4 ms·

> because the people of wealth (who are almost always older) now don't want to pay for it. Well, no, of course not. Us older people with wealth have strongly a

> because the people of wealth (who are almost always older) now don't want to pay for it. Well, no, of course not. Us older people with wealth have strongly advocated for decades that they not take on the debt. Of those who thought they knew better, why would we want to pay for their stupidity? But if we agree that we should pay for stupidity because that's the nice thing to do, why stop at college? What about the dumb kid who bought a Ferrari he can't afford? Are we going to pay for that too? Logically we should. There is no difference. ~60% of the population (in the USA) have not attended college. Why not let them reap the rewards of their choices?

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
There is some difference. Education (in a worthwhile degree) is an asset that should pay a return. A Ferrari isn't. An education in a worthless degree is more like the Ferrari - except you can at least drive the Ferrari.
- randomdata 2y ago
  > Education (in a worthwhile degree) is an asset that should pay a return. Where is the return coming from? There was once a theory that labour income with a degree attached would rise, but that didn't happen. Incomes have held quite stagnant. We've known that for many decades by now. Why do you think we've been dissuading people for the last many decades to not take on the debt? Because there is no return! In fact, the best way to estimate the return on an investment is to look at the asset sale price as buyers will pay some multiple of the yearly return. How much do you think you can sell a degree for on the used market? I'm guessing no more than nothing. Quite possibly you'd have to pay the buyer to take it off your hands. Clearly there is no retained investable value there. Which should be really troubling when you take on debt for it. If you can't resell the asset to get you out of debt, that's a scary proposition. At least the used Ferrari is still probably worth approximately what you paid for it, allowing you to get out if need be. > A Ferrari isn't. If you have a Ferrari you can almost certainly start making money with a YouTube channel. People eat that kind of thing up. If that's not your cup of tea, you can rent it out. People will pay a healthy premium to be able to rent a unique car like that. There are all kinds of ways to make money with a Ferrari. There is real, tangible value there. As such, Ferraris carry a decent resale value.
Clent 2y ago
How old? Did you attend college before the weight of it's cost was left to the student to bare? Anyone who attended college a couple decades ago benefited heavily from a subsidized system and now refused to pay it backward. There is a reason these people have been classified as a selfish generation and this is merely one aspect of it. What mental gymnastics allowed people to reap the rewards of cheap education and casually condemn anyone who follows that same path to economic ruin. Keep in mind this is uniquely an American problem with uniquely American excuses.
- randomdata 2y ago
  > How old? Old enough that the data was already abundantly clear that it wasn't worth the amount being charged. The only justification was for access to the dating pool college offers, which may have been worth something, but not debt-inducing amounts. With Tinder competing on much the same ground these days, it suggests that it isn't worth any more than maybe $50 per month, tops. > Did you attend college No, of course not. The numbers didn't make any sense. Had I attended college, I no doubt would have ended up like my friends who did: Struggling financially. Why should I bail them out? They had their fun in their 20s while I was busy building wealth. I would like to have my fun now. But you want me to sacrifice again so that they can continue to have fun? > Anyone who attended college a couple decades ago benefited heavily from a subsidized system Those who attended college a couple of decades ago are the millennials (the group referred to in the original comment). Have we already forgotten that millennials are well into their 40s now? How does this fit into the conversation, exactly? I'm not sure I quite understand the applicability.
  - beej71 2y ago
    I'm apparently older than you, and when I want to college it absolutely made sense to go. I had $2k in debt when I graduated with a BS and MS, and I paid that off the moment it started accruing interest. Instead of begging people not to go to school, maybe we should be rolling prices back to what they were when I went, inflation adjusted.
    - 2y ago
packetlost 2y ago
> But if we agree that we should pay for stupidity because that's the nice thing to do, why stop at college? What about the dumb kid who bought a Ferrari he can't afford? Are we going to pay for that too? Logically we should. There is no difference. Because there's generally societal safeguards that prevent an 18 year old from taking on crushing amount of debt that they cannot pay back, and even if they do, bankruptcy is an option. The real issue isn't that we let a bunch of people take on debt that they shouldn't have, the issue is we let them do it and the government ensures the loans in as many ways as it can, most importantly excluding it from bankruptcy. It dramatically reduces the risk to the lender for giving out a student loan, so they'll give them to just about anyone for any degree at any college, even if the career prospects for someone at that school are not favorable.
- randomdata 2y ago
  If bankruptcy were an option, nobody would be crazy enough to lend the money. At least if you can't afford the Ferrari, it can be sold to pay back the loan. At most, the lender only loses on the depreciation. But who is going to buy your degree? It is literally worthless. We already bend over backwards to ensure the loans get offered in the first place given how stupid they are, and now we have to pay them back too?
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    It would be great if easy lending went away. College prices are what they are because they know lenders will lend tens of thousands of unsecured money to just about anyone. So, the market can bear high tuition costs. If suddenly the average student could only bear to pay $5000 instead of $50,000, what do you think will happen to the price tag? Colleges are not stupid. They will adjust their prices to soak up whatever money is available to them.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      > It would be great if easy lending went away. It definitely needs to. The whole thing hinges on some tenuous idea of "social good" that I'm not sure has ever been proven. Heck, the title of most educated nation goes back and forth between Russia and Canada. Russia especially does not stand out as some utopia of "social good" – if anything, it is surely towards the bottom of the list. And Canada spends most of its day wishing it were the USA. Not exactly strong markers of "social good" success. If there were an "economic good", then these loans would be also unnecessary. Lenders would be lining up down the street to give you a loan on the basis of a percentage of your future income without any political incentive. But leaders aren't stupid. They know you will never turn the degree into anything. The data about that is abundantly clear.
lenerdenator 2y ago
> Us older people with wealth have strongly advocated for decades that they not take on the debt This is a lie, and I feel that you know it is. I graduated high school in 2009. There was tremendous pressure on students to be ready for a college degree. You were told it was absolutely necessary to compete in the new globalized economy. AP classes were offered so that you could transfer credits on entry-level coursework. SAT and ACT prep were offered by the school district. There were college spirit days and college fairs. There were signing days for athletic scholarships. You'll find most Millennials will recall much of the same if they came from a middle-class-or-above area. Of course, being middle class doesn't mean you can pay for college without debt. That's why they took it on. The idea of entering the trades was an afterthought to the point where there was a vocational center 20 miles away that serviced an entire suburban county's worth of high school students. Since it was right after the financial crisis, if you weren't going to college or going into a vocational program, you were going into the military. I'd say more people out of my high school class went into the military than vocational programs. They were trained, given a job for six months, and discharged because there was a massive pool of people, nationally, who wanted to join the military since they had no place else to go. > Of those who thought they knew better, why would we want to pay for their stupidity? See above. > But if we agree that we should pay for stupidity because that's the nice thing to do, why stop at college? What about the dumb kid who bought a Ferrari he can't afford? Are we going to pay for that too? Logically we should. There is no difference. This is comically obtuse. No one ever centered a state's high school curriculum around the idea of convincing a kid to buy a Ferrari. No one ever told the kid he'd be a nobody with no future earnings potential if he didn't buy a Ferrari. That's exactly what Millennials were told between 1995 and 2010. The Ferrari doesn't get exempted from bankruptcy because "you kept the skills you learned" from owning it. I'd much rather be in debt from owning a Ferrari than with a student loan. > ~60% of the population (in the USA) have not attended college. Why not let them reap the rewards of their choices? There are no rewards to having a large chunk of your population so indebted that they don't engage in the life milestones that allow the economy to grow for the next 20 years. That guy who was so smart as to avoid that liberal arts degree by going to trade school to learn how to be an electrician? He needs new housing and commercial buildings to work on if he'd like to earn a living and create more economic value than he consumes. If no one's building houses to start a family, and no one's building new businesses because the population isn't there to support it, he's just as screwed as everyone else. You're angry at the wrong people.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago

There is some difference. Education (in a worthwhile degree) is an asset that should pay a return. A Ferrari isn't. An education in a worthless degree is more like the Ferrari - except you can at least drive the Ferrari.

randomdata 2y ago
> Education (in a worthwhile degree) is an asset that should pay a return. Where is the return coming from? There was once a theory that labour income with a degree attached would rise, but that didn't happen. Incomes have held quite stagnant. We've known that for many decades by now. Why do you think we've been dissuading people for the last many decades to not take on the debt? Because there is no return! In fact, the best way to estimate the return on an investment is to look at the asset sale price as buyers will pay some multiple of the yearly return. How much do you think you can sell a degree for on the used market? I'm guessing no more than nothing. Quite possibly you'd have to pay the buyer to take it off your hands. Clearly there is no retained investable value there. Which should be really troubling when you take on debt for it. If you can't resell the asset to get you out of debt, that's a scary proposition. At least the used Ferrari is still probably worth approximately what you paid for it, allowing you to get out if need be. > A Ferrari isn't. If you have a Ferrari you can almost certainly start making money with a YouTube channel. People eat that kind of thing up. If that's not your cup of tea, you can rent it out. People will pay a healthy premium to be able to rent a unique car like that. There are all kinds of ways to make money with a Ferrari. There is real, tangible value there. As such, Ferraris carry a decent resale value.

Clent 2y ago

How old? Did you attend college before the weight of it's cost was left to the student to bare? Anyone who attended college a couple decades ago benefited heavily from a subsidized system and now refused to pay it backward. There is a reason these people have been classified as a selfish generation and this is merely one aspect of it. What mental gymnastics allowed people to reap the rewards of cheap education and casually condemn anyone who follows that same path to economic ruin. Keep in mind this is uniquely an American problem with uniquely American excuses.

