Ending DACA will see the true beginning of Trump's downward economic spiral

[usmbguest5318]

Sigh . . . . I don't think we are going to agree on this, as you went into this with the attitude of "debunking" the whole thing. Eh? You didn't even watching the whole thing, you went in to cherry pick segments, as such, you just do not comprehend the big picture, so really, I don't see much point in refuting any of what you say, b/c you are living in a fantasy land.

Your belief is that compulsory education is necessary and good, for everyone, and should be imposed, upon everyone. I'm not saying that college isn't right for some, maybe it is. Maybe it is right for the dull of imagination. Maybe it is right for those that aren't self-starters. Maybe it is right of those who need to be told what to do. But for those in whose veins runs the spirit of American entrepreneurship and the dreams of success, not being a slave to others, it just might not be right. Sometimes there are other paths to success.

On the other hand, I will give you, that if you want to be a successful slave, a wage slave, college is great. But if you really want to be successful, and have a free mind, if you are really driven. . . Nothing can hold you back, that is the point. Schooling is typically only a hindrance. Self-starters get what education they need, and pieces of paper only when foolish people demand them.

8 Hugely Successful People Who Didn't Graduate College
8 Hugely Successful People Who Didn't Graduate College
"1. Steve Jobs

<snip>
2. Richard Branson

<snip>
3. Dave Thomas

<snip>
4. David Green

<snip>

5. Larry Ellison

<snip>

6. Kevin Rose

<snip>

7. Michael Dell

<snip>

8. Rachael Ray

<snip>

Final thoughts
The moral of the story? A driven personality always finds a way. An education can either be a stepping stone or a road block on the path to achievement. If education proves to be an obstacle, those with an entrepreneurial spirit will push it aside and go their own chosen route.

Today, in the information age, there are many ways to learn and develop the skills you need to become a successful entrepreneur. Homeschooling may be a worthwhile option for many, especially if you have the desire to learn at your own pace, or if you have kids that are ambitious and independent thinkers."


(Just a few excerpts)
Top 100 Entrepreneurs Who Made Millions Without A College Degree
Top 100 Entrepreneurs Who Made Millions Without A College Degree

"Abraham Lincoln, lawyer, U.S. president. Finished one year of formal schooling, self-taught himself trigonometry, and read Blackstone on his own to become a lawyer.

Andrew Jackson, U.S. president, general, attorney, judge, congressman. Home-schooled. Became a practicing attorney by the age of 35 – without a formal education.

Benjamin Franklin, inventor, scientist, author, entrepreneur. Primarily home-schooled.

Debbi Fields, founder of Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chippery. Later renamed, franchised, then sold Mrs. Field’s Cookies.

Frank Lloyd Wright, the most influential architect of the twentieth century. Never attended high school.

George Eastman, multimillionaire inventor, Kodak founder. Dropped out of high school.

H. Wayne Huizenga, founder of WMX garbage company, helped build Blockbuster video chain. Joined the Army out of high school, and later went to college only to drop out during his first year.

James Cameron, Oscar-winning director, screenwriter, and producer. Dropped out of college.

Kemmons Wilson, multimillionaire, founder of Holiday Inn. High school dropout.

Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s. Dropped out of high school.

Rush Limbaugh, multi-millionaire media mogul, radio talk show host. Dropped out of college.

Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, phonograph, and more. Primarily home-schooled, then joined the railroad when he was only 12.

W. Clement Stone, multimillionaire insurance man, author, founder of Success magazine. Dropped out of elementary school. Later attended high school, graduating. Attended but did not finish college.

Walt Disney, founder of the Walt Disney Company. Dropped out of high school at 16."

Less than two dozen people and most over a hundred years ago.
And no one teaches themselves trigonometry unless someone else taught them math previously.

I wonder how many of those people started out earning their money the old fashioned way, they inherited it. Like Donald Trump and Mitt Romney and John McCain?

Anyone who says education is not needed is both delusional and insane.

Self taught is still taught. And I have never met a "self taught" person who was actually self taught. They got their foundation from someone. Someone showed them what the letter "a" is and how it's followed by "b". No one "just knows".

I love the example of Steve Jobs. Did he actually design the first Apple or was it designed by Steve Wozniak, Bill Fernandez, people who had technical educations and worked at companies like Hewlett-Packard?

Jobs was a good salesman who relied on other people's degrees. Oop! Who knew?

TY for saying that. You hit the key themes of what was to be Part II of my response to MisterBeale's post.

Wozniak never finished college, and Fernandez never went. You both prove MY point. Dolts, both of you. Jobs, Wozniak, and Fernandez, that is what I am getting at. For true success, University is just an illusion.

Self-taught might be still taught, but that is not what we are discussing, we are discussing college and University. I am not arguing against being educated, I am arguing about the necessary need of being indoctrinated and brainwashed, which clearly, some folks in this thread are.

You are under the illusion that it is pieces of paper, diplomas, degrees and certificates that make folks economically viable, it isn't. KSA's and experience that make them valuable.

There is a difference between education and schooling. Learn that difference. A person needs education, they do not need schooling.

This discussion with you is boring me now. Not because the topic in the abstract is dull, for it is not. No, I'm bored with this discussion because despite my having indulged you enough to watch that so-called documentary and read your "points," you're not having a discussion with me; you're "talking" at me and barraging me with the same f*cking remarks. You're, in other words, delivering one soliloquy of unsubstantiated conclusions after another that, apparently, you think will by repetition gain merit. To wit...

During this contretemps, I've quoted multiple specific premises (providing timestamp references to the claims in the video) presented in the video you posted as a surrogate for your own prose expressing your ideas, and I provided empirically clear evidence that repeatedly the notions expressed in the video are founded on specious information/perceptions. Among those specious premises and implied premises are:

• The assertion about how much money would have amassed investing in physical silver
• The assertion about schools not teaching how to go into business for themselves
• The assertion that college tuition prices are so high that students cannot ever pay-off the loans they obtain to finance their college education
• The implication that merely getting a degree (the knowledge, behavioral and thinking skills attendant to obtaining the degree, not the velum itself) provides the nihil obstat needed to succeed.
• The assertion that going to good school and performing well there is not an apt foundation for a successful career.
• The notion, flimsily attested to by the anecdotal remarks of a disillusioned mediocrity who graduated from a mediocre-to-poor quality law school having tuition as high or higher than as materially higher quality schools from which graduates gain entree into careers starting at double the pay of those who attended his school, that the cost of law school is too high in comparison to the wages one earns as an attorney.
• The assertion that the cost of college has risen so much that it has the same extent of "shackling" effect as does a home mortgage.
• The implication that only elite university's that "cost a ton" provide high quality educations.
• The implication that individuals are not to blame for their poor college and/or career choices.

I've with verifiably irrefutable data/evidence and sound analysis of that evidence addressed each of the above noted premises and intermediate conclusions presented in the video you posted, whereas you've, in contrast, not offered a single specific refutation of any of the facts I presented that show the porosity of the video's, thus your, claims/conclusions. Neither have you instead allowed that the video's principal conclusions, thus yours that to theirs map, rest on untruths the NIA spun into a porcine fable "which artificed olive lips hath thee kissed afore by thine own squeals thou'st petard hoist."

Previously Unaddressed-by-me Element Invalidating Another of the the Video's Claims:

Hyperinflation
There's the matter of the video's/NIA's inflammatory claim about hyperinflation, all the while presuming viewers know what hyperinflation is.

• Hyperinflation is when the prices of goods and services rise more than 50 percent a month.

The video claims the increase in tuition prices and its attendant increase in student loan debt, the average sum of which they put at $24K and declare is the equivalent of a home mortgage, will produce hyperinflation in the U.S.

• Did they present an accepted/tested model (equation) that supports their claim? No.
  • A Model of Hyperinflation
  • Modeling Hyperinflation Phenomenon: A Bayesian Approach
    
  • Expectations and Hyperinflation Dynamics
• Did they present the title and author of a credible peer reviewed and published econometric modeling study that mirrors, thus supports, their cause-effect propositions? No.
• Did they, by inferential comparison to other nations having experienced hyperinflation, inductively arrive at the conclusion that the U.S. will face the same outcome, hyperinflation? No.

The fact is that one does not need a degree in economics to see the video did none of those thing, or anything else to support its claim about hyperinflation.​

As though that weren't enough, you bid us (strictly, young people, but who the hell would recommend to someone else a video they haven't watched) to watch and think carefully about the points made in an hour-long video. For as long as my posts have been, something that occasionally people gripe about, not one has ever come close to having a one-hour estimated reading time. (And one cannot watch a video faster than the video plays.)

Oh, and also there is this:

​

Wozniak never finished college, and Fernandez never went. You both prove MY point.

In a nation comprised of hundreds of millions of individuals, that two, two hundred or even 20K individuals have achieved on the scale that Wozniak and Fernandez did illustrates only that the exceptional is possible. Although it's nice to know that and mildly encouraging to see, nobody ever thought or so much as implied that such be not possible.

It takes neither great acumen nor prudence to know that for every "rule" there are exceptions. It takes some sagacity to know whether to expect one will be or is exceptional, be so to the good or not. And it takes sagacity, ability, acumen and more to be exceptional. Add innovativeness to that set of qualities, and one will rise to the pinnacle of economic success. People like the several super-successful ones you specified have all of those qualities and were, no matter what path upon which they embarked, would have reached extreme financial success.

I should probably here say that it seems by the tenor of your remarks and examples that for you, one is successful only if one pursues a "maverick" path that leads to billionaire-grade riches. While the maverick's way is one way to success, for most people, it's a far riskier way. There's nothing wrong with taking the riskier approach. Regardless of the approach one takes, one must also assume the risk accompanying it.

I am arguing about the necessary need of being indoctrinated and brainwashed

Well, with whom do you think you are arguing? Perhaps you should introduce us to your imaginary friend with whom you're having that conversation.

Neither I nor anybody I know or know of, not even brainwashers like Jim Jones and Kim Jung Un, has ever argued that there is a need for being "indoctrinated and brainwashed." And you've not even come close to proving that anyone has been "indoctrinated and brainwashed." The closest you've gotten to it is making the empty and unsubstantiated claim quoted just above.

You are under the illusion that it is pieces of paper, diplomas, degrees and certificates that make folks economically viable,

No, I'm not.

There again you've conjured some sh*t in your mind and ascribed it to me.

KSA's and experience that make them valuable.

I agree with that statement.

There is a difference between education and schooling. Learn that difference. A person needs education, they do not need schooling.

Whatever education and/or schooling you've obtained was obviously insufficient to provide you with the KSAs needed to recognize the myriad insufficiencies I in the first part of this post pointed out about that video. Accordingly, one sees that whatever approach you used needs modifying.

You know Xelor, I have a lot of respect for you, and you are one of the most intelligent posters on this site. I don't really take a whole lot of issue with anything you have posted.

I think one of my biggest beefs with it all is, if you can't get across what you need to say at say, a ninth grade level or so, it is pretty much useless to the membership.

At the last forum I was at, such posts might have been appreciated, and I personally had no problem with your post, and found it to be not too objectionable. For the upper-middle, and upper classes, everything you posted was, for the most part, true.

That said, we are never going to agree on the truth of the matter for the middle classes and lower middle classes. I have researched the average IQ, the number of those leaving University with degrees, and the lack of jobs for those with degrees. I also am aware of how folks get jobs, what it entails with unpaid internships, and the ability of the poor and middle class to get experience and travel the world, having connections to get those jobs.

I can tell from your posts, that your son did not take out any loans for his education. His job prospects were waiting for him though contacts established through family, friends and networking that is unavailable to the lower classes. You are what is spoken of when the disenfranchised talk about, "white privilege" or the elites classes. The problem with educational costs is not a problem for the establishment.

The banking sector and government likes to have the younger generation start life in debt for the first fifteen to twenty years of it's life, and you don't really give a shit because it doesn't affect your family.

So don't give me your wall of texts telling me how it is a good thing that the system is organized this way.

We will never agree on this.

Let me be clear. Over the course of my three primary posts in this thread, I've multiple times tacitly or explicitly asked you several questions you've refused to address directly.

• Why is someone of fairly or very limited means (middle class or lower, economically) and aiming to go into a modestly-paid profession taking out loans so they can attend a pricey school when there are plenty of less costly schools they could instead attend?
  • These colleges offer the best bang for your buck
    
  • Best Value Colleges 2017: 300 Schools Worth The Investment
    
    • Chart -- Best Value Colleges 2017: The 300 Schools Worth The Investment
• Why is those individuals' bad judgment something that should be considered a "national problem?"
• How does the conspiracy model you're advancing account for the tens of thousands of low to middle income kids who take out comparatively modest college loans and pay them back on time
• What is your solution to the problem?

What I haven't asked at all, and perhaps I should is this: is it your expectation that college should be free?

 

[Unkotare]

According to PEW, the majority of Republicans think college is bad for America. Getting rid of those who benefited from DACA means tossing away nurses, engineers, entrepreneurs, not to mention thousands in the military. Republicans have this fantastical idea that once they leave jobs will magically open up for those who have no education nor skills.

There are 6 million jobs available right now that can't be filled because of a lack of skills. Republicans, instead of being jealous and coveting what others have, you need to make your own. That's the only way it works.

4 Years Later: Lives Built By DACA at Risk in 2016 Elections

Once approved, she was able to work as a teaching assistant while pursuing a master's degree in engineering. After graduating in June 2014, she moved back to Arizona and now works as a project engineer.

Her husband Juan Amaya is also a DACA recipient and an engineer. The Phoenix couple recently became parents and purchased a home.

--------------------

See what I mean? Like I said, Republicans don't believe in education. The majority think college is bad for America.

The majority of Republicans say colleges are bad for America (yes, really)

Remember, in Bible, you aren't supposed to "covet" what isn't yours. Instead of 6 million unfilled jobs because of a lack of skills, it will be 7 million. And the Business community is going to love that (snicker).

Another troll thread.

 

[Unkotare]

DACA is people who have been here since childhood. They are totally Americanized. .....

A great many are not.

 

[JoeB131]

OMG, I can't believe how obtuse you are.

So society takes advantage of and steals the youth and innocence of young girls that are abandoned by families and social safety nets because they have no choice, and yet you in the same breath tell me that where this is legal it is because they voluntary choose to this (as if they have a choice?)

Do you even listen to yourself? You are telling me it is A) Because they have no other marketable skills, and B) because they voluntary choose to be economically and, well, quite literally raped.

Yeah, guy, some women are just whores. I'm sorry this hurts your sensibilities, but I'd rather have it legal and above board than in the shadows.

 

[JoeB131]

Yep... that's why Hillary won.

Yes, she did. Too bad the Russians stole the election.

 

[MisterBeale]

Less than two dozen people and most over a hundred years ago.
And no one teaches themselves trigonometry unless someone else taught them math previously.

I wonder how many of those people started out earning their money the old fashioned way, they inherited it. Like Donald Trump and Mitt Romney and John McCain?

Anyone who says education is not needed is both delusional and insane.

Self taught is still taught. And I have never met a "self taught" person who was actually self taught. They got their foundation from someone. Someone showed them what the letter "a" is and how it's followed by "b". No one "just knows".

I love the example of Steve Jobs. Did he actually design the first Apple or was it designed by Steve Wozniak, Bill Fernandez, people who had technical educations and worked at companies like Hewlett-Packard?

Jobs was a good salesman who relied on other people's degrees. Oop! Who knew?

TY for saying that. You hit the key themes of what was to be Part II of my response to MisterBeale's post.

Wozniak never finished college, and Fernandez never went. You both prove MY point. Dolts, both of you. Jobs, Wozniak, and Fernandez, that is what I am getting at. For true success, University is just an illusion.

Self-taught might be still taught, but that is not what we are discussing, we are discussing college and University. I am not arguing against being educated, I am arguing about the necessary need of being indoctrinated and brainwashed, which clearly, some folks in this thread are.

You are under the illusion that it is pieces of paper, diplomas, degrees and certificates that make folks economically viable, it isn't. KSA's and experience that make them valuable.

There is a difference between education and schooling. Learn that difference. A person needs education, they do not need schooling.

This discussion with you is boring me now. Not because the topic in the abstract is dull, for it is not. No, I'm bored with this discussion because despite my having indulged you enough to watch that so-called documentary and read your "points," you're not having a discussion with me; you're "talking" at me and barraging me with the same f*cking remarks. You're, in other words, delivering one soliloquy of unsubstantiated conclusions after another that, apparently, you think will by repetition gain merit. To wit...

