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Northern Ireland26784 Posts
On November 09 2020 09:35 Starlightsun wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 09:20 FlaShFTW wrote:On November 09 2020 08:57 KwarK wrote:On November 09 2020 08:41 BisuDagger wrote:On November 09 2020 08:18 KlaCkoN wrote:
Thought:
There seems to be pretty universal support in this thread for forgiving (or ending mandatory repayments, or some version thereof) student debt. This is portrayed as a leftist or progressive proposal, however the US is one of the countries in the world with the highest wage premiums for college attendance, this feel quite jarring to me.
Focusing state resources so that the professional middle class can buy single family homes a few years earlier is certainly a vote winner but it doesn't do anything about the underlying class structure. If anything I think part of the reason the old social democratic parties in Europe fell from grace is that they forgot who they were supposed to represent.
So rather than forgiving 50-200k in debt for people who already have obtained 4 year degrees what about giving 50-200k in grants or cheaply financed loans for people _without_ college degrees. This can be used to fund adult professional education in fields that are deemed in demand, or to offset housing or health care costs, or whatever else.
Further the cash component of any welfare programs could be greatly expanded.
The goal of these policies should in my opinion be to spend resources to decrease the quality of living gap between the college educated professional middle class and the lower classes who lack college education.
And sure, I am aware that there are a _lot_ of people with college education who are struggling. That doesnt change the fact that people without college education on average struggle significantly more, and a 'left' party should be representing the working classes, not the professional ones. (Of course in truth the Democrats are primarily a liberal party representing educated professionals and workers dont really have representation in the American system but when talking 'left' or 'progressive' policy in my opinion the goal should be to change that.) There is not universal support in this thread. Some of us are just reading everyone’s opinions quietly. I took out $100k in student loans, got a computer science degree, and paid off my debt in 5 years by working hard and not spending my money on needless stuff. No cable television or phone with data plan and I still don’t have either despite doing well in life now. Before my loan I worked minimum wage full time for two years at a different college before picking a path and going all in on it. I think student loan debt is a product of the ill educated or ill prepared. Most students have no idea what an interest rate means before they get into college and take out these variable loans without thinking. It’s the same problem with home owners too. There should be classes taken by banks before even applying for a loan. People take these loans out and don’t understand their responsibilities to them. It’s not free money. I’m open to the idea of more financial government support for college level education, but when you take out a loan that’s you making a promise that you better be willing to fulfill (sans terrible or tragic luck). It’s weird to me that in one post you argue that many were insufficiently informed to understand what they were signing and practically children before concluding that they should be bound to the maximum extent of their contractual obligations. It seems the most dickish stance to take. You could have argued that they knew what they were doing and should be forced to hold up their end. You could have argued that they didn’t know what they were doing and shouldn’t be forced to hold up their end. But instead you argued that they were taken advantage of, but should still be punished for that ignorance. Adding in that you’d feel like you got a bad deal if they weren’t hurt because you paid off yours is also classic American hazing mentality. Making things better for other people is apparently bad because then they won’t have to suffer the way you did. It’s a weird flagellation where people who suffered for good things hate to see other people having them without also suffering. I'll agree with Kwark's last point, that just because you managed to pay off your debt, that loan forgiveness would cause your social standing to fall and you would be injured. In fact, that is not exactly the case, society is benefited from not haveing to pay back those enormous student loans. Do I agree with much of Bisudagger's stance that people should be more educated before the blindly go into college? Yes. I also believe that useless degrees DO EXIST, contrary to what many other people might think. Examples are things like how STEM, especially computer science these days, are more valuable to our society than things like the humanities. As a political science major, I really only have a few choices in life, become a professor, go into politics for life as a staffer/think-tank, or go to law school. I chose the last option because I believe law school is the most flexible of all those options. But people don't realize the futures they have when they jump into university and pick a major. We should do a better job of educating, and I believe strongly that high schools need to do a better job of connecting their students with real adults/alumni who are in the real world and can explain to them what it's like. I think there's a very large common trend in this thread: education is king, and more education can literally do no harm, because it pushes better, but more convoluted policies into the forefront, and it allows people to make smarter choices in just about every aspect of their lives. Yeah I think we need to have more robust trade school options and remove the social stigma from them. There's so many kids in college that really don't belong or want to be there yet are paying tens of thousands for it. Our profit-seeking model of college is like the other side of the coin of our for-profit prisons. Both are losing sight of their purpose to society because of profit being the biggest goal.
A lot of people aren’t well suited for those industries, it’s not a catch-all solution but yes I do agree they shouldn’t be stigmatised either.
Employers in white collar jobs being imbeciles are a big part of the problem. They complain about people coming from college not having sufficient skills for the workplace, but yet they insist on college degrees for really basic shit. Or prior experience that you can’t get because of the aforementioned.
I’ve had some of the most infuriating interviews outside of a Donald Trump one, I once didn’t get a gig because I hadn’t used Excel in an office scenario before, despite explaining that I converted an Excel spreadsheet into a functioning SQL-based database with tiered user access permissions at my volunteer gig.
People absolutely do make bad decisions in life, some people have bad circumstances to mitigated some don’t. So yeah we can’t account for all of that.
But we’re talking about young people in their formative adult years, who aren’t educated properly in terms of career progression, money management and a whole host of vital life skills, with a culture that really pushes going to college and a job market that makes it almost a prerequisite for many jobs where it’s totally unnecessary.
Kind of hard to make the right decision with all those factors there, for many people anyway.
