Q for law enforcement personnel

bnw wrote:

InvaderRam wrote:

it’d be great if there was some way they could eliminate student debt.

It’s called paying off your debt. People make choices to go into debt. People also make choices not to get into debt they can’t repay. Don’t coddle the former by fucking over the latter.

when my friends came out of school with debt it wasn’t a choice. it was either that or don’t go to school. when i came out of school with no debt it wasn’t a choice. i just got lucky.

i’m not talking about debt in general. i’m talking about school resulting from gett5an education.

InvaderRam wrote:

bnw wrote:

InvaderRam wrote:

it’d be great if there was some way they could eliminate student debt.

It’s called paying off your debt. People make choices to go into debt. People also make choices not to get into debt they can’t repay. Don’t coddle the former by fucking over the latter.

when my friends came out of school with debt it wasn’t a choice. it was either that or don’t go to school. when i came out of school with no debt it wasn’t a choice. i just got lucky.

i’m not talking about debt in general. i’m talking about school resulting from gett5an education.

I worked my way through college. I chose a school which I could afford and majored in a degree program to get a job that could pay the bills. I could have gone elsewhere and spent much more money while miring myself in tremendous debt getting a degree that would never pay the bills. But I didn’t. No way in hell should I have to bail out those who did.

I worked my way through college. I chose a school which I could afford and majored in a degree program to get a job that could pay the bills. I could have gone elsewhere and spent much more money while miring myself in tremendous debt getting a degree that would never pay the bills. But I didn’t. No way in hell should I have to bail out those who did.

You wouldn’t be “bailing them out.” You would be helping, in a very limited way, invest in America’s present and future, as others have done for you your entire life. It would be a fraction of a fraction of “payback” for what you’ve already received, but not within light years of actually squaring that debt.

And you make it sound like you, all on your own, would be responsible for American education, which you find “unfair.” In reality, your personal input in taxes would be a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the whole — and again, wouldn’t come close to repaying what you’ve received in turn.

The average American, in their entire working life, won’t pay enough in taxes to cover even a mile of roadway. Yet we get to drive on endless miles, along with enjoying a huge array of other public goods and services. How selfish can a person get to not want to help pay for even a fraction of a fraction of that?

Billy_T wrote:

I worked my way through college. I chose a school which I could afford and majored in a degree program to get a job that could pay the bills. I could have gone elsewhere and spent much more money while miring myself in tremendous debt getting a degree that would never pay the bills. But I didn’t. No way in hell should I have to bail out those who did.

You wouldn’t be “bailing them out.” You would be helping, in a very limited way, invest in America’s present and future, as others have done for you your entire life. It would be a fraction of a fraction of “payback” for what you’ve already received, but not within light years of actually squaring that debt.

And you make it sound like you, all on your own, would be responsible for American education, which you find “unfair.” In reality, your personal input in taxes would be a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the whole — and again, wouldn’t come close to repaying what you’ve received in turn.

The average American, in their entire working life, won’t pay enough in taxes to cover even a mile of roadway. Yet we get to drive on endless miles, along with enjoying a huge array of other public goods and services. How selfish can a person get to not want to help pay for even a fraction of a fraction of that?

Typical short sighted self absorbed liberal. Too bad you’re incapable of reading into my post what I sacrificed by living within my means. I could have had the ivy league diploma. I could also have majored in what was absolute fun for me. However in good conscience I couldn’t do either since my family couldn’t gift me that nor would I want them to take on the responsibility of co-signing a student loan. I accepted one credit card offer in college. It was a fuel company card that was accepted throughout the midwest and south. I used it to commute 600 miles per week between St. Louis and Rolla, MO. Usually put a diet pepsi on it too. Always paid it off each month. I chose to live within my means. That is what an honorable person does.

bnw wrote:

Typical short sighted self absorbed liberal. Too bad you’re incapable of reading into my post what I sacrificed by living within my means.

Enough.

InvaderRam wrote:

. income is tied into net worth. a person can’t increase net worth with little income.

True but that’s not what they’re looking at.

It’s not what YOU can do, it;s what you had before you started.

