EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 3439
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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26304 Posts
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Husyelt
United States837 Posts
On January 18 2022 06:18 WombaT wrote: I love the juxtaposition of general cynicism towards politicians in general and Trump of all people inspiring some past optimism. Drainage! Eli! the swampage! To be serious, I honestly though Trump would appreciate the gravity of the office and bring some sort of shakeup to Washington. I was uh, pretty fucking dumb at the time. Not that I thought he was going to be great, but like he would mellow out and be "boring". As bad as some of Sam Harris's takes are, this one will never be not golden. + Show Spoiler + “You want to understand how I see Trump? Blow up a balloon without tying off the end, and hold it up high, and then release it, then watch it fly chaotically around the room. That's Trump's mind. In my view, that's what we'd be doing with the country if we put him in charge -- just hitching our future to a totally chaotic system.” | ||
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Belisarius
Australia6233 Posts
The people I have zero sympathy for are the ones who remain optimistic about Trump. | ||
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Laurens
Belgium4555 Posts
On January 18 2022 15:21 Belisarius wrote: I have some sympathy for people who were optimistic about Trump. If you're not very switched-on and don't like politicians, I can see why you might have wanted to try a president who's not a politician. You were really, really wrong but there's an actual train of thought that got you there. The people I have zero sympathy for are the ones who remain optimistic about Trump. I can assure you those people also have an "actual train of thought that gets them there", so I'm not sure why you have sympathy for some, but not all. | ||
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gobbledydook
Australia2605 Posts
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Nick_54
United States2230 Posts
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Nick_54
United States2230 Posts
On January 18 2022 17:04 gobbledydook wrote: Is it fair to cancel student debt? What about those who decided to pay their fees and not incur debt? What about those who decided not to go to college because of the debt? Is it fair that university administrators, professors, and staff make obscene salaries while 18 year old students are forced take on life changing debts at an age they don't know what they're getting into. They're fucking crooks and the main problem as far as I'm concerned along with forgiving the debt. The issue has to be corrected for generations going forward. | ||
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Zambrah
United States7393 Posts
On January 18 2022 17:04 gobbledydook wrote: Is it fair to cancel student debt? What about those who decided to pay their fees and not incur debt? What about those who decided not to go to college because of the debt? Is it fair to abolish slavery? What about all of those who lived their lives in slavery? Is it fair to those who have been slaves for twenty years? Stop thinking in these vindictive terms, “someone might not suffer like other people have had to suffer, would that be fair to people who have suffered?” is such a crappy way to think. | ||
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EnDeR_
Spain2779 Posts
On January 18 2022 17:22 Nick_54 wrote: Is it fair that university administrators, professors, and staff make obscene salaries while 18 year old students are forced take on life changing debts at an age they don't know what they're getting into. They're fucking crooks and the main problem as far as I'm concerned along with forgiving the debt. The issue has to be corrected for generations going forward. Very sure that the majority of university administrators, professors and staff do not make obscene salaries. There are some eyewatering salaries, true, but these are exceptions, not the norm and tend to be the really senior staff. You included university staff in your list which also includes sanitation staff as well as catering staff or even campus police -- I'd be surprised if any of those are much above minimum wage. The cost of education has little to do with the salaries of the people running the place. You should do your homework. It's a bit like the poster a couple pages back that argued they could cut school budgets by 50% by cutting salaries of overpaid staff... | ||
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EnDeR_
Spain2779 Posts
On January 18 2022 17:26 Zambrah wrote: Is it fair to abolish slavery? What about all of those who lived their lives in slavery? Is it fair to those who have been slaves for twenty years? Stop thinking in these vindictive terms, “someone might not suffer like other people have had to suffer, would that be fair to people who have suffered?” is such a crappy way to think. You can't really compare being forced into slavery with choosing to get into debt to get an education. I do believe the point is a valid one, a large number of people did the financially responsible thing and not took on debt they couldn't afford and missed out on the benefits. It is certainly vindictive, but it also needs to be addressed. | ||
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Nick_54
United States2230 Posts
