oldtimer Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 How about under the terms of bankruptcy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyto Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 I've got an idea. How about just paying back your 'loans'? Keith That is what I did... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtimer Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 I've got an idea. How about just paying back your 'loans'? Keith That is what I did... Refusing to pay when able is one set of circumstances. Not being able to pay yet not even being able to restructure in bankruptcy is quite another. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike stehr Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 Back in the late eighties, I tried getting a Pell Grant to go back to community college. Of course I made too much to qualify. Getting ready to leave thinking "oh well", the lady pops off with: "We can get you a guaranteed student loan!" "How much is the interest?" "14 percent." "That's okay, I'll just go look for a job." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Naseum Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 We have created a culture of "Loopholes and Larceny." Anyone can see that. Every entity that can buy a loophole, does so. Corporations are hiding a trillion dollars offshore to avoid participating in the health of the country by paying taxes, but the guy owing a grand will be thrown in the clink because he could not purchase the synthetic loophole. The largest thefts are never prosecuted. Every form of fraud and evasion is rewarded. Now, couple that with a two-tiered justice system, and what do you think the resulting society will eventually become? Student loan defiers, and I have no idea how many there are, are being influenced by what they see around them. And that would be loopholes and larceny on a grand scale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bella Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 Excluding the gentlemen that is the topic of this thread, there are hundreds of thousands of adults who have assumed education debt and cannot find a job in their trained fields. They end up in lower paying jobs with no possible way to pay the debt. And no way to discharge it. I believe this is a fault with our system. We expect our young people to get educated yet we do not guarantee them employment in their chosen fields (assuming it isn't basket weaving). Much like home ownership used to be the American dream and people strived to achieve it people also strive to do better in life. But it appears it is increasingly becoming a gamble and not a sure thing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bella Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 We have created a culture of "Loopholes and Larceny." Anyone can see that. Every entity that can buy a loophole, does so. Corporations are hiding a trillion dollars offshore to avoid participating in the health of the country by paying taxes, but the guy owing a grand will be thrown in the clink because he could not purchase the synthetic loophole. The largest thefts are never prosecuted. Every form of fraud and evasion is rewarded. Now, couple that with a two-tiered justice system, and what do you think the resulting society will eventually become? Student loan defiers, and I have no idea how many there are, are being influenced by what they see around them. And that would be loopholes and larceny on a grand scale. Yet, even on this thread there are some that advocate for his arrest while seemingly shrugging at those who can avoid the legalities. Strange things we humans. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtimer Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 That is what I did... Same here. The amount I borrowed both for an expensive private school which paid for several semesters combined with the amount borrowed for graduate school at a state university might have paid for a single semester at the same private school today. Today's costs are well beyond the rate of inflation. Education is the key to our economic future, but the current structure is failing everyone except the schools and the lenders. The past where only the rich got the better educations will not work either. The whole thing needs a redo. From kindergarten on up. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bella Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 (edited) Back in the late eighties, I tried getting a Pell Grant to go back to community college. Of course I made too much to qualify. Getting ready to leave thinking "oh well", the lady pops off with: "We can get you a guaranteed student loan!" "How much is the interest?" "14 percent." "That's okay, I'll just go look for a job." Exactly. Student Loans are easy to get and many go that route. Last I bothered to look there was more than $1 trillion in Student Loan debt outstanding in the country and the default rate was creeping upwards. Edited February 18, 2016 by Bella Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bella Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 I'm fine with interacting with them to the extent I interact with any arbitrary neighbor. If we ever get to where you'd like us to be with rehabilitation I'm sure you'll be the first (and only) to volunteer to have them move in next door. Just be prepared for your other neighbors to hate you. Life is chock-a-block with risks. Agreed. And I see no point in adding to the risks by moving some convicted maniac to be my neighbor. I'm always looking for ways to minimize my risk. Strange I am, I suppose. compassion is the desirable trait in a society I hope as a society we choose to always put the victims at the front of the line when it comes to our compassion. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Naseum Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 If we ever get to where you'd like us to be with rehabilitation I'm sure you'll be the first (and only) to volunteer to have them move in next door. Just be prepared for your other neighbors to hate you. I live in California, not Texas or the "heartland". The west coast has an entirely different culture and, we have a massive number of felons living outside of prison, as well as a massive number of mentally ill. Agreed. And I see no point in adding to the risks by moving some convicted maniac to be my neighbor. I'm always looking for ways to minimize my risk. Strange I am, I suppose. I doubt that most premed murders are committed by sociopaths or psychopaths. That means the crime was for money or love. I have no money and no one but my wife is going to love me, so I am just not all that worked up about the guy coming to kill me. I am absolutely certain my risk of death by traffic, or disease is orders of magnitude higher. I hope as a society we choose to always put the victims at the front of the line when it comes to our compassion. Me too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paducah Home Theater Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 (edited) I went to college, then I helped put my wife through law school, now I've got a daughter who is in college. What I have noticed over the past 15 years is that people are almost trained to desire student loans nowadays. It is the weirdest thing if you can separate yourself from the stampede of people who are trying to get them. My daughter for example, she just about had to be dragged kicking and screaming from it. I had to explain in about 42 different ways why it's bad to rely on them. Everybody else is like that too. She is 19 and at this point is working as an assistant manager at Tractor Supply and putting herself through school. Why does nobody talk about this? It is entirely possible. She's doing it, right now. When my wife was in school she had to use them, but, even at $6,000 tuition per semester in the early 2000's due to being out of state, which was a ton of money for tuition back then, she got out with a $40,000 loan. Her classmates who lived in the same dorm the first year graduated with her and had racked up $120,000 loans even with in-state tuition that was almost half as much. Basically they borrowed almost $100,000 to party on. For some odd reason I don't feel sorry for them. Edited February 18, 2016 by MetropolisLakeOutfitters 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Naseum Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 Most of us went to college in the 60s, 70s and 80s, all well before the massive programs for the government to GUARANTEE student loans. Once the government said they would guarantee student loans, the unintended consequence machine raised it's head. Every two -bit lender got into the business of pouring money over students because, you know, there was NO RISK! That massive influx of hot money meant colleges could massively inflate their overhead and simply charge more for school. Since the money available was virtually unlimited, students by the million, who are the most unsophisticated financial consumers took every dollar they could get for art degrees, history, and who knows what. Imagine coming off a $120,000 loan with a BS in history. How you gonna pay that back. In shorter words, students were targeted as "suckers" by bankers who were awarded federal guarantees and simply could not lose. We made a sharks market out of education by exploiting children. Nice going, Mr. Banker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Naseum Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 Morris Berman wrote an exceptional book, "Why America Failed." It is he describes the "hustler culture" that emerged and that we live with today. I called it "Larceny and Loopholes" he is less kind. QUOTE During the final century of the Roman Empire, it was common for emperors to deny that their civilization was in decline. Only with the perspective of history can we see that the emperors were wrong, that the empire was failing, and that the Roman people were unwilling or unable to change their way of life before it was too late. The same, says Morris Berman, is true of twenty-first century America. The nation and its empire are in decline and nothing can be done to reverse their course. How did this come to be? In Why America Failed, Berman examines the development of American culture from the earliest colonies to the present, shows that the seeds of the nation's "hustler" culture were sown from the very beginning, and reveals how the very tools that enabled the country's expansion have become the instruments of its demise. At the center of Berman's argument is his assertion that hustling, materialism, and the pursuit of personal gain without regard for its effects on others have been powerful forces in American culture since the Pilgrims landed. He shows that even before the American Revolution, naked self-interest had replaced the common good as the primary social value in the colonies and that the creative power and destructive force of this idea gained irresistible momentum in the decades following the ratification of the Constitution. As invention proliferated and industry expanded, railroads, steamships, and telegraph wires quickened the frenetic pace of progress—or, as Berman calls it, the illusion of progress. An explosion of manufacturing whetted the nation's ravenous appetite for goods of all kinds and gave the hustling life its purpose—to acquire as many objects as possible prior to death. The reign of Wall Street and the 2008 financial meltdown are certainly the most visible examples today of the negative