During this contretemps, I've quoted multiple specific premises (providing timestamp references to the claims in the video) presented in the video you posted as a surrogate for your own prose expressing your ideas, and I provided empirically clear evidence that repeatedly the notions expressed in the video are founded on specious information/perceptions. Among those specious premises and implied premises are:

• The assertion about how much money would have amassed investing in physical silver
• The assertion about schools not teaching how to go into business for themselves
• The assertion that college tuition prices are so high that students cannot ever pay-off the loans they obtain to finance their college education
• The implication that merely getting a degree (the knowledge, behavioral and thinking skills attendant to obtaining the degree, not the velum itself) provides the nihil obstat needed to succeed.
• The assertion that going to good school and performing well there is not an apt foundation for a successful career.
• The notion, flimsily attested to by the anecdotal remarks of a disillusioned mediocrity who graduated from a mediocre-to-poor quality law school having tuition as high or higher than as materially higher quality schools from which graduates gain entree into careers starting at double the pay of those who attended his school, that the cost of law school is too high in comparison to the wages one earns as an attorney.
• The assertion that the cost of college has risen so much that it has the same extent of "shackling" effect as does a home mortgage.
• The implication that only elite university's that "cost a ton" provide high quality educations.
• The implication that individuals are not to blame for their poor college and/or career choices.

I've with verifiably irrefutable data/evidence and sound analysis of that evidence addressed each of the above noted premises and intermediate conclusions presented in the video you posted, whereas you've, in contrast, not offered a single specific refutation of any of the facts I presented that show the porosity of the video's, thus your, claims/conclusions. Neither have you instead allowed that the video's principal conclusions, thus yours that to theirs map, rest on untruths the NIA spun into a porcine fable "which artificed olive lips hath thee kissed afore by thine own squeals thou'st petard hoist."

Previously Unaddressed-by-me Element Invalidating Another of the the Video's Claims:

Hyperinflation
There's the matter of the video's/NIA's inflammatory claim about hyperinflation, all the while presuming viewers know what hyperinflation is.

• Hyperinflation is when the prices of goods and services rise more than 50 percent a month.

The video claims the increase in tuition prices and its attendant increase in student loan debt, the average sum of which they put at $24K and declare is the equivalent of a home mortgage, will produce hyperinflation in the U.S.

• Did they present an accepted/tested model (equation) that supports their claim? No.
  • A Model of Hyperinflation
  • Modeling Hyperinflation Phenomenon: A Bayesian Approach
    
  • Expectations and Hyperinflation Dynamics
• Did they present the title and author of a credible peer reviewed and published econometric modeling study that mirrors, thus supports, their cause-effect propositions? No.
• Did they, by inferential comparison to other nations having experienced hyperinflation, inductively arrive at the conclusion that the U.S. will face the same outcome, hyperinflation? No.

The fact is that one does not need a degree in economics to see the video did none of those thing, or anything else to support its claim about hyperinflation.​

As though that weren't enough, you bid us (strictly, young people, but who the hell would recommend to someone else a video they haven't watched) to watch and think carefully about the points made in an hour-long video. For as long as my posts have been, something that occasionally people gripe about, not one has ever come close to having a one-hour estimated reading time. (And one cannot watch a video faster than the video plays.)

Oh, and also there is this:

​

Wozniak never finished college, and Fernandez never went. You both prove MY point.

In a nation comprised of hundreds of millions of individuals, that two, two hundred or even 20K individuals have achieved on the scale that Wozniak and Fernandez did illustrates only that the exceptional is possible. Although it's nice to know that and mildly encouraging to see, nobody ever thought or so much as implied that such be not possible.

It takes neither great acumen nor prudence to know that for every "rule" there are exceptions. It takes some sagacity to know whether to expect one will be or is exceptional, be so to the good or not. And it takes sagacity, ability, acumen and more to be exceptional. Add innovativeness to that set of qualities, and one will rise to the pinnacle of economic success. People like the several super-successful ones you specified have all of those qualities and were, no matter what path upon which they embarked, would have reached extreme financial success.

I should probably here say that it seems by the tenor of your remarks and examples that for you, one is successful only if one pursues a "maverick" path that leads to billionaire-grade riches. While the maverick's way is one way to success, for most people, it's a far riskier way. There's nothing wrong with taking the riskier approach. Regardless of the approach one takes, one must also assume the risk accompanying it.

I am arguing about the necessary need of being indoctrinated and brainwashed

Well, with whom do you think you are arguing? Perhaps you should introduce us to your imaginary friend with whom you're having that conversation.

Neither I nor anybody I know or know of, not even brainwashers like Jim Jones and Kim Jung Un, has ever argued that there is a need for being "indoctrinated and brainwashed." And you've not even come close to proving that anyone has been "indoctrinated and brainwashed." The closest you've gotten to it is making the empty and unsubstantiated claim quoted just above.

You are under the illusion that it is pieces of paper, diplomas, degrees and certificates that make folks economically viable,

No, I'm not.

There again you've conjured some sh*t in your mind and ascribed it to me.

KSA's and experience that make them valuable.

I agree with that statement.

There is a difference between education and schooling. Learn that difference. A person needs education, they do not need schooling.

Whatever education and/or schooling you've obtained was obviously insufficient to provide you with the KSAs needed to recognize the myriad insufficiencies I in the first part of this post pointed out about that video. Accordingly, one sees that whatever approach you used needs modifying.

You know Xelor, I have a lot of respect for you, and you are one of the most intelligent posters on this site. I don't really take a whole lot of issue with anything you have posted.

I think one of my biggest beefs with it all is, if you can't get across what you need to say at say, a ninth grade level or so, it is pretty much useless to the membership.

At the last forum I was at, such posts might have been appreciated, and I personally had no problem with your post, and found it to be not too objectionable. For the upper-middle, and upper classes, everything you posted was, for the most part, true.

That said, we are never going to agree on the truth of the matter for the middle classes and lower middle classes. I have researched the average IQ, the number of those leaving University with degrees, and the lack of jobs for those with degrees. I also am aware of how folks get jobs, what it entails with unpaid internships, and the ability of the poor and middle class to get experience and travel the world, having connections to get those jobs.

I can tell from your posts, that your son did not take out any loans for his education. His job prospects were waiting for him though contacts established through family, friends and networking that is unavailable to the lower classes. You are what is spoken of when the disenfranchised talk about, "white privilege" or the elites classes. The problem with educational costs is not a problem for the establishment.

The banking sector and government likes to have the younger generation start life in debt for the first fifteen to twenty years of it's life, and you don't really give a shit because it doesn't affect your family.

So don't give me your wall of texts telling me how it is a good thing that the system is organized this way.

We will never agree on this.

Let me be clear. Over the course of my three primary posts in this thread, I've multiple times tacitly or explicitly asked you several questions you've refused to address directly.

• Why is someone of fairly or very limited means (middle class or lower, economically) and aiming to go into a modestly-paid profession taking out loans so they can attend a pricey school when there are plenty of less costly schools they could instead attend?
  • These colleges offer the best bang for your buck
    
  • Best Value Colleges 2017: 300 Schools Worth The Investment
    • Chart -- Best Value Colleges 2017: The 300 Schools Worth The Investment
• Why is those individuals' bad judgment something that should be considered a "national problem?"
• How does the conspiracy model you're advancing account for the tens of thousands of low to middle income kids who take out comparatively modest college loans and pay them back on time
• What is your solution to the problem?

What I haven't asked at all, and perhaps I should is this: is it your expectation that college should be free?

Ahh. . . . .

Well, since you didn't come at me with a "Wall of Text," this time, and you have offered some fairly reasonable questions for both members and non-members to read quickly for a thought provoking analysis of this issue, I will gladly answer your issue from the POV of both someone who has lived with the poor and those in poverty, and who also understands market economics from the Austrian perspective. (i.e., simple supply and demand w/o central bankers socializing risk for big bankers.)

1) First, I will agree with you, that the video does tend to cherry pick worst case scenario's, and the information in it is rather dated. That said, the experiences in them tend to be quite common. Even for folks that go to state schools, costs can quite quickly get out of control and prevent millennials from buying homes, having weddings, and starting families. None of them can afford vacations or investments like their parents used to. I'm sorry you live in an alternate universe and are not aware of this.

2) Next, not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple. Our society encourages across the board attendance because it is good for the financial sector. America's Skilled Trades Dilemma: Shortages Loom As Most-In-Demand Group Of Workers Ages
and
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2016/10/25/skilled-trades-doomed-decline/92756848/

3) Naturally you are correct. I am not suggesting that everyone doesn't pay back their loans or that the system doesn't work all the time. What I am saying is that the system is fundamentally broken. The inflationary cost of education is outpacing everything else except for healthcare. Whenever the government gets involved in something, market prices get distorted. We have long made the assumption that everyone is college material. Instead, we need to reform high-school and teach the necessary skills in high-school, or encourage graduates to get training for appropriate career skills that aren't related to advanced degrees. Instead, we are using kids as tools for market manipulation.
How The $1.2 Trillion College Debt Crisis Is Crippling Students, Parents And The Economy

4) Get the federal government out of education. Get it out of k-12 education, get it out of University education. For the first century of this nation's existence our government had nothing to do with education or research and it enabled us to become the most powerful nation on earth. Then the government intervened and started manipulating the population, dumbing them down, using them as an economic and political tools, rather than having the population be the master of the government.

 

[usmbguest5318]

TY for saying that. You hit the key themes of what was to be Part II of my response to MisterBeale's post.

Wozniak never finished college, and Fernandez never went. You both prove MY point. Dolts, both of you. Jobs, Wozniak, and Fernandez, that is what I am getting at. For true success, University is just an illusion.

Self-taught might be still taught, but that is not what we are discussing, we are discussing college and University. I am not arguing against being educated, I am arguing about the necessary need of being indoctrinated and brainwashed, which clearly, some folks in this thread are.

You are under the illusion that it is pieces of paper, diplomas, degrees and certificates that make folks economically viable, it isn't. KSA's and experience that make them valuable.

There is a difference between education and schooling. Learn that difference. A person needs education, they do not need schooling.

This discussion with you is boring me now. Not because the topic in the abstract is dull, for it is not. No, I'm bored with this discussion because despite my having indulged you enough to watch that so-called documentary and read your "points," you're not having a discussion with me; you're "talking" at me and barraging me with the same f*cking remarks. You're, in other words, delivering one soliloquy of unsubstantiated conclusions after another that, apparently, you think will by repetition gain merit. To wit...

During this contretemps, I've quoted multiple specific premises (providing timestamp references to the claims in the video) presented in the video you posted as a surrogate for your own prose expressing your ideas, and I provided empirically clear evidence that repeatedly the notions expressed in the video are founded on specious information/perceptions. Among those specious premises and implied premises are:

• The assertion about how much money would have amassed investing in physical silver
• The assertion about schools not teaching how to go into business for themselves
• The assertion that college tuition prices are so high that students cannot ever pay-off the loans they obtain to finance their college education
• The implication that merely getting a degree (the knowledge, behavioral and thinking skills attendant to obtaining the degree, not the velum itself) provides the nihil obstat needed to succeed.
• The assertion that going to good school and performing well there is not an apt foundation for a successful career.
• The notion, flimsily attested to by the anecdotal remarks of a disillusioned mediocrity who graduated from a mediocre-to-poor quality law school having tuition as high or higher than as materially higher quality schools from which graduates gain entree into careers starting at double the pay of those who attended his school, that the cost of law school is too high in comparison to the wages one earns as an attorney.
• The assertion that the cost of college has risen so much that it has the same extent of "shackling" effect as does a home mortgage.
• The implication that only elite university's that "cost a ton" provide high quality educations.
• The implication that individuals are not to blame for their poor college and/or career choices.

I've with verifiably irrefutable data/evidence and sound analysis of that evidence addressed each of the above noted premises and intermediate conclusions presented in the video you posted, whereas you've, in contrast, not offered a single specific refutation of any of the facts I presented that show the porosity of the video's, thus your, claims/conclusions. Neither have you instead allowed that the video's principal conclusions, thus yours that to theirs map, rest on untruths the NIA spun into a porcine fable "which artificed olive lips hath thee kissed afore by thine own squeals thou'st petard hoist."

Previously Unaddressed-by-me Element Invalidating Another of the the Video's Claims:

Hyperinflation
There's the matter of the video's/NIA's inflammatory claim about hyperinflation, all the while presuming viewers know what hyperinflation is.

• Hyperinflation is when the prices of goods and services rise more than 50 percent a month.

The video claims the increase in tuition prices and its attendant increase in student loan debt, the average sum of which they put at $24K and declare is the equivalent of a home mortgage, will produce hyperinflation in the U.S.

• Did they present an accepted/tested model (equation) that supports their claim? No.
  • A Model of Hyperinflation
  • Modeling Hyperinflation Phenomenon: A Bayesian Approach
    
  • Expectations and Hyperinflation Dynamics
• Did they present the title and author of a credible peer reviewed and published econometric modeling study that mirrors, thus supports, their cause-effect propositions? No.
• Did they, by inferential comparison to other nations having experienced hyperinflation, inductively arrive at the conclusion that the U.S. will face the same outcome, hyperinflation? No.

The fact is that one does not need a degree in economics to see the video did none of those thing, or anything else to support its claim about hyperinflation.​

As though that weren't enough, you bid us (strictly, young people, but who the hell would recommend to someone else a video they haven't watched) to watch and think carefully about the points made in an hour-long video. For as long as my posts have been, something that occasionally people gripe about, not one has ever come close to having a one-hour estimated reading time. (And one cannot watch a video faster than the video plays.)

Oh, and also there is this:

​

Wozniak never finished college, and Fernandez never went. You both prove MY point.

In a nation comprised of hundreds of millions of individuals, that two, two hundred or even 20K individuals have achieved on the scale that Wozniak and Fernandez did illustrates only that the exceptional is possible. Although it's nice to know that and mildly encouraging to see, nobody ever thought or so much as implied that such be not possible.

It takes neither great acumen nor prudence to know that for every "rule" there are exceptions. It takes some sagacity to know whether to expect one will be or is exceptional, be so to the good or not. And it takes sagacity, ability, acumen and more to be exceptional. Add innovativeness to that set of qualities, and one will rise to the pinnacle of economic success. People like the several super-successful ones you specified have all of those qualities and were, no matter what path upon which they embarked, would have reached extreme financial success.

I should probably here say that it seems by the tenor of your remarks and examples that for you, one is successful only if one pursues a "maverick" path that leads to billionaire-grade riches. While the maverick's way is one way to success, for most people, it's a far riskier way. There's nothing wrong with taking the riskier approach. Regardless of the approach one takes, one must also assume the risk accompanying it.

I am arguing about the necessary need of being indoctrinated and brainwashed

Well, with whom do you think you are arguing? Perhaps you should introduce us to your imaginary friend with whom you're having that conversation.

Neither I nor anybody I know or know of, not even brainwashers like Jim Jones and Kim Jung Un, has ever argued that there is a need for being "indoctrinated and brainwashed." And you've not even come close to proving that anyone has been "indoctrinated and brainwashed." The closest you've gotten to it is making the empty and unsubstantiated claim quoted just above.

You are under the illusion that it is pieces of paper, diplomas, degrees and certificates that make folks economically viable,

No, I'm not.

There again you've conjured some sh*t in your mind and ascribed it to me.

KSA's and experience that make them valuable.

I agree with that statement.

There is a difference between education and schooling. Learn that difference. A person needs education, they do not need schooling.

Whatever education and/or schooling you've obtained was obviously insufficient to provide you with the KSAs needed to recognize the myriad insufficiencies I in the first part of this post pointed out about that video. Accordingly, one sees that whatever approach you used needs modifying.

You know Xelor, I have a lot of respect for you, and you are one of the most intelligent posters on this site. I don't really take a whole lot of issue with anything you have posted.

I think one of my biggest beefs with it all is, if you can't get across what you need to say at say, a ninth grade level or so, it is pretty much useless to the membership.

At the last forum I was at, such posts might have been appreciated, and I personally had no problem with your post, and found it to be not too objectionable. For the upper-middle, and upper classes, everything you posted was, for the most part, true.

That said, we are never going to agree on the truth of the matter for the middle classes and lower middle classes. I have researched the average IQ, the number of those leaving University with degrees, and the lack of jobs for those with degrees. I also am aware of how folks get jobs, what it entails with unpaid internships, and the ability of the poor and middle class to get experience and travel the world, having connections to get those jobs.

I can tell from your posts, that your son did not take out any loans for his education. His job prospects were waiting for him though contacts established through family, friends and networking that is unavailable to the lower classes. You are what is spoken of when the disenfranchised talk about, "white privilege" or the elites classes. The problem with educational costs is not a problem for the establishment.

