This is Real, That's Not • Hacker News Board

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#221

Post by paulryanrogers » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:47 PM UTC

RickJWagner wrote: post #215

iddan wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike in Europe, in the US going to university or college requires huge amounts of money and usually require students to take loans. And unlike other types of loans it is nearly impossible to declare bankruptcy for student loans. There is a great summarising it: https://youtu.be/pVKEsiNMPNc

Father of 3 here, one recently graduated and one about to start US college. With reasonable preparation, college is very affordable. Scholarships are easily obtained with a good ACT or SAT score. Both of these are well documented, a few months of self-study practically guarantees a good score. My experience has been that good preparation puts out of pocket costs below $10k per year. (I think that's actually on the hi…

Family income bracket, natural talent, and pressures of high school are also factors.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#222

Post by throwaway2245 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:47 PM UTC

headmelted wrote: post #186

pjc50 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the UK. Although it's not a normal loan in that repayments are linked to income and there is a promise that it will be "forgiven" at retirement (which I'm a little skeptical of)

The UK loans are actually a good deal if you really understand them, which students here inevitably don’t. It makes demanding government to pay for tuition here pretty abhorrent imho. I know a lot of working class/blue-collar families here, and talking with them, it really becomes clear how incredibly selfish and unreasonable it is to expect their taxes to buy someone wealthier than them an education that they themse…

What £ of tax would the working class family contribute towards university education (assuming you accept this paradigm of tax and spend)? Back of envelope calculation suggests income tax collected from a median family would be £50 per year.

Meanwhile, I know plenty of working class/blue-collar families who believe that debt is an unmanageable risk that they should reject if at all possible.

Their children take that to mean that they absolutely shouldn't go to university, no matter how capable they are.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#223

Post by jl2718 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

jewel wrote: post #9

Since it's not spelled out in the article, what is a better mental model for how the world works?

Well if you’re male and homeless, you learn a mental model pretty quickly that goes something like:

“Nobody cares about you. You are not entitled to comfort or nourishment. You are not worthy of compassion or empathy or courtesy. If you can’t live without it, you will die without it. But you don’t need it. You can endure far more than you ever would have believed. Nothing in this world is worth the sanctity of your mind. You will not succumb to pain or drugs or temptation or dishonesty or self-pity. Everybody around you is failing this test. You are different. Your soul is getting stronger. This is a test. This is only a test.”

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#224

Post by gwd » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

trastknast wrote: post #219

gwd wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this was the most messed up part of the whole article: > I got back into housing a few weeks after I made my last student loan payment. I graduated undergrad with $4k in student loans. The fact that there are people becoming homeless due to student loan debt is insane.

In a different post[1], the author writes: > As my finances tanked due to a combination of divorce and medical crisis [1] https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/07/independent...

That makes it sound like [divorce + medical crisis] would maybe have "reset" their finances, but not kept them in on the street for so long if it hadn't been for the student loan which couldn't be discharged through bankruptcy.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#225

Post by sethammons » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

This was a good post. I particularly like:

> I will suggest that repeating all the things you believe about how life is supposed to work will not magically make them true and thereby fix your problems.

I recently realized I would frame some of my wants/desires as “I just want $x.” There is no natural order of fairness and by shifting my internal phrasing to “I want $x,” it helped shift my mental model to what concrete actions I need to take instead of a complaint.

And back to the main content of the post. Yes, most people are living on an edge they can’t see that could upturn their whole apple cart of world views and expectations. Growing up poor and now being well off, I have an expectation in the back of my head that this is all temporary and can be lost at anytime. It affects how you approach many, many things.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#226

Post by syshum » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

DubiousPusher wrote: post #128

turbinerneiter wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't give free housing to the unfortunate and at the same time increase rent on the workers. Workers need to see homeless people every day so they can feel better off and scared to end up like them. Everything else is bad for real estate investors.

The motivations of moneyed interests are obvious. But the contempt the working and middle classes have for the poor is something I'll never understand. I've often been obliged to pay for something I've seen others acquire freely and I say good for them. I wouldn't exchange places with them for a moment. It seems the pettiest of all things to begrudge someone whose life is a disater, even in the rare cases when it is…

>>But the contempt the working and middle classes have for the poor is something I'll never understand.

Really? Should be fairly easy to understand, for a Middle Class Family that is living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to save for retirement, the kids collage fund, maybe help pay for a aging parent, save for home repair, and provide daily expenses seeing a good chunk of their earnings being stolen errr "taxed" away from them, money that they could use to provide for their own needs is a large part of it.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#227

Post by Synaesthesia » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

pille wrote: post #157

kelnos wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting theory. I think there are competing interests, though. Landlords and businesses generally won't want homeless people in their areas, though, because their presence alone will decrease property values and rent (landlords), and drive away customers (businesses). But for what you suggest to work, homeless people need to be visible. Do you have any data on this? This doesn't really pass the smell te…

I don't think GP was saying that landlords keep hoards of miserable homeless people just outside the property, in order to scare tenants into paying their rent. People are plenty aware of economic reality.

They certainly collaborate to keep rent high, its known that property developers in the US don't rent out property in manhattan to keep prices high. Why would they want to solve homelessness? They're motivated by profit in their role at the institution.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#228

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

throwaway2245 wrote: post #218

IAmGraydon wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well can a person live in Germany for $15,000? A person in the US could live on that much in an apartment with multiple room mates in a city with a low cost of living, but it’s not much of a life. You would be eating Ramen noodle every night (and not the good kind).

German rents are relatively reasonable: "The price of Monthly rent for a 45 m2 (480 Sqft) furnished studio in NORMAL area in Leipzig is €352" i.e. slightly over $5,000 per year. [Source https://www.expatistan.com/price/studio-rent-normal-area/lei... ]

[deleted]

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#229

Post by RobertoG » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #220

tehjoker wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homelessness exists because the landlords and business people prefer it. Homelessness is a demonstrated threat of what not paying the rent and having a job will do to you. If you remove that dire threat, the housing market and job market becomes far more competitive for the workers and the owner class is disadvantaged. In the US, we have many more vacant houses than we have homeless people. The market system is incap…

I want to believe this is hyperbolic. Do you really believe business owners, and landlords are sitting in some smokey room plotting to keep people homeless so people will pay their rent? Really, that is your honest held belief of the situation?

Are you saying that there are not smokey rooms in all countries where they are plotting how to cut public services?

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#230

Post by emteycz » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

dtech wrote: post #200

emteycz wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. It's subsidized to zero for citizens, but many schools are not free for foreigners either from EU or outside of it. Same in most EU countries.

Yes, so for EU citizens, there is no/low tuition in the EU, making the statement true. This works this way for most social programs in most countries. E.g. to can't migrate to a country and then claim unemployment benefits. That doesn't mean the statement "the country has an unemployment program" is false.

Unemployement is something different, you can't compare apples to oranges. Nobody is paying for getting unemployment, you're not eligible at worst.

There are dozens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of people paying for universities in the European countries with public schools (most of paying students are of second/third-world background in a country that is acting passively aggressively to them because of their non-resident/non-citizen status [that causes issues e. g. with banking services], btw), and many of them in Sweden, that's why I feel the statement is false. Also note that I'm not judging, merely stating a fact; I don't see anything wrong with both funding approaches, and think they should be combined (like in Czechia).