I dropped out on a 2/1 honours degree due to intolerable stress, partly from having a mewling child, partly due to then undiagnosed bipolar disorder which I ended up in hospital for for a full year in 2015.
A bad decision to be fair, albeit somewhat explicable. A lot of debt accrued there too (the joys of that side of bipolar), but hey managed vaguely to get on top of that. A few years of shit tier work with no stability and no luck in the job hunt whatsoever.
Back at school now, early doors but I’m maintaining first class honours grades life is vaguely balanced, my condition is balanced. I’d initially wanted to go into academia with politics, so I didn’t just randomly go into school with no ideas. Aside from the illness I did discover that I’m kind of a generalist, shifting gears and combining multiple interests where I can, just mixing things up works quite well for me. Probably partly a bipolar thing too, but yeah even if I’d got the grades I’d wanted the singular focus of academia probably wasn’t for me (my baby momma and best friend are both academics and I’ve lived their lives by proxy).
Computer science (although I’m going to be streamlining into software engineering) suits my current temperament a lot better. Always some factoid to pick up or something interesting to do. In my teens I was a decently comp-literate guy but I’d sort of perceived pushing that on was only something for the ‘real’ computer nerds.
Perhaps it’s something of a bias of mine, but hey. There weren’t many decisions I made looking back that were particularly bad given information I had at the time.
The bias would come from well, what if I was American, I have those student debts from first time round, had my health issues and then a horrible experience in job hunting, well where’s my rope ladder out of the pit? I’d be saddled with way, way more debt in the first place and how on Earth would I finance a second degree with both a terrible credit score and higher fees?
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On November 09 2020 09:33 Nevuk wrote:
Stem being more valuable than humanities is a myth, that I hope we put to rest. Trump being president proves exactly how valuable the humanities side of education is, considering it is the side that teaches us about human nature and how to avoid deception.
Also, when people say STEM, they mean the TE. Science and math jobs have shit pay and worse openings. Humanities degrees frequently have higher earnings than STEM degrees.
Are there useless degrees? Sure. But it is silly to write off all humanities degrees with that brush, especially because there is no sure indication that TE degrees are going to be as super in demand 40 years from now.
It’s really just a system with an increasingly large number of ways to lose and narrow paths to victory. Once upon a time having any college degree was a huge boost, then it narrowed down to “has to be in a good practical field of study” like STEM or business, then only some subfields within those (e.g. math and science are bad, should’ve done engineering or software), and even now you have to have the right subspecialty within those fields and all the right projects and internships to find a good job. I know plenty of engineering and software folks who took more than a year to find a job in the field, maybe never did, simply because the openings weren’t there for someone who wasn’t the perfect match.
Right now is a good time to be an established professional, but woe be those who are just coming out of school into yet another downturn in job opportunities for young college graduates. Let alone non college grads or people with the wrong degree or CV.
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On November 09 2020 09:54 Oukka wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 09:50 BisuDagger wrote:On November 09 2020 09:40 Zambrah wrote:On November 09 2020 09:35 BisuDagger wrote:On November 09 2020 09:32 Zambrah wrote:On November 09 2020 09:27 BisuDagger wrote:On November 09 2020 09:20 FlaShFTW wrote:On November 09 2020 08:57 KwarK wrote:On November 09 2020 08:41 BisuDagger wrote:On November 09 2020 08:18 KlaCkoN wrote:
Thought:
There seems to be pretty universal support in this thread for forgiving (or ending mandatory repayments, or some version thereof) student debt. This is portrayed as a leftist or progressive proposal, however the US is one of the countries in the world with the highest wage premiums for college attendance, this feel quite jarring to me.
Focusing state resources so that the professional middle class can buy single family homes a few years earlier is certainly a vote winner but it doesn't do anything about the underlying class structure. If anything I think part of the reason the old social democratic parties in Europe fell from grace is that they forgot who they were supposed to represent.
So rather than forgiving 50-200k in debt for people who already have obtained 4 year degrees what about giving 50-200k in grants or cheaply financed loans for people _without_ college degrees. This can be used to fund adult professional education in fields that are deemed in demand, or to offset housing or health care costs, or whatever else.
Further the cash component of any welfare programs could be greatly expanded.
The goal of these policies should in my opinion be to spend resources to decrease the quality of living gap between the college educated professional middle class and the lower classes who lack college education.
