The Official Student Loan Debt Slavery Thread

[monsta666]

“ …. adding large financial barriers to this educational process …”   -----monsta

Nope.  Not happy about the high costs at all.  The gub’mint created the problem long ago, sustains the problem now, and will continue to feed the beast far into the future. I don’t what the solution is. Do you? Seems nearly hopeless.

I would say mixing private and public entities into one industry or even worse, one/few company, tends to create monstrosities that bring out the worst of both systems. Public education can work, it has done in some countries. And private education can work, if done correctly. But public-private entities? They often fail or are excessively expensive for the service they deliver. Just look at the medical and military industries as other examples of monstrosities created by forming public-private partnerships.

“ … medical treatment and other consumer items do not help with social mobility” -----monsta

Really? Good health does not help with social mobility?   Wonder just how socially mobile people with brain tumors are?  Housing … fuckit … working out of a cardboard box is just fine ... very easy to transport a box, highly mobile.

Most people do not get tumours at an early age. By the time a person has a significant risk of getting a chronic or deadly disease you allude to then they will be of an age were most social doors have more or less closed. Also more opportunities are achieved through education than being healthy. I tend to think that medical treatment should be socialised but not because it promotes social mobility but because privatising this service creates a conflict of interest between the doctor and patient. It also seems that the costs of a public service would be cheaper for the general population and the level of service would not diminish drastically. In short more bang for buck. At the end of the day you are just choosing your poison. Do you pay high taxes to fund medical care or do you not pay higher taxes but pay high insurance rates with always the risk the insurer may bail on you the day you finally need the money and you are the most vulnerable and desperate?

“However it is also the banks responsibility to ensure its customers have a realistic chance in paying back those loans.”  -----monsta666

Agree 100%.  Million dollar question – HOW does the bank do that regarding student loans?  It’s almost impossible, isn’t it?  Is the bank going to follow the student around to make sure he/she studies hard, instead of partying?  Is the bank going to make sure the student chooses a major with a good job market?  There is virtually no guarantee  any student can/will pay back any loan. That’s why student loans are non-dischargeable. In reality, the banks should get out of the Student Loan biz altogether. But that wouldn’t be very popular either.

The bank can hire an actuary who would make a assessment on the probability of a student obtaining a job after graduation. Not only could the actuary assess the probability of graduates finding employment they would also be able to detect the ongoing trends developing in the market. If more graduates are gaining employment in middle-class to upper-class occupations then the banks can lower the rates of interest on student loans so more students get enrolled into university. If the chances are diminishing and less students are getting employed then the risk of a default becomes higher so they raise interest rates. This raising and decreasing of interest should ensure that the supply of students matches the demand for employers and the number of delinquent loans is kept to a minimum.

If there is a chronic shortage of people becoming students due to high loan payments it would highlight the educational system is dysfunctional and  not meeting its advertised objectives. Like most things the market will innovate an alternative route to employment that should provide a greater return to investment than the university system. If left to its own devices!!! Not sure how that would work and do hold personal doubts how this would pan out in real life but that is the theory of how it COULD work in a free market. If you advocate free market this is the way it should be. It can only work though if the government wasn't involved in backstopping bankers failures or subsidising them either directly through cash or indirectly by taking on the risks of dodgy investments made by the banks.

Then again I will say this about free markets. They are paradoxes. If you have no government involvement and left everything to the market then people would game the system and it eventually become a big monopoly/oligopoly or a full on wild west scenario and thus the conditions of a free market would be broken. To stop that from happening means some government involvement is required for regulation but once that occurs you no longer have a free market as there will be some government involvement. There is a bunch of other issues that are little paradoxical in the whole free market concept but I can't be bothered to go into it. In short a total free market is a fantasy created in a textbook much like communism or socialism. Such things never existed in the real world only in textbooks.

• Tweet

[RE]

Bull-fucking-shit.  Your silliness is forcing me to defend Banksters, a horrid state of affairs. I hate to break it to you, but you are not the first to realize that lenders are Slave Masters;

“The rich rules over the poor,  And the borrower becomes the lender’s slave.”  
----- Proverbs 22:7

“But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court?”----- James 2:6

“A poor man pleads for mercy, but a rich man answers harshly.” 
----- Proverbs 18:23

Biblical Quotes!  Watson is Walkabout, now ex-Fundy ex-Seminarian StuckenThumper takes over!  LOL.

