Sure, but you’re framing that in a way to be as positive as possible about it. How about, “the 18 year old that wanted to defend criminals and get them out of violent crime offenses for huge profits”, and went into debt to pursue what they thought was going to be a hugely profitable career? Do you really think regular people, who go into debt just ~40k based on what the article states, should also be comp’ing that other case with perks/debt forgiveness? The article is specifically using an outlier case, who went into debt for a profession that’s respectable, to skew opinions…
Student debt is an issue in the states, I don’t disagree on that as far as I understand it at least. It’s just that a lot of the articles around the subject seem very heavily skewed by political bias, which is annoying. And me being annoyed by that, and wanting more neutral discussion, I don’t think of as bootlicking.
The fact that public defenders can’t afford their student loans is a crippling failure of our system which asserts a right to a lawyer for all accused regardless of ability to pay.
It’s not just violent criminals who need these defenders, it’s also the innocent who are accused of violent crimes. Both are equally invested in not going to prison. And you don’t know who’s which.
Sure, I get that not all lawyers are scum – though I do know a few that fit the very description I gave. But the point is more that you can find less ‘noble’ examples of people in massive debt, which may alter opinions on the subject. The article chooses to use a specific outlier to make the case more persuasive/concerning.
Like another thing I’d be curious about is the variance in debt levels between professionals who train at “regular” schools/colleges, and ones who train at “elite” schools like Harvard or MIT or whatever’s good down there these days. The impression I get as an outsider to the US system, is that the costs vary wildly between different tiers of schools – and that it’s entirely possible to get a decent career (middle class) even without a top tier school education. I’d suspect then that there’s a tranche of people who are going in to massive debt attempting to go to these more expensive options, without good reason for doing so – but it’s the individuals choice, at the end of the day.
And contrary to what some folks seem to think on here, an 18 year old is an adult in most countries, as far as I know. They’re old enough to be accountable for their actions. They can vote and all that. And these folks are often mid 20s by the time they get out / have fully accumulated their debt – so even more ‘old enough’. As long as they have ‘options’ to choose from, I find it questionable that people choosing the highest/most expensive options should be given the biggest break.
It’d make more sense to me to regulate the hell out of your schools, and have government enforce things like tuition caps for American citizen under grads etc – rather than have a kind of manic approach to debt forgiveness that flips every four years, which turns education affordability into a lottery. University endowment funds are a fairly clear argument for clipping those institutions wings a bit, and forcing them to give a break to the students. Heck, even here in Canada where we cap tuition, some of our universities have absurd amounts of money stockpiled.
But the point is more that you can find less ‘noble’ examples of people in massive debt, which may alter opinions on the subject.
Oh fuck right off with that shit and stop deepthroating the fucking toes.
What the fuck makes you the arbiter on who is “noble”? Why the fuck do you even want to qualify who is in “good” debt? What is “bad” student loan debt, in your omnipotent opinion?
Millennials, who are coming into their forties now, were told for the first half of their life that they will never amount to anything more than a poor [insert dirty demeaning job here] if they don’t get a good education from a premium school.
Shit I remember applying for colleges and most of the “good” schools were well into 6-digits a year. I graduated HS 22 years ago.
And then we come out on the other side and there’s a fucking recession waiting for us.
And then we are entering a jobs market that’s oversaturated with college degrees, and with wages and career earning potential below those uneducated dirty demeaning jobs we were threatened with.
The system was rigged against us before we were born and you’re sitting there with the boot in your mouth ankles-deep. Fuck off.
So your college degree seems to have been poor quality, as your approach to discussing a topic is to just insult the other person to try and make your point. You’re also conflating your personal experience, from the sound of things, with the framing I was referencing in the article. Pointing out that the article is highlighting an extreme example of an outlier, who works in a field that most people find ‘more respectable’, is a valid criticism of the article’s bias. The article would read a lot differently if it was someone who’d gone to an ivy league school to get an arts degree, went into debt for $500k doing so, and now works as a Starbucks barista struggling to make payments. The way the article is structured is intended to cause people to get triggered and be all out-ragey, without properly engaging with the subject / thinking about what’s going on, the issues, and potential tweaks to make things work.
The article does include a reference to the ‘average’ debt level of ~40k, for people that took out student loans. But it doesn’t comment on how those “average” students debt servicing amounts are changing due to the changes in policy. It references via secondary links a more regular example, one where the person is just 2-3x more in debt than average – where a woman comments that her payments are going from $250 to $900.