And sure, I am aware that there are a _lot_ of people with college education who are struggling. That doesnt change the fact that people without college education on average struggle significantly more, and a 'left' party should be representing the working classes, not the professional ones. (Of course in truth the Democrats are primarily a liberal party representing educated professionals and workers dont really have representation in the American system but when talking 'left' or 'progressive' policy in my opinion the goal should be to change that.) There is not universal support in this thread. Some of us are just reading everyone’s opinions quietly. I took out $100k in student loans, got a computer science degree, and paid off my debt in 5 years by working hard and not spending my money on needless stuff. No cable television or phone with data plan and I still don’t have either despite doing well in life now. Before my loan I worked minimum wage full time for two years at a different college before picking a path and going all in on it. I think student loan debt is a product of the ill educated or ill prepared. Most students have no idea what an interest rate means before they get into college and take out these variable loans without thinking. It’s the same problem with home owners too. There should be classes taken by banks before even applying for a loan. People take these loans out and don’t understand their responsibilities to them. It’s not free money. I’m open to the idea of more financial government support for college level education, but when you take out a loan that’s you making a promise that you better be willing to fulfill (sans terrible or tragic luck). It’s weird to me that in one post you argue that many were insufficiently informed to understand what they were signing and practically children before concluding that they should be bound to the maximum extent of their contractual obligations. It seems the most dickish stance to take. You could have argued that they knew what they were doing and should be forced to hold up their end. You could have argued that they didn’t know what they were doing and shouldn’t be forced to hold up their end. But instead you argued that they were taken advantage of, but should still be punished for that ignorance. Adding in that you’d feel like you got a bad deal if they weren’t hurt because you paid off yours is also classic American hazing mentality. Making things better for other people is apparently bad because then they won’t have to suffer the way you did. It’s a weird flagellation where people who suffered for good things hate to see other people having them without also suffering. I'll agree with Kwark's last point, that just because you managed to pay off your debt, that loan forgiveness would cause your social standing to fall and you would be injured. In fact, that is not exactly the case, society is benefited from not haveing to pay back those enormous student loans. Do I agree with much of Bisudagger's stance that people should be more educated before the blindly go into college? Yes. I also believe that useless degrees DO EXIST, contrary to what many other people might think. Examples are things like how STEM, especially computer science these days, are more valuable to our society than things like the humanities. As a political science major, I really only have a few choices in life, become a professor, go into politics for life as a staffer/think-tank, or go to law school. I chose the last option because I believe law school is the most flexible of all those options. But people don't realize the futures they have when they jump into university and pick a major. We should do a better job of educating, and I believe strongly that high schools need to do a better job of connecting their students with real adults/alumni who are in the real world and can explain to them what it's like. I think there's a very large common trend in this thread: education is king, and more education can literally do no harm, because it pushes better, but more convoluted policies into the forefront, and it allows people to make smarter choices in just about every aspect of their lives. It’s not just that I paid it off, it’s that I signed an a agreement and upheld it. As a tax payer I shouldn’t be responsible for everyone else who failed to meet their signed agreement barring extreme circumstances in someone’s life. To ask me to help pay off everyone else’s loans feels like a slap in the face. And when does it stop? Next, everyone has a right to a home? Well I am aggressively paying off my house mortgage. What if I pay it off in 7 years and suddenly there’s support for loan forgiveness on mortgages? It feels like an endless road to go down. Do you pay for insurance? I do for house, car, and health. Although for health my current company pays 100% of my personal insurance and 50% of my family insurance. Then you experience collectivized risk via your home and car insurance, do you feel cheated that the person whose home burns down gets paid out on their insurance while you do nothing but pay into it via your premiums? My first reaction is that I am required by law to have car insurance by my state so I don’t really get to have an opinion. Home owners insurance is required by my lender and I am okay with it because I signed the mortgage. Plus home owners insurance is privately run so I have the option once I pay off my mortgage to keep it or get rid of it. So l guess I’ll have to form an opinion on that once it’s up to me. I’m not sure where you are going with insurance and it’s relation to student loans though. Are you saying we should introduce student loan insurance? That's essentially how it works in the UK for example. You only pay back your student loans once your income exceeds certain level. So government essentially insures people taking student loans against poor labour market outcomes. They've also had to write down the value of the student loans in government books because of how much of it will never be paid back. Edit: don't know where Zambrah was going with this but I'll throw a wild guess there is a similar point incoming
The more interesting direction to go with insurance is health insurance anyway. If you're a fiscal conservative, do you support medicare for all because it would save money overall? There are a lot of assumptions that go along with that of course, but it a lot more interesting than this is going imo
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Northern Ireland26784 Posts
On November 09 2020 09:57 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 09:33 Nevuk wrote:
Also, when people say STEM, they mean the TE. Science and math jobs have shit pay and worse openings. Humanities degrees frequently have higher earnings than STEM degrees.
Math majors don't really have much difficulty applying for "T" and "E" positions. The difference between a math major that can demonstrate a proficient coding background (which many do) and a CS major is pretty small as far as applying for tech jobs, especially since most "computer science" you learn in college is either a) basic development skills that can be self-taught by someone with a reasonable level of aptitude, or b) specialized applications of generalized mathematics principles that math majors will develop as part of their own major anyway. I've seen a lot of math and physics majors end up in entry-level IT or software development positions 1-2 years out of college. The other basic sciences e.g. biology/chemistry are further away from being able to get into tech, but likewise also have inroads into medicine/healthcare (though most of those jobs like nursing/dentistry/physicians require additional schooling and therefore additional student debt).
Sounds about right to me. My best friend who has luckily moved up the road from me otherwise I’d have had no social life in the lockdown era has just polished off his physics PhD and he’s going for mostly tech gigs and applying his data analysis chops there.
The skillset seems really easily transferable between physics/maths and comp sci. From what I can tell just following my degree I could aspire to outdo him in a general comp sci sense (he’s not too hot on how hardware works) and coding elegance but I’d probably need to independently learn a fair amount of proper mathematics myself to be as useful as a potential employee for many gigs. Which to be fair I’d quite like to do as I’m finding myself enjoying it.
He’s had offers from the financial sector but is too stubbornly socialistic to take those up. They hoover up a lot of those grads even though it’s a pathway many people don’t consider for some reason.
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Bisutopia19350 Posts
On November 09 2020 09:59 Zambrah wrote:
Is that true in FL? I know in VA I have the option of playing a flat fee to forgo any car insurance.
My point is that the system that your insurance uses is the cause of exactly what I hear you say about student loans, "why am I paying for other people's claims," because we live within a society where we believe that its important to care for one another. I do believe everyone has the right to have somewhere to live, I believe everyone has the right to healthcare, I believe people have the right to a quality of life.
