Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

From what I read, tuition in Finland is covered entirely by the state, so long as you are a citizen of an EU country. Some do take loans out for housing and other expenses that can be up to 3900 EUR every six months. And apparently, consequently, Finland is also now seeing a rise of student debt as well.
Could very well be, I'm not very familiar with how these things are in Finland at the moment.

Incidentally, I could mention that the returns you can usually get from the stock market far outweigh the interest on any student loan you can get in Finland. I'm sort of kicking myself in the head why I didn't max out my loans when I was studying, and invest them. Might have had that much more money to play with.
 
Also, most of these loans are given out to people who are not yet considered adults in many states. Seeing how the drinking and smoking ages are 21 in a lot of states. So, I’d argue allowing someone who’s not old enough to make an informed decision on alcohol rack up hundreds of thousands in debt would be a bit predatory.

But, I don’t see why bailing out businesses who take on risky debt or fail to plan properly get bailed out all the time, and it’s suddenly an issue when we start talking about lower income people.
*shrug*

What is the age of majority in the United States, when individuals gain the status of legal adults? I think in most states it seems to be 18 years of age.
 
*shrug*

What is the age of majority in the United States, when individuals gain the status of legal adults? I think in most states it seems to be 18 years of age.
Yes, it’s 18 as long as it’s convenient.

You still didn’t answer why It’s fine for businesses to be bailed out, but god forbid the government does something to directly help people.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
In essence, the majority of what would be in a US student loan is already "forgiven" in Finland - IE, Tuition, fees (and maybe even books?) are already paid. In the US, that constitutes the lion's share of the loan. Additionally, because they're federally guaranteed, the interest rate and repayment terms are fixed no matter who is issuing the loan.

So basically, in the US your choices are:
Qualify for a full scholarship (which less than 1% do),
take the usurious loan,
or don't go.

So for most people, there's not really an actual choice other than whether to go to college or not.

And the people most loudly decrying the loan forgiveness have been getting forgiveness themselves all along.
 
I'm not so sure they were tricked into signing the loan contract, nor that they had a gun to their head. Rather, I believe they wanted their particular degree, and knew, or should have known, what it would cost them. And they chose to sign the contract out of their own free will.
Kids were told (by parents and administrators who paid a fraction for their own education that these kids would be responsible for) they would have no future if they didn't go to college and take out those loans. They took their own experience of being Boomers and having everything handed to them and assuming it would be the same for their kids.

It's not.

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This whole "Take a loan, you should pay it" ignores the reality of this loss of purchasing power and how wages have stagnated, compounding the problem.
 
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Weren't student loans invented as a method of controlling the working class? Instituted when the masses gained sufficient knowledge to challenge their masters?

Doesn't that make them inherently evil?
 
I'm not so sure they were tricked into signing the loan contract, nor that they had a gun to their head. Rather, I believe they wanted their particular degree, and knew, or should have known, what it would cost them. And they chose to sign the contract out of their own free will.
Contracts aren't Holy Writ that can never be set aside. Any functioning legal system has limits on what a contract can hold someone to - I think there was a recent post on here about a landlord that included a clause in the contract that a female tenant has to have sex with him whenever he wanted. Doesn't matter that she signed the contract of her own free will, that's not legally enforceable & no court is going to allow it to stand.

While I am in no way suggesting student loan debt is as morally repugnant as that I believe legal systems in the past have chosen to set aside contracts that too strongly benefit one side and giving a net disadvantage to the other. The question then becomes at when does student loans reach that point? And have we already reached it?
 
I'm sorry, but I believe if you take out a loan, you should pay back that loan. Being responsible for your own finances is a part of being an adult.
I know you typically try real hard to earn that Mr Burns avatar, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you aren't aware of the predatory nature of student loans in the US, the way millions were exploited into signing up for a lifetime of debt, and the way that government protections of student loans meant that they were impossible to default on, to the point that even declaring bankruptcy wouldn't make them go away and your pay would be docked your entire life.

