Wall Street Protesters

nasum makes some pretty bold statements in the top of this thread, but y'all get suckered into bickering with Bob - a person who has shown zero interest in mediated discussion, but instead exists merely to get a rise out of you.

Christ, people.

nasum, where do you recommend cutting the budget? 5-10% is huge, but where? FDA? USPS? NEA? Defense? Of course, your proposal is wide in scope and appeals to both sides of raising revenues and cutting spending, so of course it will be wildly unpopular. Sad to say, though you're surely well aware of that.

Be more specific in your proposal - do you want your redheads to be male or female? ;)
 
[quote name='mykevermin']nasum makes some pretty bold statements in the top of this thread, but y'all get suckered into bickering with Bob - a person who has shown zero interest in mediated discussion, but instead exists merely to get a rise out of you.

Christ, people.

nasum, where do you recommend cutting the budget? 5-10% is huge, but where? FDA? USPS? NEA? Defense? Of course, your proposal is wide in scope and appeals to both sides of raising revenues and cutting spending, so of course it will be wildly unpopular. Sad to say, though you're surely well aware of that.

Be more specific in your proposal - do you want your redheads to be male or female? ;)[/QUOTE]

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258

Nasum should start here.

One thing that surprised me is how (relatively) little goes to programs for non-elderly poor people.
 
Oh, look - it's the usual "clown crew" of folks who have little-to-nothing to add to the conversation except personal insults. Gee, you guys are late to the party here...

So, camoor - who do you propose I vote for? Bush III Obama? Because he's worked so hard at ending the culture of business/government collusion in Washington.
 
On the actual topic at hand (OWS and Occupy in general), I've been discussing the Occupy movement on another board that, has pretty much labeled me as a dirty marxist SOB because I'm objecting to the way these folks are being treated. Good times.

Anyway, I was thinking about the whole thing when it hit me - does anyone remember a few years ago, when various documents from state agencies and the DHS were leaked detailing potential domestic terrorist threats? How there were several far-right wing groups that were listed in these documents and there was much gnashing of teeth about them and the way our government was treating those who dared to defy them?

The reaction to OWS/Occupy is the accumulation of those efforts. Who would have guessed it would have been the far-left groups (although, admittedly, there are some far-right Ron Paul folks involved here) that would be getting the blunt of the stick from DHS on this one.
 
[quote name='UncleBob']Was it your last $1,000?

You are seriously trying to argue that the system is stacked against you, therefore you have absolutely no responsibility to make any effort whatsoever towards making yourself better.

There's really no use in trying to to have a reasonable discussion with someone who has that mindset.[/QUOTE]
I never OR IMPLIED that one shouldn't make an effort, but nebulous concepts like "personal responsibility" are so far down the list of things that dictate how your life turns out that it shouldn't even be factored in before discussing the limited choices you'll have on life just from being born in a certain locale, muchless race, economic class, sex, sexual orientation, ect.

And where's your personal responsibility for making this a reasonable discussion? You flushed it down the toilet like you always do when proven wrong.

[quote name='UncleBob']... put into power by the voting part of the community that makes up the 99%...

And with all due respect to Mrs. Warren - I'm reluctant to take someone who willing handed out billions of taxpayer dollars (most of it to the ever-so-loved top 1%) at face value.

Unlike some folks around here, I don't suddenly forget the bank bailouts simply because the person involved has a (D) behind their name.[/QUOTE]
Warren had nothing to do with disbursing bailouts because she was busy teaching at Harvard. The only thing she did regarding the bailouts was to make sure they were compliant with the few regulations that were outlined to begin with, but feel free to trumpet more disinformation from Karl Rove, who we know is as truthful as James O'Keefe.

[quote name='mykevermin']nasum makes some pretty bold statements in the top of this thread, but y'all get suckered into bickering with Bob - a person who has shown zero interest in mediated discussion, but instead exists merely to get a rise out of you.

Christ, people.

nasum, where do you recommend cutting the budget? 5-10% is huge, but where? FDA? USPS? NEA? Defense? Of course, your proposal is wide in scope and appeals to both sides of raising revenues and cutting spending, so of course it will be wildly unpopular. Sad to say, though you're surely well aware of that.

Be more specific in your proposal - do you want your redheads to be male or female? ;)[/QUOTE]
I caught that part about the 5-10% cut across the board, but I can only handle one shitty idea at a time right now.

[quote name='UncleBob']On the actual topic at hand (OWS and Occupy in general), I've been discussing the Occupy movement on another board that, has pretty much labeled me as a dirty marxist SOB because I'm objecting to the way these folks are being treated. Good times.

Anyway, I was thinking about the whole thing when it hit me - does anyone remember a few years ago, when various documents from state agencies and the DHS were leaked detailing potential domestic terrorist threats? How there were several far-right wing groups that were listed in these documents and there was much gnashing of teeth about them and the way our government was treating those who dared to defy them?

The reaction to OWS/Occupy is the accumulation of those efforts. Who would have guessed it would have been the far-left groups (although, admittedly, there are some far-right Ron Paul folks involved here) that would be getting the blunt of the stick from DHS on this one.[/QUOTE]
There has been no "accumulation of efforts." Left-leaning groups have always "enjoyed" more attention than far-right ones. The only people that would be surprised about how OWS has been treated are the ones that forget or willfully ignorant of the labor and civil rights movements of our country. If this was 60 years ago, they would've been shot down in the streets.
 
