No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job • Hacker News Board

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#201

Post by kartickv » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

azemda wrote: post #195

kartickv wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Academics is necessary to teach people how to [...] understand and appreciate Art and Culture. Any evidence in favor of that claim? > If you think these skills can be obtained from reading books I didn't say that nobody should study these fields; just that they needn't do so on taxpayer money.

Here is the OECD report http://www.oecd.org/education/ceri/arts.htm which stresses the importance of Arts in education and benefits of arts to students (even students of non-arts subjects). They also conclude that "The arts have been in existence since the earliest humans, are parts of all cultures, and are a major domain of human experience, just like science, technology, mathematics, and humanities. In that respect…

Thanks for a reasonable disagreement, unlike the other respondent to my post.

I was saying that govt should perhaps not give subsidised loans to individuals (as in the Australian example) to study things like art because:

- the subsidised loan program needs to have a positive measurable ROI for it to continue. Otherwise, the next govt may bring it to an end, because there are hundreds of projects competing for government resources.

- in a world where poverty still exists, programs that are more bang for the buck may have the maximum positive impact on people. I live in India where millions are poor. Some amount of money should definitely be spent on arts / culture, but probably 100x more should be spent on pulling people out of poverty, and the way to do that is to identify high ROI investments in people.

- there are already other venues than Australian-type student loans for govts to subsidise arts / culture-type education, like university grants.

- I'm not sure about the ethics of giving a loan to a student for a course that may not pay back financially, but the loan will with the student for life, even if payment is delayed till his income increases. If arts are considered important to society, is it ethical to burden a student with the loan?

It was just a thought. I'm not adamant about it. I'm happy to see that we've had a good exchange of views, which is supposed to be the purpose of a forum like this.

Thanks for sending the link to the OECD report. I'll read it when I'm free to learn more about this topic.

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#202

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 3:19 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #152

deepnotderp wrote: post #137

You know, it's funny, there's a lot of comments saying something along the lines of "college isn't just to get a job". Which is really funny, since that's absolutely the primary reason why college educations are pushed. E.g. "if you don't go to college you'll end up working at McDonald's" Plus, I have yet to see the evidence that colleges provide this virtuous yet intangible quality of non-economically beneficial "wh…

> Plus, I have yet to see the evidence that colleges provide this virtuous yet intangible quality of non-economically beneficial "wholesome" education. The biggest performance dilemma I noticed upon entering college is basic literacy. I saw most people reading at a 9th grade level, which is average for most Americans, and struggle to write a 2 page paper. That 2 page paper was hardly competent once written. The probl…

[deleted]

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#203

Post by darkarmani » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #199

kalleboo wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's only a new marginal rate, so it still only applies to those extra 50k

The average American doesn’t have the savings to pay that extra amount is what I’m getting at. And I’m average.

Would you rather owe the entire amount of the loan?

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#204

Post by daveFNbuck » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

kartickv wrote: post #140

daveFNbuck wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus, I have yet to see the evidence that colleges provide this virtuous yet intangible quality of non-economically beneficial "wholesome" education. You could try checking course requirements. Every college I'm aware of requires that students take classes in a variety of subjects outside their major before they can graduate.

Which doesn't provide the evidence the parent was looking for. Just because you take a variety of classes doesn't mean that they have a benefit. If they do, please give us the evidence.

The parent asked about the

> virtuous yet intangible quality of non-economically beneficial "wholesome" education

How could I possibly provide evidence of an intangible benefit? All I can do is show that they provide the education that's supposed to have this quality.

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#205

Post by gigatexal » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #199

kalleboo wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's only a new marginal rate, so it still only applies to those extra 50k

The average American doesn’t have the savings to pay that extra amount is what I’m getting at. And I’m average.

No I wouldn’t want to owe the entire amount of the loan but if I can’t pay off the loan or the forgiven amount I’m screwed either way. Just in the latter situation I’m relatively less screwed.

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#206

Post by thedufer » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 4:04 PM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #199

kalleboo wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's only a new marginal rate, so it still only applies to those extra 50k

The average American doesn’t have the savings to pay that extra amount is what I’m getting at. And I’m average.

Why would you have to pay it all immediately? The IRS is very helpful with payment plans (this is obviously better for them than demanding full payment and then watching you wipe away the debt in bankruptcy). Here are some details [1] - fees to move your owed taxes to a long-term payment plan (essentially a loan) range from $31 to $225.

And if they aren't, personal loans are possible. Or even bankruptcy! The common thread between these options is that they're better than being $50k in non-dischargeable debt.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/payments/payment-plans-installment-agree...

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#207

Post by thedufer » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #194

thedufer wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it might be hard. But my point is that it can't be harder than paying the debt itself. Debt forgiveness does not leave you in a worse position unless your marginal tax rate is more than 100%, which is vanishingly rare.

What? If I make 80k a year having the IRS think I made an extra 50k puts me in a new tax bracket

The difference in your tax bill between $80k of income and $130k of income is $15k. This is much, much less than $50k. In this case the loan forgiveness has increased your net worth by $35k. That's a lot of free money that you're insisting is actually a curse.

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#208

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

why_only_15 wrote: post #200

grecy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also have difficulty seeing the first benefit you list as being a benefit. I don't have a problem with people pursuing degrees in fields that aren't big money makers, but I also don't know that the government should be in the business of incentivising people to study in these fields. It's actually one of the best things about the system. Maybe you want to be a social worker who will never earn much but will make…

You make the mistake that the relationship between income and value to society is inverse. Delivery people, for example, or store clerks or the like are all not paid well, but their impact on society isn't particularly profound either. The loan payment structure gives people an incentive to have a lower paying job as opposed to a higher paying one, which isn't the right way to go about it.

[deleted]

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#209

Post by mercutio2 » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #205

gigatexal wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average American doesn’t have the savings to pay that extra amount is what I’m getting at. And I’m average.

No I wouldn’t want to owe the entire amount of the loan but if I can’t pay off the loan or the forgiven amount I’m screwed either way. Just in the latter situation I’m relatively less screwed.

You appear to be pretty attached to the idea that IRS liabilities are worse somehow than student loan liabilities. Other people seem to be trying in good faith to understand why you think this.

IRS liabilities can easily be repaid over long time scales, usually at much lower interest rates than you can get on unsecured loans such as a student loan.

A $50k non-dischargeable loan, at a relatively high interest rate, with a flexible repayment timeline does not appear, to me, to compare favorably with a $15k IRS liability, dischargeable in bankruptcy, at relatively low interest rates with a similarly flexible repayment timeline.

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#210

Post by rchaud » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

I'm of the class of 2009, graduating at a time when even entry-level office jobs seemed out of reach. I was an Econ major at a top US liberal arts school, with two summer analyst (finance) positions under my belt. But even with all that, the only full time job I was able to get was a book-keeping position that paid $12.50/hr.

If you don't have job-ready skills (e.g., Quickbooks expertise at a small business), your prospects are limited to big corporations that hire on the basis of a regular recruiting schedule, provide training, onboarding etc. And those firms ghosted completely that year.

I'm not from a rich family, so I would have much preferred to have done school in a short-term program like this that was incentivized to help me hit the ground running when it came to job-ready skills.

That said, what is to stop Lambda-like firms to crop up everywhere, like bootcamps did, and promise 6-figure salaries that will never materialize? The VC money required to finance such schools is certainly out there, but are the jobs?