What country?
I paid $3000 for an MRI years ago. With insurance. 😂😂😂
America.
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PoliGAF 2016 |OT11| Well this is exciting
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I paid $3000 for an MRI years ago. With insurance. 😂😂😂
America.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I think where some of the disconnect comes from is that Clinton has made free community college and debt free in state college foundations of her platform, which to me puts us significantly closer to a European standard by almost every metric, and that still isn't enough for a pretty vocal segment of people because they seem to actually want "free attendance at any college"
Like, if you hear "debt free plan for attending your state college" and your response is "but I want to move across the country to go to Boston at no expense" its...hard for me to be sympathetic?
BronzeWolf
Banned
Mexico. It's not even one of those European countries Americans love to envy, you don't have to be a rich as fuck country to have minimal safety nets. xD
Even then some folks can't afford to stop working to go to school, it's a shame
User 463088
Banned
It's funny to see people try and get all worked up about it. But, like, there's literally nothing bad there. She's actually empathizing. It's hilarious to watch the alt-right try and make it into something.
Hahaha.Mexico. It's not even an European country
Anecdotal, but I can only speak from experience in one regard: I actually don't have any student loan debt, but my girlfriend was forced to go to a very nice school by her parents even though she didn't really want to, and they made her take out most of the loans herself.
BronzeWolf
Banned
So many people here take education for granted though and just don't care or coast through school. But then I attended some semesters at an American University where people were paying thousands of dollars to NOT attend any classes and get smashed, so I think it's the same everywhere regardless of how much you pay
So she rebelled against her rich father by dating a Mechanic.
Fenderputty
Banned
What sort of criteria do you feel is reasonable for debt forgiveness? Amount? Degree type?
50k is an insane amount of debt and that's from a state school. So much lost economical activity when this individual enters the workforce.
I'm also of the opinion that an educated populace is a good thing for society. Look at the numbers regarding higher education and support for Trump as an example. I also have an extreme dislike of the current relationship between labor and higher education as it cheapens some forms of human intelligence over the other. We can't all major in STEM after all.
Keep in mind my experiences with school are similar as well as with my job advancement. I don't want lifetime students on the government dime either, but definitely think some form of debt forgiveness should be given and it shouldn't be tied to how easily the degree translates into a job
Especially for people who either refuse to read or just looking for something to go crazy about.
Now that's weird. And shitty.
User 463088
Banned
SO it's basically Downton Abbey?
That's fair but I'm not really familiar with how widely spread that sentiment is and the original comment was about loan forgiveness, and I wanted to highlight what I think might be a contradictory way of judging things. I don't think debt forgiveness is necessarily a bad thing and even in cases where people are personally irresponsible because there are multiple parties involved in creating this situation, it's not a crime, forgiving debt might be beneficial for the economy, and I think the important part is allocating the resources correctly beforehand.
I don't know how feasible it is to forgive student loans, maybe because I'm a huge outlier. I have about $450k in loans from grad and undergrad and there's no possible way I can see that being forgiven. I would just like a better explanation as far as repayment plans go. Right now there are like seven repayment plans to choose from and I'm not really sure which ones would work best since most depend on your salary. Right now I'm paying nothing because I'm under an IBR plan that used my previous year salary of almost nothing as a basis but I have no idea what my payments will be like next year.
I think I have the salary to support paying about $2000 a month in loans but before I applied for IBR they wanted me to pay like $4500 a month which would cripple me. And then there's also the fact that I can't seem to find a good explanation of how interest forgiveness works.
So I guess what I'm saying is that students should be made aware of all the factors before applying for loans and after graduating. I would really appreciate if there was some person or guide that helped me choose what the best option is/was for me. I felt like I was just a kid while making decisions to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars and I'm sure many current students feel the same way. They just want to go to that fancy school without realizing how their future might be impacted and I can relate to that.
I think I have the salary to support paying about $2000 a month in loans but before I applied for IBR they wanted me to pay like $4500 a month which would cripple me. And then there's also the fact that I can't seem to find a good explanation of how interest forgiveness works.
So I guess what I'm saying is that students should be made aware of all the factors before applying for loans and after graduating. I would really appreciate if there was some person or guide that helped me choose what the best option is/was for me. I felt like I was just a kid while making decisions to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars and I'm sure many current students feel the same way. They just want to go to that fancy school without realizing how their future might be impacted and I can relate to that.
