high expense. Their apartments are not as upscale as others are, but they are certainly livable.
I live in one of those places. This is a medium cost of living area. That's how much rent has gone up in the past decade in most places that they've raised the de facto minimum wage to 11 bucks, and I wasn't even counting those who live at the real edges. I'm talking about people who are doing reasonably but not excessively well for themselves with high school degrees.
Inflation where I live has driven entry level job wages much higher than 11 bucks. I haven't seen rent rise quickly to match it - where I've seen the most price gouging in response has generally been on car payments and electricity.
Anecdotally, plenty of people win the lottery. It does not make playing a sound strategy or something that works on average.
Sure, some will be alright. However, looking at statistics, the best way of not falling behind in terms of income is to get a good degree. Because that’s what we are talking about: average wages have been increasing more slowly than inflation for quite a few decades now. So we are talking about a generation falling behind, not a greedy generation.
It’s less and less the case that a degree is the best path forward (depending on the field), but still.
Going for a college drop is analogous to the lottery, because losers will end up further behind those that skipped the expensive degree and lost money to inflation.
Education has traditionally been a primary method for upward economic mobility. Once student loans became a thing, colleges jacked up tuition to put it out of reach of anyone but the super wealthy unless student loans were used.
People basically did remain in the economic class though. The school doesn't have much to do with it. Has class mobility significantly increased since the adoption of mass tertiary education?
And those who do not want to deal with the risk of going through school and not getting a better job to pay for the onerous loans can just remain in their economic class.
100% agree. Also, to a young adult, student loans are a nigh-irresistible way to get away from your parents and gain independence, while worrying about the costs later.
Their parents and an entire propaganda machine coming from the school system, local, and federal governments.
Children were told "you can be anything you want to be" and also "in order to get a good job you have to go to college" which, in effect, forced children who otherwise didn't need to go to college, to go to college.
In the same way a child cannot consent to sex, a child cannot fight social pressure coming from every institution they have access to. Your insistence on the word force is manipulative, pointless, and in bad faith.
It's like birthing an animal in captivity and setting up a snare trap outside the only exit to their cage and then claiming you are hunting when they step on it. Truly disgusting.
I was told such things too. I also can process numbers. I knew that taking on an extra cost I could not pay would not be worth it without a guarantee of a high paying job, which is not something offered by going to school.
The younger generations certainly seem capable of that reasoning. They aren't taking on nearly as many student loans.
> I knew that taking on an extra cost I could not pay would not be worth it without a guarantee of a high paying job, which is not something offered by going to school.
Except this was exactly what was offered. Schools used to brag about placement rates. This message came from your parents, the staff at your school, etc.
Setting up, I repeat, a literal trap for children to fall into, and then getting on this stupid high horse about how you didn't fall for it. I cannot begin to express how depraved that concept is, and I know you can't begin to comprehend it. Maybe one day you will.
> The younger generations certainly seem capable of that reasoning. They aren't taking on nearly as many student loans.
That is because they have the mistakes of 2 previous generations as an example and the rhetoric has died down dramatically.
The trap the schools set is nasty. But it meets the nasty expectations people had that the economic boom of the 40s-50s, where everyone could just keep going to college and getting a high paying job and living it good forever. Some lessons you can only learn the hard way.
It's a question of size. I use Fastmail, and even if they do that (and I hope they don't), it's a relatively small company, so the impact is also smaller.
Both are asked by your various governments to spy on you. I am not privy to the most current technical details - if you go through old NSA presentations that Snowden revealed I am sure you'll get the general idea of how it works.
Even if this is true, as we know, the American government is explicitly set up to not give citizens this kind of choice, so offering this as an argument is disingenuous.
As a counterpoint though, consider that neocons keep getting elected to Washington every other year.
I just listened to a podcast [0] this morning that mentioned the fact that the many of the same people denouncing "Team America World Police" two decades ago have flip-flopped on that attitude regarding current events in Eastern Europe. I guess this is sort of intended to go along with c_crank's reply there.
Any comparison between the middle east and Ukraine is entirely disingenuous, because they aren't even remotely comparable. Ukraine is most comparable to when a coalition of western states freed Kuwait from Saddam.
>Counterpoint: neocons keep getting elected to Washington every other year.
Because the choice given to a voter is this:
Vote for a democrat, who destabilizes foreign countries as a matter of course, and puts their energy into rewriting a health care bill.
Vote for a neocon, who destabilizes foreign countries as a matter of course, and puts their energy into keeping gas prices and taxes a little bit lower.
Vote for Trump, who actually attempts to stop destabilizing foreign countries, and gets impeached and called a terrorist by everyone who suddenly thinks NATO and aggressive foreign policy is the most important thing in the world.
An actually democratic decision would be giving citizens a plebiscite, "Do you want to stop foreign intervention in X country: yes or no." It would be quite a long list, but the results of that vote would be nice to see.
And most of those many will flip on a dime. Invading Iraq had something like 70% public support and Afghanistan was even higher. Of course, you can't find most of those people now.
Because they're mostly flip-floppers based on their political ideologies.
They had all the information they needed then. Those chose wrong, they'll be mostly wrong now. Any ideological bent today is just as much a normie venture as it was then.
I feel confident that the richest third of Russians bought almost all of those, and the poorest Russians few or none, so it's those without power who don't leave, because they can't. Lack of money/lawyers/resources diminishes your ability to arrange a residence permit in a foreign country.
The modestly powerful can only effect modest improvements. Often local rather than national. If you think modest improvement is zero, then you are unquestionably right, they can't "save" it.
Reality: Americans have not been ruled by the superhero-like ultra rich for decades, and are starting to notice that little is improving and much is getting worse.
I think a lot improved for the countless people who got medicaid.
When you assert something hasn't improved, it tells me it hasnt improved according to your personal criteria. I suspect those dont cover the wellfare and health of your society.
.... I looked back to the very root comment for any mention of Musk. Why did you mention him? What relevance does he have? What point are you trying to make?
For as much as any man in 21st century America can claim to stand for the position of the superhero rich man trying to dictate policy in favor of industry, he does. He argues for less regulation, less taxes, even such quaint things like free speech. But the rich can also stand for the opposite of those things, as the Rockefeller trust and the Bill Gates fund do.
I'll just point to basically everything that's happened at Twitter as an example of bad policy, including the 'free speech' he promised except not really. He's also dialing labor laws back by a century or two with the pressure he put on people to sleep in the office, even setting up beds that were in violation of building code.
Pedo Guy Space Karen is not the billionaire superhero you want him to be, so simp for him elsewhere.
I'm not assigning any moral value by calling him a 'superhero' only pointing out that he can represent a side, and that side does not even hold the majority of the wealthy.
Calling him a superhero assigns him the moral value of things generally considered "good", which is quite an assumption to make about Pedo Guy Space Karen WeChat2 Wannabe. He represents the non-billionaire cohort about as well and faithfully as Trump did. 'Kill your heroes' and you'll be better off.
No. Most were in the $1-10 million net worth range before taking office. Former presidents, of course, can easily make tens of millions on book sales and speaking fees. But that's still small time compared to the owners of major firms.
The whims of the morally aggressive Western elite substitute for heavy handed regulation from top down. Although recent moves have been made to try and institute a CCP style bureau of misinformation even in America.
While I agree that social media is way too aggressive with moral policing of content, I can still trivially watch any of the morally reprehensible stuff that would be banned from there.