Stucky’s Incredible Advice To Avoid Being A Debt Slave:  Don’t deal with the fucking banker in the first place!!

I am all for not dealing with Banksters, but how does Duane send his kids to Duke University so they can live the "Amerikan Dream" like he did?  Fill us in StuckenGenius on this one.  Inquiring minds want to know. 

RE

• Tweet

[widgeon]

The notion that you can only wrack up big fees elsewhere than "affordable" state institutions is not true.

Costs in (cheap) Oklahoma for OU & OSU are right in the neighborhood of $20k per year ... that's $100k for most people's experience.

• Tweet

[widgeon]

Costs that have been quoted to me (by the universities themselves) for private universities have ranged from $48-65k per year.

• Tweet

[widgeon]

All due respect to your Greatest Generation Blue Collar Dad and my Greatest Generation Pigman Dad, but Obligations to Slave Masters just are not fairly contracted obligations. 

Absolutely.  Those running it are Racketeers; in the criminal sense.

• Tweet

[WHD]

And, to him a debt was an OBLIGATION that you ALWAYS fulfilled, come hell or high water.  I agree.

Stucky1,

Are you a Pigman in disguise?     Because I took a bank loan out on this house in 2006, when I KNEW the market was inflated, but being your more-or-less Average American at the time, and generally trusting, I didn't know jack about all the bundling of mortgage securities, etc shenanigan fucking shit going on in the ethereal realm of HIGH FINANCE/TREASURY/FED, and the media wasn't advertising REALITY any more than they do now. I just assumed the housing market here in this nice blue collar/retiree/young family neighborhood in the central city would level off. 

How much bigger is the mo. fucking bank that holds the mortgage on this house, than it was in 2008? Not sure, but I'll describe it as FUCK_ALL bigger. So excuse me, in all due respect, if I get a little fucking testy about someone implying that it is my MORAL obligation to SUCK IT UP and pay the mo fuckers, though this house is what now? $50,000 under water? And my mortgage is tiny compared to yer average suburban 3000 sq ft zombie box.

Grrrrrrr. You get to lecture the likes of me about moral obligations to Pigmen Driving The World Toward Epic Over-Reach Insolvency, when you come up with some DOABLE SOLUTION about how to hold the MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE accountable for their devilish machinations. OK?

Rant done.     

• Tweet

[RE]

Me too.

Thank you Nobody.  That means a lot to me.

RE

• Tweet

[RE]

Stucky1,

Are you a Pigman in disguise?   

PILE ON STUCKENTEABAGGER!

LOL.

This ain't TBP Stucky. You won't get a whole lot of support for this opinion here.  I am sure though you will defend it until the next Flood rolls through.  LOL.

RE

• Tweet

[nobody]

You're welcome, RE

On this student loan subject, before our oldest got into the last remaining great apprenticeship (VFD), we were paying for his schooling at the local community college.  It was simply appalling.  If the tuition didn't make you scream, the book cost did, and if that didn't, the many fees (for everything) and extras did; you couldn't even park there for classes without an exorbitant cost.. and for what?  A very shitty education.  One class we paid over 2 grand for was online, taught by a bevy of non-existent persons, absolutely worthless and he got a bad grade because he really couldn't navigate it (and he's very smart and worked hard).  I tried to at least expunge the grade as the class was then dropped from the curriculum and the admin was so terrible I couldn't even get that done.  We covered all expenses because we didn't want him exposed to the then draconian measures they're apparently now changing.  The costs of even the cheapest schools are exquisitely painful

• Tweet

[Stucky1]

“but how does Duane send his kids to Duke University so they can live the "Amerikan Dream" like he did?  Fill us in StuckenGenius on this one.” ------RE

First, it’s spelled with an ‘h’.  StuchenGenius and StuchenThumper.  Second, no one here has any idea what the hell you mean by that. Unlike Lord God Ashvin, my Biblical quotes have nothing to do with the spirit life … they are economic quotes. StuchenBlowMe.

Why are you asking me such EASY questions??  Here’s what Duane does: he lives according to his means … and if that means No Dookie edumacation for his silver spooned offspring then he should change his fucking expectations.

My dad has been here since 1958.  He has never owned a credit card.  He has no debit card. The ONLY loan he ever took out was the mortgage.  Yeah … even his new cars were paid for in cash. Here is a fuckin’ incredible formula;  (Banker Slave Avoidance = Save, Then Purchase).

