A sensible system would be one like Brazil's (and possibly other countries): free education at public universities for those who qualify on the stringent entrance exams along with a system of private universities for those who don't make it and can pay for it. This would allow all deserving students a high quality, free education while limiting the amount of waste and degree inflation that would result from a complet…
The political culture in the United States would attack that system as being unfair to the poor and minorities that ostensibly received a lesser education than their middle- and upper-class cohorts.
When something like that existed in California, that wasn't the thing that destroyed it, rather, it was funding pressure from anti-tax crusaders.
The kind of people who advocate for fairness for the poor and minorities are more likely to advocate for moves back toward that system rather than away from it.
A lot of countries have a free post secondary education system : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_education#Partial_list_of... It always astonish me to think it can be seen as normal, even more equitable, to require people to get so huge debts before even being trained to work.
I live in the US and was able to go to college almost for free. There were a few caveats though: 1. I waited until I was 24. This meant that my parents income did not affect my federal assistance so that I could get the maximum amount. 2. I went to a dirt cheap community college my first two years. It was so cheap that the federal grants covered my tuition, books, plus a little extra for living expenses. 3. I did rea…
> I was able to live at home for the entire duration so I did not have to pay a huge sum for campus housing.
While this might make financial sense at first, living in the dorms was one of (if not THE) best social experiences of my life, and in my opinion, worth the cost. I still have numerous friends and acquaintances I made via the dorms, going on 20 years later. In a few cases they have paid off socially and business-wise.
I would not recommend cutting out the singular "dorm experience" for the sake of saving a few bucks you can make back later anyway.
Ok, so we have this common ground of thinking money isn't too real if it can be printed at will by central bankers. That's good. Now ask yourself: what do central banks hoard? Whatever they hoard must be, at the very least, a more "real" kind of money than the money they print. Do they hoard diamonds? No. Do they hoard platinum? No. Do they hoard fine art? No. Do they hoard expensive wine? No. What do they hoard? Gol…
Does gold truly have that much worth as a value store? Its not a terribly great metal, and I can't see myself buying food with gold anymore than I can see myself using dollars if the economy collapses.
To pay for infrastructure repairs someone else must be taxed. Why is it better to tax a working person in order to repair roads instead of just having drivers pay for the proportion of roads that they use?
I don't see the problem with this?
From a moral point of view, this is actually how it should be done. But the thing is, for one it is easier to get money from someone who has it than from someone who has not. Then there is also a nasty political debate hidden in there, about how you as a community should take care of each other in order to prosper. That poor driver may really depend on that road paid by others to make a living on his own, and you as a government will gladly bend the rules a little bit off from what's equitable for everyone, otherwise those poor bastards (becoming jobless and having too much time on their hands) will make unpleasant noise, unlike the quiet (wealthy and mostly happy) payers. After all, you wish to keep your political seat AND appear as a good caretaker which governs for the people, right? And finally, the reality is not always in harmony with our sense of justice, and if the you're not going to pay for infrastructure of remote areas that have poor economical prospective (...or corruption, or what not), the infrastructure in those areas will most likely collapse, for not having enough means of self-sustenance. The country is like an organism that should take care of its organs to prevent falling apart, no mater what.
I live in the US and was able to go to college almost for free. There were a few caveats though: 1. I waited until I was 24. This meant that my parents income did not affect my federal assistance so that I could get the maximum amount. 2. I went to a dirt cheap community college my first two years. It was so cheap that the federal grants covered my tuition, books, plus a little extra for living expenses. 3. I did rea…
> I was able to live at home for the entire duration so I did not have to pay a huge sum for campus housing. While this might make financial sense at first, living in the dorms was one of (if not THE) best social experiences of my life, and in my opinion, worth the cost. I still have numerous friends and acquaintances I made via the dorms, going on 20 years later. In a few cases they have paid off socially and busine…
By contrast, I did not live in the dorms when I went to college and I feel like I missed out on a lot. There's no one from my college years that I keep in touch with.
> Eh, it's not "real" money Why not? It was real to the tax payers who paid it to the government and real to the Corinthian employees who were paid by the school and it will be real to the students as they struggle to pay it back over many years.
If something is "real", you can't have less than zero. (For some definitions of " real".) Right now, the consequences of forgiving a billion dollars of student debt are immeasurable. It's a small amount to spread over so many people, and ultra easy/cheap borrowing by the federal government can delay the consequences for a long time.
This is really all I meant. Everybody wants to get all philosophical, when I was only referring to how our political system works.
To pay for infrastructure repairs someone else must be taxed. Why is it better to tax a working person in order to repair roads instead of just having drivers pay for the proportion of roads that they use?
I don't see the problem with this?
Okay, you contact a construction crew (and other associated contractors, civil engineers, etc), and you make sure they're doing their job. And if they don't, you take on the liability for any damages done by potholes, broken guard rails on bridges, etc.
> I was able to live at home for the entire duration so I did not have to pay a huge sum for campus housing. While this might make financial sense at first, living in the dorms was one of (if not THE) best social experiences of my life, and in my opinion, worth the cost. I still have numerous friends and acquaintances I made via the dorms, going on 20 years later. In a few cases they have paid off socially and busine…
By contrast, I did not live in the dorms when I went to college and I feel like I missed out on a lot. There's no one from my college years that I keep in touch with.
Same here - I went to a commuter school (still a big state school though, just a non-traditional environment) with a fairly high average student age and only lived on campus a single year. That single year was better than the other three combined. I was dumb and immature and didn't realize the value of friends at the time, and now am not friends with anyone from college.
They can start garnishing your wages, so unless you never want to hold a job again, creditors will get their money.
You can leave the country. Most of the people deeply in debt with degrees or training that won't pay the debt would find, for example, teaching English in China a relatively comfortable living. If you have the imagination to look beyond Europe, finding a gig that's better than debt slavery isn't too difficult.
As someone else said, you'd never be able to re-enter the country and would risk having your assets in the US seized.