One of the ‘horror’ stories we hear out of the American system, is that people will be paying these amounts for decades and decades, without chipping away at the principle. Not a surprise, if your payments are less than the monthly interest costs – and if she’s paying just $250 out of a payment that ‘should’ be $900 on a 10 year term, she isn’t covering the interest at all. If they’re allowed to take out loans from regular FIs, they could theoretically get that down to around $450-500 by extending the amortization out to 25 years and adding options for over payments if they want to get out of debt faster. You could get that even lower, if you have a guarantor (ex. Parent) or other security behind the loan to reduce the interest rate further – with that setup, you get a monthly payment of like… $250. A more practical middle ground. Yes, it’d potentially increase the payments, but it’d also remove the common complaint of not being able to get ahead on principle payments.
And again, that referenced example is one where someone’s gone into twice as much debt as the average person who uses that system. The average person, based on the numbers in the article, is looking at a payment of about $400 after the change, from the look of it. A difficult, yet far more manageable change than putting out there that people are suddenly seeing a 10x increase up to $5000, which is the ‘shock and outrage’ approach taken in the article.
I don’t think anyone from a more sane country is looking at the American system and thinking its ‘good’. In another response, I noted that here in Canada, from what I recall at least, we cap our tuition amounts for Canadian citizens / undergrads – so its far less common to hear of people going into massive debt to get degrees from local universities. Doing so aims to place the ‘pressure’ on Universities to figure out how to fund their operations. Many ended up relying on foreign student income, where tuition isn’t capped. Even with some restrictions, universities still have massive endowment funds, so they aren’t ‘hurting’ for money at the institutional level – for example the University of BC is sitting on about $3billion in its fund. Putting pressure on the Universities/institutions to give students a fair shake, is more practical in my view than saying the government should cover student loan debts / interest issues. I mean, if the Universities “fraudulently sold degrees that they claimed would get you 6 figures”, shouldn’t they be the ones holding the bag – not the government / regular tax payers?
You say you graduated HS 22 years ago. It may be time to act more like an adult, and treat other people/discussions with some decorum.
*just an edit to add in, that if you watch the clip of the lady with the 5k payment… she openly admits that, while complaining about the increase, they’re aiming to put in about $7k/month to get it all paid off in 5 years, while still having more left over for ‘prioritizing other investments too’. So, the article’s ‘outrage’ increase, is one where the person clearly got a really high paying job out of it, and isn’t exactly ‘hurting’. So they earn way more than enough to cover their debts – and are essentially 1%'rs who were getting subsidized by the government by thousands of dollars per month.
The second sentence doesn’t only apply to folks going into the medical field, and I would say a lot of jobs help people.
Do you really think regular people, who go into debt just ~40k based on what the article states, should also be comp’ing that other case with perks/debt forgiveness?
Yes.
It’s just that a lot of the articles around the subject seem very heavily skewed by political bias
I think this is why I am not super interested in engaging with the particulars of your reply. Because you’re right, there is selection and political bias in this article. But not in the direction you think. Because the article completely omits the culture pressures that started the issues of student loans. That for many it was seen as the only path out of poverty, and wanting to foster that while still allowing markets to drive everything in the country, the government decided the loans was the correct solution. Since these were 18 year olds getting goods that could not be returned, the only market solution to that was make the loans not discharged on bankruptcy.
Once the costs were abstracted into the future, the tuition start to quickly rise, and with government backing the student loans, the loans rise with them. Since schools are now getting an order of magnitude more from each student they lure in, they heavily push the idea that you will be flipping burgers for minimum wage unless you have a degree, reframing university as not a place of higher learning for those with exceptional interest, to the necessary step after high school. This taking root devalues all degrees, but 4 year degrees in particular, leading to a drop in the salaries expectations of the professional class with 4 year degrees.
With this market driven strategy giving rise to these new problems, income driven payment plans become much more common, and with those being cut off, suddenly the 1.6 trillion dollar debt bubble in the US starts to become realized. Which is what this article is touching on from a more personal level.
All of that being said, reaching for criminal defense lawyers as your example of a morally abhorrent and greedy career track says much more about your bootlicking than anything. If you had a worthwhile conception of the problem and reality of it, you would have picked one of the much better examples.
It’s not just bootlicking. It’s outright anti American bootlicking. The right to a state provided attorney is a longstanding fundamental right in America. Its something we did right even though implementation has lacked. If you want every person who’s accused of violent crime to go to prison forever without defense you can go to el Salvador or another country without human rights
Yeah, I don’t really see a reason to engage with your posts either, at least not with any real conviction. It’s not a sign that you’re approaching a topic / other person in good faith if you’re defaulting to insults. Insulting people isn’t very persuasive, and just serves to further alienate moderates – it makes you seem like an unreasonable extremist with the personality of sandpaper underwear.