On January 18 2022 17:31 EnDeR_ wrote: Very sure that the majority of university administrators, professors and staff do not make obscene salaries. There are some eyewatering salaries, true, but these are exceptions, not the norm and tend to be the really senior staff. You included university staff in your list which also includes sanitation staff as well as catering staff or even campus police -- I'd be surprised if any of those are much above minimum wage. The cost of education has little to do with the salaries of the people running the place. You should do your homework. It's a bit like the poster a couple pages back that argued they could cut school budgets by 50% by cutting salaries of overpaid staff... Obviously I'm not talking about the staff making minimum wage. Campus police should be severely defunded if not eliminated entirely. I'm talking about the public servants making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Football and basketball coaches making million up millions. The cost of university needs to go down as well the debt forgiveness to not put the next generation in this spot. I've done enough homework to know that teenagers racking up 6 figure debts to pay 6 and 7 figure salaries to go along with golden parachutes for the elite isn't right. I'm not saying it would solve the cost problem entirely, but its a start. | ||
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Velr
Switzerland10854 Posts
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28747 Posts
At the same time, and we've talked about this before so no real need to rehash, the interest rates for american student loans seem absolutely ridiculous. This should be a much more palatable fix. I think asking people to repay what they've borrowed is entirely sound, but my quick googling tells me that americans on average spend 20 years paying down their student loans and that a 6% interest rate over 20 years means that interest constitutes 42% of the total downpayment. Enact policies to decrease university/college costs. Have some x percentage of your loan might be changed into a scholarship if you pass your classes. Reduce interest rates so they stay below inflation rates. But people who avoided going to college/went to public community college to not incur debt are just as if not more deserving of free money as people who paid too much for their degree. I do believe the US is in dire need of some significant (re)distribution of resources, but I'm not convinced student loan forgiveness is a particularly good way of achieving this goal. I'm also reading that while your average american graduate has something like $40k student loans, the median for medical school is between $200k and $250k. However, doctors actually make loads, too - even though they incur massive debts, they might not be the ones most in need of student loan debt relief. I get the desire for a quick and easy fix but the problem seems too complex for that to be an option. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22116 Posts
On January 18 2022 18:22 Velr wrote: Because they want something and solving the underlying issues requires Congress which is as useless as usual.Forgiving debt whiteout any plan to solve the underlying issue still seems moronic to me. I don't get how people are still pushing for this obviously stupid idea or how it ever got any traction among "educated" people (aside from purely egoistical reasons). | ||
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Zambrah
United States7393 Posts
On January 18 2022 17:35 EnDeR_ wrote: You can't really compare being forced into slavery with choosing to get into debt to get an education. I do believe the point is a valid one, a large number of people did the financially responsible thing and not took on debt they couldn't afford and missed out on the benefits. It is certainly vindictive, but it also needs to be addressed. I doubt the decision for many was done out of financial responsibility, the last generation had it hammered into them that higher education was the ticket to a good life, you HAD to go to college or youd wind up a loser. When you hammer that into a bunch of teenagers and then saddle them with immense amounts of debt that they have no conception of because again, theyre teenagers, is fucked up. Young people went to college because society promised them a good life for doing so, in return they got crap wages, exorbitant cost of living, and debt many aren't going to be able to pay off in their life time because the have crap wages and exorbitant cost of living. College debt is 100% a trap, but that wasnt the narrative we were fed til recently. Its obviously not literally slavery, but this idea of "X group had to suffer so Y group also has to suffer or its not fair to X group," is fucking stupid. I do believe the US is in dire need of some significant (re)distribution of resources, but I'm not convinced student loan forgiveness is a particularly good way of achieving this goal. I'm also reading that while your average american graduate has something like $40k student loans, the median for medical school is between $200k and $250k. However, doctors actually make loads, too - even though they incur massive debts, they might not be the ones most in need of student loan debt relief. Given staffing issues in US healthcare further disincentivizing people to become doctors seems like a bad idea. In any case though, just means test it, are you making more than like 300K or whatever large number where you can reasonably expect to pay off your debt quickly, then youre fine, are you making less? Bam, its gone. "The rich might benefit!" is not a real argument because the rich either have their debts paid off or are very easy to exclude from any benefits of student loan forgiveness. | ||
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gobbledydook
Australia2605 Posts