[quote name='dohdough']Ummm...Not really. When CEO's fire 4,000 employees and takes a multi-million dollar bonus, what would you call that? Or when companies hire workers at part time to avoid paying benefits or numerous other things that the capitalist class does to stomp on labor? That capital doesn't disappear.
[/QUOTE]

I call it Bank of America!
OWS addresses that, but is met with scorn because people are still so easily duped into the "keep your head down and your shoulder to the wheel and you'll get ahead" nonsense. Though there is some truth to it.
I'm going to straddle the fence a bit here so be prepared.
As far as the part timers are concerned, how many full time blue-shirts do you need to throw into one of those buildings? Even with the benefits, your average register jockey won't be "making it" as a register jockey. It's not a position that demands making it really. Maybe they're the head of the electronics dept, that's a full time spot with bennies and has higher pay.
Now, if you're that register jockey that isn't getting by, you need to figure out what's going on and how to change that situation. If you don't do anything about it, even if you've got one of those happy CEOs that decides to give everyone a 20% raise and say to hell with the investors, then nothing will change in the end because that person is still in that position.
Even if inflation and wages had stayed together (this is impossible by the way), a register jockey is still a register jockey and won't be doing much more than scraping by.

The other side of that fence would be tuition reimbursement, day care options on site of employment, advancement within the company, etc... There are many more but you get the gist. There has to be a balance. Unfortunately everybody involved in the business has this shortsighted notion of profits now mean profits in the future as well which simply isn't the case.

Your problem is that your anger towards the higher end has blinded you to the consequences of what would happen if everyone made $65k a year no matter what. This is a gross exaggeration yes, but you go down that road so many times.
I have no problem with the top end of an organization making 1,000x more than the nightcrew (especially considering that most of their pay comes in the form of stock options and such which has a direct corellation to the performance of the company), but I agree that firing the nightcrew to save on labour while forcing the daycrew to do those duties without any increase in compensation is wrong. Balance.
 
[quote name='nasum']I call it Bank of America!
OWS addresses that, but is met with scorn because people are still so easily duped into the "keep your head down and your shoulder to the wheel and you'll get ahead" nonsense. Though there is some truth to it.
I'm going to straddle the fence a bit here so be prepared.

As far as the part timers are concerned, how many full time blue-shirts do you need to throw into one of those buildings? Even with the benefits, your average register jockey won't be "making it" as a register jockey. It's not a position that demands making it really. Maybe they're the head of the electronics dept, that's a full time spot with bennies and has higher pay.

Now, if you're that register jockey that isn't getting by, you need to figure out what's going on and how to change that situation. If you don't do anything about it, even if you've got one of those happy CEOs that decides to give everyone a 20% raise and say to hell with the investors, then nothing will change in the end because that person is still in that position.

Even if inflation and wages had stayed together (this is impossible by the way), a register jockey is still a register jockey and won't be doing much more than scraping by.

The other side of that fence would be tuition reimbursement, day care options on site of employment, advancement within the company, etc... There are many more but you get the gist. There has to be a balance. Unfortunately everybody involved in the business has this shortsighted notion of profits now mean profits in the future as well which simply isn't the case.

Your problem is that your anger towards the higher end has blinded you to the consequences of what would happen if everyone made $65k a year no matter what. This is a gross exaggeration yes, but you go down that road so many times.

I have no problem with the top end of an organization making 1,000x more than the nightcrew (especially considering that most of their pay comes in the form of stock options and such which has a direct corellation to the performance of the company), but I agree that firing the nightcrew to save on labour while forcing the daycrew to do those duties without any increase in compensation is wrong. Balance.[/QUOTE]
Your entire argument is asinine and the same argument is used against raising minimum wage to the point at which it now doesn't even meet the poverty line. This is a mish-mash of supply-side economics in the guise of balance using centrist language.

How is what you're saying any different from this:
We can't pay workers more because their raises will become useless because of inflation. We can give them more benefits, but the corporate class is too short-sighted to really make that hapen in any meaningful way. Even though the corporate class is short-sighted and only looks at quarterly numbers, I don't have a problem with them making 1,000x more than the night crew because if the company is profiting(due to eliminating workers and other draconian methods), then they deserve that money.

That isn't balance. This is a farce.
 
Occupy Boston was ordered by the mayor to leave their site by midnight tonight or "else." That "else" probably means being forcibly removed by police in riot gear. This is going to be a long night for some of those people.
 
The minimum wage isn't an effective anti-poverty tool anyway. The primary beneficiary of minimum wage laws are suburban teenagers.

From my old textbook on labor economics about a minimum wage increase in the 1990s:
It turns out that only about 19 percent of the increase in income generated by the higher minimum wage accrued to poor households-households with annual incomes below the poverty line-and over 50 percent of the income increase went to households with incomes that were at least twice the poverty threshold. The evidence suggests that even if the minimum wage has few adverse employment effects, it is not an effective way of combating poverty in the United States. For the most part, the benefits accrue to workers who are not at the bottom of the distribution of permanent income opportunities.
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The author is Borjas. And then there's always Heritage for these matters.

People are generally paid what they are worth. Nobody is going to hire you unless the benefit of your labor is greater than the cost to hire you. And the labor cost isn't just the wage, but the employer's tax burden, training cost and cost of complying with regulations. These are not necessarily bad things, but they must be recognized.

The minimum wage hurts people with low or no skills the most. There are people who can't even count change or fill out an application for employment. The way I see it, such people could choose to accept a lower wage in exchange for a position in which a company is willing to either focus more on training that employee and/or tolerating his mistakes. It would establish a record of sustained employment, something to put on a resume. Those with potential can "graduate" to a minimum wage position and beyond.

