The coming Democratic civil war

Many of these degrees that you disparage focus on acquiring knowledge and using it in analysis.

 

I think most are saying that you can get whatever degree you want… don’t ask the taxpayers to foot anymore of the bill than we already do.
Many many people took out loans for college and paid it back. Many many people used the go bill to cover college, many others worked in low income neighborhoods to get their loans forgiven.
Go get your degree in a whatever and then.. pay for it by working. Not expecting the govt to bail you out.

 

The problem is that this argument makes three highly dubious assumptions:

1. That an investment not working out individually means that it wasn't worth it at the time the loan was given (e.g., 9 out of 10 paid back their loans fully and one-time, but the existence of 1 who didn't makes the pathway "useless.")
2. That the people who can't pay back the loans aren't working. They generally are. Often harder than the people who did pay back their loans.
3. That they "expect" the government to "bail them out."

Let's reset the framing here a bit. The government regularly backs loans to small businesses. Some of those businesses fail. Does the fact that the business failed mean that the government should never provide loans to that type of business or that the small business owner whose business failed should never get out from under their debt or that the small business owner is a lazy person just looking for a bailout from the government?

 

Yep.

Bernie Sanders sums up exactly why Donald Trump won 2024 election - The Mirror US

He stated that America is broken as a country, and that Trump came in with promises to fix a system that needed fixing - and people believed him.

Speaking in Ireland, Sanders said: "Understand that most young people in America will have a lower standard of living than their parents.

"When you want to understand Trumpism, and why people are angry, they are angry because in America over the last 52 years, despite huge increases in worker productivity - the average American worker is worse off in inflation-accounted-for dollars than he or she was 52 years ago."

"Then Trump comes along and says 'The system is broken, and I Donald Trump will fix it'. Well, he got half of that right. The system is broken, he's correct. But his solutions will only make a terrible situation even worse."

 

Maybe that's because we see how much money they charge. The trades are killing it. Is it not brilliant to be in the AC business in FL?

 

Barefoot Bernie was dead broke before he became a politician.

 

So trade schools are too expensive too now?

 

Yeah, he went and got one of those useless degrees at University of Chicago and then became...a carpenter. What was he thinking going into the trades?

 

when “their parents” is mentioned as having a higher standard of living, a driver is they didn’t pay all of their way.

We’re sitting at $36 TRILLION of debt or 125% of gdp. That is expected to grow under the trump bill.

 

Rich Baris has demonstrated with AI/machine learning that Trump has shifted America to the right, the Republican Party still sucks. That video is behind a paywall

There is a bright spot for Democrats according to America's best pollster "by far" (per Robert Barnes). Baris is live (started half an hour ago).

 

Who?

 

no I actually gave her koodos for finishing- but her art degree did nothing to prepare her for the real world. then she came and asked me for a job- I made her start at the bottom- after she learned how to be a worker(10 months) I promoted her to assistant manager and taught her what I like to call the business of people and time management. After a year as the 2nd assistant, she was promoted to 1st assistant and 10 months after that I promoted her to GM of one of my 4 stores. She knew that was as far as she would go working for me. After another 4 years she left to go work for a different Restaurant Chain- we were very proud of her- 2 years after she left her then boyfriend beat her up and threw her down a flight of stairs- it ruined her back and the Dr’s gave her oxy for the pain. She got addicted and 4 years later she got clean and rededicated her life to Christ- unfortunately during her days of drug addiction she got MRSA and about 8 months after she got clean she got pneumonia and the MRSA came back with a vengeance and on Dec20, 2016 she passed away. I miss her every single day.

 

Who said not to provide loans? Loans are fine. Loans get paid back… if you go get your degree in ancient Japanese art, middle eastern woman’s studies, or some other liberal art with little in the way of career paths then you should be expected to most back your loans. No one says not to get a degree. No one says the govt shouldn’t give out loans. We are saying that we don’t think it’s a good idea to forgive all of those loans. Want to drop the interest rate to 0.01 - fine no problem. But pure across the board forgiveness? Nope.

 

I know the heartbreak is unimaginable. But your daughter was clearly a fighter… and she clearly did not fight alone. I hope her story, her strength will be an inspiration to others.

 

Not always. That is what bankruptcy is.

But we regularly forgive debts in medical scenarios, for forming businesses (which are government-backed loans), and a lot of other contexts. Companies will often write off bad debt that will never be paid back as well. That is my point. There isn't really much difference in artificially lowering the interest level to nothing and forgiving loans, except in emotional response to the action.