The banking sector and government likes to have the younger generation start life in debt for the first fifteen to twenty years of it's life, and you don't really give a shit because it doesn't affect your family.

So don't give me your wall of texts telling me how it is a good thing that the system is organized this way.

We will never agree on this.

Let me be clear. Over the course of my three primary posts in this thread, I've multiple times tacitly or explicitly asked you several questions you've refused to address directly.

• Why is someone of fairly or very limited means (middle class or lower, economically) and aiming to go into a modestly-paid profession taking out loans so they can attend a pricey school when there are plenty of less costly schools they could instead attend?
  • These colleges offer the best bang for your buck
    
  • Best Value Colleges 2017: 300 Schools Worth The Investment
    • Chart -- Best Value Colleges 2017: The 300 Schools Worth The Investment
• Why is those individuals' bad judgment something that should be considered a "national problem?"
• How does the conspiracy model you're advancing account for the tens of thousands of low to middle income kids who take out comparatively modest college loans and pay them back on time
• What is your solution to the problem?

What I haven't asked at all, and perhaps I should is this: is it your expectation that college should be free?

Ahh. . . . .

Well, since you didn't come at me with a "Wall of Text," this time, and you have offered some fairly reasonable questions for both members and non-members to read quickly for a thought provoking analysis of this issue, I will gladly answer your issue from the POV of both someone who has lived with the poor and those in poverty, and who also understands market economics from the Austrian perspective. (i.e., simple supply and demand w/o central bankers socializing risk for big bankers.)

1) First, I will agree with you, that the video does tend to cherry pick worst case scenario's, and the information in it is rather dated. That said, the experiences in them tend to be quite common. Even for folks that go to state schools, costs can quite quickly get out of control and prevent millennials from buying homes, having weddings, and starting families. None of them can afford vacations or investments like their parents used to. I'm sorry you live in an alternate universe and are not aware of this.

2) Next, not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple. Our society encourages across the board attendance because it is good for the financial sector. America's Skilled Trades Dilemma: Shortages Loom As Most-In-Demand Group Of Workers Ages
and
Are skilled trades doomed to decline?

3) Naturally you are correct. I am not suggesting that everyone doesn't pay back their loans or that the system doesn't work all the time. What I am saying is that the system is fundamentally broken. The inflationary cost of education is outpacing everything else except for healthcare. Whenever the government gets involved in something, market prices get distorted. We have long made the assumption that everyone is college material. Instead, we need to reform high-school and teach the necessary skills in high-school, or encourage graduates to get training for appropriate career skills that aren't related to advanced degrees. Instead, we are using kids as tools for market manipulation.
How The $1.2 Trillion College Debt Crisis Is Crippling Students, Parents And The Economy

4) Get the federal government out of education. Get it out of k-12 education, get it out of University education. For the first century of this nation's existence our government had nothing to do with education or research and it enabled us to become the most powerful nation on earth. Then the government intervened and started manipulating the population, dumbing them down, using them as an economic and political tools, rather than having the population be the master of the government.

not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple.

I have no problem with "everyone being encouraged to go to college." The message "going to college and performing well can open doors to higher paying jobs" is not inaccurate. The problem is that people hear what they want to hear and don't hear what they don't want to hear or don't like hearing. In the preceding statement, "and performing well" gets heard as "getting a degree."

The run-up to the housing collapse of 2008 provides another example. [1] That a lender to "Mary and Joe Normal Earner" said, "Oh, yes, we'll loan you $600K with no money down and an interest rate that "balloons" (or worse, a "principal balloon") in seven years," never meant that "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" were making a wise choice in taking the goddamned loan.

That financing arrangement was good for investors whose plan it was to "flip" that house just before the "ballooning point," take their gain from the appreciation in the property's value and move on. There are other buyers for whom such a loan might have been suitable. For whom was it a terrible deal? Just about anyone with a "normal paying" job who was buying the home and had no intention of "flipping" it. Why? Because "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" never had a sound basis for thinking their wages would "balloon" in proportion to their payment balloon or that their earning would "balloon" when the interest rate on that balloon loan most certainly would.

Why people who have no business going to college or buying expensive homes do so rather than following sound financial approaches to managing their lives is anyone's guess. The fact of the matter is that even though "everyone" is telling one "come this way, it'll be great," if one knows there's a "ravine" that one must cross when "going that way" and one doesn't know whether one can or cannot hurdle it, one is well advised to take the longer, slower route that forces one to go around the "ravine" because at least one knows by doing so, one will eventually get to the other side of the "ravine."

But hey, that's my approach to evaluating high risk propositions that I don't absolutely have to undertake. Obviously, individuals are free to assume or not assume risk in accordance with their own extent of risk aversion. I'm not of a mind to tell people what to do in that regard. I'm the guy who says, "Here are the choices. Here are their impacts," and then asks, "What is your decision?"

(And don't try telling me that lenders don't tell people what the impacts are. They do. The impacts are written in "black and white" for every loan anyone ever agreed to take. Yes, it's a "wall of text" one must read, but when it's my financial future that's on the line, I'm sure going to read every damn word of it before I "sign on the dotted line." Others, at their discretion, may choose not to.)

Note:

1. I understand quite well why we bailed out the banks in 2008-2010. Even understanding the huge collapse that would have resulted had we not bailed them out, I still would not have bailed them out. I'd have chosen the very painful path of "drawing the line and biting the bullet." It would have been utterly calamitous for everyone, but "everyone" would also never let such a or similar thing happen again.

 

[Harry Dresden]

deanrd said: ↑
Not only that, not everyone needs to work at a corporation. 87% of lost manufacturing jobs were automated. Most of the companies that put in automation systems are big. Automation doesn't pay if you are only making hundreds.

I know from working at a company that supported the Aerospace and Automotive industries. Being a niche company, it will never grow above a certain size and only sells about 30 units a month. The units cost 150 grand each and half the business is education and maintenance. They will never automate.

When the company was family owned, people in engineering, sales people and people all through the company were family friends. The Vice President of HR never finished High School and went to school with the owner.

The three kids, all with college degrees, took over the company and right away started retiring dads "friends". You had to have a degree to work in sales, marketing, engineering and to be in upper management positions.

The rule was relaxed for salesmen because of their particular skillset. To be a good salesman, you need to look sharp, know the product and people need to trust you and want to be friends with you right off. I never met a good salesman I didn't like. I also learned to look passed their friendliness after dealing with so many vendors.

So how did I get in engineering? I worked on the assembly line, went to night school on the GI bill and collected money from the company for going. It was hard. Co-workers and middle management threatened me and told me to quit. They said I would never make it. And pretty much made my life hell. But it was worth it.

Go back to school in your 20's and you will be surprised how different it is. You are older. More disciplined. School so hard at 16 was way, way easier at 26. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy, nothing of value ever is. But it was well worth it.[/QUOTE]
holy shit! get the Polaroid and take a picture of this.....dean did a lengthy post....and NEVER mentioned his arch enemies,not even once!......

 

[mhansen2]

DACA is people who have been here since childhood. They are totally Americanized. .....

A great many are not.

How do you determine which are which or do you just throw them all out?

 

[mhansen2]

Business leaders call on Trump to protect DACA

These are folks like Trump talking.

 

[MisterBeale]

Wozniak never finished college, and Fernandez never went. You both prove MY point. Dolts, both of you. Jobs, Wozniak, and Fernandez, that is what I am getting at. For true success, University is just an illusion.

Self-taught might be still taught, but that is not what we are discussing, we are discussing college and University. I am not arguing against being educated, I am arguing about the necessary need of being indoctrinated and brainwashed, which clearly, some folks in this thread are.

You are under the illusion that it is pieces of paper, diplomas, degrees and certificates that make folks economically viable, it isn't. KSA's and experience that make them valuable.

There is a difference between education and schooling. Learn that difference. A person needs education, they do not need schooling.

This discussion with you is boring me now. Not because the topic in the abstract is dull, for it is not. No, I'm bored with this discussion because despite my having indulged you enough to watch that so-called documentary and read your "points," you're not having a discussion with me; you're "talking" at me and barraging me with the same f*cking remarks. You're, in other words, delivering one soliloquy of unsubstantiated conclusions after another that, apparently, you think will by repetition gain merit. To wit...

During this contretemps, I've quoted multiple specific premises (providing timestamp references to the claims in the video) presented in the video you posted as a surrogate for your own prose expressing your ideas, and I provided empirically clear evidence that repeatedly the notions expressed in the video are founded on specious information/perceptions. Among those specious premises and implied premises are:

• The assertion about how much money would have amassed investing in physical silver
• The assertion about schools not teaching how to go into business for themselves
• The assertion that college tuition prices are so high that students cannot ever pay-off the loans they obtain to finance their college education
• The implication that merely getting a degree (the knowledge, behavioral and thinking skills attendant to obtaining the degree, not the velum itself) provides the nihil obstat needed to succeed.
• The assertion that going to good school and performing well there is not an apt foundation for a successful career.
• The notion, flimsily attested to by the anecdotal remarks of a disillusioned mediocrity who graduated from a mediocre-to-poor quality law school having tuition as high or higher than as materially higher quality schools from which graduates gain entree into careers starting at double the pay of those who attended his school, that the cost of law school is too high in comparison to the wages one earns as an attorney.
• The assertion that the cost of college has risen so much that it has the same extent of "shackling" effect as does a home mortgage.
• The implication that only elite university's that "cost a ton" provide high quality educations.
• The implication that individuals are not to blame for their poor college and/or career choices.

I've with verifiably irrefutable data/evidence and sound analysis of that evidence addressed each of the above noted premises and intermediate conclusions presented in the video you posted, whereas you've, in contrast, not offered a single specific refutation of any of the facts I presented that show the porosity of the video's, thus your, claims/conclusions. Neither have you instead allowed that the video's principal conclusions, thus yours that to theirs map, rest on untruths the NIA spun into a porcine fable "which artificed olive lips hath thee kissed afore by thine own squeals thou'st petard hoist."

Previously Unaddressed-by-me Element Invalidating Another of the the Video's Claims:

Hyperinflation
There's the matter of the video's/NIA's inflammatory claim about hyperinflation, all the while presuming viewers know what hyperinflation is.

• Hyperinflation is when the prices of goods and services rise more than 50 percent a month.

The video claims the increase in tuition prices and its attendant increase in student loan debt, the average sum of which they put at $24K and declare is the equivalent of a home mortgage, will produce hyperinflation in the U.S.

• Did they present an accepted/tested model (equation) that supports their claim? No.
  • A Model of Hyperinflation
  • Modeling Hyperinflation Phenomenon: A Bayesian Approach
    
  • Expectations and Hyperinflation Dynamics
• Did they present the title and author of a credible peer reviewed and published econometric modeling study that mirrors, thus supports, their cause-effect propositions? No.
• Did they, by inferential comparison to other nations having experienced hyperinflation, inductively arrive at the conclusion that the U.S. will face the same outcome, hyperinflation? No.

The fact is that one does not need a degree in economics to see the video did none of those thing, or anything else to support its claim about hyperinflation.​

As though that weren't enough, you bid us (strictly, young people, but who the hell would recommend to someone else a video they haven't watched) to watch and think carefully about the points made in an hour-long video. For as long as my posts have been, something that occasionally people gripe about, not one has ever come close to having a one-hour estimated reading time. (And one cannot watch a video faster than the video plays.)

Oh, and also there is this:

​

Wozniak never finished college, and Fernandez never went. You both prove MY point.

In a nation comprised of hundreds of millions of individuals, that two, two hundred or even 20K individuals have achieved on the scale that Wozniak and Fernandez did illustrates only that the exceptional is possible. Although it's nice to know that and mildly encouraging to see, nobody ever thought or so much as implied that such be not possible.

It takes neither great acumen nor prudence to know that for every "rule" there are exceptions. It takes some sagacity to know whether to expect one will be or is exceptional, be so to the good or not. And it takes sagacity, ability, acumen and more to be exceptional. Add innovativeness to that set of qualities, and one will rise to the pinnacle of economic success. People like the several super-successful ones you specified have all of those qualities and were, no matter what path upon which they embarked, would have reached extreme financial success.

I should probably here say that it seems by the tenor of your remarks and examples that for you, one is successful only if one pursues a "maverick" path that leads to billionaire-grade riches. While the maverick's way is one way to success, for most people, it's a far riskier way. There's nothing wrong with taking the riskier approach. Regardless of the approach one takes, one must also assume the risk accompanying it.

I am arguing about the necessary need of being indoctrinated and brainwashed

Well, with whom do you think you are arguing? Perhaps you should introduce us to your imaginary friend with whom you're having that conversation.

Neither I nor anybody I know or know of, not even brainwashers like Jim Jones and Kim Jung Un, has ever argued that there is a need for being "indoctrinated and brainwashed." And you've not even come close to proving that anyone has been "indoctrinated and brainwashed." The closest you've gotten to it is making the empty and unsubstantiated claim quoted just above.

You are under the illusion that it is pieces of paper, diplomas, degrees and certificates that make folks economically viable,

No, I'm not.

There again you've conjured some sh*t in your mind and ascribed it to me.

KSA's and experience that make them valuable.

I agree with that statement.

There is a difference between education and schooling. Learn that difference. A person needs education, they do not need schooling.

Whatever education and/or schooling you've obtained was obviously insufficient to provide you with the KSAs needed to recognize the myriad insufficiencies I in the first part of this post pointed out about that video. Accordingly, one sees that whatever approach you used needs modifying.

You know Xelor, I have a lot of respect for you, and you are one of the most intelligent posters on this site. I don't really take a whole lot of issue with anything you have posted.

I think one of my biggest beefs with it all is, if you can't get across what you need to say at say, a ninth grade level or so, it is pretty much useless to the membership.

At the last forum I was at, such posts might have been appreciated, and I personally had no problem with your post, and found it to be not too objectionable. For the upper-middle, and upper classes, everything you posted was, for the most part, true.

That said, we are never going to agree on the truth of the matter for the middle classes and lower middle classes. I have researched the average IQ, the number of those leaving University with degrees, and the lack of jobs for those with degrees. I also am aware of how folks get jobs, what it entails with unpaid internships, and the ability of the poor and middle class to get experience and travel the world, having connections to get those jobs.

I can tell from your posts, that your son did not take out any loans for his education. His job prospects were waiting for him though contacts established through family, friends and networking that is unavailable to the lower classes. You are what is spoken of when the disenfranchised talk about, "white privilege" or the elites classes. The problem with educational costs is not a problem for the establishment.

The banking sector and government likes to have the younger generation start life in debt for the first fifteen to twenty years of it's life, and you don't really give a shit because it doesn't affect your family.

So don't give me your wall of texts telling me how it is a good thing that the system is organized this way.

We will never agree on this.

Let me be clear. Over the course of my three primary posts in this thread, I've multiple times tacitly or explicitly asked you several questions you've refused to address directly.

• Why is someone of fairly or very limited means (middle class or lower, economically) and aiming to go into a modestly-paid profession taking out loans so they can attend a pricey school when there are plenty of less costly schools they could instead attend?
  • These colleges offer the best bang for your buck
    
  • Best Value Colleges 2017: 300 Schools Worth The Investment
    • Chart -- Best Value Colleges 2017: The 300 Schools Worth The Investment
• Why is those individuals' bad judgment something that should be considered a "national problem?"
• How does the conspiracy model you're advancing account for the tens of thousands of low to middle income kids who take out comparatively modest college loans and pay them back on time
• What is your solution to the problem?

What I haven't asked at all, and perhaps I should is this: is it your expectation that college should be free?

Ahh. . . . .

Well, since you didn't come at me with a "Wall of Text," this time, and you have offered some fairly reasonable questions for both members and non-members to read quickly for a thought provoking analysis of this issue, I will gladly answer your issue from the POV of both someone who has lived with the poor and those in poverty, and who also understands market economics from the Austrian perspective. (i.e., simple supply and demand w/o central bankers socializing risk for big bankers.)

1) First, I will agree with you, that the video does tend to cherry pick worst case scenario's, and the information in it is rather dated. That said, the experiences in them tend to be quite common. Even for folks that go to state schools, costs can quite quickly get out of control and prevent millennials from buying homes, having weddings, and starting families. None of them can afford vacations or investments like their parents used to. I'm sorry you live in an alternate universe and are not aware of this.

2) Next, not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple. Our society encourages across the board attendance because it is good for the financial sector. America's Skilled Trades Dilemma: Shortages Loom As Most-In-Demand Group Of Workers Ages
and
Are skilled trades doomed to decline?