On January 18 2022 18:39 Zambrah wrote: I doubt the decision for many was done out of financial responsibility, the last generation had it hammered into them that higher education was the ticket to a good life, you HAD to go to college or youd wind up a loser. When you hammer that into a bunch of teenagers and then saddle them with immense amounts of debt that they have no conception of because again, theyre teenagers, is fucked up. Young people went to college because society promised them a good life for doing so, in return they got crap wages, exorbitant cost of living, and debt many aren't going to be able to pay off in their life time because the have crap wages and exorbitant cost of living. College debt is 100% a trap, but that wasnt the narrative we were fed til recently. Its obviously not literally slavery, but this idea of "X group had to suffer so Y group also has to suffer or its not fair to X group," is fucking stupid. Given staffing issues in US healthcare further disincentivizing people to become doctors seems like a bad idea. In any case though, just means test it, are you making more than like 300K or whatever large number where you can reasonably expect to pay off your debt quickly, then youre fine, are you making less? Bam, its gone. "The rich might benefit!" is not a real argument because the rich either have their debts paid off or are very easy to exclude from any benefits of student loan forgiveness. Abolishing slavery cannot be compared to this at all. For one, abolishing slavery didn't, for example, involve the government paying former slaves restitution. Here we are talking about taking the taxpayer money, that those people who didn't borrow money to go to college paid, and paying those who did borrow money. How is it fair to them for their money to be spent in such a way? | ||
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Simberto
Germany11758 Posts
On January 18 2022 18:29 Gorsameth wrote: Because they want something and solving the underlying issues requires Congress which is as useless as usual. I think this is pretty much the reason. It is a bad fix, but it is something that is possible. Sadly, in the US congress can not do things. | ||
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Belisarius
Australia6233 Posts
On January 18 2022 16:59 Laurens wrote: I can assure you those people also have an "actual train of thought that gets them there", so I'm not sure why you have sympathy for some, but not all. I'm obviously being flippant, but if you really can't see the difference: I think someone could have honestly believed in liberal democracy and have wanted to elect Trump the first time I don't think anyone can honestly believe in liberal democracy but try to elect Trump a second time. | ||
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Zambrah
United States7393 Posts
On January 18 2022 18:57 gobbledydook wrote: Abolishing slavery cannot be compared to this at all. For one, abolishing slavery didn't, for example, involve the government paying former slaves restitution. Here we are talking about taking the taxpayer money, that those people who didn't borrow money to go to college paid, and paying those who did borrow money. How is it fair to them for their money to be spent in such a way? Its obviously not literally slavery, but this idea of "X group had to suffer so Y group also has to suffer or its not fair to X group," is fucking stupid. Tax payer money being allocated in a way that benefits some but not all?! Egads! This is the same shit from people who argue that universal healthcare is bad because you're healthy and why should you pay taxes to subsidize healthcare for other sick people! We should be okay spending tax money on higher education because an educated society is a better off society. Just like its good to have universal healthcare because a healthy society free of obscene medical debt is a better off society. Feel free to want general higher education reform as well, so that people who didnt feel able to go to college can go to college and not be financially ruined, but this "Its not fair for this group not to suffer because other people did suffer!" shit is a crap mentality. | ||
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EnDeR_
Spain2779 Posts
On January 18 2022 20:25 Zambrah wrote: Tax payer money being allocated in a way that benefits some but not all?! Egads! This is the same shit from people who argue that universal healthcare is bad because you're healthy and why should you pay taxes to subsidize healthcare for other sick people! We should be okay spending tax money on higher education because an educated society is a better off society. Just like its good to have universal healthcare because a healthy society free of obscene medical debt is a better off society. Feel free to want general higher education reform as well, so that people who didnt feel able to go to college can go to college and not be financially ruined, but this "Its not fair for this group not to suffer because other people did suffer!" shit is a crap mentality. Note that I agree with you on most points. I just don't think considering debt forgiveness in a vacuum is going to get us anywhere, you still need to address the university funding model. I do think that some level of debt relief is necessary at this point in time. As drone mentioned, interest rates on these loans are exorbitant and abolishing that doesn't sound like such a complicated short-term fix, certainly much more palatable than completely forgiving the loan. You could also muck about with thresholds so people who can't afford pay less of their loans back. I think we can all agree that this is a shitshow and something needs to be done. Addressing the university funding model does not need to be that complicated. For instance, a graduate tax could certainly be brought in to subsidize students that need it. Implementation can be tricky, but it is certainly a viable option and it would not really affect those that made the choice to not go to university. | ||
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