I believe in those things too. But when the government starts to hand those things out the question is, how much health care do we cover for free, how big of a free house is big enough to call live-able, how many dollars in student tuition is a reasonable amount to cover for free? And once we cover that, who will come along and say what we cover is still unreasonable for basic human rights and then expands what we cover more and more. I simply don’t trust those elected into federal government to actually make those decisions.
In regards to home insurance, I pay 2k a year on a house with a pool in a zone B evacuation area.
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On November 09 2020 09:57 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 09:33 Nevuk wrote:
Also, when people say STEM, they mean the TE. Science and math jobs have shit pay and worse openings. Humanities degrees frequently have higher earnings than STEM degrees.
Math majors don't really have much difficulty applying for "T" and "E" positions. The difference between a math major that can demonstrate a proficient coding background (which many do) and a CS major is pretty small as far as applying for tech jobs, especially since most "computer science" you learn in college is either a) basic development skills that can be self-taught by someone with a reasonable level of aptitude, or b) specialized applications of generalized mathematics principles that math majors will develop as part of their own major anyway. I've seen a lot of math and physics majors end up in entry-level IT or software development positions 1-2 years out of college. The other basic sciences e.g. biology/chemistry are further away from being able to get into tech, but likewise also have inroads into medicine/healthcare (though most of those jobs like nursing/dentistry/physicians require additional schooling and therefore additional student debt).
Working in insurance or a pivot into some meaningful specialty of software was the outcome I saw for the best of the math majors I knew. A couple stuck it out and became career academics. Some also-rans with a little programming experience went into unspecialized software like web development. Thing is, even then you have to be of the right couple of specialties, like computation or statistics. Study something like education, topology, or algebra? Tough shit, that’s going to give you little to nothing for a potential pivot to cross-field employment. Overall, the math folks I know had generally worse career outcomes than the TE ones.
Medicine is a path that is more obviously narrow than “learn to code” so not much needs to be said there.
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Bisutopia19350 Posts
On November 09 2020 10:09 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 09:54 Oukka wrote:On November 09 2020 09:50 BisuDagger wrote:On November 09 2020 09:40 Zambrah wrote:On November 09 2020 09:35 BisuDagger wrote:On November 09 2020 09:32 Zambrah wrote:On November 09 2020 09:27 BisuDagger wrote:On November 09 2020 09:20 FlaShFTW wrote:On November 09 2020 08:57 KwarK wrote:On November 09 2020 08:41 BisuDagger wrote:
[quote]
There is not universal support in this thread. Some of us are just reading everyone’s opinions quietly. I took out $100k in student loans, got a computer science degree, and paid off my debt in 5 years by working hard and not spending my money on needless stuff. No cable television or phone with data plan and I still don’t have either despite doing well in life now. Before my loan I worked minimum wage full time for two years at a different college before picking a path and going all in on it.
I think student loan debt is a product of the ill educated or ill prepared. Most students have no idea what an interest rate means before they get into college and take out these variable loans without thinking. It’s the same problem with home owners too. There should be classes taken by banks before even applying for a loan. People take these loans out and don’t understand their responsibilities to them. It’s not free money.
I’m open to the idea of more financial government support for college level education, but when you take out a loan that’s you making a promise that you better be willing to fulfill (sans terrible or tragic luck).
It’s weird to me that in one post you argue that many were insufficiently informed to understand what they were signing and practically children before concluding that they should be bound to the maximum extent of their contractual obligations. It seems the most dickish stance to take. You could have argued that they knew what they were doing and should be forced to hold up their end. You could have argued that they didn’t know what they were doing and shouldn’t be forced to hold up their end. But instead you argued that they were taken advantage of, but should still be punished for that ignorance. Adding in that you’d feel like you got a bad deal if they weren’t hurt because you paid off yours is also classic American hazing mentality. Making things better for other people is apparently bad because then they won’t have to suffer the way you did. It’s a weird flagellation where people who suffered for good things hate to see other people having them without also suffering. I'll agree with Kwark's last point, that just because you managed to pay off your debt, that loan forgiveness would cause your social standing to fall and you would be injured. In fact, that is not exactly the case, society is benefited from not haveing to pay back those enormous student loans. Do I agree with much of Bisudagger's stance that people should be more educated before the blindly go into college? Yes. I also believe that useless degrees DO EXIST, contrary to what many other people might think. Examples are things like how STEM, especially computer science these days, are more valuable to our society than things like the humanities. As a political science major, I really only have a few choices in life, become a professor, go into politics for life as a staffer/think-tank, or go to law school. I chose the last option because I believe law school is the most flexible of all those options. But people don't realize the futures they have when they jump into university and pick a major. We should do a better job of educating, and I believe strongly that high schools need to do a better job of connecting their students with real adults/alumni who are in the real world and can explain to them what it's like. I think there's a very large common trend in this thread: education is king, and more education can literally do no harm, because it pushes better, but more convoluted policies into the forefront, and it allows people to make smarter choices in just about every aspect of their lives. It’s not just that I paid it off, it’s that I signed an a agreement and upheld it. As a tax payer I shouldn’t be responsible for everyone else who failed to meet their signed agreement barring extreme circumstances in someone’s life. To ask me to help pay off everyone else’s loans feels like a slap in the face. And when does it stop? Next, everyone has a right to a home? Well I am aggressively paying off my house mortgage. What if I pay it off in 7 years and suddenly there’s support for loan forgiveness on mortgages? It feels like an endless road to go down. Do you pay for insurance? I do for house, car, and health. Although for health my current company pays 100% of my personal insurance and 50% of my family insurance. Then you experience collectivized risk via your home and car insurance, do you feel cheated that the person whose home burns down gets paid out on their insurance while you do nothing but pay into it via your premiums? My first reaction is that I am required by law to have car insurance by my state so I don’t really get to have an opinion. Home owners insurance is required by my lender and I am okay with it because I signed the mortgage. Plus home owners insurance is privately run so I have the option once I pay off my mortgage to keep it or get rid of it. So l guess I’ll have to form an opinion on that once it’s up to me. I’m not sure where you are going with insurance and it’s relation to student loans though. Are you saying we should introduce student loan insurance? That's essentially how it works in the UK for example. You only pay back your student loans once your income exceeds certain level. So government essentially insures people taking student loans against poor labour market outcomes. They've also had to write down the value of the student loans in government books because of how much of it will never be paid back. Edit: don't know where Zambrah was going with this but I'll throw a wild guess there is a similar point incoming The more interesting direction to go with insurance is health insurance anyway. If you're a fiscal conservative, do you support medicare for all because it would save money overall? There are a lot of assumptions that go along with that of course, but it a lot more interesting than this is going imo
I think Andrew Yang is very scary cause he has good points on basic income and it could feasibly cost the same as our existing welfare programs or less if done right. I’m all for spending less lol.
