11–20 of 370 posts
One thing that I noticed in this article and charts was the unprecedented growth of auto loans. They too have skyrocketed. That seems like another "bubble" waiting to happen.
One thing that I noticed in this article and charts was the unprecedented growth of auto loans. They too have skyrocketed. That seems like another "bubble" waiting to happen.
In the last twenty years, new vehicle prices have doubled. My eyes just about roll out of my head when I see what the sticker price is for a new truck or minivan. I assume people must be leasing more than they used to, because I can't see any other way to get the payment down into a palatable $500/month range.
bought a used 2016 last year for ... ~$12k? Small Focus, nothing fancy. Even that felt like a bit of a stretch, although... I'm getting more conservative with $ as I get older. It's also just 2 of us in the house - no kids, and I get that some people want/need larger cars to haul around kids and stuff. But seeing that an 'average' new car loan is $30k, my mind just... boggles.
Talking about underemployment as a problem for college graduates in general doesn’t seem very insightful to me. It seems obvious that not all degrees have problems with underemployment. So which ones do? Why are people doing those degrees? Are they under the mistaken impression that those degrees will lead to employment opportunities that don’t actually exist?
I believe (partially anecdotally and partially from reading articles over the years) that a big part of this problem is more like "mis-education", rather than "under-education". In primary and high school education in the UK, computing is a dire situation. It's clear that being good at using a computer is a huge asset in modern society, so why don't we gear education towards it? Programming ought to be seen as vitall…
H1B compete with the newly graduated college students. Before people say that there’s no problem with STEM graduates finding a job, I’ll counter that many of my coworkers 20 years ago didn’t have STEM degrees, and were previously English majors, business majors, etc. They were people with technical aptitude who realized they had picked a field of study that didn’t quite suit their financial aspirations. They were abl…
One thing that I noticed in this article and charts was the unprecedented growth of auto loans. They too have skyrocketed. That seems like another "bubble" waiting to happen.
In the last twenty years, new vehicle prices have doubled. My eyes just about roll out of my head when I see what the sticker price is for a new truck or minivan. I assume people must be leasing more than they used to, because I can't see any other way to get the payment down into a palatable $500/month range.
Friggin' stupid. I can almost buy two rental houses for that price. At least one that can be in move in condition with a splash of paint and carpet.
One thing that I noticed in this article and charts was the unprecedented growth of auto loans. They too have skyrocketed. That seems like another "bubble" waiting to happen.
With GPS/always on mobile data connections, the lender has a much easier time reclaiming the collateral and recouping their losses by selling or leasing it again.
Here is their business cycle:
1. Purchase a used car from a customer for 80% of "fair market value."
2. Sell the car on a $0-down, 7-year note for 110% of "fair market value."
3. Undoubtedly the loan goes into arrears, and the dealer will disable the ignition system after a certain amount of time. The "owner" will be billed for the tow as well as multiple "recovery fees."
4. Sell the car again for 110% of "fair market value."
5. Repeat.
Multiple times I have been told "we don't want them to pay off the car; we make less money that way."
I remember one particular dealer bragging to me about the fact that he had sold a 2009 Honda Civic 11 times in 4 years. That is, 11 sales and 10 repossessions over the course of 4 years. The saddest part was hearing that over 70% of their car notes would go into arrears within 4 months.
H1B compete with the newly graduated college students. Before people say that there’s no problem with STEM graduates finding a job, I’ll counter that many of my coworkers 20 years ago didn’t have STEM degrees, and were previously English majors, business majors, etc. They were people with technical aptitude who realized they had picked a field of study that didn’t quite suit their financial aspirations. They were abl…
Basically cross-train on private sector money and time. There should be a "don't follow your dreams" social campaign.
H1B compete with the newly graduated college students. Before people say that there’s no problem with STEM graduates finding a job, I’ll counter that many of my coworkers 20 years ago didn’t have STEM degrees, and were previously English majors, business majors, etc. They were people with technical aptitude who realized they had picked a field of study that didn’t quite suit their financial aspirations. They were abl…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe (partially anecdotally and partially from reading articles over the years) that a big part of this problem is more like "mis-education", rather than "under-education". In primary and high school education in the UK, computing is a dire situation. It's clear that being good at using a computer is a huge asset in modern society, so why don't we gear education towards it? Programming ought to be seen as vitall…
I wouldn't put programming as valuable than English and Math. It's clearly good to know, but honestly since we're talking about exploding debt, how about fiscal education in schools??
Talking about underemployment as a problem for college graduates in general doesn’t seem very insightful to me. It seems obvious that not all degrees have problems with underemployment. So which ones do? Why are people doing those degrees? Are they under the mistaken impression that those degrees will lead to employment opportunities that don’t actually exist?
If people are trying to pay loans back with degrees that don't lead to good jobs, surely that's a problem, right? If you think that large amounts of people being unable to pay loans back is a problem, that is.
Are people being deceived in some way into thinking that particular degrees are more marketable than they actually are?
Are degrees that are thought to be very marketable (and perhaps once were) no longer very marketable?
Are people knowingly choosing to do degrees that are known to be unmarketable?
All of those things are completely different problems. The article doesn’t give me any insight into what the problem might be, and doesn’t actually provide much more insight than I could have gotten from looking at two graphs.