05-20-2016, 10:08 AM
(05-20-2016, 09:31 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:(05-19-2016, 05:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The troublesome debt is private debt -- not public debt.
Indeed, and it isn't even just Student loans. I am suspicious of all unsecured debt (naturally this would exclude auto loans and mortgages as those are secured with a durable consumer good) and have been debt free for over 10 years. Of course because I'm thrifty I have almost no credit, but I could care less there is very little I wish to buy that I actually need credit for.
Quote:Uncle Sucker (ultimately US taxpayers) could be stuck guaranteeing the student loans to those who attended worthless vocational schools. The bulk of the student loan debt isn't to people who went to first-rate colleges or to modest programs that teach hairdressing or clerical skills; it was to the rip-off institutions that charged students attending suspect 'career training' as if they were attending first-rate schools.
Quite possible, and to liquidate these debts, the federal government would have to take on more public debt because it would have to assume not only the principle but also the interest. This means that the federal government would have to spend all that extra money into existance and financial institutions would seek to put that money to work somewhere--blowing up a bubble somewhere.
We Americans are going to pick up the tab one way or the other. The George W. Bush Administration pushed such education heavily in the belief that such schools would perform miracles. Those schools generally failed badly.
Quote:1. The people watching such shows are either unemployed or have a night-time job and hate it.
As someone who worked overnight for years, if they work at night they aren't watching washday weepers. They are in bed sleeping in a room that has been totally blacked out in some way. I generally reccomend aluminum foil taped to the windows--blue painter's tape works great for this.
So the persons watching such shows are likely unemployed.
Quote:2. People who watch large amounts of daytime television don't generally, and generally have not gone to or are not attending college.
Citation needed.
Quote: (It is a general pattern that well-educated people watch little television anyway). People who watch schlock television -- the sort in which chairs might fly -- are generally close to the low end in intellectual ability, anyway, and are unlikely to do well in any academic setting.
Again citation needed. Talk shows are not my particular cup of tea but it is possible that those with a university degree might find amusement in low brow entertainment. Just because you happen to be a snob doesn't mean everyone else is.
Quote:...The schools got their money up front from the federal government as loans. There was little quality control. The schools had marketing costs as a big part of their expenses. In case you wondered: Harvard University spends little on marketing. It doesn't have to. Neither does the University of Michigan, nor for that matter most state colleges. If you are a Catholic kid of above-average intelligence you know about Notre Dame University and even know what exit to take to it off the Indiana Toll Road. Corinthian Colleges, which owned several of the for-profit educational institutions that have very poor records for their students earning enough to pay off the loans, spent heavily on marketing.
Generally speaking good schools do not need to market they have built-in marketing in the success of their alumni, however this is not always the case. I've hired several bakers who attended Le Cordon Bleu which does advertise on tee-vee (that is a culinary school that works with many 'community colleges') and they were quite highly skilled for just having gotten culinary degrees in pastry work. That being said they are simply not on the level of someone who went to Culinary Institute of America but that institute is incredibly difficult to get into.
Quote:The Obama Administration practically shut those schools down. That was the responsible thing to do. The regulation of college debt is now much tighter.
But not tight enough. The US is one of the few countries that views education as a luxury. Many other developed countries offer school without tuition--particularly to those who need it the most, IE the highly intelligent but poor people. Tuition costs could be lowered even at top level state schools by getting rid of bloated administration, cutting off white elephant projects and reducing the focus on sport to in some schools.
A few comments:
1. Working people are better off with one union card than with one credit card. People with adequate incomes can pay cash for significant purchases. Credit cards were originally designed for people who spend money on legitimate business activities -- like travel on behalf of an employer. That is where American Express, Carte Blanche, and Diner's Club operated in the old days. A traveling salesman from Chicago checking into a motel in Louisville so that he can make a sales call in Louisville isn't going to be hurt with his credit card.
Banks used credit cards to meet the competition of finance companies. Taking an overpriced vacation on a credit card is unwise.
2. Education is worth borrowing for if it makes one a better or more skilled worker. Borrowing a huge amount of money to matriculate through med school makes sense because physicians earn huge incomes. Med school is difficult enough that one does not want a promising physician to waste time on paying work. Borrowing a small amount to become a hairdresser makes sense because one likely gets a job. Getting a bachelor's degree that allows one to be a schoolteacher isn't a bad idea (the sorts of schools that have 'education' as a major are usually inexpensive. One attends the mediocre Western Michigan University, and not the great University of Chicago, to get a teaching degree. But if you attend the University of Chicago, you probably have a very good life awaiting you.
Attending a bad technical school and going into debt as if one were attending a great university but without financial aid is a huge blunder. Even if the blunder is profitable to some entity, it is bad social policy to promote the blunder.
3. You are probably right about most people working night jobs. Some people well fit them because they do not get along well with people. Some people work at night in 24-7 businesses and would hate their jobs if those jobs if they were 9-to-5. But I see no reason to believe that people working night shifts work more hours. They do watch some television. If they are in low-end jobs and have a good reason to be in those low-end jobs (like a lack of skill and limited learning), then I can't imagine them watching recorded concerts of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
4. Television viewing and social-economic-status (SES) have a strong negative correlation. Well-educated people generally have other things to do than watch television, generally a very passive entertainment.
Snob? I can see through what Jerry Springer does. Bring a dysfunctional family to Chicago, let them stay a night in a nice hotel room, let them have some 'gourmet' meals, and bring the family onto the stage to implode.
5. Vocational schools with modest but attainable objectives (as in "become a pastry chef") and modest cost can do their students some good. It's the ones that make big and unsupportable promises that hurt their students and rip off the public.
6. Yes, the United States is the only advanced industrial society that treats formal education as a luxury. Maybe that reflects the heritage of the plantation order that is much of the American political heritage. Nobody needs to do much thinking to do farm labor; indeed, the more that one thinks the more likely he is to seek alternatives to being abused and exploited.
Just to deal with the reality of the disappearance of scarcity as a necessary constraint upon working people Americans are going to need more formal education just to make use of free time. Leisure meant nothing when people worked seventy-hour weeks just to make farm implements. One measure of progress is that people have gone from the 70-hour workweek to the 60-hour workweek, and on down to the 40-hour workweek of the 1930s. For political reasons we are stuck at the 40-hour workweek.
We do not need to make more schlock objects. We need to learn how to make life meaningful. Karl Marx' dream in which productivity makes material fetishes irrelevant is nigh -- even, and maybe especially in, capitalist societies.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.