Old Man Rant, Dagnabbit!

[ZonaBurgh]

Because no one here complains enough about anything, I thought that I'd start this, leaving others to add their current pet peeves.

Today, I got to thinking about the current President's plan to forgive student loans to garner, err, I mean, because he is a great humanitarian and concerned about the debt of his constituents.

Anywho, I considered how we got into this mess in the first place and exactly who is responsible for it. Sure, 18 year old kids aren't very financially savvy, some just plain stupid to take out a loan for a degree that will never be worth anything, but that's not the biggest issue.

I went to college in the early to mid '70's, hence the old man rant. I was fortunate enough to take advantage of the GI bill at the time, it helped greatly in achieving my educational goal,
but I'm getting sidetracked. I went to a state university about 25 miles from home, and in 1974 the tuition and fees for a year ran right around $1,000. Factoring in for inflation, that same $1,000 equates to $6,295 today, so why does that same university now cost $21,080 per year?

Some love to complain about corporate greed and the evils of capitalism, will they also condemn higher education greed? I contend that when the Federal government took control of student loans (mid '90's?) that gave the green light to the Board of Regents/Trustees to jack rates as high as possible, after all, the loans were guaranteed by the Feds and who cares if the degrees are worthless, and leaving students with a lifetime of debt.

Now, I don't believe student debt should be forgiven, because that just a political ploy by the current administration, but I do believe that a metaphorical hanging tree should come into play for those corrupt individuals in our government and academia that caused of all of this. If you can't understand that the people trying to solve this problem are the same people that caused this problem, well, there is no hope for you.

 

[Steeltime]

Zona, in economics we studied the effect of subsidies (third-party payment) on what consumers pay for goods and services. The fact is this: if a customer is willing to pay $500 to fix a dented fender, the customer will pay that $500. When insurance gets involved, the customer still pays the $500 (deductible) but now the body shop can charge $2000 because the third party will pay the other $1500.

That is what happened to college tuition. You and I were willing to pay $1,000 (now valued at $6,295) or $2,300 (now valued at $7,396) per semester for the college education, and students will still pay that price, but pretend the debt incurred to the 3rd party does not exist. The colleges know that a stupid third party (government) will finance the remaining debt and will therefore charge $30,000, $35,000, $40,000 or more for a service for which the customer would be willing to pay maybe $10,000 to $12,000.

History shows that any and all time a third-party provider (be it government or insurance companies) gets involved in "helping" pay the cost, the cost will go up - by A LOT. Look at home repairs, auto repairs, medical care, and college for obvious examples. And as surely as night follows day, the government will propose that the solution to a problem created by government is ... more government.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

To add to what @Steeltime said, essentially the govt created a big pool of money for the colleges to tap into. Therefore they created majors in all kinds of stupid ****, open admissions, and raised tuition to get it. Problem is that the colleges have no skin in the game. They still get paid even if the student never pays the loan back while putting their degree in Gender Studies to use as a barista at Starbucks. My solution is to make student loans zero interest (that's your subsidy) and the colleges are on the hook for whatever their students don't pay back after ten years.

 

[wig]

You solve the problem by making the schools and the banks eat the debt, not the tax payers.

Guess what. Banks will stop lending money REAL quick and schools will have to drop their rates because NOBODY can afford 20 to 100k a year for a stupid degree that leads to no jobs.

Problem solves itself. You want to forgive debt, make the debt holders (banks) forgive it. Not just collect from tax payers.

 

[Djfan]

The whole idea is so well past the libe of rational leadership, that the only legit idea is to throw it, them, etc., in the ocean, and start over. The "leadership" in our culture is garbage, so the ideas are garbage, and the results are garbage.

Don't try to fix garbage. Just throw it out.