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On November 09 2020 09:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 09:37 BisuDagger wrote:On November 09 2020 09:33 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2020 09:27 BisuDagger wrote:On November 09 2020 09:20 FlaShFTW wrote:On November 09 2020 08:57 KwarK wrote:On November 09 2020 08:41 BisuDagger wrote:On November 09 2020 08:18 KlaCkoN wrote:
Thought:
There seems to be pretty universal support in this thread for forgiving (or ending mandatory repayments, or some version thereof) student debt. This is portrayed as a leftist or progressive proposal, however the US is one of the countries in the world with the highest wage premiums for college attendance, this feel quite jarring to me.
Focusing state resources so that the professional middle class can buy single family homes a few years earlier is certainly a vote winner but it doesn't do anything about the underlying class structure. If anything I think part of the reason the old social democratic parties in Europe fell from grace is that they forgot who they were supposed to represent.
So rather than forgiving 50-200k in debt for people who already have obtained 4 year degrees what about giving 50-200k in grants or cheaply financed loans for people _without_ college degrees. This can be used to fund adult professional education in fields that are deemed in demand, or to offset housing or health care costs, or whatever else.
Further the cash component of any welfare programs could be greatly expanded.
The goal of these policies should in my opinion be to spend resources to decrease the quality of living gap between the college educated professional middle class and the lower classes who lack college education.
And sure, I am aware that there are a _lot_ of people with college education who are struggling. That doesnt change the fact that people without college education on average struggle significantly more, and a 'left' party should be representing the working classes, not the professional ones. (Of course in truth the Democrats are primarily a liberal party representing educated professionals and workers dont really have representation in the American system but when talking 'left' or 'progressive' policy in my opinion the goal should be to change that.) There is not universal support in this thread. Some of us are just reading everyone’s opinions quietly. I took out $100k in student loans, got a computer science degree, and paid off my debt in 5 years by working hard and not spending my money on needless stuff. No cable television or phone with data plan and I still don’t have either despite doing well in life now. Before my loan I worked minimum wage full time for two years at a different college before picking a path and going all in on it. I think student loan debt is a product of the ill educated or ill prepared. Most students have no idea what an interest rate means before they get into college and take out these variable loans without thinking. It’s the same problem with home owners too. There should be classes taken by banks before even applying for a loan. People take these loans out and don’t understand their responsibilities to them. It’s not free money. I’m open to the idea of more financial government support for college level education, but when you take out a loan that’s you making a promise that you better be willing to fulfill (sans terrible or tragic luck). It’s weird to me that in one post you argue that many were insufficiently informed to understand what they were signing and practically children before concluding that they should be bound to the maximum extent of their contractual obligations. It seems the most dickish stance to take. You could have argued that they knew what they were doing and should be forced to hold up their end. You could have argued that they didn’t know what they were doing and shouldn’t be forced to hold up their end. But instead you argued that they were taken advantage of, but should still be punished for that ignorance. Adding in that you’d feel like you got a bad deal if they weren’t hurt because you paid off yours is also classic American hazing mentality. Making things better for other people is apparently bad because then they won’t have to suffer the way you did. It’s a weird flagellation where people who suffered for good things hate to see other people having them without also suffering. I'll agree with Kwark's last point, that just because you managed to pay off your debt, that loan forgiveness would cause your social standing to fall and you would be injured. In fact, that is not exactly the case, society is benefited from not haveing to pay back those enormous student loans. Do I agree with much of Bisudagger's stance that people should be more educated before the blindly go into college? Yes. I also believe that useless degrees DO EXIST, contrary to what many other people might think. Examples are things like how STEM, especially computer science these days, are more valuable to our society than things like the humanities. As a political science major, I really only have a few choices in life, become a professor, go into politics for life as a staffer/think-tank, or go to law school. I chose the last option because I believe law school is the most flexible of all those options. But people don't realize the futures they have when they jump into university and pick a major. We should do a better job of educating, and I believe strongly that high schools need to do a better job of connecting their students with real adults/alumni who are in the real world and can explain to them what it's like. I think there's a very large common trend in this thread: education is king, and more education can literally do no harm, because it pushes better, but more convoluted policies into the forefront, and it allows people to make smarter choices in just about every aspect of their lives. It’s not just that I paid it off, it’s that I signed an a agreement and upheld it. As a tax payer I shouldn’t be responsible for everyone else who failed to meet their signed agreement barring extreme circumstances in someone’s life. To ask me to help pay off everyone else’s loans feels like a slap in the face. And when does it stop? Next, everyone has a right to a home? Well I am aggressively paying off my house mortgage. What if I pay it off in 7 years and suddenly there’s support for loan forgiveness on mortgages? It feels like an endless road to go down. Sounds good to me. Cut out the landlord class that way. I mean taxpayers globally have bailed out corporations who actually wield power and made catastrophic decisions if not committed outright fraud. I have no issue bailing out people for bad decisions, especially those who are significantly straightjacketed in terms of options to begin with. As a fiscal conservative, I’ve been essentially against all of those bailouts. I’d probably be more for citizen bailouts if our country didn’t have such a large debt or already waste all that money on corporate bailouts. I don’t want my country spending money until they balance their big fucking checkbook and stop overspending money on all their existing programs. Are you rejecting MMT?