3) Naturally you are correct. I am not suggesting that everyone doesn't pay back their loans or that the system doesn't work all the time. What I am saying is that the system is fundamentally broken. The inflationary cost of education is outpacing everything else except for healthcare. Whenever the government gets involved in something, market prices get distorted. We have long made the assumption that everyone is college material. Instead, we need to reform high-school and teach the necessary skills in high-school, or encourage graduates to get training for appropriate career skills that aren't related to advanced degrees. Instead, we are using kids as tools for market manipulation.
How The $1.2 Trillion College Debt Crisis Is Crippling Students, Parents And The Economy

4) Get the federal government out of education. Get it out of k-12 education, get it out of University education. For the first century of this nation's existence our government had nothing to do with education or research and it enabled us to become the most powerful nation on earth. Then the government intervened and started manipulating the population, dumbing them down, using them as an economic and political tools, rather than having the population be the master of the government.

not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple.

I have no problem with "everyone being encouraged to go to college." The message "going to college and performing well can open doors to higher paying jobs" is not inaccurate. The problem is that people hear what they want to hear and don't hear what they don't want to hear or don't like hearing. In the preceding statement, "and performing well" gets heard as "getting a degree."

The run-up to the housing collapse of 2008 provides another example. [1] That a lender to "Mary and Joe Normal Earner" said, "Oh, yes, we'll loan you $600K with no money down and an interest rate that "balloons" (or worse, a "principal balloon") in seven years," never meant that "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" were making a wise choice in taking the goddamned loan.

That financing arrangement was good for investors whose plan it was to "flip" that house just before the "ballooning point," take their gain from the appreciation in the property's value and move on. There are other buyers for whom such a loan might have been suitable. For whom was it a terrible deal? Just about anyone with a "normal paying" job who was buying the home and had no intention of "flipping" it. Why? Because "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" never had a sound basis for thinking their wages would "balloon" in proportion to their payment balloon or that their earning would "balloon" when the interest rate on that balloon loan most certainly would.

Why people who have no business going to college or buying expensive homes do so rather than following sound financial approaches to managing their lives is anyone's guess. The fact of the matter is that even though "everyone" is telling one "come this way, it'll be great," if one knows there's a "ravine" that one must cross when "going that way" and one doesn't know whether one can or cannot hurdle it, one is well advised to take the longer, slower route that forces one to go around the "ravine" because at least one knows by doing so, one will eventually get to the other side of the "ravine."

But hey, that's my approach to evaluating high risk propositions that I don't absolutely have to undertake. Obviously, individuals are free to assume or not assume risk in accordance with their own extent of risk aversion. I'm not of a mind to tell people what to do in that regard. I'm the guy who says, "Here are the choices. Here are their impacts," and then asks, "What is your decision?"

(And don't try telling me that lenders don't tell people what the impacts are. They do. The impacts are written in "black and white" for every loan anyone ever agreed to take. Yes, it's a "wall of text" one must read, but when it's my financial future that's on the line, I'm sure going to read every damn word of it before I "sign on the dotted line." Others, at their discretion, may choose not to.)

Note:

1. I understand quite well why we bailed out the banks in 2008-2010. Even understanding the huge collapse that would have resulted had we not bailed them out, I still would not have bailed them out. I'd have chosen the very painful path of "drawing the line and biting the bullet." It would have been utterly calamitous for everyone, but "everyone" would also never let such a or similar thing happen again.

While in theory I agree with your post, operationally I do not.

That is what the whole, "college conspiracy," is all about. Schools and the establishment only propagate one point of view.

ALL kids are brain washed since a very early age that their only way to have a piece of the American dream is via college.

A greater percentage of kids DO NOT fully comprehend the ramifications of their student loan contracts, they believe they have no other choice. All of your posts in this thread have been to convince me of that fact; that if kids want to have a chance at the good life, they need to sign these contracts. They are too immature to make these decisions that will impact their lives for decades after they sign these contracts. It's wonderful that this discussion has come full circle to the point where you are now telling me that students should beware before they sign these contracts. Funny. Before you were telling me how essential it was to get an education. You can't have both, you really can't. The poor either need to accept the brainwashing, or refuse the slavery of these loan contracts.

These are predatory laws and contracts that take advantage of those who do not understand how the system works. Naturally, you are correct, terms and conditions are clearly laid out, but implications are not understood by the kids who sign on to them. You are being disingenuous if you do not acknowledge this.

As you and I both have been to University, we have both read Plato, we understand this. We know the conditions from which, and under how the different mentalities of the different social strata operate. I not only understand it, but have lived in it. I am not interested in the legalese. You can lawyer this all you want, I am not interested in that. I am only interested in the ethics. If you set up a system to take advantage of those who are the weakest, slowest, and least capable, then surely none of us should be surprised by increasing wealth, opportunity, and educational concentration.

Hell, my friends think I am crazy when I read all the TOS and EULA of websites and Video games. Most middle class folks don't even read that stuff. No one knows what FB and Google has of rights to your data. I usually do, though they change those terms with freighting regularity.

I agree with your position on the banks. It is patently unfair what we did for the banks, yet we do not do the same for America's poor and middle class. It's criminal.

We have de facto two sets of laws which exist in this nation, but this is no different than has existed in every other civilization in throughout history. In this nation, we only give lip service to equality of opportunity. If it weren't, we wouldn't have folks from the same families running for President and Congress, and massive corporations entangled with family foundations monopolizing the nation for centuries with help from the government.

And please, don't get me wrong, I DO see your POV. I am not saying that this is the absolutely true for every poor and middle class person. If you honestly do not believe the system is encouraging folks that don't belong at college and University because Universities have become for profit businesses and because banks have been profiting off of this scam, by all means, keep this up. You won't convince me of that. We have too many degree and not enough jobs for those degrees, IN SOME FIELDS.

In others, your position is true. However, I don't think you will find schools telling kids this truth.

The fact is, the establishment isn't keeping up with trends because it is more concerned with profits.
The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK

Can the economy absorb more college-educated workers?

Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/r...here-the-jobs-are-and-the-college-grads-arent

 

[deanrd]

This discussion with you is boring me now. Not because the topic in the abstract is dull, for it is not. No, I'm bored with this discussion because despite my having indulged you enough to watch that so-called documentary and read your "points," you're not having a discussion with me; you're "talking" at me and barraging me with the same f*cking remarks. You're, in other words, delivering one soliloquy of unsubstantiated conclusions after another that, apparently, you think will by repetition gain merit. To wit...

During this contretemps, I've quoted multiple specific premises (providing timestamp references to the claims in the video) presented in the video you posted as a surrogate for your own prose expressing your ideas, and I provided empirically clear evidence that repeatedly the notions expressed in the video are founded on specious information/perceptions. Among those specious premises and implied premises are:

• The assertion about how much money would have amassed investing in physical silver
• The assertion about schools not teaching how to go into business for themselves
• The assertion that college tuition prices are so high that students cannot ever pay-off the loans they obtain to finance their college education
• The implication that merely getting a degree (the knowledge, behavioral and thinking skills attendant to obtaining the degree, not the velum itself) provides the nihil obstat needed to succeed.
• The assertion that going to good school and performing well there is not an apt foundation for a successful career.
• The notion, flimsily attested to by the anecdotal remarks of a disillusioned mediocrity who graduated from a mediocre-to-poor quality law school having tuition as high or higher than as materially higher quality schools from which graduates gain entree into careers starting at double the pay of those who attended his school, that the cost of law school is too high in comparison to the wages one earns as an attorney.
• The assertion that the cost of college has risen so much that it has the same extent of "shackling" effect as does a home mortgage.
• The implication that only elite university's that "cost a ton" provide high quality educations.
• The implication that individuals are not to blame for their poor college and/or career choices.

I've with verifiably irrefutable data/evidence and sound analysis of that evidence addressed each of the above noted premises and intermediate conclusions presented in the video you posted, whereas you've, in contrast, not offered a single specific refutation of any of the facts I presented that show the porosity of the video's, thus your, claims/conclusions. Neither have you instead allowed that the video's principal conclusions, thus yours that to theirs map, rest on untruths the NIA spun into a porcine fable "which artificed olive lips hath thee kissed afore by thine own squeals thou'st petard hoist."

Previously Unaddressed-by-me Element Invalidating Another of the the Video's Claims:

Hyperinflation
There's the matter of the video's/NIA's inflammatory claim about hyperinflation, all the while presuming viewers know what hyperinflation is.

• Hyperinflation is when the prices of goods and services rise more than 50 percent a month.

The video claims the increase in tuition prices and its attendant increase in student loan debt, the average sum of which they put at $24K and declare is the equivalent of a home mortgage, will produce hyperinflation in the U.S.

• Did they present an accepted/tested model (equation) that supports their claim? No.
  • A Model of Hyperinflation
  • Modeling Hyperinflation Phenomenon: A Bayesian Approach
    
  • Expectations and Hyperinflation Dynamics
• Did they present the title and author of a credible peer reviewed and published econometric modeling study that mirrors, thus supports, their cause-effect propositions? No.
• Did they, by inferential comparison to other nations having experienced hyperinflation, inductively arrive at the conclusion that the U.S. will face the same outcome, hyperinflation? No.

The fact is that one does not need a degree in economics to see the video did none of those thing, or anything else to support its claim about hyperinflation.​

As though that weren't enough, you bid us (strictly, young people, but who the hell would recommend to someone else a video they haven't watched) to watch and think carefully about the points made in an hour-long video. For as long as my posts have been, something that occasionally people gripe about, not one has ever come close to having a one-hour estimated reading time. (And one cannot watch a video faster than the video plays.)

Oh, and also there is this:

​

In a nation comprised of hundreds of millions of individuals, that two, two hundred or even 20K individuals have achieved on the scale that Wozniak and Fernandez did illustrates only that the exceptional is possible. Although it's nice to know that and mildly encouraging to see, nobody ever thought or so much as implied that such be not possible.

It takes neither great acumen nor prudence to know that for every "rule" there are exceptions. It takes some sagacity to know whether to expect one will be or is exceptional, be so to the good or not. And it takes sagacity, ability, acumen and more to be exceptional. Add innovativeness to that set of qualities, and one will rise to the pinnacle of economic success. People like the several super-successful ones you specified have all of those qualities and were, no matter what path upon which they embarked, would have reached extreme financial success.

I should probably here say that it seems by the tenor of your remarks and examples that for you, one is successful only if one pursues a "maverick" path that leads to billionaire-grade riches. While the maverick's way is one way to success, for most people, it's a far riskier way. There's nothing wrong with taking the riskier approach. Regardless of the approach one takes, one must also assume the risk accompanying it.

Well, with whom do you think you are arguing? Perhaps you should introduce us to your imaginary friend with whom you're having that conversation.

Neither I nor anybody I know or know of, not even brainwashers like Jim Jones and Kim Jung Un, has ever argued that there is a need for being "indoctrinated and brainwashed." And you've not even come close to proving that anyone has been "indoctrinated and brainwashed." The closest you've gotten to it is making the empty and unsubstantiated claim quoted just above.

No, I'm not.

There again you've conjured some sh*t in your mind and ascribed it to me.

I agree with that statement.

Whatever education and/or schooling you've obtained was obviously insufficient to provide you with the KSAs needed to recognize the myriad insufficiencies I in the first part of this post pointed out about that video. Accordingly, one sees that whatever approach you used needs modifying.

You know Xelor, I have a lot of respect for you, and you are one of the most intelligent posters on this site. I don't really take a whole lot of issue with anything you have posted.

I think one of my biggest beefs with it all is, if you can't get across what you need to say at say, a ninth grade level or so, it is pretty much useless to the membership.

At the last forum I was at, such posts might have been appreciated, and I personally had no problem with your post, and found it to be not too objectionable. For the upper-middle, and upper classes, everything you posted was, for the most part, true.

That said, we are never going to agree on the truth of the matter for the middle classes and lower middle classes. I have researched the average IQ, the number of those leaving University with degrees, and the lack of jobs for those with degrees. I also am aware of how folks get jobs, what it entails with unpaid internships, and the ability of the poor and middle class to get experience and travel the world, having connections to get those jobs.

I can tell from your posts, that your son did not take out any loans for his education. His job prospects were waiting for him though contacts established through family, friends and networking that is unavailable to the lower classes. You are what is spoken of when the disenfranchised talk about, "white privilege" or the elites classes. The problem with educational costs is not a problem for the establishment.

The banking sector and government likes to have the younger generation start life in debt for the first fifteen to twenty years of it's life, and you don't really give a shit because it doesn't affect your family.

So don't give me your wall of texts telling me how it is a good thing that the system is organized this way.

We will never agree on this.

Let me be clear. Over the course of my three primary posts in this thread, I've multiple times tacitly or explicitly asked you several questions you've refused to address directly.

• Why is someone of fairly or very limited means (middle class or lower, economically) and aiming to go into a modestly-paid profession taking out loans so they can attend a pricey school when there are plenty of less costly schools they could instead attend?
  • These colleges offer the best bang for your buck
    
  • Best Value Colleges 2017: 300 Schools Worth The Investment
    • Chart -- Best Value Colleges 2017: The 300 Schools Worth The Investment
• Why is those individuals' bad judgment something that should be considered a "national problem?"
• How does the conspiracy model you're advancing account for the tens of thousands of low to middle income kids who take out comparatively modest college loans and pay them back on time
• What is your solution to the problem?

What I haven't asked at all, and perhaps I should is this: is it your expectation that college should be free?

Ahh. . . . .

Well, since you didn't come at me with a "Wall of Text," this time, and you have offered some fairly reasonable questions for both members and non-members to read quickly for a thought provoking analysis of this issue, I will gladly answer your issue from the POV of both someone who has lived with the poor and those in poverty, and who also understands market economics from the Austrian perspective. (i.e., simple supply and demand w/o central bankers socializing risk for big bankers.)

1) First, I will agree with you, that the video does tend to cherry pick worst case scenario's, and the information in it is rather dated. That said, the experiences in them tend to be quite common. Even for folks that go to state schools, costs can quite quickly get out of control and prevent millennials from buying homes, having weddings, and starting families. None of them can afford vacations or investments like their parents used to. I'm sorry you live in an alternate universe and are not aware of this.

2) Next, not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple. Our society encourages across the board attendance because it is good for the financial sector. America's Skilled Trades Dilemma: Shortages Loom As Most-In-Demand Group Of Workers Ages
and
Are skilled trades doomed to decline?

3) Naturally you are correct. I am not suggesting that everyone doesn't pay back their loans or that the system doesn't work all the time. What I am saying is that the system is fundamentally broken. The inflationary cost of education is outpacing everything else except for healthcare. Whenever the government gets involved in something, market prices get distorted. We have long made the assumption that everyone is college material. Instead, we need to reform high-school and teach the necessary skills in high-school, or encourage graduates to get training for appropriate career skills that aren't related to advanced degrees. Instead, we are using kids as tools for market manipulation.
How The $1.2 Trillion College Debt Crisis Is Crippling Students, Parents And The Economy

4) Get the federal government out of education. Get it out of k-12 education, get it out of University education. For the first century of this nation's existence our government had nothing to do with education or research and it enabled us to become the most powerful nation on earth. Then the government intervened and started manipulating the population, dumbing them down, using them as an economic and political tools, rather than having the population be the master of the government.

not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple.

I have no problem with "everyone being encouraged to go to college." The message "going to college and performing well can open doors to higher paying jobs" is not inaccurate. The problem is that people hear what they want to hear and don't hear what they don't want to hear or don't like hearing. In the preceding statement, "and performing well" gets heard as "getting a degree."

The run-up to the housing collapse of 2008 provides another example. [1] That a lender to "Mary and Joe Normal Earner" said, "Oh, yes, we'll loan you $600K with no money down and an interest rate that "balloons" (or worse, a "principal balloon") in seven years," never meant that "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" were making a wise choice in taking the goddamned loan.

That financing arrangement was good for investors whose plan it was to "flip" that house just before the "ballooning point," take their gain from the appreciation in the property's value and move on. There are other buyers for whom such a loan might have been suitable. For whom was it a terrible deal? Just about anyone with a "normal paying" job who was buying the home and had no intention of "flipping" it. Why? Because "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" never had a sound basis for thinking their wages would "balloon" in proportion to their payment balloon or that their earning would "balloon" when the interest rate on that balloon loan most certainly would.