This.
Also, focusing this conversation on the poor students/families taking out student loans to go to college and who may not have made the wisest choices in their planning (and if you didn't make the best choices, well then fuck you because I did) is giving a big fat pass to the banks that have had profit-based incentives to push people with no credit history into taking outrageous loans, and a society that trains kids from the time they're old enough to read that they NEED to go to college to be a successful and worthwhile human, and they NEED to have the "college experience" to be a well-rounded adult.
Some people make it through college with very little if any debt. Great. We're now entering a world where millions of students don't. But I guess they shouldn't have all spent their refund money on keggers, right?
Except there's no sassy Dowager Countess to politely verbally slap Trump around and take all the best lines.
"Donald, you are a candidate for president, not Toad of Toad Hall!"
User 463088
Banned
Cesare Borgia
Banned
The Clinton tape isn't ideal but it's tame compared to typical "SECRET TAPE" shenanigans. She didn't insult anyone, she called for understanding while also expertly explaining the situation. I'm sure Trump will attempt to make hay of it but the spotlight is currently focused on him, it's the weekend and the VP debate is in three days. Even if the media wanted to stabilize the race by spinning the tape they wouldn't have time to.
Trump is out of time. October is packed with events, and there will be unforeseen events he has to deal with (leaks). While I fully expect Hillary to get hit with an October surprise I just don't think it matters at this point.
I wouldn't be stunned at all if Trump demotes Conway after the second debate and either brings Corey back or promotes his sons to campaign manager.
Trump is out of time. October is packed with events, and there will be unforeseen events he has to deal with (leaks). While I fully expect Hillary to get hit with an October surprise I just don't think it matters at this point.
I wouldn't be stunned at all if Trump demotes Conway after the second debate and either brings Corey back or promotes his sons to campaign manager.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
Handling further tuition is a really difficult thing to do well, economically. If you make it free, you're taxing people who didn't benefit from it, or only benefited from it indirectly (better doctors, etc.), to give to people who did benefit from it and can expect to get better jobs as a result. It's almost a direct poor -> rich transfer. But make students bear all the costs, and suddenly you've stratified society so that only the rich continue to be rich because they're the only ones who can afford it, and everyone suffers as a result from a less dynamic economy and so on. You need to find some way of doing it so that people get charged roughly in proportion to their expected benefit (or slightly less, given risk aversion), and so that the state gets charged roughly in proportion to the expected benefit of those not taking the degree. But that's nearly impossible, because how many people can accurately assess the benefit of a degree to them personally, and it ends up being even more complicated when less people taking degrees increases the benefit of you having a degree, and you end up with all sorts of coordination problems.
There's some cool economic models that solve the problem, but running them in the real world would be difficult. You have HCC models - human capital contracts - where people essentially get money for their degrees in return for giving up a small portion of their income to whoever gave them the capital. They work because, given your income should vary with how much private benefit your degree gives you, the HCC pays out differently according to how much private benefit your degree gave you, so whether or not an institution pays out to you depends on how much they think you'll benefit from your degree, and they're often in a better position to assess, so it solves the information problem and the co-ordination problem (to an extent) by reducing the number of agents.
But if you make HCCs too fine-grained, you end up with all sorts of weird problems - like, black Americans end up earning less than whites, so their HCCs pay out less. You have to try and make it so the sole differential variable is what degree you do, so legally every institution has to offer exactly the same loan to anyone taking a particular degree, but there are tonnes of universities offering a huge variety of degrees and so that standardization becomes very difficult.
I've seen some people suggesting the best way it would work would be the teaching institutions themselves going to institutions, saying "here is the degree on offer and our teaching methods and so on", the institution saying "okay, we'll offer a deal of x% of your students' income for y of their years after graduation in return for z payment from us to you as an institution", and this is without knowledge of the students, only the university in question and the degree they offer, and then universities publish the sort of HCCs the degree is accompanied by so that students know what the money looks like when they apply, but then you have conflicts of interest where universities might abuse monopoly positions and so on.