So for example, if a child grows up in a bought and paid for house in a neighborhood that has good schools, that’s something substantial that the previous generation did for the individual child. It’s incalculable. And it;s not something that the individual child DID, he or she just simply benefits from that. And then the government handback on taxes for homeowners helped guarantee things like ordinary decent medical and dental care while growing up.

So the article is not about what WE do as individuals to build OUR worth. It’s about what WE got as a headstart before we even started doing that.

And of course behind the parents owning the house is a long series of policy decisions that made the house affordable to them. Before the 1940s, people typically had to come up with a 50% down payment, and before 1930 the mortgage would be 3 to 5 years to pay off.

The 30 year mortgage with an affordable down payment was a deliberate, direct, orchestrated shift in policies at the government level. (This all has to do with the history of the FHA.)

It’s not simply that our parents bought us cars and paid the college tuition. (I am talking in generalities here…I don’t know your history. My own parents did not pay college tuition. I don’t know anyone’s personal history. It’s just the sociological types I am talking about here.) Those who had all that were already ahead of kids who did not grow up in an owned house in a neighborhood where the schools were at least recognizably decent. None of those kids did that on their own. They grew up WITH that.

So even the kid who goes to a public university without a scholarship and pays his way through by working is starting off with enormous advantages just if their parents owned a house in a decent safe neighborhood with a decent school and who could afford to pay for basic medical and dental expenses while they were growing up. (Add to that the fact that until recently public universities were affordable in the first place because they were mostly tax funded…tuition is not the major financial force keeping those institutions going.)

This goes on and on and on. What did WE get to help us before we even started to make our own income as individuals.

That;s what the article is about.

Billy_T wrote:

Typical short sighted self absorbed liberal. Too bad you’re incapable of reading into my post what I sacrificed by living within my means. I could have had the ivy league diploma. I could also have majored in what was absolute fun for me. However in good conscience I couldn’t do either since my family couldn’t gift me that nor would I want them to take on the responsibility of co-signing a student loan. I accepted one credit card offer in college. It was a fuel company card that was accepted throughout the midwest and south. I used it to commute 600 miles per week between St. Louis and Rolla, MO. Usually put a diet pepsi on it too. Always paid it off each month. I chose to live within my means. That is what an honorable person does.

Bnw, again, stop with the personal attacks. I’m trying very, very hard not to respond in kind, and you’re making that more and more difficult by the day. Just stop it.

Nothing you say in your post has anything whatsoever to do with the logic of paying a tiny, tiny bit in taxes as an investment in the betterment of society. And your description of students is nothing more than abstract generalization, without any concrete foundation. It strikes me as a cartoon of a cartoon. From personal experience as a student in three different decades — I have two degrees and a bit toward an MFA — I never saw anyone who resembled that cartoon. And my experience also involved paying my own way, working full time while going to school, and I’ve paid my three sets of loans off in full.

I’m more than fine helping others after me who seek to expand their intellectual, cultural and social horizons. It baffles me that anyone would have a problem with this.

Cartoon of a cartoon? Either you can afford the education or you can’t. Real world difficulties result from never understanding that simple concept.

Cartoon of a cartoon? Either you can afford the education or you can’t. Real world difficulties result from never understanding that simple concept.

Yes, cartoon of a cartoon. Your description of these mythical students who, unlike you, lack all connection to reality, have their heads permanently in the clouds, and selfishly choose “useless” degrees, because they don’t know what it means to be responsible for oneself — again, unlike you.

Billy_T wrote:

Cartoon of a cartoon? Either you can afford the education or you can’t. Real world difficulties result from never understanding that simple concept.

Yes, cartoon of a cartoon. Your description of these mythical students who, unlike you, lack all connection to reality, have their heads permanently in the clouds, and selfishly choose “useless” degrees, because they don’t know what it means to be responsible for oneself — again, unlike you.

Not necessarily useless degrees. Simply a degree from a school so expensive they couldn’t afford to repay the debt.

Not necessarily useless degrees. Simply a degree from a school so expensive they couldn’t afford to repay the debt.