Why people who have no business going to college or buying expensive homes do so rather than following sound financial approaches to managing their lives is anyone's guess. The fact of the matter is that even though "everyone" is telling one "come this way, it'll be great," if one knows there's a "ravine" that one must cross when "going that way" and one doesn't know whether one can or cannot hurdle it, one is well advised to take the longer, slower route that forces one to go around the "ravine" because at least one knows by doing so, one will eventually get to the other side of the "ravine."

But hey, that's my approach to evaluating high risk propositions that I don't absolutely have to undertake. Obviously, individuals are free to assume or not assume risk in accordance with their own extent of risk aversion. I'm not of a mind to tell people what to do in that regard. I'm the guy who says, "Here are the choices. Here are their impacts," and then asks, "What is your decision?"

(And don't try telling me that lenders don't tell people what the impacts are. They do. The impacts are written in "black and white" for every loan anyone ever agreed to take. Yes, it's a "wall of text" one must read, but when it's my financial future that's on the line, I'm sure going to read every damn word of it before I "sign on the dotted line." Others, at their discretion, may choose not to.)

Note:

1. I understand quite well why we bailed out the banks in 2008-2010. Even understanding the huge collapse that would have resulted had we not bailed them out, I still would not have bailed them out. I'd have chosen the very painful path of "drawing the line and biting the bullet." It would have been utterly calamitous for everyone, but "everyone" would also never let such a or similar thing happen again.

While in theory I agree with your post, operationally I do not.

That is what the whole, "college conspiracy," is all about. Schools and the establishment only propagate one point of view.

ALL kids are brain washed since a very early age that their only way to have a piece of the American dream is via college.

A greater percentage of kids DO NOT fully comprehend the ramifications of their student loan contracts, they believe they have no other choice. All of your posts in this thread have been to convince me of that fact; that if kids want to have a chance at the good life, they need to sign these contracts. They are too immature to make these decisions that will impact their lives for decades after they sign these contracts. It's wonderful that this discussion has come full circle to the point where you are now telling me that students should beware before they sign these contracts. Funny. Before you were telling me how essential it was to get an education. You can't have both, you really can't. The poor either need to accept the brainwashing, or refuse the slavery of these loan contracts.

These are predatory laws and contracts that take advantage of those who do not understand how the system works. Naturally, you are correct, terms and conditions are clearly laid out, but implications are not understood by the kids who sign on to them. You are being disingenuous if you do not acknowledge this.

As you and I both have been to University, we have both read Plato, we understand this. We know the conditions from which, and under how the different mentalities of the different social strata operate. I not only understand it, but have lived in it. I am not interested in the legalese. You can lawyer this all you want, I am not interested in that. I am only interested in the ethics. If you set up a system to take advantage of those who are the weakest, slowest, and least capable, then surely none of us should be surprised by increasing wealth, opportunity, and educational concentration.

Hell, my friends think I am crazy when I read all the TOS and EULA of websites and Video games. Most middle class folks don't even read that stuff. No one knows what FB and Google has of rights to your data. I usually do, though they change those terms with freighting regularity.

I agree with your position on the banks. It is patently unfair what we did for the banks, yet we do not do the same for America's poor and middle class. It's criminal.

We have de facto two sets of laws which exist in this nation, but this is no different than has existed in every other civilization in throughout history. In this nation, we only give lip service to equality of opportunity. If it weren't, we wouldn't have folks from the same families running for President and Congress, and massive corporations entangled with family foundations monopolizing the nation for centuries with help from the government.

And please, don't get me wrong, I DO see your POV. I am not saying that this is the absolutely true for every poor and middle class person. If you honestly do not believe the system is encouraging folks that don't belong at college and University because Universities have become for profit businesses and because banks have been profiting off of this scam, by all means, keep this up. You won't convince me of that. We have too many degree and not enough jobs for those degrees, IN SOME FIELDS.

In others, your position is true. However, I don't think you will find schools telling kids this truth.

The fact is, the establishment isn't keeping up with trends because it is more concerned with profits.
The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK

Can the economy absorb more college-educated workers?

Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/r...here-the-jobs-are-and-the-college-grads-arent

From your post and your link, they don't appear to be in sync.

You seem to suggest college isn't important, yet this comes from your link:

The BLS projections of demand for college grads are dangerously understated, argue Anthony Carnevale and his colleagues at the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce. Why dangerously? Because they discourage disadvantaged students, for whom tertiary education is not a foregone conclusion, from earning a college degree.

Our projections suggest that the economy will create 55 million new job openings over the next decade, and 65 percent, or 37 million, of these new job vacancies will require some postsecondary education and training.

According to table 2 in the December 2013 edition of the BLS’ Monthly Labor Review, only 23 percent of jobs will require a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2022. By comparison, our projections show that, by 2020, 35 percent of jobs will require a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The BLS estimates are frighteningly low given that so many of our competitor nations have far exceeded them over the past decades. The United States was one of the top countries in college achievement in 1992 but has since fallen to number 11 among Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations. The United States performs especially poorly in sub-baccalaureate attainment, where we now rank 15th among our peers.

--------------------

The majority of Republicans say colleges are bad for America (yes, really)

 

[MisterBeale]

You know Xelor, I have a lot of respect for you, and you are one of the most intelligent posters on this site. I don't really take a whole lot of issue with anything you have posted.

I think one of my biggest beefs with it all is, if you can't get across what you need to say at say, a ninth grade level or so, it is pretty much useless to the membership.

At the last forum I was at, such posts might have been appreciated, and I personally had no problem with your post, and found it to be not too objectionable. For the upper-middle, and upper classes, everything you posted was, for the most part, true.

That said, we are never going to agree on the truth of the matter for the middle classes and lower middle classes. I have researched the average IQ, the number of those leaving University with degrees, and the lack of jobs for those with degrees. I also am aware of how folks get jobs, what it entails with unpaid internships, and the ability of the poor and middle class to get experience and travel the world, having connections to get those jobs.

I can tell from your posts, that your son did not take out any loans for his education. His job prospects were waiting for him though contacts established through family, friends and networking that is unavailable to the lower classes. You are what is spoken of when the disenfranchised talk about, "white privilege" or the elites classes. The problem with educational costs is not a problem for the establishment.

The banking sector and government likes to have the younger generation start life in debt for the first fifteen to twenty years of it's life, and you don't really give a shit because it doesn't affect your family.

So don't give me your wall of texts telling me how it is a good thing that the system is organized this way.

We will never agree on this.

Let me be clear. Over the course of my three primary posts in this thread, I've multiple times tacitly or explicitly asked you several questions you've refused to address directly.

• Why is someone of fairly or very limited means (middle class or lower, economically) and aiming to go into a modestly-paid profession taking out loans so they can attend a pricey school when there are plenty of less costly schools they could instead attend?
  • These colleges offer the best bang for your buck
    
  • Best Value Colleges 2017: 300 Schools Worth The Investment
    • Chart -- Best Value Colleges 2017: The 300 Schools Worth The Investment
• Why is those individuals' bad judgment something that should be considered a "national problem?"
• How does the conspiracy model you're advancing account for the tens of thousands of low to middle income kids who take out comparatively modest college loans and pay them back on time
• What is your solution to the problem?

What I haven't asked at all, and perhaps I should is this: is it your expectation that college should be free?

Ahh. . . . .

Well, since you didn't come at me with a "Wall of Text," this time, and you have offered some fairly reasonable questions for both members and non-members to read quickly for a thought provoking analysis of this issue, I will gladly answer your issue from the POV of both someone who has lived with the poor and those in poverty, and who also understands market economics from the Austrian perspective. (i.e., simple supply and demand w/o central bankers socializing risk for big bankers.)

1) First, I will agree with you, that the video does tend to cherry pick worst case scenario's, and the information in it is rather dated. That said, the experiences in them tend to be quite common. Even for folks that go to state schools, costs can quite quickly get out of control and prevent millennials from buying homes, having weddings, and starting families. None of them can afford vacations or investments like their parents used to. I'm sorry you live in an alternate universe and are not aware of this.

2) Next, not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple. Our society encourages across the board attendance because it is good for the financial sector. America's Skilled Trades Dilemma: Shortages Loom As Most-In-Demand Group Of Workers Ages
and
Are skilled trades doomed to decline?

3) Naturally you are correct. I am not suggesting that everyone doesn't pay back their loans or that the system doesn't work all the time. What I am saying is that the system is fundamentally broken. The inflationary cost of education is outpacing everything else except for healthcare. Whenever the government gets involved in something, market prices get distorted. We have long made the assumption that everyone is college material. Instead, we need to reform high-school and teach the necessary skills in high-school, or encourage graduates to get training for appropriate career skills that aren't related to advanced degrees. Instead, we are using kids as tools for market manipulation.
How The $1.2 Trillion College Debt Crisis Is Crippling Students, Parents And The Economy

4) Get the federal government out of education. Get it out of k-12 education, get it out of University education. For the first century of this nation's existence our government had nothing to do with education or research and it enabled us to become the most powerful nation on earth. Then the government intervened and started manipulating the population, dumbing them down, using them as an economic and political tools, rather than having the population be the master of the government.

not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple.

I have no problem with "everyone being encouraged to go to college." The message "going to college and performing well can open doors to higher paying jobs" is not inaccurate. The problem is that people hear what they want to hear and don't hear what they don't want to hear or don't like hearing. In the preceding statement, "and performing well" gets heard as "getting a degree."

The run-up to the housing collapse of 2008 provides another example. [1] That a lender to "Mary and Joe Normal Earner" said, "Oh, yes, we'll loan you $600K with no money down and an interest rate that "balloons" (or worse, a "principal balloon") in seven years," never meant that "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" were making a wise choice in taking the goddamned loan.

That financing arrangement was good for investors whose plan it was to "flip" that house just before the "ballooning point," take their gain from the appreciation in the property's value and move on. There are other buyers for whom such a loan might have been suitable. For whom was it a terrible deal? Just about anyone with a "normal paying" job who was buying the home and had no intention of "flipping" it. Why? Because "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" never had a sound basis for thinking their wages would "balloon" in proportion to their payment balloon or that their earning would "balloon" when the interest rate on that balloon loan most certainly would.

Why people who have no business going to college or buying expensive homes do so rather than following sound financial approaches to managing their lives is anyone's guess. The fact of the matter is that even though "everyone" is telling one "come this way, it'll be great," if one knows there's a "ravine" that one must cross when "going that way" and one doesn't know whether one can or cannot hurdle it, one is well advised to take the longer, slower route that forces one to go around the "ravine" because at least one knows by doing so, one will eventually get to the other side of the "ravine."

But hey, that's my approach to evaluating high risk propositions that I don't absolutely have to undertake. Obviously, individuals are free to assume or not assume risk in accordance with their own extent of risk aversion. I'm not of a mind to tell people what to do in that regard. I'm the guy who says, "Here are the choices. Here are their impacts," and then asks, "What is your decision?"

(And don't try telling me that lenders don't tell people what the impacts are. They do. The impacts are written in "black and white" for every loan anyone ever agreed to take. Yes, it's a "wall of text" one must read, but when it's my financial future that's on the line, I'm sure going to read every damn word of it before I "sign on the dotted line." Others, at their discretion, may choose not to.)

Note:

1. I understand quite well why we bailed out the banks in 2008-2010. Even understanding the huge collapse that would have resulted had we not bailed them out, I still would not have bailed them out. I'd have chosen the very painful path of "drawing the line and biting the bullet." It would have been utterly calamitous for everyone, but "everyone" would also never let such a or similar thing happen again.

While in theory I agree with your post, operationally I do not.

That is what the whole, "college conspiracy," is all about. Schools and the establishment only propagate one point of view.

ALL kids are brain washed since a very early age that their only way to have a piece of the American dream is via college.

A greater percentage of kids DO NOT fully comprehend the ramifications of their student loan contracts, they believe they have no other choice. All of your posts in this thread have been to convince me of that fact; that if kids want to have a chance at the good life, they need to sign these contracts. They are too immature to make these decisions that will impact their lives for decades after they sign these contracts. It's wonderful that this discussion has come full circle to the point where you are now telling me that students should beware before they sign these contracts. Funny. Before you were telling me how essential it was to get an education. You can't have both, you really can't. The poor either need to accept the brainwashing, or refuse the slavery of these loan contracts.

These are predatory laws and contracts that take advantage of those who do not understand how the system works. Naturally, you are correct, terms and conditions are clearly laid out, but implications are not understood by the kids who sign on to them. You are being disingenuous if you do not acknowledge this.

As you and I both have been to University, we have both read Plato, we understand this. We know the conditions from which, and under how the different mentalities of the different social strata operate. I not only understand it, but have lived in it. I am not interested in the legalese. You can lawyer this all you want, I am not interested in that. I am only interested in the ethics. If you set up a system to take advantage of those who are the weakest, slowest, and least capable, then surely none of us should be surprised by increasing wealth, opportunity, and educational concentration.

Hell, my friends think I am crazy when I read all the TOS and EULA of websites and Video games. Most middle class folks don't even read that stuff. No one knows what FB and Google has of rights to your data. I usually do, though they change those terms with freighting regularity.

I agree with your position on the banks. It is patently unfair what we did for the banks, yet we do not do the same for America's poor and middle class. It's criminal.

We have de facto two sets of laws which exist in this nation, but this is no different than has existed in every other civilization in throughout history. In this nation, we only give lip service to equality of opportunity. If it weren't, we wouldn't have folks from the same families running for President and Congress, and massive corporations entangled with family foundations monopolizing the nation for centuries with help from the government.

And please, don't get me wrong, I DO see your POV. I am not saying that this is the absolutely true for every poor and middle class person. If you honestly do not believe the system is encouraging folks that don't belong at college and University because Universities have become for profit businesses and because banks have been profiting off of this scam, by all means, keep this up. You won't convince me of that. We have too many degree and not enough jobs for those degrees, IN SOME FIELDS.

In others, your position is true. However, I don't think you will find schools telling kids this truth.

The fact is, the establishment isn't keeping up with trends because it is more concerned with profits.
The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK

Can the economy absorb more college-educated workers?

Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/r...here-the-jobs-are-and-the-college-grads-arent

From your post and your link, they don't appear to be in sync.

You seem to suggest college isn't important, yet this comes from your link:

The BLS projections of demand for college grads are dangerously understated, argue Anthony Carnevale and his colleagues at the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce. Why dangerously? Because they discourage disadvantaged students, for whom tertiary education is not a foregone conclusion, from earning a college degree.

Our projections suggest that the economy will create 55 million new job openings over the next decade, and 65 percent, or 37 million, of these new job vacancies will require some postsecondary education and training.

According to table 2 in the December 2013 edition of the BLS’ Monthly Labor Review, only 23 percent of jobs will require a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2022. By comparison, our projections show that, by 2020, 35 percent of jobs will require a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The BLS estimates are frighteningly low given that so many of our competitor nations have far exceeded them over the past decades. The United States was one of the top countries in college achievement in 1992 but has since fallen to number 11 among Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations. The United States performs especially poorly in sub-baccalaureate attainment, where we now rank 15th among our peers.

--------------------

The majority of Republicans say colleges are bad for America (yes, really)

deanrd, while I appreciate you trying to interject you two cents into an advanced conversation into societal and social engineering dynamics, if you refuse to consider the whole of my post in its entirety I can't in good conscious take you seriously.

You need to analyze the data tables that were included in the NPR propaganda. Their worry was that the BLS data would discourage minorities and the disadvantaged from going to college. But if you look at the data tables from their most recent years, you will find that even in their data sets according to labor market requirements, they are making arguments from unavailable data compared to the available date from the BLS. If you don't understand why I posted that link, then please don't get involved in our discussion.

(See page 3. recovery job growth and education requirements through 2020
TABLE 3: Comparison of BLS education and training requirements and education among employed workers in 2008, and 2010.
* Note: In this particular case, the column variables are mutually exclusive.)

From this chart we see that the BLS shows over 60% of the population has education level at vocational training or less than an Associates degree required for the available jobs.

You also ignored this chart and all the attendant implications.
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK

 

[Unkotare]

This discussion with you is boring me now. Not because the topic in the abstract is dull, for it is not. No, I'm bored with this discussion because despite my having indulged you enough to watch that so-called documentary and read your "points," you're not having a discussion with me; you're "talking" at me and barraging me with the same f*cking remarks. You're, in other words, delivering one soliloquy of unsubstantiated conclusions after another that, apparently, you think will by repetition gain merit. To wit...