consequences of the pursuit of affluence. Berman, however, sees the manipulations of Goldman Sachs and others not as some kind of aberration, but as the logical endpoint of the hustler culture. The fact that Goldman and its ilk continue to thrive in the wake of the disaster they wrought simply proves that it is already too late: America is incapable of changing direction. Many readers will take exception to much of Why America Failed—beginning, perhaps, with its title. But many more will read this provocative and insightful book and join Berman in making a long, hard reassessment of the nation, its goals, and its future. END Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyto Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 Excluding the gentlemen that is the topic of this thread, there are hundreds of thousands of adults who have assumed education debt and cannot find a job in their trained fields. They end up in lower paying jobs with no possible way to pay the debt. And no way to discharge it. I believe this is a fault with our system. We expect our young people to get educated yet we do not guarantee them employment in their chosen fields (assuming it isn't basket weaving). Much like home ownership used to be the American dream and people strived to achieve it people also strive to do better in life. But it appears it is increasingly becoming a gamble and not a sure thing. You must be educated in something that employers need. A degree in English Literature, Sociology, History etc and a lot of similar things may get you a job teaching but that is about it. More emphasis also needs to be put on learning trades, the world will always need plumbers, HVAC repair people, welders etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtimer Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 Employers are partly to blame. For years they kept harping in public that what they really wanted was an educated person who could actually read and write---someone who could communicate in complete sentences and having obtained a degree, have proven that they are capable of not only learning but of the persistence and ambition to see it through to the end. Then when these educated individuals show up for hire, human resource department idiots deny them employment. The idea that a university education has somehow become nothing more than a specialized white collar "trade school" has been propagated by HR demanding the perfect fit for their little pigeon hole minds. At the same time CEO's just wanted smart people! Smart people intimidate HR people. So they won't hire them because their interview "skills" are lacking....or for a myriad of other reasons, not that they know the meaning of myriad. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 You must be educated in something that employers need. A degree in English Literature, Sociology, History etc and a lot of similar things may get you a job teaching but that is about it. More emphasis also needs to be put on learning trades, the world will always need plumbers, HVAC repair people, welders etc. Great point. My youngest child of 3 has the best gpa of all my children. She would have no trouble getting accepted into most 4 year schools. She had 2 fields of interest that she wanted to get into. After researching jobs (with no prodding from her parents) she determined that there wasn't much availability of employment in those 2 areas. She's decided to take a 2 1/2 rear radiology tech course as there are plenty of jobs that pay well right off the bat, in our area. She's a smart kid (takes after her mother). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtimer Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 It pays well off the bat, but has a ceiling pretty close to that. There's nothing wrong with that, and she may well use the money to stay in the black and launch from there. It can't be that hard the dumbest non (well slightly) retarded person I know made a career out of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 It pays well off the bat, but has a ceiling pretty close to that. There's nothing wrong with that, and she may well use the money to stay in the black and launch from there. It can't be that hard the dumbest non (well slightly) retarded person I know made a career out of it. There are specialties she can branch off into once she gets her foot in the door somewhere. I have several family members use this particular job as a stepping stone to other careers. If you stay in the field for a while you can end up running a department as well. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paducah Home Theater Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 (edited) You must be educated in something that employers need. A degree in English Literature, Sociology, History etc and a lot of similar things may get you a job teaching but that is about it. More emphasis also needs to be put on learning trades, the world will always need plumbers, HVAC repair people, welders etc. Not just blue collar trades though. My day job is in programming. Macroeconomics, chemistry, physics, humanities, advanced accounting, calculus, management, volleyball, golf, history, and about 80% of everything else I took in college just really has diddley squat to do with putting text into a database. All the basic stuff should be taught in high school. The idea that people are taking out tens of thousands of dollars worth of loans so they can take English and PE classes and learn how to use basic spreadsheets in college is stupid to me when we have a shortage of tech workers and engineers of the type that don't need a Ph D in physics. Edited February 18, 2016 by MetropolisLakeOutfitters Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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