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

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

#211

Post by keenmaster »

nkozyra wrote: post #195
keenmaster wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took that as a reference to the decline of manufacturing in the United States.

Even so ... if we've supplanted manufacturing with non-tangible good production, what impact does that have on economic reality?

I agree. On the whole, with a service economy and comparative advantage, we should be better off as a result. Automation, however, is redistributing a greater share of wealth to those with capital. The adverse side effects of that phenomenon, which is unstoppable, are being conflated with outsourcing, which can be disincentivized. People know as a fact that things used to be better when there were more manufacturing jobs around. They are simply acting on what they know instead of confronting a novel problem with a novel solution. Rethinking education and the cost thereof would be a good place to start.

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

#212

Post by pmorici »

Fomite wrote: post #184
tdeck wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are more depressing statistics: https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/funding-d... tl;dr: States have been cutting back on funding public education even as it's gotten much more expensive every year.

This. States slashed higher education spending during the recession, and it's not coming back. At the same time, federal grant money got tighter. Student tuition is literally the only dial left that can be moved.

Have you considered that universities might be able to operate more cost efficiently? Purdue University has manged to freeze tuition for the past 5 years for example.

https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2016/Q2/purdue-plan...

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

#213

Post by xelxebar »

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…

Is it possible even in principle to calculate things like CPI-U from publicly available raw data? It would be really cool to have access to time series prices for broad swathes of goods amd from various locations across the country/world.

I'd be interested in playing with that data to see if the official numbers are reproducible. Also, it'd be cool to see how well one could predict future prices of certain goods, like toilet paper.

We probably also want data on the spending habits of various locations and demographics.

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

#214

Post by TheCowboy »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #200
YZF wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what about this data: http://www.thebillionpricesproject.com/datasets/ I think to support the argument that CPI is cooked you need to show that you have some reasonable sampling of prices of some reasonable basket across the entire country. You can search online for rent prices, you can see real estate prices, you can see product/produce prices... You can find out what % of the population rents vs. owns and factor…

A variety of organizations have already done this. One of the better known is Shadowstats. http://www.shadowstats.com/

Here's a sample of Shadowstats: http://www.shadowstats.com/imgs/sgs-gdp.gif?hl=ad&t=

Shadowstats claims that real GDP growth has been negative for every year since 2000 with the exception of 2004. Nearly 2 decades of GDP contraction. Seriously?

It's better known as being completely unreliable. It's the post-truth version of econ stats. It builds its own reality, selectively choosing and omitting facts.

There are a lot of detailed and nuanced articles/posts on the Internet that debunk this site and point out serious flaws. I can't compete with the quality out there, but you must read more before feeling so confident in this site.

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

#215

Post by gehwartzen »

ep103 wrote: post #95
cableshaft wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This puts zero pressure on the actual university to do anything with tuition. The universities aren't the ones loaning the money or counting on your repayments. That's handled by private or government subsidized lenders. It's not a solution at all.

Perhaps we misunderstand each other. The vast majority of people who take out federal financial aid, also take out private loans, because it is very difficult (if even possible anymore) to cover tuition costs with federal loans. If private loan repayment rates were capped, then private institutions would have a very, very strong incentive not to loan student loan rates larger than a certain amount to students, depend…

It seems like an even better solution then would be if there were no private or government lenders and the universities themselves had to write the loan. There would certainly be an incentive to only give loans that would be repayed. Also if loans were not repayed the university could simply rescind the degree.

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

#216

Post by alphaalpha101 »

shmerl wrote: post #173
alphaalpha101 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still has a very consumerist bent to it. What about some real outcome-based measurements? Why aren't we measuring how well the economy performs by measuring how healthy people are? Or levels of malnutrition? Or happiness? Or stress? Or education? We should measure our economic progress by how well we're doing as people, not by how much extra shit rich people can buy.

Let's rephrase it. When people can't buy necessities, they aren't doing well.

When people can buy necessities and luxury items but depression is at an all-time high, they aren't doing well either.

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

#217

Post by CaptSpify »

nkozyra wrote: post #187
CaptSpify wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it's fake. Our economic models are so out of touch with reality, it's a wonder the system works at all. We treat digital goods the same as physical goods, we spend tons of money to prop up giant failing structures instead of letting them fall apart, we let those that make the most walk away without paying their fair share, we subsidize stuff that nobody wants and is harmful to us, and aren't even close to making…

> We treat digital goods the same as physical goods I'm struggling to see the impact this has on economic reality. Could you expound?

sorry if this is a bit ranty:

We should be able to freely sharing digital media as virtual-goods are immediate to duplicate. Instead we've created artificial barriers (drm, paywalls, streaming services, etc).

The only reason these barriers are allowed, is a dying industry is trying to stay relevant. The economic impact of the media industry loss would be great, and the media industry does still have a place in our system, but they need to let go of distribution.

It no longer makes sense to have laws protecting the sharing of media, but we are propping up a false representation of our economic system by trying to do so.

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

#218

Post by olalonde »

I firmly believe that university is way, way overpriced in a world of free, high quality MOOCs. It just makes zero economic sense and I believe the market will correct this sooner or later. Think about how utterly inefficient it all is: you have hundreds of professors around the world, each mechanically teaching the same subject semester after semester to new students (I know, they do a bit more than that). Some will say it is about signaling but in a free market, smart companies will eventually start to pick up on better signals. People who attempt to justify the cost of university really just seem unimaginative.

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

#219

Post by gwatch »

There is an obvious explanation that people are missing on this thread. These graduates are under employed. The salary is too low to pay back student loans. They have gotten degrees in useless disciplines. This is the danger of government giving out student loans. Since government is answerable to no one, it is like a giant pot of money that students can just borrow. As a result they end up spending the money on degrees that have very little return on investment. If it is a private entity giving out student loans, the loan officer will not give loans to someone majoring in useless liberal arts degrees. Since it is cheap to get student loans colleges have become more expensive, which means students are taking out bigger loans. This is the problem with socialism. It does not even work in theory.

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

#220

Post by billmalarky »

dnautics wrote: post #115
Avshalom wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any recent studies that crunch the numbers on how much that would cost? Because as a debt free college grad earning ~16000 pre tax I'm still willing to commit a fair amount, call it 500 a year? but I have no idea if that's even close to enough if we assume it's progressive at the same rate as income tax.

it may cost more than just dollars and cents. I worry that the adage of "you get what you pay for" may start to apply.

Many students aren't getting what they pay for now. Better to be debt free.
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