Right now, that’s most schools. Even state schools. Those of us from earlier generations had a much easier time of that, as mentioned. And we used to have free state colleges as recently as the 1970s — in New York and California. Massive tax cuts for the rich forced states to slash their support for higher ed, and here we are. Millennials now are guaranteed tens of thousands in debt when they leave school — again, even state colleges.

And you aren’t being asked to fund the expensive, private ones by anyone anyway. Sanders’ plan, for instance, only involves public universities and colleges. Clinton has moved in that direction as well.

No one is asking you to pay more taxes to support matriculating to Harvard, etc. etc.

bnw wrote:

InvaderRam wrote:

bnw wrote:

InvaderRam wrote:

it’d be great if there was some way they could eliminate student debt.

It’s called paying off your debt. People make choices to go into debt. People also make choices not to get into debt they can’t repay. Don’t coddle the former by fucking over the latter.

when my friends came out of school with debt it wasn’t a choice. it was either that or don’t go to school. when i came out of school with no debt it wasn’t a choice. i just got lucky.

i’m not talking about debt in general. i’m talking about school resulting from gett5an education.

I worked my way through college. I chose a school which I could afford and majored in a degree program to get a job that could pay the bills. I could have gone elsewhere and spent much more money while miring myself in tremendous debt getting a degree that would never pay the bills. But I didn’t. No way in hell should I have to bail out those who did.

I returned to school at 40 after a 20 year career at Fedex. Took advantage of the tuition refund program the company offered and financed the rest at 8% with Sallie Mae. I worked full time plus OT the entire time while my wife built a home-based business. I paid off the loans fairly quickly by transferring the balance to a zero-interest credit card (on balance transfers-you can’t get that kind of deal today for more than a year). It also helped that I majored in Systems Admin and found uninterrupted work as a hardware engineer. My first choice would have been history but that choice most likely would not have paid the bills given my age.

Later, my wife used her business contacts to move into a marketing job which led to an executive position (not bad for someone with zero college- she played her natural smarts, people and organizational skills to the hilt). We parlayed that hard work (as opposed to good fortune- or privilege) into two fully paid college educations for our daughters- one private, one public. During this time we never lived beyond our means and even funded most of our retirement until AC- After cancer. We took a lot of trips, mainly to Hawaii over the past 10 years.

So the point- student loans and who pays them off- the borrower or the taxpayer, i.e., the rest of us- leaves a foul taste in my mouth. We played by the rules. And in my opinion, this explosion of student debt we see today can be laid squarely on uncapped, uncollateralized loans and the universities that exploit this by raising tuition accordingly. Market forces are taken out of the equation entirely. Cap those loans and see how fast tuition rates drop. What are they going to do? Close their doors?

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Ozoneranger.

Ozoneranger wrote:

bnw wrote:

InvaderRam wrote:

bnw wrote:

InvaderRam wrote:

it’d be great if there was some way they could eliminate student debt.

It’s called paying off your debt. People make choices to go into debt. People also make choices not to get into debt they can’t repay. Don’t coddle the former by fucking over the latter.

when my friends came out of school with debt it wasn’t a choice. it was either that or don’t go to school. when i came out of school with no debt it wasn’t a choice. i just got lucky.

i’m not talking about debt in general. i’m talking about school resulting from gett5an education.

I worked my way through college. I chose a school which I could afford and majored in a degree program to get a job that could pay the bills. I could have gone elsewhere and spent much more money while miring myself in tremendous debt getting a degree that would never pay the bills. But I didn’t. No way in hell should I have to bail out those who did.

I returned to school at 40 after a 20 year career at Fedex. Took advantage of the tuition refund program the company offered and financed the rest at 8% with Fannie Mae. I worked full time plus OT the entire time while my wife built a home-based business. I paid off the loans fairly quickly by transferring the balance to a zero-interest credit card (on balance transfers-you can’t get that kind of deal today for more than a year). It also helped that I majored in Systems Admin and found uninterrupted work as a hardware engineer. My first choice would have been history but that choice most likely would not have paid the bills given my age.