• Tweet

[WHD]

I took a bank loan out on this house in 2006,

Stucky1

In the interest of pointing out that my rant was slightly off topic, I'd like to point out too that as a primary thrust of the culture has been about Home Ownership, an equally important aspect of that mythology has been, you go to college to get a good paying job. So at the same time as the cultural mythology is feeding the Eternal Growth paradigm, and Masters of Finance are handing out credit like candy, we inflate the cost of big edu about 1000% over a generation And now that there are no jobs, you say, pay up anyway?

It's one thing to say if people are so stupid as to take out such loans, they should have to pay them. I say, people who prey on "stupid" people can burn in the "eternal hellfire" they use to control them. In other words, I'd be fine with making usury punishable by death. Or at the very least, no banker should make more than your average blue collar.   

 

• Tweet

[JoeP]

“but how does Duane send his kids to Duke University so they can live the "Amerikan Dream" like he did?  Fill us in StuckenGenius on this one.” ------RE

First, it’s spelled with an ‘h’.  StuchenGenius and StuchenThumper.  Second, no one here has any idea what the hell you mean by that. Unlike Lord God Ashvin, my Biblical quotes have nothing to do with the spirit life … they are economic quotes. StuchenBlowMe.

Why are you asking me such EASY questions??  Here’s what Duane does: he lives according to his means … and if that means No Dookie edumacation for his silver spooned offspring then he should change his fucking expectations.

My dad has been here since 1958.  He has never owned a credit card.  He has no debit card. The ONLY loan he ever took out was the mortgage.  Yeah … even his new cars were paid for in cash. Here is a fuckin’ incredible formula;  (Banker Slave Avoidance = Save, Then Purchase).

Yeah, that's the reality.  But I think there is some family "tradition" going on here.  Alot of pressure.
 

• Tweet

[Petty Tyrant]

RE, yeah youre right working your way through uni is no longer possible like it was in my day of early 90's  due to the massively increased expense. And in fact, there probably arent enough part time unskilled jobs for students anymore anyway.

I believe some time ago GO hit on an important distinction when I said ANYBODY should be able to get a degree he said yes but not EVERYBODY.

They have turned the universities into money making machines, the standards are ridiculously low, I can tell you most native english speaking students now do not have a quarter of the command of the english language in academic and professional writing as you can see in these posts. And then there are the overseas students who often write so badly it is unintelligible. They get a degree for turning up but most importantly for PAYING up.

What we have with qualifications now is the same as what we have with cars and houses. Young people wanting to all start with the best, brand new cars instead of affordable old ones, and brand new big houses instead of smaller older ones all straight off starting off.

STOP MAKING IT SO EASY TO GET IN. fuck the bridging courses and recognition of "life experience", and then the ongoing recognition of whatever disadvantage right through. You should need at least a 70% pass in yr 12/SAT to start off Or make the bridging course MEAN SOMETHING, a decent standard.

If you make it reasonably hard to get in, in the first place you dont have too many  graduates and not enough jobs for those grads. You also have less incompetent so called professionals.

• Tweet

[RE]

Here is a fuckin’ incredible formula;  (Banker Slave Avoidance = Save, Then Purchase).

Incredible indeed, because you can't save up for a Tuition that Inflates in cost faster than your income does.  WTF could save up $200K plus for a 4 year tuition for even ONE of their kids to go to Duke University and get a bullshit BA? Even if you are making $100K/year for the 18 years in between the birth of the child and entry to college you can;t save that much after taxes and living expenses, not to mention the medical insurance and bills and the new tires for the car....

So effectively what you are saying here is if you are J6P Middle Class, DOWNSIZE your ambition for your kid to at least have the same shot in life you did.  "I'm sorry son, I don't make enough money to send you to my Alma Mater of Duke University.  You can go Online and live in the Basement of our McMansion for 4 years and get a Degree from Kaplan Online University.  We can afford that."

Downward Mobility all the way under the StuchenDimwit Program!  LOL.   Ya can't afford College, don't take out a loan and don't go!  Work for 100 years flipping burgers at Mickey Ds, SAVE up enough, THEN go to College as a Centenarian!  LOL.

RE

• Tweet

[RE]

STOP MAKING IT SO EASY TO GET IN. fuck the bridging courses and recognition of "life experience", and then the ongoing recognition of whatever disadvantage right through. You should need at least a 70% pass in yr 12/SAT to start off

Fuck that.  I think to go to College you need a 1600 on your SAT.   

RE

• Tweet