Sure, someone should be responsible for their finances, but that goes both ways. Lenders should have a risk that giving out loans might result in not getting them paid back, but thanks to government interference risk was completely removed from the lenders side, creating an entire industry of giving bad loans and obfuscating what that meant to people.

This also coincides with the rise of the idea of free University that began to rise in California, but was quickly squashed by Ronald Reagan when he was governor, all at the behest of the interest of those making billions by keeping people in debt.

You probably knew most of this but again, I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt
 
Average cost of a car in 1980: $7,574
Average cost of a 4 year degree: 11,236 for tuition, room and board. $4652 if you didn't have a dorm. (1 degree costs about 1/2 a car)
Median salary: $21,020. A 4 year degree without a room was 5% of your income across that 4 years.

-------------------------
Cost of a car in 2007: 23,892 (3X 1980 prices)
cost of a 4 year degree: 113,536 (w/room) or 79,964 (without room) (17X 1980 costs) (1 degree now costs 3 cars)
Average salary: 40,405 (2X 1980 values) A 4 year degree without room now is 49% of your income across that 4 years.


-------------------------
The disparity has only grown in the intervening 13 years since these numbers. I could use all kinds of flowery debate language to talk about income disparity or argue about how these numbers hurt lower-income people even more, blah blah blah. But instead, I'm going to call it what it is: Bullshit.

sources:
 
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I'm not so sure they were tricked into signing the loan contract, nor that they had a gun to their head. Rather, I believe they wanted their particular degree, and knew, or should have known, what it would cost them. And they chose to sign the contract out of their own free will.
You seem to have little idea of what "predatory" means.

Will save you a long list of all the misdirections and outright lies loan lenders told me when I was first trying to get into a school at 18, I won't even go into the fact that a lot of schools, more so trade schools, refuse to transfer credits, meaning once you are deep into a school you either finish it or start over from day one. No, I won't get into any of that because I was one of the lucky ones, my father took on half my debt and for the most part I got an okay interest rate. Even so, I am still paying off my loans 20 years later with another 10 (maybe less with the forgiveness) left to go.

Many young people that tried to get into college in the last ten years can't even afford the interest, they will take out a 30k loan for cheap school, pay the "minimum payment" every month, and a year later they owe 32k. That is how stupid it is. The board needs to be RESET, but at least forgiveness is a start.
 
In other news. The GOP has had to cancel a lot of ads in battleground states due to lack of campaign funds. Not only have they seemingly "misplaced" millions due to the financial prowess of Rick Scott, but small donations have gone off a cliff.

Why? Because Trump keeps sending emails for supporters to send him money, so they send him money rather then send to local GOP campaigns, then Trump gives the actual GOP none of it.
 
In other news. The GOP has had to cancel a lot of ads in battleground states due to lack of campaign funds. Not only have they seemingly "misplaced" millions due to the financial prowess of Rick Scott, but small donations have gone off a cliff.

Why? Because Trump keeps sending emails for supporters to send him money, so they send him money rather then send to local GOP campaigns, then Trump gives the actual GOP none of it.
Can confirm that once you get on the Trump mailing list it is nonstop Trump emails.
 
I'm not so sure they were tricked into signing the loan contract
Ah, but they were. They were promised that taking out these loans would be at most a short-term inconvenience, because there would be a position waiting for them on the other end which would pay enough that not only would they be able to easily pay back the loan, but also live well. And they believed this because they were idealistic teens with insufficient real-life experience to comprehend and visualize the magnitude of the tight budget and time commitments that would be required to acquire their desired degree and career before their loan money + savings is depleted.

Did the lenders make any attempt to educate their prospective borrowers on these details before collecting signatures? Did they periodically check in on their students during studies to make sure they were sticking to their goals, or to advise them of imminent changes to their declared field which might impact the trajectory of their study or their expected earning power? Did they dig further than a mere credit and asset check to make sure the borrower would actually be likely to succeed on their journey? No. No, they did not. And this blatant lack of anything resembling concern for the welfare of their borrowers shows that they cared nothing for the actual people, only for the payments they produce.