Later, my wife used her business contacts to move into a marketing job which led to an executive position (not bad for someone with zero college- she played her natural smarts, people and organizational skills to the hilt). We parlayed that hard work (as opposed to good fortune- or privilege) into two fully paid college educations for our daughters- one private, one public. During this time we never lived beyond our means and even funded most of our retirement until AC- After cancer. We took a lot of trips, mainly to Hawaii over the past 10 years.

So the point- student loans and who pays them off- the borrower or the taxpayer, i.e., the rest of us- leaves a foul taste in my mouth. We played by the rules. And in my opinion, this explosion of student debt we see today can be laid squarely on uncapped, uncollateralized loans and the universities that exploit this by raising tuition accordingly. Market forces are taken out of the equation entirely. Cap those loans and see how fast tuition rates drop. What are they going to do? Close their doors?

I would have chosen history too. Your wife is an excellent example that college is not necessary to succeed. Both of you married well.

“Inherited background advantages”?

What the hell is that?

Anyway, I disagree, mostly. We as a society created an infrastructure to lift and grow the society. And that takes risk as well as hard work on the individual’s part. I know. In addition to working full time while I went to school, I also drained a mutual fund while I completed my industry certs. By the time I found my first IT job, we had $1100 in our checking account. We were that close to bankruptcy. My wife didn’t even know about this.

So by your logic, flirting with bankruptcy was a team effort with “institutional policies”? And had I failed, would it have been entirely on me? Can’t have it both ways…

Ozoneranger wrote:

“Inherited background advantages”?

What the hell is that?

wv wrote:

So, if actual communication is truly desired…everyone slow down, and post carefully, and listen hard.

Coz this is really difficult to converse about.

w
v

WV’s right, O. This is one of those key issues, and it IS tricky. Anyway, so far I have spent 3 long posts describing some of those advantages and where they come from.

.

zn wrote:

We parlayed that hard work (as opposed to good fortune- or privilege) into two fully paid college educations for our daughters- one private, one public.

It’s not just hard work, it was opportunities…presented by others, and by institutions. It honestly is a myth that we do all these things ourselves. So deep a myth that some of us are incapable of looking things in the eye.

Yeah you have to work hard though there are those who do and don’t get anywhere. And it’s a credit to those who do, and all, but then if you don’t have an institutional set of provided opportunities and inherited background advantages, there’s nowhere to go and no way to get there.

What I hear constantly in this I made choices, I did right rhetoric we hear all the time is an effort to claim the disadvantaged are disadvantaged because it’s their own fault. In essence that always amounts to “socialism for me, capitalism for you.” Without recognizing that’s what it is.

Yet virtually everyone who tells me they made it on their own is always just neglecting the ways in which they were sponsored, helped, aided, supported by policies at the government level, and so on. There’s a blindness to that stuff. About half of what I hear in those stories is the rightful pride, and then the other half of what I hear in those stories is the blindness to how policies and specific kinds of opportunies helped them. They then invariably don’t realize those opportunities are not universal. Many of us are set up to benefit from them. Many not.

No one makes it on their own. Or it’s so rare as to be discountable. Everyone takes useful advantage of policies and institutions set up to help them.

Like no one in this thread invented the lower downpayment, longterm mortgage and the tax breaks that come with it. That was a deliberate “give away” at the national level. That’s just one example among others.

You act as if life has guarantees which it doesn’t. You do your best and make reasonable choices and with some luck you’re good. Someone earlier mentioned parents in the home and I agree. I had parents growing up. That is where the wealth and privilege ended. Theres no pot of cash waiting for me. The nursing home will get whatever assets are left. There was no career via the family greasing the skids for me either. I made my way. I lived within my means. I married a woman who believes the same. We eloped, no honeymoon, put off children until we had 50% equity in our home, didn’t take a serious vacation on our dime until we were well into our 40s. We were the couple that weren’t supposed to make it. Apparently our making good choices for the long term didn’t sit well with those people accustomed to following the carefree spending high expectations in fun keeping up with the Joneses. It is always about choices.