During this contretemps, I've quoted multiple specific premises (providing timestamp references to the claims in the video) presented in the video you posted as a surrogate for your own prose expressing your ideas, and I provided empirically clear evidence that repeatedly the notions expressed in the video are founded on specious information/perceptions. Among those specious premises and implied premises are:

• The assertion about how much money would have amassed investing in physical silver
• The assertion about schools not teaching how to go into business for themselves
• The assertion that college tuition prices are so high that students cannot ever pay-off the loans they obtain to finance their college education
• The implication that merely getting a degree (the knowledge, behavioral and thinking skills attendant to obtaining the degree, not the velum itself) provides the nihil obstat needed to succeed.
• The assertion that going to good school and performing well there is not an apt foundation for a successful career.
• The notion, flimsily attested to by the anecdotal remarks of a disillusioned mediocrity who graduated from a mediocre-to-poor quality law school having tuition as high or higher than as materially higher quality schools from which graduates gain entree into careers starting at double the pay of those who attended his school, that the cost of law school is too high in comparison to the wages one earns as an attorney.
• The assertion that the cost of college has risen so much that it has the same extent of "shackling" effect as does a home mortgage.
• The implication that only elite university's that "cost a ton" provide high quality educations.
• The implication that individuals are not to blame for their poor college and/or career choices.

I've with verifiably irrefutable data/evidence and sound analysis of that evidence addressed each of the above noted premises and intermediate conclusions presented in the video you posted, whereas you've, in contrast, not offered a single specific refutation of any of the facts I presented that show the porosity of the video's, thus your, claims/conclusions. Neither have you instead allowed that the video's principal conclusions, thus yours that to theirs map, rest on untruths the NIA spun into a porcine fable "which artificed olive lips hath thee kissed afore by thine own squeals thou'st petard hoist."

Previously Unaddressed-by-me Element Invalidating Another of the the Video's Claims:

Hyperinflation
There's the matter of the video's/NIA's inflammatory claim about hyperinflation, all the while presuming viewers know what hyperinflation is.

• Hyperinflation is when the prices of goods and services rise more than 50 percent a month.

The video claims the increase in tuition prices and its attendant increase in student loan debt, the average sum of which they put at $24K and declare is the equivalent of a home mortgage, will produce hyperinflation in the U.S.

• Did they present an accepted/tested model (equation) that supports their claim? No.
  • A Model of Hyperinflation
  • Modeling Hyperinflation Phenomenon: A Bayesian Approach
    
  • Expectations and Hyperinflation Dynamics
• Did they present the title and author of a credible peer reviewed and published econometric modeling study that mirrors, thus supports, their cause-effect propositions? No.
• Did they, by inferential comparison to other nations having experienced hyperinflation, inductively arrive at the conclusion that the U.S. will face the same outcome, hyperinflation? No.

The fact is that one does not need a degree in economics to see the video did none of those thing, or anything else to support its claim about hyperinflation.​

As though that weren't enough, you bid us (strictly, young people, but who the hell would recommend to someone else a video they haven't watched) to watch and think carefully about the points made in an hour-long video. For as long as my posts have been, something that occasionally people gripe about, not one has ever come close to having a one-hour estimated reading time. (And one cannot watch a video faster than the video plays.)

Oh, and also there is this:

​

In a nation comprised of hundreds of millions of individuals, that two, two hundred or even 20K individuals have achieved on the scale that Wozniak and Fernandez did illustrates only that the exceptional is possible. Although it's nice to know that and mildly encouraging to see, nobody ever thought or so much as implied that such be not possible.

It takes neither great acumen nor prudence to know that for every "rule" there are exceptions. It takes some sagacity to know whether to expect one will be or is exceptional, be so to the good or not. And it takes sagacity, ability, acumen and more to be exceptional. Add innovativeness to that set of qualities, and one will rise to the pinnacle of economic success. People like the several super-successful ones you specified have all of those qualities and were, no matter what path upon which they embarked, would have reached extreme financial success.

I should probably here say that it seems by the tenor of your remarks and examples that for you, one is successful only if one pursues a "maverick" path that leads to billionaire-grade riches. While the maverick's way is one way to success, for most people, it's a far riskier way. There's nothing wrong with taking the riskier approach. Regardless of the approach one takes, one must also assume the risk accompanying it.

Well, with whom do you think you are arguing? Perhaps you should introduce us to your imaginary friend with whom you're having that conversation.

Neither I nor anybody I know or know of, not even brainwashers like Jim Jones and Kim Jung Un, has ever argued that there is a need for being "indoctrinated and brainwashed." And you've not even come close to proving that anyone has been "indoctrinated and brainwashed." The closest you've gotten to it is making the empty and unsubstantiated claim quoted just above.

No, I'm not.

There again you've conjured some sh*t in your mind and ascribed it to me.

I agree with that statement.

Whatever education and/or schooling you've obtained was obviously insufficient to provide you with the KSAs needed to recognize the myriad insufficiencies I in the first part of this post pointed out about that video. Accordingly, one sees that whatever approach you used needs modifying.

You know Xelor, I have a lot of respect for you, and you are one of the most intelligent posters on this site. I don't really take a whole lot of issue with anything you have posted.

I think one of my biggest beefs with it all is, if you can't get across what you need to say at say, a ninth grade level or so, it is pretty much useless to the membership.

At the last forum I was at, such posts might have been appreciated, and I personally had no problem with your post, and found it to be not too objectionable. For the upper-middle, and upper classes, everything you posted was, for the most part, true.

That said, we are never going to agree on the truth of the matter for the middle classes and lower middle classes. I have researched the average IQ, the number of those leaving University with degrees, and the lack of jobs for those with degrees. I also am aware of how folks get jobs, what it entails with unpaid internships, and the ability of the poor and middle class to get experience and travel the world, having connections to get those jobs.

I can tell from your posts, that your son did not take out any loans for his education. His job prospects were waiting for him though contacts established through family, friends and networking that is unavailable to the lower classes. You are what is spoken of when the disenfranchised talk about, "white privilege" or the elites classes. The problem with educational costs is not a problem for the establishment.

The banking sector and government likes to have the younger generation start life in debt for the first fifteen to twenty years of it's life, and you don't really give a shit because it doesn't affect your family.

So don't give me your wall of texts telling me how it is a good thing that the system is organized this way.

We will never agree on this.

Let me be clear. Over the course of my three primary posts in this thread, I've multiple times tacitly or explicitly asked you several questions you've refused to address directly.

• Why is someone of fairly or very limited means (middle class or lower, economically) and aiming to go into a modestly-paid profession taking out loans so they can attend a pricey school when there are plenty of less costly schools they could instead attend?
  • These colleges offer the best bang for your buck
    
  • Best Value Colleges 2017: 300 Schools Worth The Investment
    • Chart -- Best Value Colleges 2017: The 300 Schools Worth The Investment
• Why is those individuals' bad judgment something that should be considered a "national problem?"
• How does the conspiracy model you're advancing account for the tens of thousands of low to middle income kids who take out comparatively modest college loans and pay them back on time
• What is your solution to the problem?

What I haven't asked at all, and perhaps I should is this: is it your expectation that college should be free?

Ahh. . . . .

Well, since you didn't come at me with a "Wall of Text," this time, and you have offered some fairly reasonable questions for both members and non-members to read quickly for a thought provoking analysis of this issue, I will gladly answer your issue from the POV of both someone who has lived with the poor and those in poverty, and who also understands market economics from the Austrian perspective. (i.e., simple supply and demand w/o central bankers socializing risk for big bankers.)

1) First, I will agree with you, that the video does tend to cherry pick worst case scenario's, and the information in it is rather dated. That said, the experiences in them tend to be quite common. Even for folks that go to state schools, costs can quite quickly get out of control and prevent millennials from buying homes, having weddings, and starting families. None of them can afford vacations or investments like their parents used to. I'm sorry you live in an alternate universe and are not aware of this.

2) Next, not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple. Our society encourages across the board attendance because it is good for the financial sector. America's Skilled Trades Dilemma: Shortages Loom As Most-In-Demand Group Of Workers Ages
and
Are skilled trades doomed to decline?

3) Naturally you are correct. I am not suggesting that everyone doesn't pay back their loans or that the system doesn't work all the time. What I am saying is that the system is fundamentally broken. The inflationary cost of education is outpacing everything else except for healthcare. Whenever the government gets involved in something, market prices get distorted. We have long made the assumption that everyone is college material. Instead, we need to reform high-school and teach the necessary skills in high-school, or encourage graduates to get training for appropriate career skills that aren't related to advanced degrees. Instead, we are using kids as tools for market manipulation.
How The $1.2 Trillion College Debt Crisis Is Crippling Students, Parents And The Economy

4) Get the federal government out of education. Get it out of k-12 education, get it out of University education. For the first century of this nation's existence our government had nothing to do with education or research and it enabled us to become the most powerful nation on earth. Then the government intervened and started manipulating the population, dumbing them down, using them as an economic and political tools, rather than having the population be the master of the government.

not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple.

I have no problem with "everyone being encouraged to go to college." The message "going to college and performing well can open doors to higher paying jobs" is not inaccurate. The problem is that people hear what they want to hear and don't hear what they don't want to hear or don't like hearing. In the preceding statement, "and performing well" gets heard as "getting a degree."

The run-up to the housing collapse of 2008 provides another example. [1] That a lender to "Mary and Joe Normal Earner" said, "Oh, yes, we'll loan you $600K with no money down and an interest rate that "balloons" (or worse, a "principal balloon") in seven years," never meant that "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" were making a wise choice in taking the goddamned loan.

That financing arrangement was good for investors whose plan it was to "flip" that house just before the "ballooning point," take their gain from the appreciation in the property's value and move on. There are other buyers for whom such a loan might have been suitable. For whom was it a terrible deal? Just about anyone with a "normal paying" job who was buying the home and had no intention of "flipping" it. Why? Because "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" never had a sound basis for thinking their wages would "balloon" in proportion to their payment balloon or that their earning would "balloon" when the interest rate on that balloon loan most certainly would.

Why people who have no business going to college or buying expensive homes do so rather than following sound financial approaches to managing their lives is anyone's guess. The fact of the matter is that even though "everyone" is telling one "come this way, it'll be great," if one knows there's a "ravine" that one must cross when "going that way" and one doesn't know whether one can or cannot hurdle it, one is well advised to take the longer, slower route that forces one to go around the "ravine" because at least one knows by doing so, one will eventually get to the other side of the "ravine."

But hey, that's my approach to evaluating high risk propositions that I don't absolutely have to undertake. Obviously, individuals are free to assume or not assume risk in accordance with their own extent of risk aversion. I'm not of a mind to tell people what to do in that regard. I'm the guy who says, "Here are the choices. Here are their impacts," and then asks, "What is your decision?"

(And don't try telling me that lenders don't tell people what the impacts are. They do. The impacts are written in "black and white" for every loan anyone ever agreed to take. Yes, it's a "wall of text" one must read, but when it's my financial future that's on the line, I'm sure going to read every damn word of it before I "sign on the dotted line." Others, at their discretion, may choose not to.)

Note:

1. I understand quite well why we bailed out the banks in 2008-2010. Even understanding the huge collapse that would have resulted had we not bailed them out, I still would not have bailed them out. I'd have chosen the very painful path of "drawing the line and biting the bullet." It would have been utterly calamitous for everyone, but "everyone" would also never let such a or similar thing happen again.

While in theory I agree with your post, operationally I do not.

That is what the whole, "college conspiracy," is all about. Schools and the establishment only propagate one point of view.

ALL kids are brain washed since a very early age that their only way to have a piece of the American dream is via college.

A greater percentage of kids DO NOT fully comprehend the ramifications of their student loan contracts, they believe they have no other choice. All of your posts in this thread have been to convince me of that fact; that if kids want to have a chance at the good life, they need to sign these contracts. They are too immature to make these decisions that will impact their lives for decades after they sign these contracts. It's wonderful that this discussion has come full circle to the point where you are now telling me that students should beware before they sign these contracts. Funny. Before you were telling me how essential it was to get an education. You can't have both, you really can't. The poor either need to accept the brainwashing, or refuse the slavery of these loan contracts.

These are predatory laws and contracts that take advantage of those who do not understand how the system works. Naturally, you are correct, terms and conditions are clearly laid out, but implications are not understood by the kids who sign on to them. You are being disingenuous if you do not acknowledge this.

As you and I both have been to University, we have both read Plato, we understand this. We know the conditions from which, and under how the different mentalities of the different social strata operate. I not only understand it, but have lived in it. I am not interested in the legalese. You can lawyer this all you want, I am not interested in that. I am only interested in the ethics. If you set up a system to take advantage of those who are the weakest, slowest, and least capable, then surely none of us should be surprised by increasing wealth, opportunity, and educational concentration.

Hell, my friends think I am crazy when I read all the TOS and EULA of websites and Video games. Most middle class folks don't even read that stuff. No one knows what FB and Google has of rights to your data. I usually do, though they change those terms with freighting regularity.

I agree with your position on the banks. It is patently unfair what we did for the banks, yet we do not do the same for America's poor and middle class. It's criminal.

We have de facto two sets of laws which exist in this nation, but this is no different than has existed in every other civilization in throughout history. In this nation, we only give lip service to equality of opportunity. If it weren't, we wouldn't have folks from the same families running for President and Congress, and massive corporations entangled with family foundations monopolizing the nation for centuries with help from the government.

And please, don't get me wrong, I DO see your POV. I am not saying that this is the absolutely true for every poor and middle class person. If you honestly do not believe the system is encouraging folks that don't belong at college and University because Universities have become for profit businesses and because banks have been profiting off of this scam, by all means, keep this up. You won't convince me of that. We have too many degree and not enough jobs for those degrees, IN SOME FIELDS.

In others, your position is true. However, I don't think you will find schools telling kids this truth.

The fact is, the establishment isn't keeping up with trends because it is more concerned with profits.
The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK

Can the economy absorb more college-educated workers?

Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/r...here-the-jobs-are-and-the-college-grads-arent

What a load of crap.

 

[Conservative65]

DACA is people who have been here since childhood. They are totally Americanized. A lot of these people don't even remember their home country. They are more alien to Mexico than they are to America.

Sending them back to a place which they know nothing about seems particularly harsh to me.

They're still illegal. That's all that matters. Excuses don't.

 

[MisterBeale]

You know Xelor, I have a lot of respect for you, and you are one of the most intelligent posters on this site. I don't really take a whole lot of issue with anything you have posted.

I think one of my biggest beefs with it all is, if you can't get across what you need to say at say, a ninth grade level or so, it is pretty much useless to the membership.

At the last forum I was at, such posts might have been appreciated, and I personally had no problem with your post, and found it to be not too objectionable. For the upper-middle, and upper classes, everything you posted was, for the most part, true.

That said, we are never going to agree on the truth of the matter for the middle classes and lower middle classes. I have researched the average IQ, the number of those leaving University with degrees, and the lack of jobs for those with degrees. I also am aware of how folks get jobs, what it entails with unpaid internships, and the ability of the poor and middle class to get experience and travel the world, having connections to get those jobs.

I can tell from your posts, that your son did not take out any loans for his education. His job prospects were waiting for him though contacts established through family, friends and networking that is unavailable to the lower classes. You are what is spoken of when the disenfranchised talk about, "white privilege" or the elites classes. The problem with educational costs is not a problem for the establishment.

The banking sector and government likes to have the younger generation start life in debt for the first fifteen to twenty years of it's life, and you don't really give a shit because it doesn't affect your family.

So don't give me your wall of texts telling me how it is a good thing that the system is organized this way.

We will never agree on this.

Let me be clear. Over the course of my three primary posts in this thread, I've multiple times tacitly or explicitly asked you several questions you've refused to address directly.

• Why is someone of fairly or very limited means (middle class or lower, economically) and aiming to go into a modestly-paid profession taking out loans so they can attend a pricey school when there are plenty of less costly schools they could instead attend?
  • These colleges offer the best bang for your buck
    
  • Best Value Colleges 2017: 300 Schools Worth The Investment
    • Chart -- Best Value Colleges 2017: The 300 Schools Worth The Investment
• Why is those individuals' bad judgment something that should be considered a "national problem?"
• How does the conspiracy model you're advancing account for the tens of thousands of low to middle income kids who take out comparatively modest college loans and pay them back on time
• What is your solution to the problem?

What I haven't asked at all, and perhaps I should is this: is it your expectation that college should be free?

Ahh. . . . .

Well, since you didn't come at me with a "Wall of Text," this time, and you have offered some fairly reasonable questions for both members and non-members to read quickly for a thought provoking analysis of this issue, I will gladly answer your issue from the POV of both someone who has lived with the poor and those in poverty, and who also understands market economics from the Austrian perspective. (i.e., simple supply and demand w/o central bankers socializing risk for big bankers.)

