Terthna
Professional Lurker
So, would you mind explaining to me your plan to help people who can't pay their student loans?
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United States Biden administration policies and actions - megathread
- Thread starter Tyzuris
- Start date
Prince Ire
Section XIII
"Fuck you, got mine," will be my guess.
Maybe don't take a loan and instead do something that doesn't require studying?
Terthna
Professional Lurker
Whatever we decide to do about student loans, we cannot keep doing things the way we've been doing them. Too many people are trying to get degrees that they think will help them succeed, when they really don't need one. Honestly, I want to abolish student loans altogether, and encourage people to explore other means of educating themselves; because the tools to do so are available to everyone, and I think it's more important that people learn how to take control over their own lives than get a "prestigious" education at a university.
How about repayment plans that base it off a percentage of your income?
They Actually already do that.
Not a bad plan.
They already have ways to do it, such as:
Or Teach for America, the Peace Corps, etc.
Terthna
Professional Lurker
How would that work for someone who doesn't have income?
Here's the thing; nobody ever told me those were options. Or indeed, that there were any options beyond just scrounging up enough money to make payments on the loans. I spent two years trying to pay off my loans with my disability money before a homeless guy told me I could use my disability to seek loan forgiveness. Now I'm not stupid, so maybe if those are viable options (which I assume they may or may not be, depending on one's circumstances), more effort needs to be put into making people aware of them.
Give them a forbearance until they do. Already you can delay payments for a year with no penalities and then you can apply for multiple forbearances if you're in tough times...
And this is something they can do. Because right now they have the entire nation in forbearance.
Right now, to lower costs if you had a few loans, you can consolidate your loans, and then get on an income driven payment plan (10%,) on a forgiveness plan, which waives your remaining debt after 20 years of regular payments.
And in the meantime if you were in between jobs, you could file for a period of forbearance and not have to pay until you're back on your feet.
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Terthna
Professional Lurker
Your interest would still accrue though.
Oh, totally. But at the same time, these do exist, and insufficient marketing isn't a reason to drastically change what people fairly agreed to.
EDIT: Thanks @Terthna, forgot to finish my thought.
Yes, but given that the plan is presumably to pay for 20 years and then have it forgiven, the interest doesn't matter overly much.
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That's a good area we can improve.
Terthna
Professional Lurker
Reason to what?
There's no evidence that I've been able to find that there is such a path to loan forgiveness.
I'm currently on that plan, so maybe search harder.
I don't have time to find links right now
Edit: I found one
See point #1
Terthna
Professional Lurker
Where the heck was all this information a decade ago when I needed it?I'm currently on that plan, so maybe search harder.
I don't have time to find links right now
Edit: I found one
See point #1
You're welcome. It is, however, a satisfactory explanation for why so many people support student debt relief; they don't know of the options that are already available to people that are having issues paying them back.
This shit is confusing as hell, I don't blame you for not knowing about it. It was a lot of work for me to navigate!
History Learner
Well-known member
Well there's your problem, you're seeing a pattern that doesn't exist outside your own imagination. Let's take a look:
Anti-China sentiment is hardly sudden, it's been higher than not since 2011. There was a dip around 2016, when big media went up against Trump who was sanctioning them. The real rise was right at the tail end of 2019, almost like some sort of virulent plague came out of China that was handled poorly....
Anti-China sentiment in general isn't new, sure, but in terms of policy outcomes and with the full support of the political apparatus is, however. An unfavorable rate of roughly 55-45 for a few years before ballooning to 70-25ish is a very big difference statistically as is all the politicians suddenly harping on about the CCP or what not. COVID doesn't explain it either given the trendlines or the like.
Replace China with Iraq in your post and we are right back to 2003 in terms of rhetoric.
Cool, then how come you're only focusing in on China and not the American Capitalists conducting deals with them? It takes two to tango, after all, and that's exactly where our issue is coming up: the CCP/China/etc is the scapegoat while the domestic interlopers are getting away free. You really want to convince me you don't believe in not advocating evil? Get the corporate boards of places like Google, Apple, and the like behind bars for slave labor and the like.
Sure, it wasn't misplaced then and not now either; I don't like China either. Personally, I wouldn't mind to eventually put them in their place, so to speak, geopolitically. The problem is, however, you and the others harping on about this have not stopped to consider why this suddenly has mainstream political support or the consequences therein. 9/11 made going after OBL not only needed but the right thing to do but it also lead to the creation of DHS and the Patriot Act which is now being brought down on average American citizens in force with the January 6th events as the excuse.
Just as the threat of "Radical Islam" was used in the 2000s to build a police state, it seems increasingly clear to me that the Anti-China stuff is in the same vein, be it to further a police state or to have a simple foreign scape goat to deflect anger about domestic conditions to.
They are censoring the movies they release in China or the games they do in China; can you please explain in any way how this is scary or any real issue to Americans who don't get censored products? Even further, can you please explain what makes this exceptional but not our domestic equivalents? Where is your condemnation of the ADL's Advisory Board, which is doing the same here for domestic audiences?
Which is what is already being done, and since the beginning no less? There never was free money to everyone; we've had income caps since the original CARES Act. If debt is your concern, long term I agree it's not viable, that's why I'm opposed to UBI but in the short term, debt held by the American-controlled Federal Reserve isn't a concern at all, as the Japanese will tell you. Unlike the Japanese, however, we have the benefit of being the world reserve currency.
The average salary of a College undergraduate is $51,347 annually.
A meta study done by UC-I, meanwhile UC-B found the opposite in that wage hikes increased pay and have not led to job losses. There's also the CBO study which estimated 1.4 million job losses but also that it lifts 900,000 out of poverty and raises wages for an additional 10 million workers. If you want to eliminate the minimum wage, sure, we can do like the Scandinavians but in that case you also need to advocate for a dramatic increase in unionization and power.