randomdata 2y ago
> How old? Old enough that the data was already abundantly clear that it wasn't worth the amount being charged. The only justification was for access to the dating pool college offers, which may have been worth something, but not debt-inducing amounts. With Tinder competing on much the same ground these days, it suggests that it isn't worth any more than maybe $50 per month, tops. > Did you attend college No, of course not. The numbers didn't make any sense. Had I attended college, I no doubt would have ended up like my friends who did: Struggling financially. Why should I bail them out? They had their fun in their 20s while I was busy building wealth. I would like to have my fun now. But you want me to sacrifice again so that they can continue to have fun? > Anyone who attended college a couple decades ago benefited heavily from a subsidized system Those who attended college a couple of decades ago are the millennials (the group referred to in the original comment). Have we already forgotten that millennials are well into their 40s now? How does this fit into the conversation, exactly? I'm not sure I quite understand the applicability.
- beej71 2y ago
  I'm apparently older than you, and when I want to college it absolutely made sense to go. I had $2k in debt when I graduated with a BS and MS, and I paid that off the moment it started accruing interest. Instead of begging people not to go to school, maybe we should be rolling prices back to what they were when I went, inflation adjusted.
  - 2y ago

packetlost 2y ago

> But if we agree that we should pay for stupidity because that's the nice thing to do, why stop at college? What about the dumb kid who bought a Ferrari he can't afford? Are we going to pay for that too? Logically we should. There is no difference. Because there's generally societal safeguards that prevent an 18 year old from taking on crushing amount of debt that they cannot pay back, and even if they do, bankruptcy is an option. The real issue isn't that we let a bunch of people take on debt that they shouldn't have, the issue is we let them do it and the government ensures the loans in as many ways as it can, most importantly excluding it from bankruptcy. It dramatically reduces the risk to the lender for giving out a student loan, so they'll give them to just about anyone for any degree at any college, even if the career prospects for someone at that school are not favorable.

randomdata 2y ago
If bankruptcy were an option, nobody would be crazy enough to lend the money. At least if you can't afford the Ferrari, it can be sold to pay back the loan. At most, the lender only loses on the depreciation. But who is going to buy your degree? It is literally worthless. We already bend over backwards to ensure the loans get offered in the first place given how stupid they are, and now we have to pay them back too?
- ryandrake 2y ago
  It would be great if easy lending went away. College prices are what they are because they know lenders will lend tens of thousands of unsecured money to just about anyone. So, the market can bear high tuition costs. If suddenly the average student could only bear to pay $5000 instead of $50,000, what do you think will happen to the price tag? Colleges are not stupid. They will adjust their prices to soak up whatever money is available to them.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    > It would be great if easy lending went away. It definitely needs to. The whole thing hinges on some tenuous idea of "social good" that I'm not sure has ever been proven. Heck, the title of most educated nation goes back and forth between Russia and Canada. Russia especially does not stand out as some utopia of "social good" – if anything, it is surely towards the bottom of the list. And Canada spends most of its day wishing it were the USA. Not exactly strong markers of "social good" success. If there were an "economic good", then these loans would be also unnecessary. Lenders would be lining up down the street to give you a loan on the basis of a percentage of your future income without any political incentive. But leaders aren't stupid. They know you will never turn the degree into anything. The data about that is abundantly clear.

lenerdenator 2y ago

> Us older people with wealth have strongly advocated for decades that they not take on the debt This is a lie, and I feel that you know it is. I graduated high school in 2009. There was tremendous pressure on students to be ready for a college degree. You were told it was absolutely necessary to compete in the new globalized economy. AP classes were offered so that you could transfer credits on entry-level coursework. SAT and ACT prep were offered by the school district. There were college spirit days and college fairs. There were signing days for athletic scholarships. You'll find most Millennials will recall much of the same if they came from a middle-class-or-above area. Of course, being middle class doesn't mean you can pay for college without debt. That's why they took it on. The idea of entering the trades was an afterthought to the point where there was a vocational center 20 miles away that serviced an entire suburban county's worth of high school students. Since it was right after the financial crisis, if you weren't going to college or going into a vocational program, you were going into the military. I'd say more people out of my high school class went into the military than vocational programs. They were trained, given a job for six months, and discharged because there was a massive pool of people, nationally, who wanted to join the military since they had no place else to go. > Of those who thought they knew better, why would we want to pay for their stupidity? See above. > But if we agree that we should pay for stupidity because that's the nice thing to do, why stop at college? What about the dumb kid who bought a Ferrari he can't afford? Are we going to pay for that too? Logically we should. There is no difference. This is comically obtuse. No one ever centered a state's high school curriculum around the idea of convincing a kid to buy a Ferrari. No one ever told the kid he'd be a nobody with no future earnings potential if he didn't buy a Ferrari. That's exactly what Millennials were told between 1995 and 2010. The Ferrari doesn't get exempted from bankruptcy because "you kept the skills you learned" from owning it. I'd much rather be in debt from owning a Ferrari than with a student loan. > ~60% of the population (in the USA) have not attended college. Why not let them reap the rewards of their choices? There are no rewards to having a large chunk of your population so indebted that they don't engage in the life milestones that allow the economy to grow for the next 20 years. That guy who was so smart as to avoid that liberal arts degree by going to trade school to learn how to be an electrician? He needs new housing and commercial buildings to work on if he'd like to earn a living and create more economic value than he consumes. If no one's building houses to start a family, and no one's building new businesses because the population isn't there to support it, he's just as screwed as everyone else. You're angry at the wrong people.