1) First, I will agree with you, that the video does tend to cherry pick worst case scenario's, and the information in it is rather dated. That said, the experiences in them tend to be quite common. Even for folks that go to state schools, costs can quite quickly get out of control and prevent millennials from buying homes, having weddings, and starting families. None of them can afford vacations or investments like their parents used to. I'm sorry you live in an alternate universe and are not aware of this.

2) Next, not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple. Our society encourages across the board attendance because it is good for the financial sector. America's Skilled Trades Dilemma: Shortages Loom As Most-In-Demand Group Of Workers Ages
and
Are skilled trades doomed to decline?

3) Naturally you are correct. I am not suggesting that everyone doesn't pay back their loans or that the system doesn't work all the time. What I am saying is that the system is fundamentally broken. The inflationary cost of education is outpacing everything else except for healthcare. Whenever the government gets involved in something, market prices get distorted. We have long made the assumption that everyone is college material. Instead, we need to reform high-school and teach the necessary skills in high-school, or encourage graduates to get training for appropriate career skills that aren't related to advanced degrees. Instead, we are using kids as tools for market manipulation.
How The $1.2 Trillion College Debt Crisis Is Crippling Students, Parents And The Economy

4) Get the federal government out of education. Get it out of k-12 education, get it out of University education. For the first century of this nation's existence our government had nothing to do with education or research and it enabled us to become the most powerful nation on earth. Then the government intervened and started manipulating the population, dumbing them down, using them as an economic and political tools, rather than having the population be the master of the government.

not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple.

I have no problem with "everyone being encouraged to go to college." The message "going to college and performing well can open doors to higher paying jobs" is not inaccurate. The problem is that people hear what they want to hear and don't hear what they don't want to hear or don't like hearing. In the preceding statement, "and performing well" gets heard as "getting a degree."

The run-up to the housing collapse of 2008 provides another example. [1] That a lender to "Mary and Joe Normal Earner" said, "Oh, yes, we'll loan you $600K with no money down and an interest rate that "balloons" (or worse, a "principal balloon") in seven years," never meant that "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" were making a wise choice in taking the goddamned loan.

That financing arrangement was good for investors whose plan it was to "flip" that house just before the "ballooning point," take their gain from the appreciation in the property's value and move on. There are other buyers for whom such a loan might have been suitable. For whom was it a terrible deal? Just about anyone with a "normal paying" job who was buying the home and had no intention of "flipping" it. Why? Because "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" never had a sound basis for thinking their wages would "balloon" in proportion to their payment balloon or that their earning would "balloon" when the interest rate on that balloon loan most certainly would.

Why people who have no business going to college or buying expensive homes do so rather than following sound financial approaches to managing their lives is anyone's guess. The fact of the matter is that even though "everyone" is telling one "come this way, it'll be great," if one knows there's a "ravine" that one must cross when "going that way" and one doesn't know whether one can or cannot hurdle it, one is well advised to take the longer, slower route that forces one to go around the "ravine" because at least one knows by doing so, one will eventually get to the other side of the "ravine."

But hey, that's my approach to evaluating high risk propositions that I don't absolutely have to undertake. Obviously, individuals are free to assume or not assume risk in accordance with their own extent of risk aversion. I'm not of a mind to tell people what to do in that regard. I'm the guy who says, "Here are the choices. Here are their impacts," and then asks, "What is your decision?"

(And don't try telling me that lenders don't tell people what the impacts are. They do. The impacts are written in "black and white" for every loan anyone ever agreed to take. Yes, it's a "wall of text" one must read, but when it's my financial future that's on the line, I'm sure going to read every damn word of it before I "sign on the dotted line." Others, at their discretion, may choose not to.)

Note:

1. I understand quite well why we bailed out the banks in 2008-2010. Even understanding the huge collapse that would have resulted had we not bailed them out, I still would not have bailed them out. I'd have chosen the very painful path of "drawing the line and biting the bullet." It would have been utterly calamitous for everyone, but "everyone" would also never let such a or similar thing happen again.

While in theory I agree with your post, operationally I do not.

That is what the whole, "college conspiracy," is all about. Schools and the establishment only propagate one point of view.

ALL kids are brain washed since a very early age that their only way to have a piece of the American dream is via college.

A greater percentage of kids DO NOT fully comprehend the ramifications of their student loan contracts, they believe they have no other choice. All of your posts in this thread have been to convince me of that fact; that if kids want to have a chance at the good life, they need to sign these contracts. They are too immature to make these decisions that will impact their lives for decades after they sign these contracts. It's wonderful that this discussion has come full circle to the point where you are now telling me that students should beware before they sign these contracts. Funny. Before you were telling me how essential it was to get an education. You can't have both, you really can't. The poor either need to accept the brainwashing, or refuse the slavery of these loan contracts.

These are predatory laws and contracts that take advantage of those who do not understand how the system works. Naturally, you are correct, terms and conditions are clearly laid out, but implications are not understood by the kids who sign on to them. You are being disingenuous if you do not acknowledge this.

As you and I both have been to University, we have both read Plato, we understand this. We know the conditions from which, and under how the different mentalities of the different social strata operate. I not only understand it, but have lived in it. I am not interested in the legalese. You can lawyer this all you want, I am not interested in that. I am only interested in the ethics. If you set up a system to take advantage of those who are the weakest, slowest, and least capable, then surely none of us should be surprised by increasing wealth, opportunity, and educational concentration.

Hell, my friends think I am crazy when I read all the TOS and EULA of websites and Video games. Most middle class folks don't even read that stuff. No one knows what FB and Google has of rights to your data. I usually do, though they change those terms with freighting regularity.

I agree with your position on the banks. It is patently unfair what we did for the banks, yet we do not do the same for America's poor and middle class. It's criminal.

We have de facto two sets of laws which exist in this nation, but this is no different than has existed in every other civilization in throughout history. In this nation, we only give lip service to equality of opportunity. If it weren't, we wouldn't have folks from the same families running for President and Congress, and massive corporations entangled with family foundations monopolizing the nation for centuries with help from the government.

And please, don't get me wrong, I DO see your POV. I am not saying that this is the absolutely true for every poor and middle class person. If you honestly do not believe the system is encouraging folks that don't belong at college and University because Universities have become for profit businesses and because banks have been profiting off of this scam, by all means, keep this up. You won't convince me of that. We have too many degree and not enough jobs for those degrees, IN SOME FIELDS.

In others, your position is true. However, I don't think you will find schools telling kids this truth.

The fact is, the establishment isn't keeping up with trends because it is more concerned with profits.
The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK

Can the economy absorb more college-educated workers?

Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/r...here-the-jobs-are-and-the-college-grads-arent

What a load of crap.

As usual, thanks for your well thought out critical analysis.

 

[Unkotare]

Let me be clear. Over the course of my three primary posts in this thread, I've multiple times tacitly or explicitly asked you several questions you've refused to address directly.

• Why is someone of fairly or very limited means (middle class or lower, economically) and aiming to go into a modestly-paid profession taking out loans so they can attend a pricey school when there are plenty of less costly schools they could instead attend?
  • These colleges offer the best bang for your buck
    
  • Best Value Colleges 2017: 300 Schools Worth The Investment
    • Chart -- Best Value Colleges 2017: The 300 Schools Worth The Investment
• Why is those individuals' bad judgment something that should be considered a "national problem?"
• How does the conspiracy model you're advancing account for the tens of thousands of low to middle income kids who take out comparatively modest college loans and pay them back on time
• What is your solution to the problem?

What I haven't asked at all, and perhaps I should is this: is it your expectation that college should be free?

Ahh. . . . .

Well, since you didn't come at me with a "Wall of Text," this time, and you have offered some fairly reasonable questions for both members and non-members to read quickly for a thought provoking analysis of this issue, I will gladly answer your issue from the POV of both someone who has lived with the poor and those in poverty, and who also understands market economics from the Austrian perspective. (i.e., simple supply and demand w/o central bankers socializing risk for big bankers.)

1) First, I will agree with you, that the video does tend to cherry pick worst case scenario's, and the information in it is rather dated. That said, the experiences in them tend to be quite common. Even for folks that go to state schools, costs can quite quickly get out of control and prevent millennials from buying homes, having weddings, and starting families. None of them can afford vacations or investments like their parents used to. I'm sorry you live in an alternate universe and are not aware of this.

2) Next, not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple. Our society encourages across the board attendance because it is good for the financial sector. America's Skilled Trades Dilemma: Shortages Loom As Most-In-Demand Group Of Workers Ages
and
Are skilled trades doomed to decline?

3) Naturally you are correct. I am not suggesting that everyone doesn't pay back their loans or that the system doesn't work all the time. What I am saying is that the system is fundamentally broken. The inflationary cost of education is outpacing everything else except for healthcare. Whenever the government gets involved in something, market prices get distorted. We have long made the assumption that everyone is college material. Instead, we need to reform high-school and teach the necessary skills in high-school, or encourage graduates to get training for appropriate career skills that aren't related to advanced degrees. Instead, we are using kids as tools for market manipulation.
How The $1.2 Trillion College Debt Crisis Is Crippling Students, Parents And The Economy

4) Get the federal government out of education. Get it out of k-12 education, get it out of University education. For the first century of this nation's existence our government had nothing to do with education or research and it enabled us to become the most powerful nation on earth. Then the government intervened and started manipulating the population, dumbing them down, using them as an economic and political tools, rather than having the population be the master of the government.

not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple.

I have no problem with "everyone being encouraged to go to college." The message "going to college and performing well can open doors to higher paying jobs" is not inaccurate. The problem is that people hear what they want to hear and don't hear what they don't want to hear or don't like hearing. In the preceding statement, "and performing well" gets heard as "getting a degree."

The run-up to the housing collapse of 2008 provides another example. [1] That a lender to "Mary and Joe Normal Earner" said, "Oh, yes, we'll loan you $600K with no money down and an interest rate that "balloons" (or worse, a "principal balloon") in seven years," never meant that "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" were making a wise choice in taking the goddamned loan.

That financing arrangement was good for investors whose plan it was to "flip" that house just before the "ballooning point," take their gain from the appreciation in the property's value and move on. There are other buyers for whom such a loan might have been suitable. For whom was it a terrible deal? Just about anyone with a "normal paying" job who was buying the home and had no intention of "flipping" it. Why? Because "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" never had a sound basis for thinking their wages would "balloon" in proportion to their payment balloon or that their earning would "balloon" when the interest rate on that balloon loan most certainly would.

Why people who have no business going to college or buying expensive homes do so rather than following sound financial approaches to managing their lives is anyone's guess. The fact of the matter is that even though "everyone" is telling one "come this way, it'll be great," if one knows there's a "ravine" that one must cross when "going that way" and one doesn't know whether one can or cannot hurdle it, one is well advised to take the longer, slower route that forces one to go around the "ravine" because at least one knows by doing so, one will eventually get to the other side of the "ravine."

But hey, that's my approach to evaluating high risk propositions that I don't absolutely have to undertake. Obviously, individuals are free to assume or not assume risk in accordance with their own extent of risk aversion. I'm not of a mind to tell people what to do in that regard. I'm the guy who says, "Here are the choices. Here are their impacts," and then asks, "What is your decision?"

(And don't try telling me that lenders don't tell people what the impacts are. They do. The impacts are written in "black and white" for every loan anyone ever agreed to take. Yes, it's a "wall of text" one must read, but when it's my financial future that's on the line, I'm sure going to read every damn word of it before I "sign on the dotted line." Others, at their discretion, may choose not to.)

Note:

1. I understand quite well why we bailed out the banks in 2008-2010. Even understanding the huge collapse that would have resulted had we not bailed them out, I still would not have bailed them out. I'd have chosen the very painful path of "drawing the line and biting the bullet." It would have been utterly calamitous for everyone, but "everyone" would also never let such a or similar thing happen again.

While in theory I agree with your post, operationally I do not.

That is what the whole, "college conspiracy," is all about. Schools and the establishment only propagate one point of view.

ALL kids are brain washed since a very early age that their only way to have a piece of the American dream is via college.

A greater percentage of kids DO NOT fully comprehend the ramifications of their student loan contracts, they believe they have no other choice. All of your posts in this thread have been to convince me of that fact; that if kids want to have a chance at the good life, they need to sign these contracts. They are too immature to make these decisions that will impact their lives for decades after they sign these contracts. It's wonderful that this discussion has come full circle to the point where you are now telling me that students should beware before they sign these contracts. Funny. Before you were telling me how essential it was to get an education. You can't have both, you really can't. The poor either need to accept the brainwashing, or refuse the slavery of these loan contracts.

These are predatory laws and contracts that take advantage of those who do not understand how the system works. Naturally, you are correct, terms and conditions are clearly laid out, but implications are not understood by the kids who sign on to them. You are being disingenuous if you do not acknowledge this.

As you and I both have been to University, we have both read Plato, we understand this. We know the conditions from which, and under how the different mentalities of the different social strata operate. I not only understand it, but have lived in it. I am not interested in the legalese. You can lawyer this all you want, I am not interested in that. I am only interested in the ethics. If you set up a system to take advantage of those who are the weakest, slowest, and least capable, then surely none of us should be surprised by increasing wealth, opportunity, and educational concentration.

Hell, my friends think I am crazy when I read all the TOS and EULA of websites and Video games. Most middle class folks don't even read that stuff. No one knows what FB and Google has of rights to your data. I usually do, though they change those terms with freighting regularity.

I agree with your position on the banks. It is patently unfair what we did for the banks, yet we do not do the same for America's poor and middle class. It's criminal.

We have de facto two sets of laws which exist in this nation, but this is no different than has existed in every other civilization in throughout history. In this nation, we only give lip service to equality of opportunity. If it weren't, we wouldn't have folks from the same families running for President and Congress, and massive corporations entangled with family foundations monopolizing the nation for centuries with help from the government.

And please, don't get me wrong, I DO see your POV. I am not saying that this is the absolutely true for every poor and middle class person. If you honestly do not believe the system is encouraging folks that don't belong at college and University because Universities have become for profit businesses and because banks have been profiting off of this scam, by all means, keep this up. You won't convince me of that. We have too many degree and not enough jobs for those degrees, IN SOME FIELDS.

In others, your position is true. However, I don't think you will find schools telling kids this truth.

The fact is, the establishment isn't keeping up with trends because it is more concerned with profits.
The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK

Can the economy absorb more college-educated workers?

Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/r...here-the-jobs-are-and-the-college-grads-arent

What a load of crap.

As usual, thanks for your well thought out critical analysis.

As usual, thanks for the endless pile of rubbish. Someone freely entering into a loan agreement for something they value highly is not a "boo-hop, poor, stupid me!" victim. They are adults making decisions, and not helpless, "brainwashed" little babies. Cut the crap.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Ahh. . . . .

Well, since you didn't come at me with a "Wall of Text," this time, and you have offered some fairly reasonable questions for both members and non-members to read quickly for a thought provoking analysis of this issue, I will gladly answer your issue from the POV of both someone who has lived with the poor and those in poverty, and who also understands market economics from the Austrian perspective. (i.e., simple supply and demand w/o central bankers socializing risk for big bankers.)

1) First, I will agree with you, that the video does tend to cherry pick worst case scenario's, and the information in it is rather dated. That said, the experiences in them tend to be quite common. Even for folks that go to state schools, costs can quite quickly get out of control and prevent millennials from buying homes, having weddings, and starting families. None of them can afford vacations or investments like their parents used to. I'm sorry you live in an alternate universe and are not aware of this.

2) Next, not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple. Our society encourages across the board attendance because it is good for the financial sector. America's Skilled Trades Dilemma: Shortages Loom As Most-In-Demand Group Of Workers Ages
and
Are skilled trades doomed to decline?

3) Naturally you are correct. I am not suggesting that everyone doesn't pay back their loans or that the system doesn't work all the time. What I am saying is that the system is fundamentally broken. The inflationary cost of education is outpacing everything else except for healthcare. Whenever the government gets involved in something, market prices get distorted. We have long made the assumption that everyone is college material. Instead, we need to reform high-school and teach the necessary skills in high-school, or encourage graduates to get training for appropriate career skills that aren't related to advanced degrees. Instead, we are using kids as tools for market manipulation.
How The $1.2 Trillion College Debt Crisis Is Crippling Students, Parents And The Economy

4) Get the federal government out of education. Get it out of k-12 education, get it out of University education. For the first century of this nation's existence our government had nothing to do with education or research and it enabled us to become the most powerful nation on earth. Then the government intervened and started manipulating the population, dumbing them down, using them as an economic and political tools, rather than having the population be the master of the government.

not everyone should be encouraged to take out loans and go to college, plane and simple.

