Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 298 posts

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#201

Post by orangecat »

freeflight wrote: post #159
saint_fiasco wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that amount of money, can't you just end poverty directly? Why do so many people treat college like a terminal, intrinsic good?

How would you propose to "end poverty"? Paying all the debt of the poor? But that wouldn't solve the actual problem, only a symptom. Some view better education as a potential solution because poverty is often directly correlated with the level of education.

To quote Dave Barry, from 1982 but still relevant:

"Now the problem poor people have is obvious: they don't have enough money. They can't afford food, housing, or medical care. The simple, obvious, efficient way for the government to help them is to give them money so they can buy these things. So that is not how the government does it."

This is basically the libertarian argument for a basic income: if we're going to have an expensive welfare state, it should be efficient and it should actually accomplish its stated goals.

poverty is often directly correlated with the level of education.

It's even more directly correlated with the level of money.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#202

Post by jaunkst »

All good points, but the only real answer is... Paying for an education is a gamble and gambling with our future is dumb. If we pay taxes for anything, anything at all the number 1 priority should be to provide an education to anyone. That doesn't mean pay for their housing, or anything else. One has to invest their time into an education, its already very expensive.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#203

Post by chiefalchemist »

1_2__4 wrote: post #108

I hate sounding both old and weird but I cannot shake the feeling that much of the claims of economic health and growth in the US is... if not fake (I’m not totally nuts) but not accurate. My most charitable interpretation if I’m right is that we’re using the wrong metrics (possibly intentionally) that give a distorted view of the economy. But I keep hearing employment is great, productivity is great, stock market is…

Let me add this to your theory (which btw I agree with). Fracking! It was allowed to hockey stick - despite the ecological damage - because without historically low fuel prices the US economy would be into the weeds. Ultra-cheap fuels is a (temporary?) fix to hide plenty of ills.

Keep in mind, much of the hockey stick'ing happened under Obama, who was and still is perceived to be a green prez. Yet no one has really stopped to ask why is gasoline so cheap? Why would we sacrifice the planet for fossil fuel burning? The answer is simple: because we have to.

p.s. Low oil prices also puts the screws to the Russian economy. That probably isn't a hig deal but it's certainly for some a nice bonus.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#204

Post by Erik816 »

kiliantics wrote: post #189
lettergram wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, student loans are rediculously high. Every adult I know always pushes college, but had I been given a $100k loan to buy a rental unit at 18, I'd have turned that into $250k by the time I finished 5 years of school. Not to mention, I could have worked a 9 - 5, $25 / hr job, and bought a second or third... Perhaps school isn't the best in many cases. Now I pay $1k a month in student loan payments, on top…

Where do you get a 9-5 job that pays $25/hr without going to college? I know adjunct professors that get paid less than that.

Adjunct professors make less money than just about anyone, college educated or not. Many skilled trades can easily make $25/hour. The median wage for an electrian, for example, is $25/hour based on a quick search. That will depend on location and experience, but college is not the only way to get a decent paying job.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#205

Post by chiefalchemist »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #197
trts wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hedonic adjustment" is meant to control for the 'quality' of some (limited) products sampled in the CPI such as rent, computers and automobiles. 'quality-adjusted' means that they run a standard linear regression across the features of sampled items to normalize the variation in the sample. For example, the sampled rent of apartments would be modeled as (in the simplest example I can think of) : y = rent, b = slope,…

I'm not claiming a conspiracy, its more a confederacy of dunces staffed by people who have a vested interest in reaching conclusions that affirm the wishes of their bosses. Any such system that includes a bunch of very complex algorithms filled with uncertain data and arbitrary variables that can be tweaked by the people crunching the numbers you are going to come out with a garbage result. The FED is literally engag…

Agreed. They all have the same incentive. There's no need to full conspire. The insentive is strong enough for most of those involved to act in a conspire-esque sort of way. Emergence, if you will.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#206

Post by chiefalchemist »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #116
1_2__4 wrote: post #108

I hate sounding both old and weird but I cannot shake the feeling that much of the claims of economic health and growth in the US is... if not fake (I’m not totally nuts) but not accurate. My most charitable interpretation if I’m right is that we’re using the wrong metrics (possibly intentionally) that give a distorted view of the economy. But I keep hearing employment is great, productivity is great, stock market is…

Maybe what that means is that the economy (or perhaps society in general) is/are changing in ways that are genuinely new, and our understanding of it is lagging behind.

But why is it lagging, what feels to be, so far behind? Perhaps there's a reason to delay the truth? Because it's not pretty? Obama sold hope for 8 years. Trump is making America great again. This perception ponzi scheme can't keep going forever. Or can it?

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#207

Post by jjoonathan »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #197
trts wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hedonic adjustment" is meant to control for the 'quality' of some (limited) products sampled in the CPI such as rent, computers and automobiles. 'quality-adjusted' means that they run a standard linear regression across the features of sampled items to normalize the variation in the sample. For example, the sampled rent of apartments would be modeled as (in the simplest example I can think of) : y = rent, b = slope,…

I'm not claiming a conspiracy, its more a confederacy of dunces staffed by people who have a vested interest in reaching conclusions that affirm the wishes of their bosses. Any such system that includes a bunch of very complex algorithms filled with uncertain data and arbitrary variables that can be tweaked by the people crunching the numbers you are going to come out with a garbage result. The FED is literally engag…

Difficult or not, you don't seem to be trying very hard. You didn't address the concrete argument you were presented with.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#208

Post by cat199 »

1_2__4 wrote: post #108

I hate sounding both old and weird but I cannot shake the feeling that much of the claims of economic health and growth in the US is... if not fake (I’m not totally nuts) but not accurate. My most charitable interpretation if I’m right is that we’re using the wrong metrics (possibly intentionally) that give a distorted view of the economy. But I keep hearing employment is great, productivity is great, stock market is…

do not worry, central committee will fix it in the next 5 year plan.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#209

Post by gruez »

nerfhammer wrote: post #179
Kadin wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The schools would undoubtedly respond that in doing so, they would necessarily have to stop educating people from anything less than the most privileged (and thus low-risk) backgrounds. You'd need to cook up some sort of risk-pooling scheme if you wanted schools to extend that credit to anyone coming from a background that made payment statistically less-likely. And once you started doing that you'd have to be carefu…

Find some way of blinding schools from the individual financial background of applicants.

trouble is, academic performance is (strongly?) correlated with wealth.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#210

Post by [deleted] »

lettergram wrote: post #180
1_2__4 wrote: post #108

I hate sounding both old and weird but I cannot shake the feeling that much of the claims of economic health and growth in the US is... if not fake (I’m not totally nuts) but not accurate. My most charitable interpretation if I’m right is that we’re using the wrong metrics (possibly intentionally) that give a distorted view of the economy. But I keep hearing employment is great, productivity is great, stock market is…

Alternatively, student loans are rediculously high. Every adult I know always pushes college, but had I been given a $100k loan to buy a rental unit at 18, I'd have turned that into $250k by the time I finished 5 years of school. Not to mention, I could have worked a 9 - 5, $25 / hr job, and bought a second or third... Perhaps school isn't the best in many cases. Now I pay $1k a month in student loan payments, on top…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN