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On November 10 2020 01:07 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2020 01:01 Wegandi wrote:On November 10 2020 00:52 JimmiC wrote:On November 10 2020 00:51 Wegandi wrote:On November 09 2020 23:58 Nevuk wrote:On November 09 2020 10:02 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2020 09:35 Starlightsun 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. 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? I went through something very similar twice in my life, though a bit more spread out, so I can give the american perspective on what happens. (Though I avoided hospitalization even if it would have been a very good idea at one point, exactly for cost concerns). In 2011 I went through a bout of MDD and took a 6 month hiatus from college, dropping out of my major one class from finishing my major's requirements. It took me until 2013 to finish the degree, which I did long distance after moving back in with one of my parents. I then floated from shitty job to shitty job until late 2014, as I refused to finish my specific major and got one of the few legitimately really useless undergrads (General Education). Then at the end of 2014 I wound up with another bout of MDD, tried new meds and got serotonin sickness and trembling. Then I lost my job, lost insurance, and had to move back in with my parent who lived 140 miles away (on top of ending a long-term relationship and a bed bug infestation). I then had to go off an extremely high dose of xanax that had been prescribed to me. I couldn't even taper off normally because medicaid (my only option) effectively refuses to cover xanax for any reason (not a BAD idea, per se, but the way I went off it was legitimately quite dangerous). This is not exactly intentional, but only 2 psychiatrists in the entire state accepted medicaid and neither was accepting new patients. Recovering from that took up my life for about another year. To resolve my shitty degree I went back for a master's in 2017... which taught me nothing that I use in my current job, but was proof that I was capable of it (app development... when I had learned to program in 6th grade and knew four programming languages before starting the degree). The master's cost $60k but made my salary go from $12k to $70k/year. However, I am extremely lucky because I come from a somewhat wealthy family on one side. My undergrad debts were 95% covered and in the long run I'm well aware that if I have a truly unexpected expense, that I can beg (which is admittedly extremely unpleasant) and have it paid for me, and that if I had healthcare costs they would generally be covered no question (which was how I covered a few visits to a psychiatrist). Medicaid also would not be an option in a ton of states. So at the end of it I'm in debt something close to $72k (due to interest and some really strange requirements from my college that I get a mean plan at one point). The main reason student debt is so weird is that you can't discharge it, ever, through any means. The fact that education loans are undischargable is a huge reason why college is so expensive. Like I said its basically a 1:1 track of expense to Government involvement. This is not some "market failure", it is as almost always a Government failure. All loans should be dischargable through bankruptcy. You need risk in the system to price things accordingly. I had the GI bill so that worked for me, but even I took out a small FAFSA loan in school so I didnt need to work while I went to school (20k). The problem with progressives here is that theyre not so much interested in the working class (theyre not by and large working class - theyre heavily/over-represented with white collar and upper mid class jobs/folks) as they emphasize all the policies and programs that most benefit them. Theyre also hostile to many industries that working class folks ya know work in because theyve bought the AGW/Climate change extinction doom scenario hook and line sinker and want to outlaw these jobs by Government writ. Working class folks dont want the "Green New Deal". They dont have 100k in student debt. Theyre disproportionately affected by COVID lockdowns and insane occupational licensing laws. I could go on here. You know who appealed to the working class better - Ron Paul and Donald Trump. Thats saying something, isn't it? Your theory breaks down when you look outside your own borders. Americans are not going to support a 25% national VAT and tax burdens of 45-50% like in Europe. Even many EU states are talking of rolling back the extent of their welfare states because of cost and because theyve used up all the accumulated years of growth under their market system when they didnt have elaborate welfare systems. There's a reason progressives lie overtly or by omission about working class and middle class tax burdens in the EU. "The rich will pay for it". Tell that to Europe. Americans already pay more than Brits do. Americans just love their stealth taxes. I pay $16k in employer paid benefits and another $7k in employer paid FICA that I don’t even see on my paycheck. Then a further $5k and $7k for employee paid benefits and FICA. Then I pay worker’s comp and other payroll deductions. Then I pay Federal income tax, then State income tax. And then, when I have the money, I pay property tax. But the rest I can spend as I choose, as long as I keep a fair chunk of it back for medical and educational expenses. Oh, and whenever I pay utilities or phone bills there’s taxes for things that should be public expenditures hidden on those. Registered a car earlier this year, another $1.2k in tax. But after those it’s all mine, except for sales taxes on everything I buy. Oh, and it doesn't buy as much as it would have the last year because the government printed a bunch of new money which, through the power of fiat currency, is really just taking value from all currency currently in circulation through dilution. I’m an accountant and a very good one so I actually worked it all out one time for fun. You would not believe how much tax Americans pay. Most of it isn’t labeled tax but if you were living in the UK you wouldn’t have to pay it because funds for it come out of general tax revenue. Americans are more heavily taxed than it’s really possible to explain to Europeans because of stealth taxes. Europeans are familiar with fuel taxes but may be surprised to learn that the 911 emergency response call centres are funded by a special surcharge on my cell phone bill, rather than coming out of the police budget. That most jurisdictions realize that they can tax out of town folks by slapping special surcharges on hotel rooms. That some areas fund their police departments entirely by having sudden speed limit decreases and issuing tickets to anyone driving the normal speed on the road. When you devolve tax raising powers to local authorities shit gets weird. You start finding taxes in all sorts of weird places where they shouldn't be. The US wants to pay for all the things that are paid for in a modern functioning state but it doesn't want to pay for them with taxes and so they get paid for with a thousand special fees, surcharges, and other costs.
There could probably be a whole thread just about the bullshit way different countries extract tax from their citizen, and another one about how private companies exploit their position when they offer services which would should be provided by the government.
I completely believe that the US tax level is very well in line with the ones in Europe, but where the money goes is different. The money to fund that massive US military and police force as well as managing the ever increasing national debt must come from somewhere...
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Northern Ireland26784 Posts
On November 09 2020 23:58 Nevuk wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 10:02 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2020 09:35 Starlightsun 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. 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? I went through something very similar twice in my life, though a bit more spread out, so I can give the american perspective on what happens. (Though I avoided hospitalization even if it would have been a very good idea at one point, exactly for cost concerns). In 2011 I went through a bout of MDD and took a 6 month hiatus from college, dropping out of my major one class from finishing my major's requirements. It took me until 2013 to finish the degree, which I did long distance after moving back in with one of my parents. I then floated from shitty job to shitty job until late 2014, as I refused to finish my specific major and got one of the few legitimately really useless undergrads (General Education). Then at the end of 2014 I wound up with another bout of MDD, tried new meds and got serotonin sickness and trembling. Then I lost my job, lost insurance, and had to move back in with my parent who lived 140 miles away (on top of ending a long-term relationship and a bed bug infestation). I then had to go off an extremely high dose of xanax that had been prescribed to me. I couldn't even taper off normally because medicaid (my only option) effectively refuses to cover xanax for any reason (not a BAD idea, per se, but the way I went off it was legitimately quite dangerous). This is not exactly intentional, but only 2 psychiatrists in the entire state accepted medicaid and neither was accepting new patients. Recovering from that took up my life for about another year. To resolve my shitty degree I went back for a master's in 2017... which taught me nothing that I use in my current job, but was proof that I was capable of it (app development... when I had learned to program in 6th grade and knew four programming languages before starting the degree). The master's cost $60k but made my salary go from $12k to $70k/year. However, I am extremely lucky because I come from a somewhat wealthy family on one side. My undergrad debts were 95% covered and in the long run I'm well aware that if I have a truly unexpected expense, that I can beg (which is admittedly extremely unpleasant) and have it paid for me, and that if I had healthcare costs they would generally be covered no question (which was how I covered a few visits to a psychiatrist). Medicaid also would not be an option in a ton of states. So at the end of it I'm in debt something close to $72k (due to interest and some really strange requirements from my college that I get a mean plan at one point). The main reason student debt is so weird is that you can't discharge it, ever, through any means.
Cheers for the share man, gives some added context. How would that look if you didn't have the family support network around you if you were to guess?
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On November 10 2020 01:11 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2020 01:03 Erasme wrote:On November 10 2020 00:51 Wegandi wrote:On November 09 2020 23:58 Nevuk wrote:On November 09 2020 10:02 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2020 09:35 Starlightsun 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. 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? I went through something very similar twice in my life, though a bit more spread out, so I can give the american perspective on what happens. (Though I avoided hospitalization even if it would have been a very good idea at one point, exactly for cost concerns). In 2011 I went through a bout of MDD and took a 6 month hiatus from college, dropping out of my major one class from finishing my major's requirements. It took me until 2013 to finish the degree, which I did long distance after moving back in with one of my parents. I then floated from shitty job to shitty job until late 2014, as I refused to finish my specific major and got one of the few legitimately really useless undergrads (General Education). Then at the end of 2014 I wound up with another bout of MDD, tried new meds and got serotonin sickness and trembling. Then I lost my job, lost insurance, and had to move back in with my parent who lived 140 miles away (on top of ending a long-term relationship and a bed bug infestation). I then had to go off an extremely high dose of xanax that had been prescribed to me. I couldn't even taper off normally because medicaid (my only option) effectively refuses to cover xanax for any reason (not a BAD idea, per se, but the way I went off it was legitimately quite dangerous). This is not exactly intentional, but only 2 psychiatrists in the entire state accepted medicaid and neither was accepting new patients. Recovering from that took up my life for about another year. To resolve my shitty degree I went back for a master's in 2017... which taught me nothing that I use in my current job, but was proof that I was capable of it (app development... when I had learned to program in 6th grade and knew four programming languages before starting the degree). The master's cost $60k but made my salary go from $12k to $70k/year. However, I am extremely lucky because I come from a somewhat wealthy family on one side. My undergrad debts were 95% covered and in the long run I'm well aware that if I have a truly unexpected expense, that I can beg (which is admittedly extremely unpleasant) and have it paid for me, and that if I had healthcare costs they would generally be covered no question (which was how I covered a few visits to a psychiatrist). Medicaid also would not be an option in a ton of states. So at the end of it I'm in debt something close to $72k (due to interest and some really strange requirements from my college that I get a mean plan at one point). The main reason student debt is so weird is that you can't discharge it, ever, through any means. The fact that education loans are undischargable is a huge reason why college is so expensive. Like I said its basically a 1:1 track of expense to Government involvement. This is not some "market failure", it is as almost always a Government failure. All loans should be dischargable through bankruptcy. You need risk in the system to price things accordingly. I had the GI bill so that worked for me, but even I took out a small FAFSA loan in school so I didnt need to work while I went to school (20k). The problem with progressives here is that theyre not so much interested in the working class (theyre not by and large working class - theyre heavily/over-represented with white collar and upper mid class jobs/folks) as they emphasize all the policies and programs that most benefit them. Theyre also hostile to many industries that working class folks ya know work in because theyve bought the AGW/Climate change extinction doom scenario hook and line sinker and want to outlaw these jobs by Government writ. Working class folks dont want the "Green New Deal". They dont have 100k in student debt. Theyre disproportionately affected by COVID lockdowns and insane occupational licensing laws. I could go on here. You know who appealed to the working class better - Ron Paul and Donald Trump. Thats saying something, isn't it? Your're supposing that the working class is perfectly informed. I certainly don't talk down to them and act like I know what is better for them like many progressives do. Things like Lady Gaga mocking them, or mocking their lifestyle, it's very common in progressive circles. Acting like being against lockdowns you were the devil incarnate. Progressive talking points are very technocratic.
No, you're acting as if the economic actors involved are perfectly informed, which they are not. You cannot expect of someone to make the optimal decision if they don't possess the information required to do so.
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Luckily Wegandi doesn't think bureaucrats are the worst, he knows how important than are to public service and public good. 
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On November 10 2020 01:40 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2020 23:58 Nevuk wrote:On November 09 2020 10:02 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2020 09:35 Starlightsun 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. 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? I went through something very similar twice in my life, though a bit more spread out, so I can give the american perspective on what happens. (Though I avoided hospitalization even if it would have been a very good idea at one point, exactly for cost concerns). In 2011 I went through a bout of MDD and took a 6 month hiatus from college, dropping out of my major one class from finishing my major's requirements. It took me until 2013 to finish the degree, which I did long distance after moving back in with one of my parents. I then floated from shitty job to shitty job until late 2014, as I refused to finish my specific major and got one of the few legitimately really useless undergrads (General Education). Then at the end of 2014 I wound up with another bout of MDD, tried new meds and got serotonin sickness and trembling. Then I lost my job, lost insurance, and had to move back in with my parent who lived 140 miles away (on top of ending a long-term relationship and a bed bug infestation). I then had to go off an extremely high dose of xanax that had been prescribed to me. I couldn't even taper off normally because medicaid (my only option) effectively refuses to cover xanax for any reason (not a BAD idea, per se, but the way I went off it was legitimately quite dangerous). This is not exactly intentional, but only 2 psychiatrists in the entire state accepted medicaid and neither was accepting new patients. Recovering from that took up my life for about another year. To resolve my shitty degree I went back for a master's in 2017... which taught me nothing that I use in my current job, but was proof that I was capable of it (app development... when I had learned to program in 6th grade and knew four programming languages before starting the degree). The master's cost $60k but made my salary go from $12k to $70k/year. However, I am extremely lucky because I come from a somewhat wealthy family on one side. My undergrad debts were 95% covered and in the long run I'm well aware that if I have a truly unexpected expense, that I can beg (which is admittedly extremely unpleasant) and have it paid for me, and that if I had healthcare costs they would generally be covered no question (which was how I covered a few visits to a psychiatrist). Medicaid also would not be an option in a ton of states. So at the end of it I'm in debt something close to $72k (due to interest and some really strange requirements from my college that I get a mean plan at one point). The main reason student debt is so weird is that you can't discharge it, ever, through any means. Cheers for the share man, gives some added context. How would that look if you didn't have the family support network around you if you were to guess?
Homeless.
If you mean, if my family provided a place to live and food to eat but no financial help, it would be about 100k debt instead - but I went to a cheap school and had 50% of my tuition covered for the first four years through scholarships.
Some updates on the elections :
We're waiting on 18 house races and 2 senate races. Another 2 senate races will be runoffs in a couple of months.
The 2 senate races are probably 90-95% GOP, but we don't know yet : this is because they can't start counting until 11/10 for AK and 11/12 for NC.
We also don't know AK/NC presidential results, but similar likelihood of GOP win. Here's the breakdown of outstanding per 538:
Alaska has counted every Election Day vote and every early in-person vote cast by Oct. 29, and Trump leads these ballots by 51,382 votes. However, Alaska won’t start to count the remaining 134,664 absentee and late-cast early votes until Nov. 10. Biden’s path to a win here is steep, but it’s not impossible. However, we won’t likely know who won until Wednesday at the earliest.
It’s slow going in North Carolina, too. Trump currently leads here by 75,407 votes. However, the state has announced that about 130,900 mail-in ballots and 40,766 provisional ballots
AZ is still counting, but Biden's lead is probably insurmountable (85-90% chance or so of Biden win).
GA is done counting almost every vote but is so close that it will trigger recount (>99% chance of Biden victory, imo).
The house races:
D are up in 4/18 outstanding house races, tied in another, but mail in vote makes counting very wonky this year.
edit: Chart:
+ Show Spoiler +
Per 538 liveblog:https://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/2020-election-uncalled-races/
Also news :
Ben Carson has COVID.
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Election night party... lose the presidency and give everybody covid.
Re: Wegandi's comments of the working class conservatives being "talked down to", goes to show the power of pandering in American politics. You can rob people blind so long as you pretend you are on their team. I guess Democrats do the same with minorities but not as egregiously and with less collateral damage.
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On November 10 2020 02:01 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2020 01:37 Slydie wrote:On November 10 2020 01:07 KwarK wrote:On November 10 2020 01:01 Wegandi wrote:On November 10 2020 00:52 JimmiC wrote:On November 10 2020 00:51 Wegandi wrote:On November 09 2020 23:58 Nevuk wrote:On November 09 2020 10:02 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2020 09:35 Starlightsun wrote:On November 09 2020 09:20 FlaShFTW wrote:
[quote]
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? I went through something very similar twice in my life, though a bit more spread out, so I can give the american perspective on what happens. (Though I avoided hospitalization even if it would have been a very good idea at one point, exactly for cost concerns). In 2011 I went through a bout of MDD and took a 6 month hiatus from college, dropping out of my major one class from finishing my major's requirements. It took me until 2013 to finish the degree, which I did long distance after moving back in with one of my parents. I then floated from shitty job to shitty job until late 2014, as I refused to finish my specific major and got one of the few legitimately really useless undergrads (General Education). Then at the end of 2014 I wound up with another bout of MDD, tried new meds and got serotonin sickness and trembling. Then I lost my job, lost insurance, and had to move back in with my parent who lived 140 miles away (on top of ending a long-term relationship and a bed bug infestation). I then had to go off an extremely high dose of xanax that had been prescribed to me. I couldn't even taper off normally because medicaid (my only option) effectively refuses to cover xanax for any reason (not a BAD idea, per se, but the way I went off it was legitimately quite dangerous). This is not exactly intentional, but only 2 psychiatrists in the entire state accepted medicaid and neither was accepting new patients. Recovering from that took up my life for about another year. To resolve my shitty degree I went back for a master's in 2017... which taught me nothing that I use in my current job, but was proof that I was capable of it (app development... when I had learned to program in 6th grade and knew four programming languages before starting the degree). The master's cost $60k but made my salary go from $12k to $70k/year. However, I am extremely lucky because I come from a somewhat wealthy family on one side. My undergrad debts were 95% covered and in the long run I'm well aware that if I have a truly unexpected expense, that I can beg (which is admittedly extremely unpleasant) and have it paid for me, and that if I had healthcare costs they would generally be covered no question (which was how I covered a few visits to a psychiatrist). Medicaid also would not be an option in a ton of states. So at the end of it I'm in debt something close to $72k (due to interest and some really strange requirements from my college that I get a mean plan at one point). The main reason student debt is so weird is that you can't discharge it, ever, through any means. The fact that education loans are undischargable is a huge reason why college is so expensive. Like I said its basically a 1:1 track of expense to Government involvement. This is not some "market failure", it is as almost always a Government failure. All loans should be dischargable through bankruptcy. You need risk in the system to price things accordingly. I had the GI bill so that worked for me, but even I took out a small FAFSA loan in school so I didnt need to work while I went to school (20k). The problem with progressives here is that theyre not so much interested in the working class (theyre not by and large working class - theyre heavily/over-represented with white collar and upper mid class jobs/folks) as they emphasize all the policies and programs that most benefit them. Theyre also hostile to many industries that working class folks ya know work in because theyve bought the AGW/Climate change extinction doom scenario hook and line sinker and want to outlaw these jobs by Government writ. Working class folks dont want the "Green New Deal". They dont have 100k in student debt. Theyre disproportionately affected by COVID lockdowns and insane occupational licensing laws. I could go on here. You know who appealed to the working class better - Ron Paul and Donald Trump. Thats saying something, isn't it? Your theory breaks down when you look outside your own borders. Americans are not going to support a 25% national VAT and tax burdens of 45-50% like in Europe. Even many EU states are talking of rolling back the extent of their welfare states because of cost and because theyve used up all the accumulated years of growth under their market system when they didnt have elaborate welfare systems. There's a reason progressives lie overtly or by omission about working class and middle class tax burdens in the EU. "The rich will pay for it". Tell that to Europe. Americans already pay more than Brits do. Americans just love their stealth taxes. I pay $16k in employer paid benefits and another $7k in employer paid FICA that I don’t even see on my paycheck. Then a further $5k and $7k for employee paid benefits and FICA. Then I pay worker’s comp and other payroll deductions. Then I pay Federal income tax, then State income tax. And then, when I have the money, I pay property tax. But the rest I can spend as I choose, as long as I keep a fair chunk of it back for medical and educational expenses. Oh, and whenever I pay utilities or phone bills there’s taxes for things that should be public expenditures hidden on those. Registered a car earlier this year, another $1.2k in tax. But after those it’s all mine, except for sales taxes on everything I buy. Oh, and it doesn't buy as much as it would have the last year because the government printed a bunch of new money which, through the power of fiat currency, is really just taking value from all currency currently in circulation through dilution. I’m an accountant and a very good one so I actually worked it all out one time for fun. You would not believe how much tax Americans pay. Most of it isn’t labeled tax but if you were living in the UK you wouldn’t have to pay it because funds for it come out of general tax revenue. Americans are more heavily taxed than it’s really possible to explain to Europeans because of stealth taxes. Europeans are familiar with fuel taxes but may be surprised to learn that the 911 emergency response call centres are funded by a special surcharge on my cell phone bill, rather than coming out of the police budget. That most jurisdictions realize that they can tax out of town folks by slapping special surcharges on hotel rooms. That some areas fund their police departments entirely by having sudden speed limit decreases and issuing tickets to anyone driving the normal speed on the road. When you devolve tax raising powers to local authorities shit gets weird. You start finding taxes in all sorts of weird places where they shouldn't be. The US wants to pay for all the things that are paid for in a modern functioning state but it doesn't want to pay for them with taxes and so they get paid for with a thousand special fees, surcharges, and other costs. There could probably be a whole thread just about the bullshit way different countries extract tax from their citizen, and another one about how private companies exploit their position when they offer services which would should be provided by the government. I completely believe that the US tax level is very well in line with the ones in Europe, but where the money goes is different. The money to fund that massive US military and police force as well as managing the ever increasing national debt must come from somewhere... Not to mention they spend the same amount on health care as us (like tax dollars) and then they pay more on prisons and the legal system along with everything you added. @wegandi people don't mind paying for stuff, even will pay a lot more than they need too. If they didn't BMW wouldn't exist. People just want value for what they are getting. If someone offered a reasonable tax bump to solve a whole bunch of issues most would take it. The issue is that way to many people have this "hur dur taxes are bad and bureaucrats are the worst" attitude that leads to the government doing things like Tarifs and maybe of things that Kwark was scratching the surfaces on to tax you without you being aware. Also, almost all of these stealth taxes (I like the term) end up disproportionately charging the middle class since for example a low middle or middle class person will use just as much gas as rich person, sometimes more. For things like Healthcare its also very easy to think your fine not paying now because your healthy and our mind tried to just ignore that something like a broken leg will financially ruin you if your not ready for it.
Its something that frequently came up with the ACA.
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Conspiracy/Fraud/Results denial roundup (these are what we'll likely see the most updates of throughout the day/week):
Trump is denying transition funding for Biden's team out of what I can only assume to be petty spite.
While Biden is preparing his transition team, he cannot shift into high gear until the U.S. General Services Administration, which oversees federal property, certifies the winner.
Over the weekend, the GSA said "an ascertainment [of the presidential election] has not yet been made. GSA and its administrator will continue to abide by, and fulfill, all requirements under the law."
While some office space has been allocated at the Commerce Department's headquarters in Washington, additional resources like salaries for administrative support and government email addresses won't be given over until the agency has formally identified Biden as the winner.
In 2000, money was not released until after Al Gore conceded on December 13, but that seems unlikely this year given the Trump campaign's bevy of lawsuits.
Two sources. One I've heard of but is ad infested, the only I've never heard of but seems less adinfested.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3633434-federal-agency-responsible-for-transition-yet-to-affirm-biden-victory
https://www.mediaite.com/news/trump-admin-denies-transition-funds-to-biden-team-as-dec-14-electoral-college-vote-looms/
Trump's team says their lawsuits are about getting the president to accept his loss more than actually winning the suits , per AP
The strategy to wage a legal fight against the votes tallied for Biden in Pennsylvania and other places is more to provide Trump with an off-ramp for a loss he can’t quite grasp and less about changing the election’s outcome, the officials said. They spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the-bogus-fraud-claims-are-all-about-giving-trump-an-off-ramp-officials-say
Republicans have dropped the sharpiegate inspired lawsuit :
https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/conservative-lawyers-quietly-dropped-lawsuit-that-pushed-debunked-sharpiegate-conspiracy-theory/
Philly City commissioner said that his vote counters are getting death threats still, on 60 minutes last night.
Amusing but not super important:
Chris Wallace and Ted Cruz are in a twitter fight after Wallace said he was acting like a japanese holdout after WW22.
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On November 10 2020 02:12 Starlightsun wrote:
Election night party... lose the presidency and give everybody covid.
Re: Wegandi's comments of the working class conservatives being "talked down to", goes to show the power of pandering in American politics. You can rob people blind so long as you pretend you are on their team. I guess Democrats do the same with minorities but not as egregiously and with less collateral damage.
Honestly, if you vote for Trump you kind of deserve to be "talked down to", because you are clearly not a responsible adult.
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Democrats and progressive can't think like that though if the want to peel off working class voters from the Republicans, we need to channel the frustration they feel at the US and turn it away from racist psychosis into healthcare reform, police reform, corporate reform, etc. etc.
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On November 10 2020 02:19 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2020 02:12 Starlightsun wrote:
Election night party... lose the presidency and give everybody covid.
Re: Wegandi's comments of the working class conservatives being "talked down to", goes to show the power of pandering in American politics. You can rob people blind so long as you pretend you are on their team. I guess Democrats do the same with minorities but not as egregiously and with less collateral damage. Honestly, if you vote for Trump you kind of deserve to be "talked down to", because you are clearly not a responsible adult.
Clearly you have never met any Trump voters who are living a quite shitty life.
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Its tempting to throw scorn and contempt at the Republican electorate, I wont pretend the dont make it easy, but I will always try and caution putting blame on the electorate. Republican politicians have twisted the feelings of working class discontent to suit their political ambitions, that does not excuse the behavior of the electorate, but given we are likely going to need more unity amongst the working classes of the US in order to prevent general Republican obstructionism, we really ought to consider less how to mock them and more how to get them to onto a progressive agenda, using their energy for positive change rather than what its currently being used for.
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On November 10 2020 02:40 Neneu wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2020 02:19 Simberto wrote:On November 10 2020 02:12 Starlightsun wrote:
Election night party... lose the presidency and give everybody covid.
Re: Wegandi's comments of the working class conservatives being "talked down to", goes to show the power of pandering in American politics. You can rob people blind so long as you pretend you are on their team. I guess Democrats do the same with minorities but not as egregiously and with less collateral damage. Honestly, if you vote for Trump you kind of deserve to be "talked down to", because you are clearly not a responsible adult. Clearly you have never met any Trump voters who are living a quite shitty life.
Gonna have to throw some whiteness into this one. Trump voters are living quite a shitty life "for white people". Highly doubt they are worse off than the average poor person of color in urban areas...
(thanks for your answer about libs in Norway btw)
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The absolute bottom class of white people wouldn't honestly be too far off really
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On November 10 2020 03:07 Zambrah wrote:
The absolute bottom class of white people wouldn't honestly be too far off really
I'd say this is very generalist, and a reason why they vote Trump. I know quite a few "bottom class of white people" who are pro biden. Not every redneck is pro trump. It's those who are susceptible to manipulation, and as we can tell, a large portion of the voting population is easily manipulated. It's also the actual nazi's, and fascists.
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Trump has fired Mike Esper, Secretary of Defense. I've never heard of his replacement.
edit:
His wikipedia page is literally two (three after a refresh) sentences long. No idea if this "unanimous confirmation" claim is correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_C._Miller
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I mean sure, it's not a competition. I was just reminded of this tweet
+ Show Spoiler +
We have to be careful about stuff like this, this is a very bad tweet. That dude owned a house, two trucks... There's junk in his yard. Okay.
Without denying that there is poverty involved as well, a lot of Trump voting is about perceiving that a privileged position is about to be lost, and attempting to maintain it, rather than actually being at the true bottom. They can see that their circumstances are getting worse and they're blaming it on the people below them "threatening to reach the same level as them", rather than on the people on top of them stepping harder and harder on their necks.
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On November 10 2020 03:13 ShoCkeyy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2020 03:07 Zambrah wrote:
The absolute bottom class of white people wouldn't honestly be too far off really I'd say this is very generalist, and a reason why they vote Trump. I know quite a few "bottom class of white people" who are pro biden. Not every redneck is pro trump. It's those who are susceptible to manipulation, and as we can tell, a large portion of the voting population is easily manipulated. It's also the actual nazi's, and fascists.
Im a little confused, I do acknowledge that my comment was generalist (Im not sure how to make a comment about the economic standing of the absolute bottom of the lower classes of white people without being generalist tbh) but that comment didnt say anything about Trump or Biden
On November 10 2020 03:16 Nebuchad wrote:I mean sure, it's not a competition. I was just reminded of this tweet + Show Spoiler +We have to be careful about stuff like this, this is a very bad tweet. That dude owned a house, two trucks... There's junk in his yard. Okay. Without denying that there is poverty involved as well, a lot of Trump voting is about perceiving that a privileged position is about to be lost, and attempting to maintain it, rather than actually being at the true bottom. They can see that their circumstances are getting worse and they're blaming it on the people below them "threatening to reach the same level as them", rather than on the people on top of them stepping harder and harder on their necks.
Yeah, that person is still likely lower class, but not the bottom of the barrel lower class, probably a little better off than I was growing up given the multiple vehicles, but it's not super helpful to split hairs about poor people imo, oppression olympics stuff is exhausting, this person is not well off for sure and is likely exploited in the similar way others are exploited. Definitely not as bad as I've seen in POC communities, I want to find some stark pictures of a public school that I found utterly ghastly...
https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/2016/01/12/detroit-teacher-says-sick-outs-are-in-response-to-deplorable-conditions-at-dps-schools/
I mean fucking LOOK AT THIS SHIT, this is the kind of shit you'd see people go, "look at what socialism causes in other countries!"
THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE WEALTHIEST CAPITALIST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, HOLY SHIT.
POCs 100% are the majority people exposed to these sorts of wretched conditions, but some white people live in similarly squalid conditions. I had a friend in Florida whose house was infested to a horrific degree with palmetto bugs. Crawling all over the ceiling at all times, if you moved something they'd swarm out from under it, it that wasn't my childhood normal it would've terrified me. I actually slept over in that house before though. I shudder at the thought now...
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/2wcV2z3.png)