Then you start saying "well, let's take it out of the hands of institutions and have HCCs to the government", which is... a tax, on graduates, and then you end up with a whole raft of problems on top of that - like, can this be defended? Because judging most countries where people owe a fee to the government, the issue gets politicized and you have fee creep, like in the United Kingdom, from free -> £3,000 -> £9,000 and now they're talking £12,000; and the government has a big incentive to post hoc underdeliver and universities end up suffocating for budget.
And at this point you just tear up all the policy papers you've read and start crying quietly. It's the ultimate optimization problem: public good, private benefit, imperfect information, information asymmetry, prisoner's dilemma, you name it, education fucks with it.
There's some cool economic models that solve the problem, but running them in the real world would be difficult. You have HCC models - human capital contracts - where people essentially get money for their degrees in return for giving up a small portion of their income to whoever gave them the capital. They work because, given your income should vary with how much private benefit your degree gives you, the HCC pays out differently according to how much private benefit your degree gave you, so whether or not an institution pays out to you depends on how much they think you'll benefit from your degree, and they're often in a better position to assess, so it solves the information problem and the co-ordination problem (to an extent) by reducing the number of agents.
But if you make HCCs too fine-grained, you end up with all sorts of weird problems - like, black Americans end up earning less than whites, so their HCCs pay out less. You have to try and make it so the sole differential variable is what degree you do, so legally every institution has to offer exactly the same loan to anyone taking a particular degree, but there are tonnes of universities offering a huge variety of degrees and so that standardization becomes very difficult.
I've seen some people suggesting the best way it would work would be the teaching institutions themselves going to institutions, saying "here is the degree on offer and our teaching methods and so on", the institution saying "okay, we'll offer a deal of x% of your students' income for y of their years after graduation in return for z payment from us to you as an institution", and this is without knowledge of the students, only the university in question and the degree they offer, and then universities publish the sort of HCCs the degree is accompanied by so that students know what the money looks like when they apply, but then you have conflicts of interest where universities might abuse monopoly positions and so on.
Then you start saying "well, let's take it out of the hands of institutions and have HCCs to the government", which is... a tax, on graduates, and then you end up with a whole raft of problems on top of that - like, can this be defended? Because judging most countries where people owe a fee to the government, the issue gets politicized and you have fee creep, like in the United Kingdom, from free -> £3,000 -> £9,000 and now they're talking £12,000; and the government has a big incentive to post hoc underdeliver and universities end up suffocating for budget.
And at this point you just tear up all the policy papers you've read and start crying quietly. It's the ultimate optimization problem: public good, private benefit, imperfect information, information asymmetry, prisoner's dilemma, you name it, education fucks with it.
Anyone want to start a campaign to get Dame Maggie Smith to record this line? I'll be in for a few quid.
User 463088
Banned
I'm in for $20.Anyone want to start a campaign to get Dame Maggie Smith to record this line? I'll be in for a few quid.
I mean, by all accounts Kushner already is a campaign manager and Conway is kind of a glorified Head Communications person when compared to all of the other scumbags (Bannon, Ailes, Giuliani, etc).
I totally agree. I don't think Conway will last until the election. Someone will come in and be head "damage control" person, and Corey makes sense. But I don't see a scenario where Bannon leaves. He doesn't seem weak like Corey and Manafort were.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Setting aside things that are more subjective, is she even wrong about 3? The people who were drawn to Bernie's message by and large were people who've been hosed by the system.
Republicans are pro racism and pro hate
User 463088
Banned
Anna PalmerVerified account
‏@apalmerdc
NEWS: Clinton barring lobbyists from policy groups & transition team. Unclear whether that would remain in place post-election/WH.
‏@apalmerdc
NEWS: Clinton barring lobbyists from policy groups & transition team. Unclear whether that would remain in place post-election/WH.
After accurately characterizing a lot of people's plight, she literally asks of her supporters behind closed doors for compassion
["I think we all should be really understanding of that," Clinton said.]
This general election is a real life Parks and Rec episode
Leslie is running against Bobby Newport and Jamm combined in one person. There are nutty side characters like Dr Wifi, and Governor Aleppo who are seen as worthy adversaries. She is clearly the only qualified one for the job, but there are a ton of hicks seen in the town meetings that would never vote for her. What should be a comically easy choice is seen as an excruciating process. Except I get no humor from all of this.
["I think we all should be really understanding of that," Clinton said.]
This general election is a real life Parks and Rec episode
Leslie is running against Bobby Newport and Jamm combined in one person. There are nutty side characters like Dr Wifi, and Governor Aleppo who are seen as worthy adversaries. She is clearly the only qualified one for the job, but there are a ton of hicks seen in the town meetings that would never vote for her. What should be a comically easy choice is seen as an excruciating process. Except I get no humor from all of this.
I need this audio!
Honestly, of all of his surrogates, the descent of Guiliani has been the most fascinating to watch. He totally drank the coolaid.
Well these are people that will criticize her for anything even though she's telling the truth and empathizing with them. Even asks that we understand their plight.
If they want to be mad about a term she said 8 months ago so be it. She's extended that base every olive branch in regards to policy. If they still aren't happy they just never wanted to vote for her.
This comment is just like Obama's "Gods and guns" or "you didn't build that."
I really want to watch Parks and Rec if it really is Hillary and Friends.
It's really good, Joe Biden even shows up at one point.
Fenderputty
Banned
So what? Lots of taxes taken from my check go to programs that don't directly benefit me. The majority of the social safety nets as an example. I don't collect welfare or food stamps or Medicare. I've never even collected unemployment. I have and indirect benefit from each though.
cooljeanius
Member
I re-read The Wind In The Willows recently and was surprised how apologetic it was towards the aristocracy. Sure, Toad is an idiot, but everything still goes his way in the end and he never really reforms, yet we're supposed to feel sorry for him.
I'm more okay with it. Maybe make it a sympathetic small business owner with a family who he never paid. It doesn't need to be as big and flashy as a Miss Universe contestant, but I'm a fan of attacking him directly with all of the small people he's hurt over his lifetime.
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
That man is precious cargo!
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
yes, but they're examples of rich -> poor transfers. This is an example of poor -> rich transfers. People who go to university can generally expect to earn much more as a result of going. People who didn't go to university can generally expect to earn less than if they did go. So by taxing the latter to pay for the former, you're transferring money from low-earners to high-earners, which is pretty inegalitarian.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
If this doesn't mean post-election, then unless she plans to make up some policies in the final month, which given Clinton's history of caution would surprise me immensely, this means... very little?
If it includes post-election, that's a good start, although a start alone.
I wonder if this is going to show up in a campaign ad.
Is the actual statement out there? I mean, "Mexicans in the kitchen at the Waldorf" is bad enough on it's own...
Fenderputty
Banned
I take issue with this description. For one not everyone graduating is getting a job and making more. This is why I said I hate the relationship between labor and higher education as we can't all major in STEM. The transfer isn't poor to rich when it happens either, and this transfer only offers and increased earning potential to the person earning the degree, which again is dependent on the degree. We also have tiered taxation and the person who earns more after their degree would pay more for others to earn their degree. That person will pay more into other social safety nets as well.
Voysa Reezun
Banned
It strikes me as a "I did it, why don't the poors do it" type of argument when people talk about how they made it through college with low debt or debt-free and deride others who don't via a small sample size of people they've known in their lives with high college debt.
I have a Master's and only paid 38K (my B.A., I got debt-free). Did I use some of that cash to live? Yeah, but I was also working at the time teaching classes and tutoring - and if you're a teacher, you know that it takes significant prep time to do it right. It's not like I was like, "fuck it, I'll spend profligately." I needed the Master's to work in my career field.
Yeah, I got my B.A. for no debt, but not because I was smart. I was lucky to have people around me to show me opportunities. My parents let me know that they'd have no money for college, so I applied for scholarships, and I participated in a national competition through my high school that ended up awarding me money for scholarships only because of a teacher who recommended me for a spot on the team.
In other words, I was lucky to have good guidance because I was a dumbass seventeen-year-old kid who wasn't yet adept at making the greatest choices on a regular basis.
I was also lucky just to live in a state with low in-state tuition at the time. Tuition in general was so low, in fact, that kids from California found out-of-state tuition here to be cheaper than their in-state tuition to the Cal State schools, never mind the UC schools.
This country feeds a "need to go to college" narrative to people that specifically focuses on four-year major universities. College is half-necessity, half-rite-of-passage. Tuition is ever more expensive (and since instructors don't see commensurate raises in most places, you can guess where that money goes). I find it pretty unnecessary to shit on people who were told all their lives that they had to go to a good (read: not "community") college to get anywhere, thought that going to a good college would equal a good-paying job, and then got out to find that it wasn't true.
