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US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High

nytimes.com

221–230 of 436 posts

Re: US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High

#221
FYI, it's not adjusted for inflation so in real terms we're likely under the peak.

The article talks a lot about debt with no mention of the income supporting it, which is a glaring oversight for any kind of financial analysis. All I can find quickly are median real numbers through 2015. It's not pretty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

Re: US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High

#222

Yes, the student debt growth is unsustainable. It's up 10x in a bit over 10 years. Unbelievable!! There are only three things whose relative cost has gone up in the past 40 years: education, health care, and housing. It's also amazing to me is that total household debt is 12.5 trillion, while the federal debt is just about $20 trillion. In $12.5 trillion so many people have gotten an education and own a home. What ex…

Opportunity.

Re: US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High

#223
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, maybe it's different now, but my generation (went to school in the mid 90s) was not told to "just go to the best college no matter what": We were also advised to consider the cost and carefully choose a major so as to produce a positive expected ROI. Obviously nobody has a crystal ball and you can never tell when huge, industry-wrecking changes are coming, but it was well understood that majoring in Und…

> not told to "just go to the best college no matter what" > majoring in Underwater Basket Weaving was not a great idea from a financial point of view I've met many people in places like McKinsey or Goldman Sachs (i.e. "elite" high paying jobs) with degrees from Oxford or Cambridge in Philosophy, English, Arch & Ant or Theology (in "decreasing usefulness"). Many more than, say, graduates in accounting or business adm…

Please don't use code blocks like this. They force horizontal scrolling for long lines which makes your list of points very difficult to read (if not impossible on mobile).

Re: US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a gross oversimplification of a much more complicated issue. Even if this was all affordable, it doesn't take into account any second order effects. For example, European GDP per capita is typically ~75% that of the US GDP per capita. Have you ever considered the possibility that the tax regimes of European economies might be a contributing factor to this? Or have you considered what differences in attendance…

France offers admission to most normal universities without any exam or grade evaluating and a 300€ tuition per year.

Is this Slate article incorrect: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/dispatches_from_the_w... ?

Re: US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High

#225
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not told to "just go to the best college no matter what" > majoring in Underwater Basket Weaving was not a great idea from a financial point of view I've met many people in places like McKinsey or Goldman Sachs (i.e. "elite" high paying jobs) with degrees from Oxford or Cambridge in Philosophy, English, Arch & Ant or Theology (in "decreasing usefulness"). Many more than, say, graduates in accounting or business adm…

Please don't use code blocks like this. They force horizontal scrolling for long lines which makes your list of points very difficult to read (if not impossible on mobile).

Is there a better way to create a bullet list on HN? I googled and found this. Still time to edit.

Re: US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High

#226
post #10

I don't know if it's a "bubble" (I am not qualified to say that), but I can't imagine that the current trend with student loans will continue. Looking at the numbers for someone entering college in 2017, it feels nearly predatory what a good portion of private and out of state colleges are charging. Even with financial aid, $30-40k a year for 4-5 years is insane. I was fortunate enough to have parents who made saving…

It sure feels like a bubble to me. I don't know how many friends I have with six figures of student loans and no career, but it's a lot. Considering that those loans don't even go away with bankruptcy, it's waaaay too many. I've noticed that younger students are starting to realize how much risk there is in something like that and shy away when my generation didn't. Maybe it's that I grew up in a "striving" middle cl…

What do you think about Make School in comparison to Lambda University? They seem to based around the same concept of paying the fee for training through salary repatriation.

Re: US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't argue with #3 - some MOOC graders are particularly terrible, too. However, there's nothing to stop a person studying just as many topics/subjects online, and to cover them in about as much depth.

I agree. However, there's not a good way to compare apples to apples like there is with a university education. Maybe that's the next step: having these MOOCs come up with some competing standards...

Yes and no. Many of the MOOCs provided by the likes of MIT, Stanford, Berkley, etc, are not watered down. For lesser known providers the quality of content is less certain.

I think a standard in terms of grading would be a huge win.

Re: US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to college without debt is not always possible. I tried everything to get scholarships to no avail. Picking a major with a good ROI is definitely possible. Assuming everyone can do what you did is foolish because there's not physically enough scholarships to go around. There's probably a much greater number of people equally puzzled why they have to go to community college because they couldn't get a scholarshi…

I think his point was that he went to a college he could afford. It's true that not everyone can get scholarships to pay for their entire education. But no one has to pay $40k+/year in tuition to get a good education.

Yea, my point was both college selection and major selection should be guided by ROI. This was pretty thoroughly drilled into me by my parents and my high school advisors / guidance counselors. We couldn't afford much so I went to a low cost state school, took advantage of as many scholarships as I possibly could, and picked an engineering major. At no point in the process did anyone ever advise me to "follow my dreams" or "pursue my passions".

Re: US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High

#229
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use code blocks like this. They force horizontal scrolling for long lines which makes your list of points very difficult to read (if not impossible on mobile).

Is there a better way to create a bullet list on HN? I googled and found this. Still time to edit.

- In my experience,

- I find that just using a hyphen or asterisk for the bullet

- and two newlines to separate items works well enough.

There isn't any specific formatting that will be rendered as an html list.

Re: US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High

#230
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use code blocks like this. They force horizontal scrolling for long lines which makes your list of points very difficult to read (if not impossible on mobile).

Is there a better way to create a bullet list on HN? I googled and found this. Still time to edit.

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