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U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

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Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#161

Post by goodells »

Casseres wrote: post #119
goodells wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is spot on. An anecdote from my undergrad studies and living in Madison, WI: the UW has a division of housing, which provides (shoddy) canvas carts to the students to use for moving in/out of the dorms. My student organization happened to "acquire" some of these carts, and when using one I was confronted by none other than the director of housing, who promptly called the police on me. In the end I was happy to r…

> there's a complicated bidding process to even attempt to sell them to the school! Did he mean complicated process for the school to buy them, or was he making them and selling them to the school himself?

My understanding is that there was a bidding process wherein the school would publish a request for proposal and companies would win the contract through it. I'm sure such an approach would be valid in other contexts, but in this case it just speaks to the unnecessary bureaucracy surrounding the procurement of something that could realistically be bought off the shelf.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#162

Post by wrong_variable »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #153
rubyn00bie wrote: post #138

Let it burn down. No one should pay back their student loan debt. Seriously, just stop. This is a scheme in which they've fucked over a large portion of the population with the skyrocketing prices of education. Further, this education is the regularly accepted means of increasing your production. Society says you have to do this, and then continuously increases the price, without reason. The gist of this is; some shi…

>No one should pay back their student loan debt. Seriously, just stop. Sorry. But you took a debt, you pay it back. Integrity isn’t outdated. I agree that the idea and industry behind “13th grade” is dumb. Obviously not every kid should be encouraged to take on debt to go to college. But “stop paying your debts” is a bad message imo.

> But “stop paying your debts” is a bad message imo.

Not really.

- Do you own a debt to your parents with a interest rate of 25% because they gave birth to you ?

- Do you own rent to planet earth for living in it ?

Debt can be unreasonable, just like wealth can be unreasonable. Its why governments intervene to destroy large amount of concentrated wealth and Egyptian pharaohs used to periodically clear everybody's debt.

The culture of " Paying your debt " is created by the small number of creditors who historically have controlled information flow, because they understand that society in aggregate has strong bargaining power.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#163

Post by arbitrary_name »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #153
rubyn00bie wrote: post #138

Let it burn down. No one should pay back their student loan debt. Seriously, just stop. This is a scheme in which they've fucked over a large portion of the population with the skyrocketing prices of education. Further, this education is the regularly accepted means of increasing your production. Society says you have to do this, and then continuously increases the price, without reason. The gist of this is; some shi…

>No one should pay back their student loan debt. Seriously, just stop. Sorry. But you took a debt, you pay it back. Integrity isn’t outdated. I agree that the idea and industry behind “13th grade” is dumb. Obviously not every kid should be encouraged to take on debt to go to college. But “stop paying your debts” is a bad message imo.

Let's take the morality out of it. It's been injected in there for the benefit of the lenders.

They charge an interest rate to cover their risk. Right now, with the fact that debt holders cannot default, they are getting an unfair deal. Defaulting on the debt and refusing to pay effectively triggers the risk that they were charging interest on.

Like strikers refusing to work until better working conditions are provided, so too are debtors withholding payment doing something noble.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#164

Post by Stanish »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #153
rubyn00bie wrote: post #138

Let it burn down. No one should pay back their student loan debt. Seriously, just stop. This is a scheme in which they've fucked over a large portion of the population with the skyrocketing prices of education. Further, this education is the regularly accepted means of increasing your production. Society says you have to do this, and then continuously increases the price, without reason. The gist of this is; some shi…

>No one should pay back their student loan debt. Seriously, just stop. Sorry. But you took a debt, you pay it back. Integrity isn’t outdated. I agree that the idea and industry behind “13th grade” is dumb. Obviously not every kid should be encouraged to take on debt to go to college. But “stop paying your debts” is a bad message imo.