Were some of these people not great with their money? I'm sure some were. I know just as many people who worked through college (I did as an undergrad, as did pretty much everyone I knew). But I get why those people feel like they got sold some bullshit and are asking for loan forgiveness.
Frankly, I don't think that complete loan forgiveness for everyone is at all feasible, but we have a ton of shit to fix and a ton of places in this country that need help from people, and trading some partial or complete loan forgiveness for these former students' work and time seems like a start to addressing the specific problem of these voters.
I also don't give a shit if voters like Bernie's asking for loan forgiveness sounds like a caricature of what conservatives think that liberals really want from the government. Conservatives love their handouts more than everyone else in this country. Take away their farm subsidies or tell them that the major urban areas in their states don't want to send their tax money to the countryside to bus their kids from their remote-ass houses to school, and they'll bitch, moan, and whine about it more than any Bernie-or-buster does about his student loans. They can take the planks out of their eyes first when it comes to criticizing people for wanting government handouts.
I have a Master's and only paid 38K (my B.A., I got debt-free). Did I use some of that cash to live? Yeah, but I was also working at the time teaching classes and tutoring - and if you're a teacher, you know that it takes significant prep time to do it right. It's not like I was like, "fuck it, I'll spend profligately." I needed the Master's to work in my career field.
Yeah, I got my B.A. for no debt, but not because I was smart. I was lucky to have people around me to show me opportunities. My parents let me know that they'd have no money for college, so I applied for scholarships, and I participated in a national competition through my high school that ended up awarding me money for scholarships only because of a teacher who recommended me for a spot on the team.
In other words, I was lucky to have good guidance because I was a dumbass seventeen-year-old kid who wasn't yet adept at making the greatest choices on a regular basis.
I was also lucky just to live in a state with low in-state tuition at the time. Tuition in general was so low, in fact, that kids from California found out-of-state tuition here to be cheaper than their in-state tuition to the Cal State schools, never mind the UC schools.
This country feeds a "need to go to college" narrative to people that specifically focuses on four-year major universities. College is half-necessity, half-rite-of-passage. Tuition is ever more expensive (and since instructors don't see commensurate raises in most places, you can guess where that money goes). I find it pretty unnecessary to shit on people who were told all their lives that they had to go to a good (read: not "community") college to get anywhere, thought that going to a good college would equal a good-paying job, and then got out to find that it wasn't true.
Were some of these people not great with their money? I'm sure some were. I know just as many people who worked through college (I did as an undergrad, as did pretty much everyone I knew). But I get why those people feel like they got sold some bullshit and are asking for loan forgiveness.
Frankly, I don't think that complete loan forgiveness for everyone is at all feasible, but we have a ton of shit to fix and a ton of places in this country that need help from people, and trading some partial or complete loan forgiveness for these former students' work and time seems like a start to addressing the specific problem of these voters.
I also don't give a shit if voters like Bernie's asking for loan forgiveness sounds like a caricature of what conservatives think that liberals really want from the government. Conservatives love their handouts more than everyone else in this country. Take away their farm subsidies or tell them that the major urban areas in their states don't want to send their tax money to the countryside to bus their kids from their remote-ass houses to school, and they'll bitch, moan, and whine about it more than any Bernie-or-buster does about his student loans. They can take the planks out of their eyes first when it comes to criticizing people for wanting government handouts.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
Not everyone does, no, but it is true that the average person does, which means the overall effect is still a transfer from poor to rich. While it's not poor to rich at the point it happens, it does end up entrenching the divide between the poor and the rich. And the amount of that increased income taken away by different income brackets doesn't cover that.
Basically, the effect of doing a degree is something like increased personal fulfillment (or other generally unquantifiable factors), increased personal income, and increased societal gain (from secondary effects like having more doctors or people working in R&D). The government wants to pay for the latter part, because everyone benefits from that and usually the poorest most of all, but it probably doesn't want to pay for the middle part, because that's a straight up transfer from poor people to rich people and also a racial transfer because in American black people are less likely to attend further education. What input it has into the first part is down to your political philosophy, thought I'd love the government to cover it.
The trouble then becomes unweaving these parts and sorting out which bits need what income sources.
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