They call these internships for college students. Those determined to be unemployable for reasons such as a criminal record or lack of a high school diploma might be steered into the program as they come into contact with the system. Minimum wage laws and welfare programs are not helping them anyway. As the minimum wage is raised, these jobs become more attractive to people with higher skills, more experience and better work ethic, and the consequence is that you push out the lower skilled workers that were attracted to these jobs in the first place.

A question was asked once about why Wal-Mart doesn't just pay their employees $20 an hour. They have the money. Well, if they did that, the positions would attract a much higher caliber of worker, and the lower skilled workers won't be helped. A similar thing happens in blighted areas. Homeowners/renters near a railyard want it cleaned up. They cite environmental justice laws. Well, if they succeed, they might push themselves out with higher rents as higher income people replace them. These homeowners/renters can afford to live there precisely because others with more money do not want to live there.
 
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[quote name='camoor']UB is the classic Walmart flunkie who is brainwashed into voting for those who will always keep him down. The only twist here is that UB also happens to be a dilettante.

Eldergamer is more your garden variety idiot and all-around ignoramus.[/QUOTE]

Wow, I've managed to be both?

So, I'm a average, jack-of-all-trades fool.

Well done, me!
 
[quote name='dohdough']Your entire argument is asinine and the same argument is used against raising minimum wage to the point at which it now doesn't even meet the poverty line. This is a mish-mash of supply-side economics in the guise of balance using centrist language.

How is what you're saying any different from this:
We can't pay workers more because their raises will become useless because of inflation. We can give them more benefits, but the corporate class is too short-sighted to really make that hapen in any meaningful way. Even though the corporate class is short-sighted and only looks at quarterly numbers, I don't have a problem with them making 1,000x more than the night crew because if the company is profiting(due to eliminating workers and other draconian methods), then they deserve that money.

That isn't balance. This is a farce.[/QUOTE]

Considering I'm a demand side guy I fail to see how I busted out the supply with force.

How is it different? It really isn't all that different. Now if you want to use loaded language like "deserving" the profit bonus, then feel free to ignore how in the same post I stated that I think it's wrong to do that, but instead just stated that it's reality.
We've come to the point in our culture that investors demand a return (which isn't a bad thing in and of itself) on their investment, it's just that instead of using innovation in product it's easier to ditch a few million in labour cost and chalk that up to profit while revenue remains relatively neutral. It's stupid and shortsighted and falls in line with the house of cards that has been in place for a few decades.
The shortsighted part (in terms of wages) is because we'd rather see small profit gains quaterly as opposed to higher wages which will eventually lead to higher revenues as consumers have more money to make purchases. It's just that it will take some time for that to catch on as people pay off debt and such before splurging on a new car.

Minimum wage laws are goofy (especially considering that they don't mean what they say they mean and are applied differently in various fields) for reasons beyond raising costs, hell think of what it does to your section 8 voucher! While I scoff at Heritage just as much, if not more, than the next reasonable person, it is entirely true that raising minimum wage hurts more people than it helps and further squashes middle and lower class people.
 
[quote name='nasum']Considering I'm a demand side guy I fail to see how I busted out the supply with force.

How is it different? It really isn't all that different. Now if you want to use loaded language like "deserving" the profit bonus, then feel free to ignore how in the same post I stated that I think it's wrong to do that, but instead just stated that it's reality.
We've come to the point in our culture that investors demand a return (which isn't a bad thing in and of itself) on their investment, it's just that instead of using innovation in product it's easier to ditch a few million in labour cost and chalk that up to profit while revenue remains relatively neutral. It's stupid and shortsighted and falls in line with the house of cards that has been in place for a few decades.
The shortsighted part (in terms of wages) is because we'd rather see small profit gains quaterly as opposed to higher wages which will eventually lead to higher revenues as consumers have more money to make purchases. It's just that it will take some time for that to catch on as people pay off debt and such before splurging on a new car.

Minimum wage laws are goofy (especially considering that they don't mean what they say they mean and are applied differently in various fields) for reasons beyond raising costs, hell think of what it does to your section 8 voucher! While I scoff at Heritage just as much, if not more, than the next reasonable person, it is entirely true that raising minimum wage hurts more people than it helps and further squashes middle and lower class people.[/QUOTE]
So giving more money to anyone not in the upper-class is bad?

You go demand-side and then refute it completely with supply-side in your closing.
 
[quote name='dohdough']So giving more money to anyone not in the upper-class is bad?[/QUOTE]When we talk about a minimum wage, this is something you earn. There is no sense of giving anything. If you are currently earning the minimum wage, and they raise it, that minimum wage may go to someone else who can show they deserve it more.

The minimum wage is partially responsible for the astounding levels of youth unemployment, especially among black males.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703859304576307201724065640.html

The confounding factor is that blacks have less skills than other workers. Throw in immigration and the influx of women into the labor force, and you've got a recipe for massive black unemployment.

http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/herman/reports/futurework/conference/trends/trendsVII.htm

While inequality has increased among education groups, it has declined between men and women and blacks and whites. While evidence of labor market discrimination still exists, much of the remaining gap in black and white men’s wages can be attributed to their level of skills before they enter the labor market.

Welfare reform and an expanding economy have pushed 1 million women on TANF into the labor market; the vast majority of former TANF recipients are low-skilled and have entered low-wage jobs. In addition, many unskilled immigrants have joined the labor force in several large American cities.

Despite rising levels of formal education, many adults lack the basic math and reading skills, work habits, and interpersonal skills that most employers require. Increasingly, those individuals have become disenfranchised from the market economy.
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Raising the minimum wage is going to hurt these people the most.
 