Sure, but you’re framing that in a way to be as positive as possible about it. How about, “the 18 year old that wanted to defend criminals and get them out of violent crime offenses for huge profits”, and went into debt to pursue what they thought was going to be a hugely profitable career? Do you really think regular people, who go into debt just ~40k based on what the article states, should also be comp’ing that other case with perks/debt forgiveness? The article is specifically using an outlier case, who went into debt for a profession that’s respectable, to skew opinions…
Student debt is an issue in the states, I don’t disagree on that as far as I understand it at least. It’s just that a lot of the articles around the subject seem very heavily skewed by political bias, which is annoying. And me being annoyed by that, and wanting more neutral discussion, I don’t think of as bootlicking.
The fact that public defenders can’t afford their student loans is a crippling failure of our system which asserts a right to a lawyer for all accused regardless of ability to pay.
It’s not just violent criminals who need these defenders, it’s also the innocent who are accused of violent crimes. Both are equally invested in not going to prison. And you don’t know who’s which.
Sure, I get that not all lawyers are scum – though I do know a few that fit the very description I gave. But the point is more that you can find less ‘noble’ examples of people in massive debt, which may alter opinions on the subject. The article chooses to use a specific outlier to make the case more persuasive/concerning.
Like another thing I’d be curious about is the variance in debt levels between professionals who train at “regular” schools/colleges, and ones who train at “elite” schools like Harvard or MIT or whatever’s good down there these days. The impression I get as an outsider to the US system, is that the costs vary wildly between different tiers of schools – and that it’s entirely possible to get a decent career (middle class) even without a top tier school education. I’d suspect then that there’s a tranche of people who are going in to massive debt attempting to go to these more expensive options, without good reason for doing so – but it’s the individuals choice, at the end of the day.
And contrary to what some folks seem to think on here, an 18 year old is an adult in most countries, as far as I know. They’re old enough to be accountable for their actions. They can vote and all that. And these folks are often mid 20s by the time they get out / have fully accumulated their debt – so even more ‘old enough’. As long as they have ‘options’ to choose from, I find it questionable that people choosing the highest/most expensive options should be given the biggest break.
It’d make more sense to me to regulate the hell out of your schools, and have government enforce things like tuition caps for American citizen under grads etc – rather than have a kind of manic approach to debt forgiveness that flips every four years, which turns education affordability into a lottery. University endowment funds are a fairly clear argument for clipping those institutions wings a bit, and forcing them to give a break to the students. Heck, even here in Canada where we cap tuition, some of our universities have absurd amounts of money stockpiled.
Oh fuck right off with that shit and stop deepthroating the fucking toes.
What the fuck makes you the arbiter on who is “noble”? Why the fuck do you even want to qualify who is in “good” debt? What is “bad” student loan debt, in your omnipotent opinion?
Millennials, who are coming into their forties now, were told for the first half of their life that they will never amount to anything more than a poor [insert dirty demeaning job here] if they don’t get a good education from a premium school.
Shit I remember applying for colleges and most of the “good” schools were well into 6-digits a year. I graduated HS 22 years ago.
And then we come out on the other side and there’s a fucking recession waiting for us.
And then we are entering a jobs market that’s oversaturated with college degrees, and with wages and career earning potential below those uneducated dirty demeaning jobs we were threatened with.
The system was rigged against us before we were born and you’re sitting there with the boot in your mouth ankles-deep. Fuck off.
So your college degree seems to have been poor quality, as your approach to discussing a topic is to just insult the other person to try and make your point. You’re also conflating your personal experience, from the sound of things, with the framing I was referencing in the article. Pointing out that the article is highlighting an extreme example of an outlier, who works in a field that most people find ‘more respectable’, is a valid criticism of the article’s bias. The article would read a lot differently if it was someone who’d gone to an ivy league school to get an arts degree, went into debt for $500k doing so, and now works as a Starbucks barista struggling to make payments. The way the article is structured is intended to cause people to get triggered and be all out-ragey, without properly engaging with the subject / thinking about what’s going on, the issues, and potential tweaks to make things work.
The article does include a reference to the ‘average’ debt level of ~40k, for people that took out student loans. But it doesn’t comment on how those “average” students debt servicing amounts are changing due to the changes in policy. It references via secondary links a more regular example, one where the person is just 2-3x more in debt than average – where a woman comments that her payments are going from $250 to $900.