Hard to reconcile any sort of budget conservatism with the aggressive leap to “debt doesn’t actually matter” that is MMT.
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Northern Ireland26784 Posts
What is MMT I’m unfamiliar with that particular acronym?
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On November 09 2020 10:27 WombaT wrote:
What is MMT I’m unfamiliar with that particular acronym?
Modern monetary theory.
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On November 09 2020 10:20 BisuDagger wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 09:59 Zambrah wrote:
Is that true in FL? I know in VA I have the option of playing a flat fee to forgo any car insurance.
My point is that the system that your insurance uses is the cause of exactly what I hear you say about student loans, "why am I paying for other people's claims," because we live within a society where we believe that its important to care for one another. I do believe everyone has the right to have somewhere to live, I believe everyone has the right to healthcare, I believe people have the right to a quality of life.
I believe in those things too. But when the government starts to hand those things out the question is, how much health care do we cover for free, how big of a free house is big enough to call live-able, how many dollars in student tuition is a reasonable amount to cover for free? And once we cover that, who will come along and say what we cover is still unreasonable for basic human rights and then expands what we cover more and more. I simply don’t trust those elected into federal government to actually make those decisions. In regards to home insurance, I pay 2k a year on a house with a pool in a zone B evacuation area.
Insurance talk, lol
+ Show Spoiler +Pools shouldnt make too much of a difference (the real cost of your insurance rarely comes from the coverage amounts!) your overall rate isn't actually THAT bad for what Ive seen in places like Tennesee, Missouri, or Georgia. Insurance in the poor southern states is usually expensive for several reasons, a common one is humidity (GA in particular has huge mold issues with homes), another one is crime rates, another one is the financial status of the people within the state, a poorer state like Missouri has lots of poorly maintained homes that cause more claims to be filed, they have more people who outright own their homes and choose not to purchase insurance thus lowering the risk pool. Sounds like Florida's still more expensive than most anywhere else, but your rate looks pretty solid given what I understand of the way insurance likes to price things and what I know of how insurance feels about FL, lol. Florida has had to basically say, "if you dont sell homeowners here you dont sell insurance here period" to get insurers to insure homes in Florida at all, I imagine they have certain regulations that encourage less absurd insane price spikage.
Ah, thank you for clarifying! If you do believe in collectivization of certain things, who should be in charge of them if not governments? I understand worrying about how we pay for things to an extent, god knows I've whined about the military budget enough, lol. A lot of these social services do a lot of cost saving on their own. Medical care is probably the most obvious one, Americans spend a shit ton more for healthcare than anyone else despite our care not being public. The reasons include things like our lack of preventative care leading to far more expensive procedures having to be performed, and the general profit seeking motive not really meshing well with prioritizing human lives. An example of that is companies buying the right to a drug that treats something specific so that the only one who can produce the drug is them, and then they jack the prices up exorbitantly, because what are the sick people going to do? They're going to pay the exorbitant prices or die. It all just leads to gross inflation of the cost of medical services.
Homelessness is also something that isnt necessary absurdly expensive to fix, its not nearly as clear as in medical care imo, but theres been work done on it
https://www.fastcompany.com/90316607/3-cities-in-the-u-s-have-ended-chronic-homelessness-heres-how-they-did-it
It makes some sense in that a homeless person likely isn't contributing to the economy, a large homeless population likely drives down property values, etc.
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@Wombat That's quite a path you've travelled and I'm glad you've got some stability now. Yeah I think if you were American you'd probably end up in huge debt and maybe even put in prison for untreated mental illness (happens a lot here). Our society can be so punitive to people who "fall through the cracks", especially the conservatives with their "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" philosophy and disdain for the poor and the different. I guess that's why a lot of people are pushing hard for drastic progressive measures now to move the balance back to more humaneness and compassion.
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United States43984 Posts
On November 09 2020 10:30 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 10:27 WombaT wrote:
What is MMT I’m unfamiliar with that particular acronym? Modern monetary theory.
I like to think of it as magic money tree. For decades conservatives insisted that there wasn't a magic money tree, you couldn't just print money and if you did there would be dire inflationary consequences. But then they needed a whole lot of money and didn't want to raise taxes so they created money by having the central bank lend money to the government. And after studying the phenomenon they discovered that there actually was a magic money tree (it helps if your currency is the global reserve currency).
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On November 09 2020 10:27 WombaT wrote:
What is MMT I’m unfamiliar with that particular acronym?
Modern Monetary Theory. It's a heterodox school of thought in economics which claims that the state can keep borrowing as long as it's in its own currency. There's a lot more to it than that of course but it has very little supporting evidence (and it's proponents like to play calvinball as Krugman points out). If you're interested in learning actual economics I can point you in the right way.
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On November 09 2020 10:20 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 09:57 TheYango wrote:On November 09 2020 09:33 Nevuk wrote:
Also, when people say STEM, they mean the TE. Science and math jobs have shit pay and worse openings. Humanities degrees frequently have higher earnings than STEM degrees.
Math majors don't really have much difficulty applying for "T" and "E" positions. The difference between a math major that can demonstrate a proficient coding background (which many do) and a CS major is pretty small as far as applying for tech jobs, especially since most "computer science" you learn in college is either a) basic development skills that can be self-taught by someone with a reasonable level of aptitude, or b) specialized applications of generalized mathematics principles that math majors will develop as part of their own major anyway. I've seen a lot of math and physics majors end up in entry-level IT or software development positions 1-2 years out of college. The other basic sciences e.g. biology/chemistry are further away from being able to get into tech, but likewise also have inroads into medicine/healthcare (though most of those jobs like nursing/dentistry/physicians require additional schooling and therefore additional student debt). Working in insurance or a pivot into some meaningful specialty of software was the outcome I saw for the best of the math majors I knew. A couple stuck it out and became career academics. Some also-rans with a little programming experience went into unspecialized software like web development. Thing is, even then you have to be of the right couple of specialties, like computation or statistics. Study something like education, topology, or algebra? Tough shit, that’s going to give you little to nothing for a potential pivot to cross-field employment. Overall, the math folks I know had generally worse career outcomes than the TE ones. Medicine is a path that is more obviously narrow than “learn to code” so not much needs to be said there.
As someone who works in the scientific side of the software industry, I'd say math and physics, regardless of specialization, are completely okay if they want to pivot to software engineering. In fact, physics and math majors are probably more desirable for many of the harder math jobs (e.g. anything that includes statistics or algebra) than CS majors.
Most physics and math majors are also okay making a pivot to finance. I'll agree that careers in hard physics or math are few and far between, and those hoping to pursue such a job will end up disillusioned. It's like how a friend of mine studied geology, and at the end of his education, it was basically the same as after his bachelor: go into the oil industry or give up on making money (except he had now spent 5 extra years specializing (and learning for the sake of learning, which I don't see as a bad thing, but doesn't help your career)). He is now a teacher, which he enjoys, but is rather overqualified for.
Don't know many chemists or biologists. The ones I do ended up in areas at least somewhat related to their studies. Especially chemists shouldn't really have any issues with how big the pharmaceutical, petrochemical and agrochemical industries are (as just a few of the examples that rely heavily on chemists developing newer and better processes/products).
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Regarding debt relief: while I understand there are some different rules regarding how student loans are treated legally which may merit treating it differently, but I don't see how it being owned by the government makes it categorically different from other loans. If the government decided it wanted to forgive credit card debt, it would not be hard for them to buy credit card debt from the banks and then forgive it all. Or mortgages, car loans, etc etc.
I think the main thing people are overlooking is that this is a mostly government caused problem, and therefore it falls on the government to fix it. Higher Education used to be mostly free, or at least cheap, until the government explicitly decided it should stop being so. It was no doubt intended that people who studied would have better career choices that would justify having a loan. However, it was not foreseen (or rather, it was willfully overlooked) that (1) loans would be absurdly high, and (2) not all students would land jobs that allow them to repay the loan.
Moreover, it is problematic precisely for some of the legal reasons that merit treating it differently. The bank can take away your home if you can't pay your mortgage. It is most definitely horrible, but you aren't burdened by crippling debt anymore (instead you're burdened by homelessness). However, the lender cannot take away your education, and that crippling debt is there to stay, essentially forever. This type of debt is rather cruel, especially as it is originally inflicted by the government making a conscious decision to invest less per student in higher education Wegandi would argue that the overall government expenditure on education has increased to ridiculous amounts, but that would overlook the fact that the percentage of young people obtaining college degrees has doubled since the 80s, heavily encouraged by the government. I'd argue you cannot have both college degrees as a minimum requirement for almost any job AND expensive college education without an undue burden upon the people expected to get those degrees.
And that latter is why the government should do something about it, not because they happen to own that debt already (a problem that could be easily solved for other debts)
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On November 09 2020 18:54 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 10:20 LegalLord wrote:On November 09 2020 09:57 TheYango wrote:On November 09 2020 09:33 Nevuk wrote:
Also, when people say STEM, they mean the TE. Science and math jobs have shit pay and worse openings. Humanities degrees frequently have higher earnings than STEM degrees.
Math majors don't really have much difficulty applying for "T" and "E" positions. The difference between a math major that can demonstrate a proficient coding background (which many do) and a CS major is pretty small as far as applying for tech jobs, especially since most "computer science" you learn in college is either a) basic development skills that can be self-taught by someone with a reasonable level of aptitude, or b) specialized applications of generalized mathematics principles that math majors will develop as part of their own major anyway. I've seen a lot of math and physics majors end up in entry-level IT or software development positions 1-2 years out of college. The other basic sciences e.g. biology/chemistry are further away from being able to get into tech, but likewise also have inroads into medicine/healthcare (though most of those jobs like nursing/dentistry/physicians require additional schooling and therefore additional student debt). Working in insurance or a pivot into some meaningful specialty of software was the outcome I saw for the best of the math majors I knew. A couple stuck it out and became career academics. Some also-rans with a little programming experience went into unspecialized software like web development. Thing is, even then you have to be of the right couple of specialties, like computation or statistics. Study something like education, topology, or algebra? Tough shit, that’s going to give you little to nothing for a potential pivot to cross-field employment. Overall, the math folks I know had generally worse career outcomes than the TE ones. Medicine is a path that is more obviously narrow than “learn to code” so not much needs to be said there. As someone who works in the scientific side of the software industry, I'd say math and physics, regardless of specialization, are completely okay if they want to pivot to software engineering. In fact, physics and math majors are probably more desirable for many of the harder math jobs (e.g. anything that includes statistics or algebra) than CS majors. Most physics and math majors are also okay making a pivot to finance. I'll agree that careers in hard physics or math are few and far between, and those hoping to pursue such a job will end up disillusioned. It's like how a friend of mine studied geology, and at the end of his education, it was basically the same as after his bachelor: go into the oil industry or give up on making money (except he had now spent 5 extra years specializing (and learning for the sake of learning, which I don't see as a bad thing, but doesn't help your career)). He is now a teacher, which he enjoys, but is rather overqualified for. Don't know many chemists or biologists. The ones I do ended up in areas at least somewhat related to their studies. Especially chemists shouldn't really have any issues with how big the pharmaceutical, petrochemical and agrochemical industries are (as just a few of the examples that rely heavily on chemists developing newer and better processes/products).
I think one of the unifying skills here - that might permit STEM majors to be reasonably able to transfer from one STEM branch or STEM career to another - is an emphasis on Problem Solving. That's not to say that non-STEM majors or non-STEM courses never focus on problem solving ability, but there are particularly nice parallels in how one goes about designing and working through engineering applications, writing code, creating a proof, and employing the scientific method. I think that the content is less important (although still obviously relevant), and serves mostly as a vehicle to deliver new problem solving opportunities. The specific branch or career creates a new lens or perspective for problem solving, but a lot of it really boils down to how you approach novel ideas.
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Yeah chemistry PhDs are usually alright, don't worry about them. Transitioning to computer sciences is not easy or natural depending on your specific field but there's a lot of money to be made in the various chemical industries. Hearsay suggests biologists have it a bit harder though, which I find odd.
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Biology in general seems to be furthest away from math, coding, engineering and the typical techy STEM skillsets.
Off course the specializations into the physics and chemistry aspect of "life" are very diffrent from the ones that count brown cows in guatemala and asking how their day has been so far. :D
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On November 09 2020 18:54 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 10:20 LegalLord wrote:On November 09 2020 09:57 TheYango wrote:On November 09 2020 09:33 Nevuk wrote:
Also, when people say STEM, they mean the TE. Science and math jobs have shit pay and worse openings. Humanities degrees frequently have higher earnings than STEM degrees.
Math majors don't really have much difficulty applying for "T" and "E" positions. The difference between a math major that can demonstrate a proficient coding background (which many do) and a CS major is pretty small as far as applying for tech jobs, especially since most "computer science" you learn in college is either a) basic development skills that can be self-taught by someone with a reasonable level of aptitude, or b) specialized applications of generalized mathematics principles that math majors will develop as part of their own major anyway. I've seen a lot of math and physics majors end up in entry-level IT or software development positions 1-2 years out of college. The other basic sciences e.g. biology/chemistry are further away from being able to get into tech, but likewise also have inroads into medicine/healthcare (though most of those jobs like nursing/dentistry/physicians require additional schooling and therefore additional student debt). Working in insurance or a pivot into some meaningful specialty of software was the outcome I saw for the best of the math majors I knew. A couple stuck it out and became career academics. Some also-rans with a little programming experience went into unspecialized software like web development. Thing is, even then you have to be of the right couple of specialties, like computation or statistics. Study something like education, topology, or algebra? Tough shit, that’s going to give you little to nothing for a potential pivot to cross-field employment. Overall, the math folks I know had generally worse career outcomes than the TE ones. Medicine is a path that is more obviously narrow than “learn to code” so not much needs to be said there. As someone who works in the scientific side of the software industry, I'd say math and physics, regardless of specialization, are completely okay if they want to pivot to software engineering. In fact, physics and math majors are probably more desirable for many of the harder math jobs (e.g. anything that includes statistics or algebra) than CS majors. Most physics and math majors are also okay making a pivot to finance. I'll agree that careers in hard physics or math are few and far between, and those hoping to pursue such a job will end up disillusioned. It's like how a friend of mine studied geology, and at the end of his education, it was basically the same as after his bachelor: go into the oil industry or give up on making money (except he had now spent 5 extra years specializing (and learning for the sake of learning, which I don't see as a bad thing, but doesn't help your career)). He is now a teacher, which he enjoys, but is rather overqualified for. Don't know many chemists or biologists. The ones I do ended up in areas at least somewhat related to their studies. Especially chemists shouldn't really have any issues with how big the pharmaceutical, petrochemical and agrochemical industries are (as just a few of the examples that rely heavily on chemists developing newer and better processes/products).
As mathematician in central Europe I'd say it is like this:
There are many well paying jobs in finance and consulting for us. Even the worst students of math will have above average pay as long as they show up to work. Many of us have advanced rather fast.
If you have some IT affinity it is easy to make the switch there, some of my friends have done so. In particular into high paying fields like automation technologies.
Then there is everything data-driven, which is a field that usually also hires mathematicians (usually requires some low level IT affinity like basic SQL).
And then there are all sorts of jobs that take mathematicians with open doors like schools, national statistic institutes and surely many others that dont come to my head.
Physics is quite similar. A little less finance, a little more tech but also lots.of (high paying) options.
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EPT