Who really cares about youth unemployment? Sure, it's great for high school and college kids to get some work experience and make some money, but we're talking shitty retail and food service jobs etc. that aren't going to boost their resumes for their real careers anyway.

I'd think it would be much better to boost minimum wage and have more living wage jobs for adults needing to support themselves and their families than worry about youth having part time jobs for beer money. They should be focused on doing well in school as that's what's going to get them ahead in life--not working part time at Best Buy or a fast food joint.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']Who really cares about youth unemployment? Sure, it's great for high school and college kids to get some work experience and make some money, but we're talking shitty retail and food service jobs etc. that aren't going to boost their resumes for their real careers anyway.[/QUOTE]
We're also talking people who aren't going to college and may not have even finished high school. A lower minimum wage would allow these people to establish a work history and develop a work ethic.
 
Those people are pretty much always going to be limited to manual labor jobs anyway.

And retail stores etc. will still higher the more qualified of those people anyway as they prefer getting people who want to stay long term and make a career of the job to hiring youth or overqualified people who they know won't stay long term anyway as it saves on training costs etc .
 
[quote name='dohdough']So giving more money to anyone not in the upper-class is bad?

You go demand-side and then refute it completely with supply-side in your closing.[/QUOTE]

Did you steal UB's password or something?

It's a simple fact that when demanding x profit as a return of investment, raising cost y will need to be offset either by raised revenue (more people buying more stuff) or by increased cost to the consumer (the same amount of people buying the same amount of stuff but it costs them more). Take your own reasoning of a living wage. If living wage is (stab in the dark here) $12.50hr, then raising the min wage from $7.25 to $9.50 still doesn't take care of the problem. Meanwhile, the person making $10 an hour isn't going to get a bump to $12.25 while costs are going to go up to meet the profit requirement of x until revenue catches up. In effect, you've given a small but ultimately useless bump to the little guy while the middle guy loses some consumer power. During all of this, profit x will still be met and therefore the big guy is still getting their same cut and you haven't adjusted them at all. So the big guy still gets his, the little guy gets a bit of his, and the middle guy loses some of his. Min wage increase is great for all!

Put simply, raising the floor doesn't lower the ceiling, it just shrinks the room and doesn't change the initial problem.

Listen, I know you're an eloquent guy who can understand things into the realm of the complex. To that end you should be able to see how pulling the wage lever doesn't resolve the greater problem. In fact it exacerbates the problem since it further squashes the middle.

[quote name='Spokker']We're also talking people who aren't going to college and may not have even finished high school. A lower minimum wage would allow these people to establish a work history and develop a work ethic.[/quote]

Oy. I fear that this is what you think I'm actually saying.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']nasum makes some pretty bold statements in the top of this thread, but y'all get suckered into bickering with Bob - a person who has shown zero interest in mediated discussion, but instead exists merely to get a rise out of you.

Christ, people.

nasum, where do you recommend cutting the budget? 5-10% is huge, but where? FDA? USPS? NEA? Defense? Of course, your proposal is wide in scope and appeals to both sides of raising revenues and cutting spending, so of course it will be wildly unpopular. Sad to say, though you're surely well aware of that.

Be more specific in your proposal - do you want your redheads to be male or female? ;)[/QUOTE]

I want my redheads with ladyparts! And at least one needs to be a Days of Thunder era Nicole Kidman clone. God that hair was amazing... Also, if you get the snorg tees ad here, there's a charming young lass with the Winter Is Coming shirt that would fit in nicely.

I'm talking across the board short of SSI payments. Yeah it's bold and it'll hurt (ask not what your country can do for you afterall). Mind you, if we just take the 2011 payments and not automatically budget a 7% increase each year that will more or less take care of it. Using that difference to pay down the national debt (and build savings for natural disaster aid) will absolve us of that debt, at which point we will actually have the necessary govt money to build REAL social safety nets and not the administrative nightmare that we have right now.

------
I can't seem to find the post right now but Spokker mentioned that internships are wonderful. They're wonderful for the employer because it is $0 cost labour. Of course when Little Jimmy is done with his internship he'll get hired right away as a reward for his internship! Well the reality is that Little Jimmy gets thanked and the next intern comes in for $0 cost labour while Little Jimmy is now struggling to find that guaranteed job out of college that we all know exists.
 
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[quote name='nasum']
I can't seem to find the post right now but Spokker mentioned that internships are wonderful. They're wonderful for the employer because it is $0 cost labour. Of course when Little Jimmy is done with his internship he'll get hired right away as a reward for his internship! Well the reality is that Little Jimmy gets thanked and the next intern comes in for $0 cost labour while Little Jimmy is now struggling to find that guaranteed job out of college that we all know exists.[/QUOTE]There are paid internships if you can get one.

Many people get hired after internships, many do not. If you don't feel it's worth it, don't participate. I received college credit, an entry on my resume (experience) and a employer recommendation out of my internship. It is up to you to research the internship and make sure it is up to snuff. If it is not, you can leave at any time. The key here is to pursue academic or professional internships. If the employer does not require you to provide proof that you are a student, it may not be worthwhile. Many of the horror stories I read mention that the intern did not receive college credit. That's a red flag in my eyes.

Interns generally do not do work that is very consequential to the company. Employers would be wise to not put them in vitally important positions, especially an unpaid intern, because they can and will leave at any time once their hours are completed. There is very little responsibility as well.

There are no guarantees that you will get a job out of college. A major determinant of this is choice of major. http://cew.georgetown.edu/whatsitworth/

If you and I are competing for the same job, all other things being equal, I will get the job if you don't have an internship under your belt.

Additionally, one of the perks of being a college student is having the freedom to make a very adult choice to participate in an unpaid internship in exchange for the benefits explained above. If companies were required to offer only paid internships, unpaid internship positions would not suddenly become paid internship positions. They would simply go away. Such a program would be beneficial to high school dropouts and graduates, though, but I'm not sure who would administer it.
 
[quote name='dohdough']I never OR IMPLIED that one shouldn't make an effort, but nebulous concepts like "personal responsibility" are so far down the list of things that dictate how your life turns out that it shouldn't even be factored in before discussing the limited choices you'll have on life just from being born in a certain locale, muchless race, economic class, sex, sexual orientation, ect.[/quote]

You can discuss where you're born... and race... and all that jazz. But there's not a whole lot you, as an individual, can do about it (I suppose you could change your sex/sexual orientation... but that's not really in the realm of what we're discussing).

You, as an individual, cannot change much about your life. All you can do is make the best decisions with what you're given. Lemonade from Lemons and all that.


There has been no "accumulation of efforts." Left-leaning groups have always "enjoyed" more attention than far-right ones. The only people that would be surprised about how OWS has been treated are the ones that forget or willfully ignorant of the labor and civil rights movements of our country. If this was 60 years ago, they would've been shot down in the streets.
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Yup... I remember reading that article in USA Today how, shortly after the DHS was formed in 2002, they built a time machine and went back to the 60's and cracked some heads during the civil rights movement.
 
[quote name='Spokker']There are paid internships if you can get one.



There are no guarantees that you will get a job out of college. A major determinant of this is choice of major. http://cew.georgetown.edu/whatsitworth/

If you and I are competing for the same job, all other things being equal, I will get the job if you don't have an internship under your belt.

.[/QUOTE]

This. +1. Choice of major does matter. Which is why the Occupiers demand to forgive their student loan is ludcrious.

Wealth redistribution? Maybe. Get money out of politics? Sure. (Good luck. It's like damming up a river, it always finds a new way to flow)

Give you a job? Okay, what do you want to do?

Repay your loans? Who forced you to take them out? Did you make wise financial decisions involving your college career? (Starting out a community college, choosing a practical degree, going to a state school, etc...)
 
A) Everyone who has no college degree is a shiftless loser who deserves to stock shelves at a sub-livable wage forever.

B) People who are struggling with student loan debt just want to shirk their responsibilities as they knew exactly what they were getting in to.

C) People who chose the "wrong" majors deserve to suffer despite the fact the economy sucks for basically everyone.

Did I miss any?
 
[quote name='Msut77']A) Everyone who has no college degree is a shiftless loser who deserves to stock shelves at a sub-livable wage forever.[/quote]They deserve whatever job their skills can get them. For those who are not adept at academics, there are vocational programs that teach useful skills that are in demand.

B) People who are struggling with student loan debt just want to shirk their responsibilities as they knew exactly what they were getting in to.
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When you get a student loan, you are required to take loan counselling before you receive it and exit counselling before you graduate. You will also sign a promissory note and receive loan disclosure documents. Yes, you should know what you are getting into. If someone is struggling with student loan debt, it does not necessarily mean they want to shirk their responsibilities. You can complain all you want, but you must pay on-time, make arrangements if you cannot (deferment, for example) or default and take the hit on your credit report.

C) People who chose the "wrong" majors deserve to suffer despite the fact the economy sucks for basically everyone.
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Social workers will make less than engineers even in a good economy. Even within the social studies group, a social worker will make less than an economist on average.
 
[quote name='Spokker']They deserve whatever job their skills can get them. For those who are not adept at academics, there are vocational programs that teach useful skills that are in demand.[/quote]

There are plenty of people out there who would normally be working who aren't. We are talking basically every sector of the economy.

When you get a student loan, you are required to take loan counselling before you receive it and exit counselling before you graduate.
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Since when?

You will also sign a promissory note and receive loan disclosure documents. Yes, you should know what you are getting into. If someone is struggling with student loan debt, it does not necessarily mean they want to shirk their responsibilities. You can complain all you want, but you must pay on-time, make arrangements if you cannot (deferment, for example) or default and take the hit on your credit report.
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1) Most people are 17/18 when they start.

2) Obviously most people did not realize they would be graduating into a shitty economy.

Social workers will make less than engineers even in a good economy.
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Engineers didn't always make a lot of money. There is no guarantee they will in the future.
 
[quote name='Msut77']A) Everyone who has no college degree is a shiftless loser who deserves to stock shelves at a sub-livable wage forever.

B) People who are struggling with student loan debt just want to shirk their responsibilities as they knew exactly what they were getting in to.

C) People who chose the "wrong" majors deserve to suffer despite the fact the economy sucks for basically everyone.

Did I miss any?[/QUOTE]

You missed everything. It's like ypu have a very narrow worldview and anyone who does not agree with you is some type of heartless monster as you seem eager to portay me to be.

A) Have you never heard of working at a trade ? There's more to life than just a college degree. and people who do not have one are not doomed to failure.

B) not people. the occupiers. everyone is not asking for debt forgiveness. just them. stay focused. lose yr broad brush.

C) there are conesquences to choices. no one is forcing anyone who chose the wrong major to 'suffer'

a sad reality is, there are not enogh jobs for everyone in their chosen fields.
 
[quote name='elessar123']Since at least 2000 for FAFSA.[/QUOTE]

I don't remember it.

I don't recall my brother doing anything like that either.
 
[quote name='Msut77']I don't remember it.