One of the ‘horror’ stories we hear out of the American system, is that people will be paying these amounts for decades and decades, without chipping away at the principle. Not a surprise, if your payments are less than the monthly interest costs – and if she’s paying just $250 out of a payment that ‘should’ be $900 on a 10 year term, she isn’t covering the interest at all. If they’re allowed to take out loans from regular FIs, they could theoretically get that down to around $450-500 by extending the amortization out to 25 years and adding options for over payments if they want to get out of debt faster. You could get that even lower, if you have a guarantor (ex. Parent) or other security behind the loan to reduce the interest rate further – with that setup, you get a monthly payment of like… $250. A more practical middle ground. Yes, it’d potentially increase the payments, but it’d also remove the common complaint of not being able to get ahead on principle payments.
And again, that referenced example is one where someone’s gone into twice as much debt as the average person who uses that system. The average person, based on the numbers in the article, is looking at a payment of about $400 after the change, from the look of it. A difficult, yet far more manageable change than putting out there that people are suddenly seeing a 10x increase up to $5000, which is the ‘shock and outrage’ approach taken in the article.
I don’t think anyone from a more sane country is looking at the American system and thinking its ‘good’. In another response, I noted that here in Canada, from what I recall at least, we cap our tuition amounts for Canadian citizens / undergrads – so its far less common to hear of people going into massive debt to get degrees from local universities. Doing so aims to place the ‘pressure’ on Universities to figure out how to fund their operations. Many ended up relying on foreign student income, where tuition isn’t capped. Even with some restrictions, universities still have massive endowment funds, so they aren’t ‘hurting’ for money at the institutional level – for example the University of BC is sitting on about $3billion in its fund. Putting pressure on the Universities/institutions to give students a fair shake, is more practical in my view than saying the government should cover student loan debts / interest issues. I mean, if the Universities “fraudulently sold degrees that they claimed would get you 6 figures”, shouldn’t they be the ones holding the bag – not the government / regular tax payers?
You say you graduated HS 22 years ago. It may be time to act more like an adult, and treat other people/discussions with some decorum.
*just an edit to add in, that if you watch the clip of the lady with the 5k payment… she openly admits that, while complaining about the increase, they’re aiming to put in about $7k/month to get it all paid off in 5 years, while still having more left over for ‘prioritizing other investments too’. So, the article’s ‘outrage’ increase, is one where the person clearly got a really high paying job out of it, and isn’t exactly ‘hurting’. So they earn way more than enough to cover their debts – and are essentially 1%'rs who were getting subsidized by the government by thousands of dollars per month.
The second sentence doesn’t only apply to folks going into the medical field, and I would say a lot of jobs help people.
Yes.
I think this is why I am not super interested in engaging with the particulars of your reply. Because you’re right, there is selection and political bias in this article. But not in the direction you think. Because the article completely omits the culture pressures that started the issues of student loans. That for many it was seen as the only path out of poverty, and wanting to foster that while still allowing markets to drive everything in the country, the government decided the loans was the correct solution. Since these were 18 year olds getting goods that could not be returned, the only market solution to that was make the loans not discharged on bankruptcy.
Once the costs were abstracted into the future, the tuition start to quickly rise, and with government backing the student loans, the loans rise with them. Since schools are now getting an order of magnitude more from each student they lure in, they heavily push the idea that you will be flipping burgers for minimum wage unless you have a degree, reframing university as not a place of higher learning for those with exceptional interest, to the necessary step after high school. This taking root devalues all degrees, but 4 year degrees in particular, leading to a drop in the salaries expectations of the professional class with 4 year degrees.
With this market driven strategy giving rise to these new problems, income driven payment plans become much more common, and with those being cut off, suddenly the 1.6 trillion dollar debt bubble in the US starts to become realized. Which is what this article is touching on from a more personal level.
All of that being said, reaching for criminal defense lawyers as your example of a morally abhorrent and greedy career track says much more about your bootlicking than anything. If you had a worthwhile conception of the problem and reality of it, you would have picked one of the much better examples.
It’s not just bootlicking. It’s outright anti American bootlicking. The right to a state provided attorney is a longstanding fundamental right in America. Its something we did right even though implementation has lacked. If you want every person who’s accused of violent crime to go to prison forever without defense you can go to el Salvador or another country without human rights
Yeah, I don’t really see a reason to engage with your posts either, at least not with any real conviction. It’s not a sign that you’re approaching a topic / other person in good faith if you’re defaulting to insults. Insulting people isn’t very persuasive, and just serves to further alienate moderates – it makes you seem like an unreasonable extremist with the personality of sandpaper underwear.