Oh, I’m sure I can hear your reply already, about how they entered into a business contract, and how that places certain obligations which must be fulfilled upon the signer/co-signer blah blah etc. But the lender’s enforcement/insistence is highly selective. Failed business loans get discharged in bankruptcy. Car loans get sold to collection agencies. When a mortgage defaults, the bank gets to keep the property. And in all of these cases, the bank gets to write down/off the loan on their balance sheets, declaring a loss on their taxes (while potentially getting to keep assets, such as houses). Not so with student loans. Student loans are structured so they CANNOT be discharged except through payment in full OR the death of all the named borrowers. There are some exceptions for public service, but this is less of a reward and more of an incentive to force (young) people into public service (which is traditionally NOT described using words like ”lucrative”) for an extended period of time (Up to twenty years, I think?).

The above is not the behavior of a merchant with goods to sell, it is the behavior of a recruiter, of a traveling monorail snake oil salesman, or of a multi-level marketer. It is not the behavior of someone looking to help a borrower, it is the behavior of someone looking for a mark.

Really, just ask yourself this question: Being a “Federally Guaranteed Student Loan” means that the lender is protected in case the borrower defaults. The Federal Government takes over the debt and pays the lender to do so. Heck, the guaranteed loan program ended in 2010 and the gvt just handles them directly now rather than having to wait for the borrower to default (which kinda says something on its own, really). But what protection is there for the borrower? Answer: There is none. Again—this is supposed to be a government of/by/for the People, so why does it expend so much effort erecting such an elaborate safety net for lenders while completely ignoring borrowers (very specifically student borrowers, at that)? Answer2: because it really IS a net—one designed to allow lenders to capture (and hold!) large numbers of young adults with plenty of lifetime ahead of them with which to make payments. Endless payments at rates that just barely allow borrowers to keep up with the loans, ensuring a persistent, steady stream of guaranteed income for decades to come.

—Patrick
 

Dave

Staff member
WHY?!? Why the fuck would you come out & say this?!? Why not just say, “We, as democrats, are doing good things and getting more popular. We can’t have that. So let’s say the dumbest thing possible to energize the opposition base.”

 
WHY?!? Why the fuck would you come out & say this?!? Why not just say, “We, as democrats, are doing good things and getting more popular. We can’t have that. So let’s say the dumbest thing possible to energize the opposition base.”

He’s losing Democrat support, and people are actively talking about primary challenges. He’s trying to energize the base for himself in 2024 instead of thinking about what’s best to make sure Democrats win in 2022.

As you said, it’s dumb.
 
I honestly wonder if this is a move to make his primary challengers more appealing in contrast. The Dems haven't exactly put forth many other viable candidates but there are plenty of "Any but Biden" democrats out there.
 
WHY?!? Why the fuck would you come out & say this?!? Why not just say, “We, as democrats, are doing good things and getting more popular. We can’t have that. So let’s say the dumbest thing possible to energize the opposition base.”

is it too soon to say he's shooting himself in the foot?
 
"Peltola is set to become the first Alaska Native to represent the state in Congress."
...what? AK has never previously been represented by an Alaskan? What?

--Patrick
 
I think they mean Native American. Though she is the first house member to represent Alaska and be born in Alaska, though its skewed since they only have one seat and the same guy held it for the last 50 years.
 
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I will sum up.
Your point is valid, people who sign loans have a responsibility to pay them back.
But the people who originate loans also bear a responsibility to not treat their borrow[er]s as mere teats on a money goat.

—Patrick
 
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For the first time since 1966, a Democrat will represent Alaska in the House of Representatives (ignoring that time that a Democrat died before the election and won anyways).

To make it sweeter? Well...

The conservative echo chambers are already complaining about ranked choice voting and how it "stole" the election.

The argument they are making is that many of the people who voted for the other Republican candidate didn't add a second option on the ballot, thus their votes were thrown out once the other candidate pulled up third, you know, like any regular election when a third person comes in.

I think it's funny how this entire argument hangs on the fact that conservative voters in Alaska are idiots who can't fill out a ballot, because it's too confusing.
 
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