I don't recall my brother doing anything like that either.[/QUOTE]

It's definitely something you have to do with FAFSA, I had to do it.
 
[quote name='eldergamer']You missed everything. It's like you have a very narrow worldview and anyone who does not agree with you is some type of heartless monster as you seem eager to portray me to be.[/quote]

If it makes you feel better, you are not alone.

A) Have you never heard of working at a trade ? There's more to life than just a college degree. and people who do not have one are not doomed to failure.
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A lot of trades need schooling now, degrees and certifications to get into apprenticeships. Also waiting lists can be 5 years long and you need to have connections to get on the list in some.

B) not people. the occupiers. everyone is not asking for debt forgiveness. just them. stay focused. lose yr broad brush.
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I do not know a single person who is paying student loan debt who would not welcome a student loan debt jubilee, partial or otherwise.

C) there are conesquences to choices. no one is forcing anyone who chose the wrong major to 'suffer'

a sad reality is, there are not enogh jobs for everyone in their chosen fields.
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You don't sound that sad.
 
You guys are really distracting me from enjoying UMvC3.

Like most conservative/mainstream media lies, the whole student loan/debt/repayment/discharge problem is multifaceted and isn't as simple as picking the wrong major or going to an expensive private school.

1) The student loan industry has commoditized loans and is being treated like the housing bubble. We all knew what happened with that.

2) In case of bankruptcy, student loans are non-dischargable. This means that you will still owe the money no matter what.

3) In terms of repayment, students entering the workforce are entering one of the most hostile climates in over 20 years and payments are due upon graduation. I shouldn't need to explain this part, but for those to bothered to be assed figure it out themselves: no job means no repayment of loans.
 
[quote name='dohdough']3) In terms of repayment, students entering the workforce are entering one of the most hostile climates in over 20 years and payments are due upon graduation. I shouldn't need to explain this part, but for those to bothered to be assed figure it out themselves: no job means no repayment of loans.[/QUOTE]

Six months, and there's deferment / forbearance.
 
Partial payments knocks something like 50 bucks a month off the average monthly student loan payment (bit of a pittance really), good luck getting payments suspended for a while without loss of limb (while still watching interest accrue).

Thing is, these guys make more money when you default and then use the government as an enforcer. They have no incentive to help you.
 
:rofl:

Student loan "counseling" consists of a few web pages of information and an idiot-proof quiz at the end. Attributing that, in any way, to more responsible borrowing is a joke.

Myke, you probably did the counseling but it was so inconsequential to the entire process that you completely forgot it.

The problem is that companies are increasingly desiring more and more education out of their incoming workforce which in turn has us all scrambling to educate ourselves further just to keep up. Of course, the republicans jump to "well just start a small business if you want to get ahead" but one doesn't need to look very far to see how frequently small businesses fail.

Of course, if you start a small business and it fails you're afforded much more in the way of protection by way of corporate shells than if you go to school financed by student loans and can't find a job. Dohdough already mentioned it, non-dischargeable student loan debt... The reason student loans are non-dischargeable? The baby boomers poisoned the fucking well by turning bankruptcy into the next step after graduation instead using it as a means of last resort as it is/was intended.

Sad times when venturing and taking a chance on education and bettering yourself has vastly higher consequences and stakes than starting a business.
 
[quote name='nasum']Did you steal UB's password or something?

It's a simple fact that when demanding x profit as a return of investment, raising cost y will need to be offset either by raised revenue (more people buying more stuff) or by increased cost to the consumer (the same amount of people buying the same amount of stuff but it costs them more). Take your own reasoning of a living wage. If living wage is (stab in the dark here) $12.50hr, then raising the min wage from $7.25 to $9.50 still doesn't take care of the problem. Meanwhile, the person making $10 an hour isn't going to get a bump to $12.25 while costs are going to go up to meet the profit requirement of x until revenue catches up. In effect, you've given a small but ultimately useless bump to the little guy while the middle guy loses some consumer power. During all of this, profit x will still be met and therefore the big guy is still getting their same cut and you haven't adjusted them at all. So the big guy still gets his, the little guy gets a bit of his, and the middle guy loses some of his. Min wage increase is great for all!

Put simply, raising the floor doesn't lower the ceiling, it just shrinks the room and doesn't change the initial problem.

Listen, I know you're an eloquent guy who can understand things into the realm of the complex. To that end you should be able to see how pulling the wage lever doesn't resolve the greater problem. In fact it exacerbates the problem since it further squashes the middle.[/QUOTE]
Or we can take from the top and shift it to the bottom like I've consistantly been saying for years. Btw, it sounds like now you're the one subscribing to the gold-backed currency lunacy aka zero sum.

The problem is actually capitalism, but let's not get into that right now.

[quote name='UncleBob']You can discuss where you're born... and race... and all that jazz. But there's not a whole lot you, as an individual, can do about it (I suppose you could change your sex/sexual orientation... but that's not really in the realm of what we're discussing).

You, as an individual, cannot change much about your life. All you can do is make the best decisions with what you're given. Lemonade from Lemons and all that.[/QUOTE]
So if you can't do much to change your life, that means that there are outside forces acting on it that doesn't allow you to. I wonder what that outside force is called...

Yup... I remember reading that article in USA Today how, shortly after the DHS was formed in 2002, they built a time machine and went back to the 60's and cracked some heads during the civil rights movement.
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I know you're being a stupid asshole here, but left leaning(we're talking people of color and labor unions here, not white nationalists) were killed by the national guard in the 70's, killed by the police in the 60's, killed by the army in the 30's, and killed by private security forces before that. So fuck you.
 