I have no problem with "everyone being encouraged to go to college." The message "going to college and performing well can open doors to higher paying jobs" is not inaccurate. The problem is that people hear what they want to hear and don't hear what they don't want to hear or don't like hearing. In the preceding statement, "and performing well" gets heard as "getting a degree."

The run-up to the housing collapse of 2008 provides another example. [1] That a lender to "Mary and Joe Normal Earner" said, "Oh, yes, we'll loan you $600K with no money down and an interest rate that "balloons" (or worse, a "principal balloon") in seven years," never meant that "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" were making a wise choice in taking the goddamned loan.

That financing arrangement was good for investors whose plan it was to "flip" that house just before the "ballooning point," take their gain from the appreciation in the property's value and move on. There are other buyers for whom such a loan might have been suitable. For whom was it a terrible deal? Just about anyone with a "normal paying" job who was buying the home and had no intention of "flipping" it. Why? Because "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" never had a sound basis for thinking their wages would "balloon" in proportion to their payment balloon or that their earning would "balloon" when the interest rate on that balloon loan most certainly would.

Why people who have no business going to college or buying expensive homes do so rather than following sound financial approaches to managing their lives is anyone's guess. The fact of the matter is that even though "everyone" is telling one "come this way, it'll be great," if one knows there's a "ravine" that one must cross when "going that way" and one doesn't know whether one can or cannot hurdle it, one is well advised to take the longer, slower route that forces one to go around the "ravine" because at least one knows by doing so, one will eventually get to the other side of the "ravine."

But hey, that's my approach to evaluating high risk propositions that I don't absolutely have to undertake. Obviously, individuals are free to assume or not assume risk in accordance with their own extent of risk aversion. I'm not of a mind to tell people what to do in that regard. I'm the guy who says, "Here are the choices. Here are their impacts," and then asks, "What is your decision?"

(And don't try telling me that lenders don't tell people what the impacts are. They do. The impacts are written in "black and white" for every loan anyone ever agreed to take. Yes, it's a "wall of text" one must read, but when it's my financial future that's on the line, I'm sure going to read every damn word of it before I "sign on the dotted line." Others, at their discretion, may choose not to.)

Note:

1. I understand quite well why we bailed out the banks in 2008-2010. Even understanding the huge collapse that would have resulted had we not bailed them out, I still would not have bailed them out. I'd have chosen the very painful path of "drawing the line and biting the bullet." It would have been utterly calamitous for everyone, but "everyone" would also never let such a or similar thing happen again.

While in theory I agree with your post, operationally I do not.

That is what the whole, "college conspiracy," is all about. Schools and the establishment only propagate one point of view.

ALL kids are brain washed since a very early age that their only way to have a piece of the American dream is via college.

A greater percentage of kids DO NOT fully comprehend the ramifications of their student loan contracts, they believe they have no other choice. All of your posts in this thread have been to convince me of that fact; that if kids want to have a chance at the good life, they need to sign these contracts. They are too immature to make these decisions that will impact their lives for decades after they sign these contracts. It's wonderful that this discussion has come full circle to the point where you are now telling me that students should beware before they sign these contracts. Funny. Before you were telling me how essential it was to get an education. You can't have both, you really can't. The poor either need to accept the brainwashing, or refuse the slavery of these loan contracts.

These are predatory laws and contracts that take advantage of those who do not understand how the system works. Naturally, you are correct, terms and conditions are clearly laid out, but implications are not understood by the kids who sign on to them. You are being disingenuous if you do not acknowledge this.

As you and I both have been to University, we have both read Plato, we understand this. We know the conditions from which, and under how the different mentalities of the different social strata operate. I not only understand it, but have lived in it. I am not interested in the legalese. You can lawyer this all you want, I am not interested in that. I am only interested in the ethics. If you set up a system to take advantage of those who are the weakest, slowest, and least capable, then surely none of us should be surprised by increasing wealth, opportunity, and educational concentration.

Hell, my friends think I am crazy when I read all the TOS and EULA of websites and Video games. Most middle class folks don't even read that stuff. No one knows what FB and Google has of rights to your data. I usually do, though they change those terms with freighting regularity.

I agree with your position on the banks. It is patently unfair what we did for the banks, yet we do not do the same for America's poor and middle class. It's criminal.

We have de facto two sets of laws which exist in this nation, but this is no different than has existed in every other civilization in throughout history. In this nation, we only give lip service to equality of opportunity. If it weren't, we wouldn't have folks from the same families running for President and Congress, and massive corporations entangled with family foundations monopolizing the nation for centuries with help from the government.

And please, don't get me wrong, I DO see your POV. I am not saying that this is the absolutely true for every poor and middle class person. If you honestly do not believe the system is encouraging folks that don't belong at college and University because Universities have become for profit businesses and because banks have been profiting off of this scam, by all means, keep this up. You won't convince me of that. We have too many degree and not enough jobs for those degrees, IN SOME FIELDS.

In others, your position is true. However, I don't think you will find schools telling kids this truth.

The fact is, the establishment isn't keeping up with trends because it is more concerned with profits.
The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK

Can the economy absorb more college-educated workers?

Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/r...here-the-jobs-are-and-the-college-grads-arent

What a load of crap.

As usual, thanks for your well thought out critical analysis.

As usual, thanks for the endless pile of rubbish. Someone freely entering into a loan agreement for something they value highly is not a "boo-hop, poor, stupid me!" victim. They are adults making decisions, and not helpless, "brainwashed" little babies. Cut the crap.

Cut the crap.

FWIW, though I share your sentiment re: "brainwashed," I wouldn't call all of what MisterBeale has presented "crap." For instance, his assertion that college isn't the right path for everyone is accurate. There is, however, a conspiratorial theme that underlies his "storyline" and I simply do not agree with that. I have seen no evidence that there is, on the part of the actors he's identified, a collaborative, willful and concerted effort to undermine the futures of young Americans who are not "to the manor born."


Were I to identify any single problem with our current education-to-work model, it's that it's currently structured to provide largely only via post-secondary education the KSAs needed to obtain the "regular good jobs." Complicating matters is the fact that employers these days demand a greater level and different genre of skills than they did prior to the 1980s and before. Quite simply, the bar has risen, and no longer is it so that "everything one really needs to know is taught in high school."

The reason I see the aforementioned disconnect as problematic is that until the 21st century, one could obtain in high school the highly demanded KSAs that allowed one to obtain a job that paid a "livable wage." These days, high schools do not. Why not? I suspect because in crush to simply graduate students, they have refrained from raising the bar defining the minimum requirements to graduate from high school. In other words, while businesses have raised the bar for prospective employees, school systems have not done the same. Thus industry's demands and the what our K-12 education system offers are not well aligned. The result is that one must enroll in a post-secondary institution of some sort: junior college, college/university or trade school.

 

[MisterBeale]

I have no problem with "everyone being encouraged to go to college." The message "going to college and performing well can open doors to higher paying jobs" is not inaccurate. The problem is that people hear what they want to hear and don't hear what they don't want to hear or don't like hearing. In the preceding statement, "and performing well" gets heard as "getting a degree."

The run-up to the housing collapse of 2008 provides another example. [1] That a lender to "Mary and Joe Normal Earner" said, "Oh, yes, we'll loan you $600K with no money down and an interest rate that "balloons" (or worse, a "principal balloon") in seven years," never meant that "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" were making a wise choice in taking the goddamned loan.

That financing arrangement was good for investors whose plan it was to "flip" that house just before the "ballooning point," take their gain from the appreciation in the property's value and move on. There are other buyers for whom such a loan might have been suitable. For whom was it a terrible deal? Just about anyone with a "normal paying" job who was buying the home and had no intention of "flipping" it. Why? Because "Mr. and Mrs. Normal Earner" never had a sound basis for thinking their wages would "balloon" in proportion to their payment balloon or that their earning would "balloon" when the interest rate on that balloon loan most certainly would.

Why people who have no business going to college or buying expensive homes do so rather than following sound financial approaches to managing their lives is anyone's guess. The fact of the matter is that even though "everyone" is telling one "come this way, it'll be great," if one knows there's a "ravine" that one must cross when "going that way" and one doesn't know whether one can or cannot hurdle it, one is well advised to take the longer, slower route that forces one to go around the "ravine" because at least one knows by doing so, one will eventually get to the other side of the "ravine."

But hey, that's my approach to evaluating high risk propositions that I don't absolutely have to undertake. Obviously, individuals are free to assume or not assume risk in accordance with their own extent of risk aversion. I'm not of a mind to tell people what to do in that regard. I'm the guy who says, "Here are the choices. Here are their impacts," and then asks, "What is your decision?"

(And don't try telling me that lenders don't tell people what the impacts are. They do. The impacts are written in "black and white" for every loan anyone ever agreed to take. Yes, it's a "wall of text" one must read, but when it's my financial future that's on the line, I'm sure going to read every damn word of it before I "sign on the dotted line." Others, at their discretion, may choose not to.)

Note:

1. I understand quite well why we bailed out the banks in 2008-2010. Even understanding the huge collapse that would have resulted had we not bailed them out, I still would not have bailed them out. I'd have chosen the very painful path of "drawing the line and biting the bullet." It would have been utterly calamitous for everyone, but "everyone" would also never let such a or similar thing happen again.

While in theory I agree with your post, operationally I do not.

That is what the whole, "college conspiracy," is all about. Schools and the establishment only propagate one point of view.

ALL kids are brain washed since a very early age that their only way to have a piece of the American dream is via college.

A greater percentage of kids DO NOT fully comprehend the ramifications of their student loan contracts, they believe they have no other choice. All of your posts in this thread have been to convince me of that fact; that if kids want to have a chance at the good life, they need to sign these contracts. They are too immature to make these decisions that will impact their lives for decades after they sign these contracts. It's wonderful that this discussion has come full circle to the point where you are now telling me that students should beware before they sign these contracts. Funny. Before you were telling me how essential it was to get an education. You can't have both, you really can't. The poor either need to accept the brainwashing, or refuse the slavery of these loan contracts.

These are predatory laws and contracts that take advantage of those who do not understand how the system works. Naturally, you are correct, terms and conditions are clearly laid out, but implications are not understood by the kids who sign on to them. You are being disingenuous if you do not acknowledge this.

As you and I both have been to University, we have both read Plato, we understand this. We know the conditions from which, and under how the different mentalities of the different social strata operate. I not only understand it, but have lived in it. I am not interested in the legalese. You can lawyer this all you want, I am not interested in that. I am only interested in the ethics. If you set up a system to take advantage of those who are the weakest, slowest, and least capable, then surely none of us should be surprised by increasing wealth, opportunity, and educational concentration.

Hell, my friends think I am crazy when I read all the TOS and EULA of websites and Video games. Most middle class folks don't even read that stuff. No one knows what FB and Google has of rights to your data. I usually do, though they change those terms with freighting regularity.

I agree with your position on the banks. It is patently unfair what we did for the banks, yet we do not do the same for America's poor and middle class. It's criminal.

We have de facto two sets of laws which exist in this nation, but this is no different than has existed in every other civilization in throughout history. In this nation, we only give lip service to equality of opportunity. If it weren't, we wouldn't have folks from the same families running for President and Congress, and massive corporations entangled with family foundations monopolizing the nation for centuries with help from the government.

And please, don't get me wrong, I DO see your POV. I am not saying that this is the absolutely true for every poor and middle class person. If you honestly do not believe the system is encouraging folks that don't belong at college and University because Universities have become for profit businesses and because banks have been profiting off of this scam, by all means, keep this up. You won't convince me of that. We have too many degree and not enough jobs for those degrees, IN SOME FIELDS.

In others, your position is true. However, I don't think you will find schools telling kids this truth.

The fact is, the establishment isn't keeping up with trends because it is more concerned with profits.
The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK

Can the economy absorb more college-educated workers?

Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/r...here-the-jobs-are-and-the-college-grads-arent

What a load of crap.

As usual, thanks for your well thought out critical analysis.

As usual, thanks for the endless pile of rubbish. Someone freely entering into a loan agreement for something they value highly is not a "boo-hop, poor, stupid me!" victim. They are adults making decisions, and not helpless, "brainwashed" little babies. Cut the crap.

Cut the crap.

FWIW, though I share your sentiment re: "brainwashed," I wouldn't call all of what MisterBeale has presented "crap." For instance, his assertion that college isn't the right path for everyone is accurate. There is, however, a conspiratorial theme that underlies his "storyline" and I simply do not agree with that. I have seen no evidence that there is, on the part of the actors he's identified, a collaborative, willful and concerted effort to undermine the futures of young Americans who are not "to the manor born."


Were I to identify any single problem with our current education-to-work model, it's that it's currently structured to provide largely only via post-secondary education the KSAs needed to obtain the "regular good jobs." Complicating matters is the fact that employers these days demand a greater level and different genre of skills than they did prior to the 1980s and before. Quite simply, the bar has risen, and no longer is it so that "everything one really needs to know is taught in high school."

The reason I see the aforementioned disconnect as problematic is that until the 21st century, one could obtain in high school the highly demanded KSAs that allowed one to obtain a job that paid a "livable wage." These days, high schools do not. Why not? I suspect because in crush to simply graduate students, they have refrained from raising the bar defining the minimum requirements to graduate from high school. In other words, while businesses have raised the bar for prospective employees, school systems have not done the same. Thus industry's demands and the what our K-12 education system offers are not well aligned. The result is that one must enroll in a post-secondary institution of some sort: junior college, college/university or trade school.

With that post, I can mostly agree.

However, where we depart in our agreement, and where I see the collusion between the financial world, big education, and the government, is the emphasis placed on kids to focus exclusively on college to the exclusion of trade schools, and the current restructuring of high schools that make kids unprepared for life and ready to enter the market once they graduate. They seem unready for anything other than post-secondary education at anything other than a college or junior college. Or at least, that seems to be the purpose for most high schools. Encourage consumption and encourage kids to take on loans to go to college.

A good percentage of these kids shouldn't even be going to college.

http://www.users.humboldt.edu/jwpowell/27806948-Dumbing-Us-Down-by-John-Taylor-Gatto.pdf

 

[Dragonlady]

According to PEW, the majority of Republicans think college is bad for America. Getting rid of those who benefited from DACA means tossing away nurses, engineers, entrepreneurs, not to mention thousands in the military. Republicans have this fantastical idea that once they leave jobs will magically open up for those who have no education nor skills.

There are 6 million jobs available right now that can't be filled because of a lack of skills. Republicans, instead of being jealous and coveting what others have, you need to make your own. That's the only way it works.

4 Years Later: Lives Built By DACA at Risk in 2016 Elections

Once approved, she was able to work as a teaching assistant while pursuing a master's degree in engineering. After graduating in June 2014, she moved back to Arizona and now works as a project engineer.

Her husband Juan Amaya is also a DACA recipient and an engineer. The Phoenix couple recently became parents and purchased a home.

--------------------

See what I mean? Like I said, Republicans don't believe in education. The majority think college is bad for America.

The majority of Republicans say colleges are bad for America (yes, really)

Remember, in Bible, you aren't supposed to "covet" what isn't yours. Instead of 6 million unfilled jobs because of a lack of skills, it will be 7 million. And the Business community is going to love that (snicker).

My kid will either have a tech. certification or marketable associates degree before he graduates high school.

He understands that the corruption coming out of the federal government, intertwining the federal student aid and loan program have encouraged the debt folks take on in this nation and have caused higher education cost to be ludicrously over priced and out of touch with their true cost to benefits.

Every kid needs to watch this documentary entering High School.



The fact is, many illegals get free rides, while citizens get piled on with huge debt.

No social security number? No ability of the FED or credit agencies to put you into a life time of debt, eh? Sure doesn't seem fair for the rest of us.

If they broke the law, they need to be shipped out.

You need to get that critical theory brainwashing outta your head.

The brainwashing is right wingers thinking that deporting the undocumented immigrants is going to magically improve job potentials, decrease social spending, and lower their taxes. It won't. If anything their costs are going to go up.

All of the work currently being done for cheap by undocumented workers, is either not going to be done (like picking crops), or it's going to cost you a whole lot more.

Currently, those undocumented workers working under phoney green cards and SS numbers have the same withholding taxes as legal citizens, but can't apply for government benefits, so their taxes are paid, with no benefits. Once their tax dollars dry up, Americans will have to make up the shortfall.

With 11 million people taken out of the economy and no longer buying food, clothing, cars and shelter, demand for these and other consumer goods will decline, as will the GDP.

But keep believing that things will be better for you when you get rid of 11 million illegals.