1. Deadbeat? Perhaps a noble adventurer seeking [typically useless] knowledge. ?

   1

   1. No but of knowledge is useless … But some comes within epsilon.

      1

      1. But much of what they acquire nowadays is anti-knowledge: false knowledge that armors them against the acquisition of actual knowledge.

         4

2. deadbeat; synonyms: layabout · loafer · lounger · idler · waster · wastrel · good-for-nothing · parasite ·

   2

3. You may be correct, but two points.
   .
   One, the program could include a provision that no negative impact could be entered on the credit report.
   .
   Two … It seems to me that, on average, the people who choose to pursue useless degrees aren’t ones to be thinking much of long term consequences. By the time the repercussions hit home they’re already well into “it’s not my fault” self-justification etc. because they simply don’t see any causal connection that involves their initial decisions.

   6

4. Fauxcahontas had the big lie earlier in the week. “This will only affect 40 million people” (the number is approximate – not sure I got it right). That’s bullsh*t. It will affect every single taxpayer.
   .
   Those of us who got student loans and paid them off years ago (decades in my case)? Congratulations. You pay off other peoples’ loans forever. Those who didn’t go to college because they didn’t want the financial burden? Congratulations. You’re getting it anyway.

   1

5. Not sure how the final EO will work out, but in the past, your credit history was reviewed as part of a review for a security clearance. If you were so untrustworthy as to fail to pay off a loan, you couldn’t be trusted with national secrets. Also, if you were in insurmountable debt, you represented a potential target for subversion.

6. Generally I agree, I took loans and I pay them and I generally believe it is my responsibility to do so.

   Here is my but. At least two generations have been lied to about going to college and preyed upon by lenders and I have lots of sympathy.

   Gov guaranteed loans should have 0 to very minimal interest .5% say. Loans should be forgivable in bankruptcy. We need to stop fucking over the youth, luckily people are waking up a bit. If we can bail out the banks why shouldn’t we bail out all the people lied into taking predatory loans and make the banks pay for it? Removing that debt would probably stimulate the economy more than any other measure already taken.

   Examples of predatory lending I have personally experience, libor tied loans with interest rates that reached 18%, 15, 20, and 25 year loan terms, and running out of credit after 1.5 years in college with the only help availbe being a shoulder shrug.

   2

   1. If no one held a gun to their heads to sign for it, it wasn’t a “predatory loan”. They were just too stupid to understand what they were doing.
      If you want to blame them for making loans to retarded people, and punish the Congress who voted it into being with 20 year prison terms apiece, including the ones voting to underwrite forgiveness, I’m all in on that.

      2

      1

      1. You’re totally right, taking advantage of the ignorant, uninformed, inexperienced, young, and stupid is not predatory in the least.

         1

         1. So they are smart enough to go to college, and perhaps even graduate, but too incurably stupid to understand what “loan” means, or to judge whether their major qualifies them for anything better paying than bartender?
            However, I would argue the government needs to get out of the loans business. Put it back into the hands of colleges, so they get to feel themselves directly whether the alleged education they put out is worth the money they charge for it.

            1. You do not need to be smart to go to college or finish it.

               50% or more of it is worthless daycare level BS, gen eds, and prereqs. No amount of forced gen eds and prereqs is going to make anyone but those with the most malleable minds more “well rounded students”. Being forced to take some bullshit class that was a waste of my time was also a waste of my money, and prevented me from taking better, more interesting classes in my area of study and from finishing my degrees faster. This happens to everyone and serves no purpose other than to make the college more money by extending your stay.

               At least starting in my generation (millennial) we have been lied to by every authority in education and most other people in positions of authority in our lives that you must A: go to college to be successful, earn $100k a year, and have a good/better life than your parents, and B:it is ok to follow your dreams and study whatever you want with little to no consideration of the financial return.

               This IMO is mostly fueled by boomers and gen xers that grew up in a different era where having any college education generally, automatically, meant success and where finding a job was super easy. I’m not blaming the prior generations for being wrong or playing up some inter generational bs, I’m simply saying they did not understand how things had changed and how 2008 crushed my generation and how we continue to seem to get the shitty end of the economic stick.

               And I agree 100% get the gov money out of it. It might be too late now to see any real price drops but I’m sure they will come down a least a little bit. Free easy money has inflated the cost of college, just like free easy money does to everything else.

               We also don’t need everyone and their brother going to college for useless degrees. I have an English and a Philosophy degree. They are useless to me in my daily life. I have not gotten concrete feedback from any boss that they played any meaningful role in my hiring. I do nothing related to them professionally. I don’t believe I get any tangential benefits from them either like having been able to cultivate my reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. I think this is the same for most people with useless degrees and the “oh you cultivated X with that” is the pablum we apply to make people feel better about their waste of money.

               IDK how old you are, but maybe you are too old to remember what it was like to be a 17/18 year old kid. I remember enough to understand that I had no ability to comprehend what a 25 year loan at LIBOR + 5% or more meant. You can’t comprehend the level of fucking that is going to do to you financially unless you have experienced something similar before that, which, many 17/18 year old kids haven’t. Every college graduate I know who wasn’t a rich kid or got a full ride were $600+ a month automatically out of their paycheck, many paid much more, myself included. I had no idea what it meant at 18 that one half of my monthly salary was automatically gone every month beyond the abstract; I did not understand in real, practical terms what that meant. I did not understands how that would impact my ability to do things like afford an apartment or a house, start a family, have a car, access credit, etc.

               I was a responsible kid, worked since I legally could as a draftsman at 16, mowed lawns and cleared snows for years before and after that, top 10% of my class, etc. I was not dumb, but I was inexperienced, and when you are presented with only one option to do the thing everyone tells you you need to do, well you are going to take it.

               I 100% believe we are responsible for some of the decisions we make in college and their subsequent consequences; no one should get off 100% scott free. But I also believe that college and college lending exists as an industry to prey on inexperienced unsuspecting kids and older generations that believed getting their kids into college was the best thing they could do for their children’s futures because that was what they were raised to believe and because it was not generally attainable for themselves. College as an industry exists currently, to extract as much money as they can from each student then toss them aside. If most graduate, that is a happy accident and not a required outcome. The college industry as it exists now needs reform.

7. I remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth when the people who got mortgage bailouts found out their credit rating was trashed.
   .
   What did Reagan say? You have no idea how expensive something is until is it free? Something like that.

8. Screw that. Transfer the debt to FedGov, and make those losers wards of the state until it’s repaid in full, with interest.

   Put them to work with shovels and brooms for $15/hr plus three hots and a cot, all salary forfeit until repayment.
   There’d be no potholes anywhere, and we’d have the cleanest roads and highways in the civilized world.
   A $30k debt would take a full working year to repay, and the tentage and food costs minimal in return for both the service delivered, and the lessons it would teach.

   If they default, they can go to prison, and repay the loans at 15¢/hr working in the prison shops instead.

   Dealer’s choice.

   1

   1

9. Part of the not-dischargeable-in-bankruptcy thing with student loans was alleged to be (say) physicians in residency (making, what?, $60-80,000 a year), seeking bankruptcy protection ref their $200-$500,000 student debt. Seems kinda off, when a family practice GP makes something like $150,000-200,000/year, once out of residency.

   Myself, I’m OK paying my own student loans, acquired at age 55, even now, that I’m approaching 70. As Aesop noted, I read the loan docs, I did the arithmetic, and I’m net better off than I was as a midnights ED RN.

   No bitching from me.

   In addition, I’m unclear on the moral rectitude of Joe The Plumber subsidizing (further) my own debt.

Comments are closed.