[quote name='eldergamer']You missed everything. It's like ypu have a very narrow worldview and anyone who does not agree with you is some type of heartless monster as you seem eager to portay me to be.

A) Have you never heard of working at a trade ? There's more to life than just a college degree. and people who do not have one are not doomed to failure.

B) not people. the occupiers. everyone is not asking for debt forgiveness. just them. stay focused. lose yr broad brush.

C) there are conesquences to choices. no one is forcing anyone who chose the wrong major to 'suffer'

a sad reality is, there are not enogh jobs for everyone in their chosen fields.[/QUOTE]

Don't beat yourself up too much - you're more like 25% heartless monster and 75% fucktard.

People make mistakes, you can doom them to indentured servitude (check out how well that worked out) or you can come up with a system to attempt unclusterfucking the clusterfuck.

I choose pretty well in my choice of majors and career but I could have easily made an inopportune choice. It's a shame to waste intelligent and talented people to slave wage jobs because they made a bad choice early on in their lives (and it's even worse to trick them into squandering their talent)

Now don't getting all butthurt with your working class hero bullshit again - it's not about blue collar vs white collar, it's about 99% vs 1%.
 
[quote name='dohdough']

1) The student loan industry has commoditized loans and is being treated like the housing bubble. We all knew what happened with that.[/QUOTE]

After spending a semester studying consumer protection and real estate transactions, I'm still incensed at how crooked something as seemingly innocuous as selling a debt as a commodity can become and how little attention that abuse has been given.
 
[quote name='dohdough']So if you can't do much to change your life, that means that there are outside forces acting on it that doesn't allow you to. I wonder what that outside force is called...[/quote]

I've never denied the existence of outside forces affecting one's life.

I'm merely saying that if you shrug your shoulders and say **** it, there's nothing I can do, I'm just going to crawl over to this corner and die... well, I don't have much sympathy for you.

There are great examples of people - of multiple races - in all periods of history - who, instead of crying about how they were cursed by the gods, instead, took control of their own life and did the best they could with what they had. These are people to look up to and aspire to - where be it some seamstress who refused to give up her seat or the mother who worked two jobs to feed her kids after that SOB of a father left for the babysitter. Sure, Parks could have just got up and moved. Sure, the mother could have just turned her kids over to the state.

That's why I do sympathize with the Occupy folks - even if I disagree with some of their message and some of their tactics... and the very least, they're out there fighting for change instead of saying "Well, I'm screwed... let's go buy iPads!"

I know you're being a stupid asshole here, but left leaning(we're talking people of color and labor unions here, not white nationalists) were killed by the national guard in the 70's, killed by the police in the 60's, killed by the army in the 30's, and killed by private security forces before that. So fuck you.
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Yup... aware of that. Still not sure what it has to do with the DHS and various states lying out plans on how to deal with "homegrown terrorist groups" (a.k.a. protestors who are fed up with the corruption in government) a few years ago.
 
[quote name='Msut77']
I do not know a single person who is paying student loan debt who would not welcome a student loan debt jubilee, partial or otherwise.
[/QUOTE]

Well I don't think anyone would complain about student loan debt (or any type of debt) being reduced or taken away! :D

But I finished with around $55k in student loan debt and I'm not begging for any reductions or anything. It was my choice to take those loans and I don't have any difficulties making the payments after consolidating and extending the repayment period.

[quote name='elessar123']Six months, and there's deferment / forbearance.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, if you consolidate through the federal program, they have pretty good deferment and forbearance options and various pay back plans.

They're not idea as interest still accrues etc., but its pretty flexible otherwise. Probably a lot more so than what you get if you keep your loans with the bank lenders.

[quote name='camoor']
People make mistakes, you can doom them to indentured servitude (check out how well that worked out) or you can come up with a system to attempt unclusterfucking the clusterfuck.

I choose pretty well in my choice of majors and career but I could have easily made an inopportune choice. It's a shame to waste intelligent and talented people to slave wage jobs because they made a bad choice early on in their lives (and it's even worse to trick them into squandering their talent)
[/QUOTE]

It's a tough situation as you have basically 18-20 year olds (by the time they decide on a major) making a big decision that will impact their future career by picking a major.

At the same time, it's hard to support forgiving debts because a person's degree didn't get them a decent job.

But there are things that can be done

-Better deferment plans where interest doesn't accrue while one is unemployed to give them a chance to find a job and get on their feet without their debt getting even larger

-Colleges required provide better and more easily accessible info about the unemployment rates of recent graduates of each major, average starting salaries, salary at 5 years, 10 years etc. of graduates of each major.

Info like that would help a lot with students being able to make smart decisions about how much student loan debt is a reasonable investment relative to what they can expect to earn with their degree. It's ok to study philosophy or whatever if you're not taking out loans to do so. But if you're racking up debt, you better make a wise decision and use it to get a career that ensures you can pay the debt back--no way to be sure of that, but having such data would at least help tilt the odds in your favor as much as possible.
 
[quote name='UncleBob']I've never denied the existence of outside forces affecting one's life.

I'm merely saying that if you shrug your shoulders and say **** it, there's nothing I can do, I'm just going to crawl over to this corner and die... well, I don't have much sympathy for you.

There are great examples of people - of multiple races - in all periods of history - who, instead of crying about how they were cursed by the gods, instead, took control of their own life and did the best they could with what they had. These are people to look up to and aspire to - where be it some seamstress who refused to give up her seat or the mother who worked two jobs to feed her kids after that SOB of a father left for the babysitter. Sure, Parks could have just got up and moved. Sure, the mother could have just turned her kids over to the state.[/quote]
You need to familiarize yourself with the background information about Park's protest. What you're describing is so far from the truth that you might as well believe that bullshit story about Washington and that goddamn cherry tree.