 

Let's not forget this "businessman" who declared bankruptcy six times and ended up paying his creditors pennies of the dollar.
Fact Check: Has Trump declared bankruptcy four or six times?
Trump’s companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which means a company can remain in business while wiping away many of its debts. The bankruptcy court ultimately approves a corporate budget and a plan to repay remaining debts; often shareholders lose much of their equity.

Trump’s Taj Mahal opened in April 1990 in Atlantic City, but six months later, “defaulted on interest payments to bondholders as his finances went into a tailspin,” The Washington Post’s Robert O’Harrow found. In July 1991, Trump’s Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy. He could not keep up with debts on two other Atlantic City casinos, and those two properties declared bankruptcy in 1992. A fourth property, the Plaza Hotel in New York, declared bankruptcy in 1992 after amassing debt.

PolitiFact uncovered two more bankruptcies filed after 1992, totaling six. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts filed for bankruptcy again in 2004, after accruing about $1.8 billion in debt. Trump Entertainment Resorts also declared bankruptcy in 2009, after being hit hard during the 2008 recession.

 

Very sorry for your loss Bill. I had no idea.

 

If a student borrows 80k and has his/her interest rate dropped to zero they still pay back the 80k. Most would be ok with that.
Yes, business loans do sometimes get forgiven.. and so do school
Loans depending on circumstances. That’s not what’s being discussed. Whole sale loan forgiveness across the nation is HUGE. Want to make loan forgiveness for military service, working in underserved areas, being a first responder, etc.. fine.

As far as trade schools go (the original argument) it is my belief that the US has the wrong mind set for college. We push every kid in that direction with the idea it’s the only way to success. Now that has gotten a little better in the last 20 years or so thanks to the tech sector but we (US education) need to do a bette job of providing HS students with all the options. Trade schools are the right path for some. College is the right path for others . Being a first responder would be better for a few. There are so many options out there that do not require huge amounts of debt not taking out govt issued loans.
And finally… when taking out large govt issued loans students need to have a plan for the future. Most businesses have e at least a five year plan when they start(or should if they want to succeed).
Students should have a strong idea of what their degree in Roman art history will allow them to do after college.

 

like he had a crystal ball

A Warning From Justice Souter: Democracy Is in Peril - The New York Times

But a seemingly bland question from an audience member at a New Hampshire arts center in 2012 provoked an impassioned response from the justice, who was the opposite of excitable.

He said he was worried that public ignorance about how American government works would allow an authoritarian leader to emerge and claim total power. “That is the way democracy dies,” he said.

“An ignorant people can never remain a free people,” the justice said. “Democracy cannot survive too much ignorance.”

Not understanding how power is allocated among the three branches of government, he said, leaves a void that invites a strongman. After a crisis, he said, “one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power, and I will solve this problem.’”

 

Time is an important component of finance. If you forgive loans and don't change the interest rate, that may have no difference in effect. But if you drop interest rates to zero, a borrower never has incentive to pay back the loan. Regardless, it is just loan forgiveness reframed.

Again, it is about reframing to make people feel better about it than anything else it seems. We will forgive you if we think you are worthy, essentially.


To tie all of this back into the thread, democrats face the problem that they are likely right from a policy standpoint (the debt burden on college loans is restricting activity and destabilizing the economy and the political system), but older folks, especially those with more money, have bad feelings about forgiving loans without some sort of emotional tie to the recipient, so we just saddle younger generations with debt (except their kids, of course- essentially, a way to lock in a socio-economix hierarchy- kids from well-off families get college, kids from less well-off families don't and can hope they can get enough money through trades, which is beneath the college kids of the college-educated).

Downright false.

We push the kids your kids knew because they are likely the kids of college-educated families. Most younger Americans never graduate from a 4-year college. But it isn't as if the college-educated parental population looks at those kids and tells their kids to emulate them.

Which has been the system now, 20 years ago, 40 years ago, etc.

Holding a 17-18 year old to their plan because that is what they said 5 years ago seems like an awful idea. If anything, kids tend to firm up plans and come up with better ones over time. The fact that some plans didn't work out is not evidence that the entire path was wrong from the start.

Most kids pay back their loans in full. The fact that it didn't work out for everybody doesn't mean that giving loans to those that didn't work out was wrong, in the same sense that business failures don't mean that the loan was wrong initially.