Also, as a general note, if wages were indexed to productivity the minimum wage would actually be around $25 right now.
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Abhishekm
Well-known member
Honestly the more I look into the whole subsidized student loans thing the more I gravitate toward the ancap line. Because holy heck I thought India mandating reserved seats and fixed tuitions for certain casts was shit but this. Why did they ever think it was a good idea for tax money to be used to back all college goers?
Is this the spend more to generate more jobs and taxes argument ala education?
Like Christ on a cracker I though the no kids left behind stuff sounded like a horrible way to ruin the worth of an education. Now you add a state sponsored debt hole to the devalued degree too?
Consolidation of the debt to the general public and easing further loan debt seems like the obvious next step in that train wreck.
Is this the spend more to generate more jobs and taxes argument ala education?
Like Christ on a cracker I though the no kids left behind stuff sounded like a horrible way to ruin the worth of an education. Now you add a state sponsored debt hole to the devalued degree too?
Consolidation of the debt to the general public and easing further loan debt seems like the obvious next step in that train wreck.
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Bear Ribs
Well-known member
COVID perfectly explains it. The surveys literally say that COVID and China's response to it are the reason people have their opinion dropping.
What's more the entire world, not just the US, had a major drop in opinion on China in 2019 but had slightly more moderate levels of disapproval before. This is no coincidence given that's when COVID appeared, and shows that this is no astroturfing campaign, but a planet-wide phenomenon. Most notably, worldwide opinion dropped noticeable around 2012 the same time US opinion did.
How Are Global Views on China Trending? | ChinaPower Project
Perceptions play an indelible role in international politics. Politicians must perceive and anticipate both threats and opportunities.
chinapower.csis.org
Amusingly, China's opinion of itself remains solidly above 90% no matter what.
So I'd say you didn't read my posts, because look! Here I am, blaming capitalists:
And again!
Only, I know you read my posts:
So that just makes you a liar or stupid. Probably both if you're going to say something so easily disprovable that evidence is the same thread.
So apologies to everyone else, this post might get a little testy.
Here, you seem to be ignoring that there isn't enough mainstream support to go after China, especially considering Biden's disgraceful defense of their concentration camps recently.
First, no, the censorship hits American releases as well. Second, I have complained about cancel culture in the past, so I'm still missing your point here. I complain about corporate censorship and I complain about Government censorship, at home and abroad.
The income limits were no where near enough. If I am still employed, I have no need for stimulus checks. All that should have happened was unemployment benefits going up and applying to people on furlough or being employed less.
Again, you don't even read what I say. So an improvement from lying, I guess, but not much of one. The relevant part of what I said is literally in the quote you took of my prior post, now bolded for your convience. Oh, and I put evidence in a later post, which you probably didn't read either. Surprise, surprise.
Your link isn't a meta study. Basically, you found one of the 20% of studies that found no change, in comparison to the 80% that did. If you had read and understood what I wrote, you would know that some studies found no change, while most found change. Congrats, the scientific consensus finds that the minimum wage does cause job loss.
What does this mean for your study? That it's basically one of the ones that got the wrong answer. That happens in science, so what one needs to do is look at the totality of data instead of cherrypicking studies that agree with your priors.
Thanks for pointing out that it will cause massive job loss now. That trade is nowhere near worth it. For every 2 people that are lifted out of poverty, we'll put 3 people out of work, and they'll end up on welfare or worse. Genius idea!
So? Why the hell do I care that a shitty program would be even shittier if a stupid decision was made? This only works as an argument if someone accepts that they are somehow 'owed' a minimum wage. No one is.
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Anti-CCP sentiment has a long, long history on the American Right, going back to the 1990s at least when the Conservatives were one of the few parts of the American spectrum to oppose giving China permanent MFN status in trade and tried to push back on bringing them to the WTO and other involvement. Clinton's ties to China were a Big Deal back in his administration with accusations of him selling US technology to China (specifically missile tech) being a big thing among the American Right.
The Conservatives in the US had been warning about China's rise and saying they would not be a good actor since the 90s. They were just ignored because the Chamber of Commerce saw money and the Democrats saw opposing the Chinese as "racist" and generally tended to like the autocratic tendencies of China even back then. The China Issue is probably one of the first areas you saw the prior Cold War party alignment start to slip, and the Big Businesses start to shift from more aligned with the Republicans to the Democrats. Meanwhile the Libertarians gave ideological cover for engagement with the ChiComs for those who needed it, with the ridiculous idea that "social and political liberty would follow economic liberty" in China.
The thing is, it took nearly 30 years for the damage that the Conservatives warned about with China to become apparent to the rest of the country. Right Libertarians are finally beginning to see they were wrong about their idea of economic liberty first, and the formally strong Dem groups that were most damaged by opening China (the labor unions, blue collar types) only just started their political realignment with Trump. They probably would have started earlier, but Obama's historic presidency actually delayed the political realignment a bit.
But as a populist-conservative alignment has begun to develop, it's not surprise that anti-CCP sentiment has come to the fore, it's an aspect they have shared going back to the 90s, but because they were split between two parties, and not a majority in either one, that sentiment was subsumed by the elite consensus. Now that the Republican coalition is shifting, the elites leaving the party and the populists entering, that anti-CCP sentiment has grown that much stronger and is now being voiced and heard. This has spooked the Dems because they realize that the sentiments resonate with the lower and lower middle class, where a lot of their minority coalition is trapped in by their policies, and so they have had to revise their rhetoric to be a bit more hostile to the CCP in order to prevent more voters turning to the Rs, as if Rs continue to make headway into the minority groups, the Democrats rapidly lose their ability to be a national party.