That's why I do sympathize with the Occupy folks - even if I disagree with some of their message and some of their tactics... and the very least, they're out there fighting for change instead of saying "Well, I'm screwed... let's go buy iPads!"
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Or maybe buying that ipad is making the best out of a shitty situation. Who gives a shit if someone buys a fucking ipad or not when $500 over the course of a lifetime means shit. Chances are that if someone's car just exploded and they work a shitty paying job, there'll be some form of public transportation, no matter how shitty, to get people to anyways.

Yup... aware of that. Still not sure what it has to do with the DHS and various states lying out plans on how to deal with "homegrown terrorist groups" (a.k.a. protestors who are fed up with the corruption in government) a few years ago.
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White nationalists fighting for white male supremacy isn't the same as fighting for workers rights and equal treatment of oppressed and marginalized people in society. There's a fucking difference.
 
[quote name='Msut77']There are plenty of people out there who would normally be working who aren't. We are talking basically every sector of the economy. [/quote]Unemployment is very high, but your individual experience may depend on your major. Even in the midst of the recession, some majors have different unemployment rates than others.

2) Obviously most people did not realize they would be graduating into a shitty economy.
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Until we can correctly forecast the economy four years into the future with any degree of accuracy, this will continue to be the case. There is a risk associated with going to college. The choice to go to a college is a very serious one that individuals must think long and hard about. I fear that in our push to encourage everybody to go to college regardless of the circumstances, this decision is not being taken very seriously. I'm not going to say you have to know your discount rate to figure out how present-orientated a person you are and set up a mathematical model as economists do in their theories of labor economics, but you should think about these things.

Returns to education are accurate in the aggregate. The disclaimer that they rarely print is, "YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY." There is selection bias at work here. Tread lightly in this area.
 
I have thought about these spokker.

I actually have a decent career with benefits etc.

Do you?

Can you even imagine what it is like to graduate and not be able to get a job (any job let alone one that lets you pay off loans)?

If you haven't experienced it or you are so insulated from the chance of it even happening (rich parents/grandparents) then congratulations but you clearly do not realize how serious this is for most people.
 
I don't think anyone disputes that it isn't a serious problem to have lots of people out there with five or six figure student loan debt who can't find jobs.

There's just not a lot that can be done about it beyond having better deferment options for the unemployed.

More can be done to help limit this in the future by helping better educate students on loans, expected career outcomes from various majors, channeling more people who aren't cut out for college into vocational trade programs and community colleges etc. But for those stuck with degrees, debt and no job, not much we can do other than better deferment options and all the general stuff we should be doing to create jobs for everyone in general.
 
[quote name='Msut77']
Can you even imagine what it is like to graduate and not be able to get a job (any job let alone one that lets you pay off loans)?
[/QUOTE]
These people were probably better off not going to college, perhaps.

Is the issue that they can't get a job now or that they will never be able to get a job worthy of a college grad? In the midst of a recession, businesses put off expansion, workers put off vacation/retirement/etc. and job seekers hunker down until the economy recovers and settle for something less in the meantime. I think most people know which category they are in.

My partner went through something like this. She graduated in 2009 from law school and could only find paralegal work at $12 per hour. 100k in debt weighed down on her shoulders and she became very depressed. She felt that the world was ending and that she'll never be able to pay off her debt and that she'll default and blah blah blah. That didn't deter her from keeping at it, and she landed a job as a real attorney making real money just a year later. The economy probably delayed this by a year or so. Her fretting was for nothing.

Of course, she graduated from a tier 1 law school. Those who graduated from tier 4 are having a much more difficult time right now. She certainly deserves everything she has earned for her struggle because she is smarter and harder working than most people, and she came from nothing. That she will live a better life than most people is the way it should be. She would never say this, but I am.

On an unrelated note, there is an oil boom in North Dakota for those who looking for work. Would the Occupy protesters who are looking for work but can't find any get on a chartered bus and go there? You know, the Okies at least migrated to California. These assholes just sit in a park and bang on drums.
 
A clip every Occupier needs to hear, I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtjjvdoIOPE&t=6m0s

The context here is radio and comedy, but I think the lesson here is universal. It is courageous, in this day and age, to say what he said here. I think 3 minutes is enough to get the point here.

The stupid embed thing ruins it. The clip is at 6 minutes and 0 seconds in.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']I had zero counseling w/r/t student loans, fwiw.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, in fact they tried to push loans on me when i didn't need them.
 
[quote name='Clak']Yeah, in fact they tried to push loans on me when i didn't need them.[/QUOTE]
In what sense?

When I filled out the FAFSA each year they basically gave me a list of options online once everything was processed, which included the grants and loans being offered. Grants were automatically selected while loans had a checkbox, and you could specify how much you wanted to borrow up to whatever the limit was that year. I go to a California public university. There was no face-to-face discussion of this. Everything was done online.
 
[quote name='Spokker']In what sense?

When I filled out the FAFSA each year they basically gave me a list of options online once everything was processed, which included the grants and loans being offered. Grants were automatically selected while loans had a checkbox, and you could specify how much you wanted to borrow up to whatever the limit was that year. I go to a California public university. There was no face-to-face discussion of this. Everything was done online.[/QUOTE]
I had to tell the woman in the financial aid office 3 times I didn't want the loan and only needed the grant. I finally had to get tough with her and told her I did not want the loan, did not need the loan, and that if she kept asking I'd have to talk to the director of the department.
 
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