41–50 of 182 posts
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Same goes for books. Your prices for textbooks over there are hilarious. They're priced purely based on just how much you can milk the students, or rather whoever finances them.
Yeah and to a captive market too. College textbook sales is one of the most insane rackets I've ever witnessed... "milking the students" is no exaggeration.
Imagine working for a company that buys up poor people’s debt in order to sue them.
Okay, I'm imagining it. So what? There is a debate to be had about what sorts of protections we want to provide to debtors. But that's separate and apart from the existence of companies that specialize in debt collection. The latter is simply an example of economic specialization. The problem everyone has getting their mind around debt collection is that they focus on the after-the-fact situation, instead of the whol…
Let's take your example of student loans. We can both agree that making student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy and not owed to the government would cause the student loan market to contract. What if you think that this kind of debt, being non-asset backed, is not just unethical but unsustainable inside a functioning free market? What if you think that many institutions have made use of debt inflation to bloat their bureaucracies, facilities and other non-academic investments via a bubble that can and should pop? What if an alternative financial product should exist that forced institutions to put skin in the game towards the permanent economic future of the students that they are ostensibly responsible for and selling a product towards advancing?
I think that we need to remember that debt is primarily a mechanism for moving around value, and that the intrinsic value (liquidity) that it provides is distinctly marginal. We as a society in America should question whether it is a robust long term strategy for the country's economic future to even allow for the option of selling an education with debt-based financing without some kind of a positive outcome guarantee. Otherwise, the incentives are almost guaranteed to result in bad actors exploiting the disenfranchised. Outside of the moral hazard here, the more unavoidable hazard is the market hazard of overleveraging assets whose intrinsic value cannot support the bonds they back, causing an unnecessary macroeconomic financial shock that could be avoided with foresight.
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It's not surprising when you think about it, but it's still an important problem to think about. It has the potential to cause some problems if state courts become seen as a vehicle for debt collectors more than an authority for righting wrongs.
I think we all agree you should be able to collect on a debt. (if you can't it's not a debt) And I imagine most of us agree collection should be pursuant to due process. I don't really see any other options.
Nah, not really. Depends on the debt, honestly.
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What do you mean "receive the least"? Pretty much all the social programs we have target the poor, not the rich. The poor are the ones that receive the most.
This is a narrow understanding. Rich individuals are setup to benefit from the programs for the poor. Such that what you say is both true and irrelevant. Poor individuals are not benefited.
Can you give an example how the rich benefit from programs like social security, Medicaid, food stamps?
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If student loans were suddenly unavailable then universities would have to rein in out of control costs and Maybe get rid of sports and bs admin staff. The only reason they change that much is due to the ability of loans.
Same goes for books. Your prices for textbooks over there are hilarious. They're priced purely based on just how much you can milk the students, or rather whoever finances them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, I'm imagining it. So what? There is a debate to be had about what sorts of protections we want to provide to debtors. But that's separate and apart from the existence of companies that specialize in debt collection. The latter is simply an example of economic specialization. The problem everyone has getting their mind around debt collection is that they focus on the after-the-fact situation, instead of the whol…
If student loans were suddenly unavailable then universities would have to rein in out of control costs and Maybe get rid of sports and bs admin staff. The only reason they change that much is due to the ability of loans.
Most of the defendants (which were small or large companies, some local and some national) in these citizen-brought cases didn't even show, but those who did typically brought a lawyer to deny the charges, and were usually asked by the magistrate to work out a settlement in the hallway.
Excluding the local small claims plaintiffs such as myself, about half the docket consisted of national credit card companies suing local debtors. The lawyer for say BOA would come in with a list of 10 local people being sued for amounts under the small claims threshhold. Maybe 1 in 4 defendants in these cases did show up, and were asked to work out a settlement in the hallway. If the local person being sued didn't show, the default judgement was for the credit card company with treble damages, putting these people further in the hole.
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And it only gets to court after harassment hasn't worked. Anecdata: guy I know had a common name. Debt collector fastened on him because he'd lived in the same town as a deadbeat with that name too. Guy would call day and night demanding payment.
At least in America, you can demand that all correspondence goes through certified mail, with big fines if they don't.
I might make a guess that the efforts of our corporate overlords to force everyone into nonjuducial arbitration has something to do with it.
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This is a narrow understanding. Rich individuals are setup to benefit from the programs for the poor. Such that what you say is both true and irrelevant. Poor individuals are not benefited.
Rich individuals are setup to benefit from the programs for the poor. Can you give an example how the rich benefit from programs like social security, Medicaid, food stamps?