Sorry, but that logic doesn't work after the 2008 rolling bailouts. It never actually worked, but especially now. Also, students don't get bankruptcy protection, which is another check on predatory lending that was removed specifically to inflate this bubble. Nobody should pay their loans if they can get away with it. Period. It's the only way to stop the cycle of predatory lending and fraudulent price inflation of what should be treated as a right for all.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#165

Post by kokokokoko »

RGamma wrote: post #127

From a European perspective I can only shake my head at this. It doesn't seem like a good idea at all to indebt a significant part of the young population (which I presume creates a lot of avoidable stress) while the rich gain in wealth and power year after year. But I guess longer-term thinking has been thrown overboard in economic decision/policy making anyway, because that would make the numbers not grow fast enou…

It's just a clever way for the government to spend less than it would. The idea is that it is cheaper to cover all the defaulted loans than it would be to pay for everyone's education upfront. And all the private insurance that will get defaulted on is actually free money the wealthy essentially donated to education. And dont forget that a chunk will be covered by inheritance when the younger generations parents pass away. I'm not saying I agree, but this isn't just a surprise. What is happening is kind of by design.

Beyond that don't trust what you read online about the US. It is all grossly exaggerated. Remember the US is a large country with a wide variety of people with different priorities.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#166

Post by haukilup »

why-el wrote: post #148
monting wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t mean to sound defensive (I’m not American), and I mostly agree with you. But, from a non-European perspective, Europe doesn’t seem to be doing well? It seems the EU is slowly disintegrating, and the monetary union isn’t working. Also the political landscape seems to be in turmoil as well.

This is a conversation about education. The EU, with all its faults, is leaps and bounds ahead of the US in the democratization of education, even though the US was the nation that pioneered the field in the first place. Goes to show how extreme the whole political spectrum of the US has gotten.

> This is a conversation about education.

Actually, this particular part of the thread you're responding to is about wealth inequality, economic policy, short-term political thinking, whether the EU is doing well comparatively, and policies that create a large amount of potentially avoidable anxiety - among a few other topics.

Education is only a related topic for this specific comment chain.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#167

Post by onetimemanytime »

arbitrary_name wrote: post #163
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No one should pay back their student loan debt. Seriously, just stop. Sorry. But you took a debt, you pay it back. Integrity isn’t outdated. I agree that the idea and industry behind “13th grade” is dumb. Obviously not every kid should be encouraged to take on debt to go to college. But “stop paying your debts” is a bad message imo.

Let's take the morality out of it. It's been injected in there for the benefit of the lenders. They charge an interest rate to cover their risk. Right now, with the fact that debt holders cannot default, they are getting an unfair deal. Defaulting on the debt and refusing to pay effectively triggers the risk that they were charging interest on. Like strikers refusing to work until better working conditions are provid…

agreed. If you cannot default, you should be charged more or less cost as interest.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#168

Post by goodells »

rosterface wrote: post #151
troutwine wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a member of the first group and I disagree with the conclusion. I'd be very happy to see all current student debt forgiven and subsidies to university programs improved. Good on you, though, for getting through an education without debt. That's a real accomplishment. There are for sure a good number of people who get an education for a viable career and wind up with loans that spiral out of control, especially i…

Actually, I don't have a degree. That's sort of my point. It's very possible to just enter the labor market and make money if you work hard and smart. I'm a developer but I know plenty of people I grew up with who went on to be: military people, plumbers, cops... > there's a good number of folks with student loan debt they can't easily manage who made all the right decisions but got a bad break somewhere. I don't thi…

What makes the student debt such a crappy situation is the fact that we're dealing with young people and families who may not necessarily have all the information to do an educated cost/benefit analysis. Students are pressured from very early on to plan to go to college. Teachers, guidance counselors, administrators, and often parents all fall into the narrative of "yes, college is a good decision and will pay for itself". It is completely taboo to tell a student that there are other options because that can be construed as telling the student they have less potential than others.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#170

Post by noir_lord »

holografix wrote: post #154
monting wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t mean to sound defensive (I’m not American), and I mostly agree with you. But, from a non-European perspective, Europe doesn’t seem to be doing well? It seems the EU is slowly disintegrating, and the monetary union isn’t working. Also the political landscape seems to be in turmoil as well.

Also non-American and non-European here. My impression is that the EU is getting itself into a huge mess mainly due to abused good intentions taking in immigrants and as a byproduct of the GFC and Middle East’s proxy American x Russian war. While the Americans seem to not be operating as a democracy for a while and are instead a Corporocracy. It became fairly obvious after the GFC. The three “super powers” in the wor…

Which are you three?

I make it US, EU and China - 4 if we count Russia for the 8000 nukes but not by most other measures.

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