541–550 of 588 posts
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Kind of like what's been happening with housing in the places with jobs. It's too bad there isn't some sort of system where we could all have a voice to regulate these sort of things. Kind of like the US had before the Managementism replaced Capitalism and Corprotocrocy replaced deomocracy.
What sort of regulation would you propose to handle credential inflation?
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Wait. You're comparing total cost in France, to cost at the point of use excluding taxes in the US. Education in public in-state universities is also highly subsidized.
Those state subsidies have steadily been eroded over the time period under discussion--part of why tuition has increased. At most large state flagships, public funding is now a significant minority of revenue.
Besides, public funding given a year ago still factors into costs today.
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> Why should students pay for this while living for 4 years in poverty conditions when there is arguably little tangible benefit beyond checking a box required by employers? They wouldn't. But there is a tangible benefit for many, that is why they are willing to spend this money to go to school. No one forces kids to go to school at 18 just like it doesn't force kids to blow money on credit cards and rack up debt, or…
The fact that it continues is not evidence of effectiveness of educational ability, it’s evidence of structural entrenchment of the process due to the efficiency with which the process can extract value from students without options or perspective.
No one actually learns how to do any job in high school either. It's just a credential representing a general level of intelligence.
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I think if you look at what modern on-campus housing and amenities have evolved to become, I struggle to agree with a description of that experience as "poverty conditions".
I’ve heard that narrative too.. Dorms with 2 people in a 15x10 space was my first experience. Then there was a whole bubble of slum lords renting barely habitable split homes built a century ago near campus for the same amount my parents pay on their mortgage. Large minority of college students report being hungry and not being able to afford food. Sure there were some nice new buildings as seen on tv, many of them w…
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The real solution is to ban lending with interest. We have known that usurious lending is a parasitic practice for thousands of years, how did we not learn?
Without interest, why would anybody lend?
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The real solution is to ban lending with interest. We have known that usurious lending is a parasitic practice for thousands of years, how did we not learn?
Are you suggesting we run everything on equity? Lend without interest (why would the lender be interested)? Something else? Our society uses debt for an enormous number of things: business loans, car loans, mortgages. Simply prohibiting these seems like a cure worse than the disease?
Lending with interest is taking advantage of the needy, it's predatory and immoral, that I think we can all agree on.
If we ban lending with interest, then you're right, there is no financial benefit to be made. So the lender would be lending out of good will. However, the seller might also be willing to let go of his product on installments (without raising the price, that's also usury). For example, if I go to purchase a car from the dealer, given most people would not be able to afford to pay cash outright, he'd be forced to give it out in installments, otherwise he wouldn't sell. The entire system must be set up properly for this to work.
Introducing easy debt just ups prices for everyone, and pushes the poor deeper into misery, exactly as you note: car loans, mortgages, etc.
There are solutions. Instead of business loans, the person providing the funds would get a share of the company in return. That way, if the company succeeds, he'll make a profit, and if it doesn't, he'll lose his investment. We can come up with similar scenarios for personal loans.
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...demand that students live in them freshman year What? I've been watching movies and series made in USA for decades and didn't know that. I assumed that students living there was a way to save money or the parents wanted it. I had no idea it was required. If it's in the same city, can students just keep living with their parents?
Most schools don't require you to live in a dorm freshman year, at least mine certainly didn't and plenty of my peers at other schools didn't have problems getting off campus accommodations freshman year. Students live on campus for convenience and/or for socialization/environment - its not to save money, depending on a bunch of factors it's usually possible to live cheaper off campus.
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This is true. There are a lot of pointless liberal arts classes for a STEM degree in the US. For example, my engineering degree required 3 English classes, psychology, fine arts, and sociology. These were all incredibly easy and I found the course material was what I was used to as a freshman in highschool (no I'm not exaggerating). So those classes weren't even remedial, but felt like a joke. Please note that I'm no…
> There are a lot of pointless liberal arts classes for a STEM degree in the US. I understand, this was my outlook when I left school too, but I changed my mind about that. It took me maybe 5 years of work experience before I realized that no matter how "technically" smart I was, my technical skills were worth shit if I couldn't communicate better with my teammates. My writing was poor, I couldn't explain myself conc…
If only those mandatory liberal arts classes taught things as useful as communicating and writing...
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Are you suggesting we run everything on equity? Lend without interest (why would the lender be interested)? Something else? Our society uses debt for an enormous number of things: business loans, car loans, mortgages. Simply prohibiting these seems like a cure worse than the disease?
Let's take it one step at a time. Lending with interest is taking advantage of the needy, it's predatory and immoral, that I think we can all agree on. If we ban lending with interest, then you're right, there is no financial benefit to be made. So the lender would be lending out of good will. However, the seller might also be willing to let go of his product on installments (without raising the price, that's also us…
Many loans have nothing to do with the needy. If I borrow $1M to buy pile driving equipment to start a pile driving business, and pay the loan back with the proceeds of my business, nothing predatory or immoral has happened.
Similarly, I borrowed money from the bank to buy my current house. I am relatively well-off; the bank did not take advantage of me by offering a loan at market rate, and I wasn't needy.
> If I go to purchase a car from the dealer, given most people would not be able to afford to pay cash outright, he'd be forced to give it out in installments, otherwise he wouldn't sell. The entire system must be set up properly for this to work.
To afford to let you (and everyone else) pay for the car in installments, the dealer is going to need to charge a higher price. The amount you end up paying in total for the car is approximately the same under an installment approach than under a loan-with-interest approach.
> Instead of business loans, the person providing the funds would get a share of the company in return.
This is what most startups do, yes