And this is where we lose track of the original topic. I was responding to the USA having the best system. When you have to take a very large, very serious risk (with increasingly poor payout) to get a higher education in the states, but very little risk, comparatively, to go to a college which is damn near as good in Germany or a similar country, can you still claim that the American system is better?
Yes, it is possible to have a society that is basically capitalist and democratic and still be poor or unbalanced or whatever term you want to use. Yes, that is possible. No, I would not say that such a society cannot be improved.
Are 17/18 year olds capable of making sound risk/reward decisions, especially when they’ve been convinced by parents/guidance counselors/peers that taking out student loans to major in psych is a good decision?
Should adults be responsible for their own decisions? Of course not.
The government will assign you your major, based on what they expect will be the fields needing workers. Upon graduation, you will be assigned to the city where you will work and the position you will fill. You will continue to work there, until you are told where to move next to fill a different job.
If you are saying we should forgive the debt, I hope you are at least also saying we should not allow such debt to accrue in the future lest we have to repeat the forgiveness of further bad debt.
Another misunderstanding Libertarians have is their belief that the right of property trumps every other right (except maybe the right to self-defense). They figure every conflict can be resolved by determining who owns the property involved and deciding in that party’s favor. And they believe everyone will agree that this is the right decision.
But many non-Libertarians feel that other rights like, for example, the right to free speech or right to assemble or right of free movement are at least as important (and in some cases more important) than the right to property.
So, we are done, then, discussing the value of higher education and the access to it, what with the GI Bill, and all that? Would that be conceding my point, or hoping I will allow you to ignore it?
First of all, I want to address one of my main problems with libertarian philosophy: it has little protection for victims of coercion and deception. It’s a “fool me once, shame on me” mentality - if you’re convinced when you’re in high school in 2006 that you can go to college, go in to debt, and it’s okay because you’ll have a job when you get out (and the statistics indicate you will), and then the economy goes down the shitter… that’s harsh. Especially when a libertarian comes along and tells you your situation is all your fault because you took a bad risk and made a terrible life decision.
Now who should step in and solve this? You seem to think I think it has to be the government. I think the government could be a major part of the solution, but not the whole solution.
Problems: ballooning education costs (and thus student loans), high unemployment among young people
Underlying causes: greater demand for college (brought on by the decline of blue-collar jobs in America and the glorification of college and white-collar jobs by parents and educators), the recession which caused unemployment and hiring freezes
Potential solutions for current problems: This is the tough one. Increase forbearance (with a freeze on accruing interest) until unemployed grad gets a job, hiring tax credits targeted at hiring new grads. Lower interest rates on student debt (Wells Fargo did this voluntarily)
Potential ways to prevent this from happening in the future: reduce education costs (possibly by a shift toward vocational/trade schools coupled with infrastructure spending), increased regulations on student loans (which are basically a racket), increase federal loan programs, prevent the economy from getting fucked up again by Wall Street and anyone else with the potential to fuck it up through human error
Not potential solutions: forbidding students from picking “useless” majors, means-testing for college loans
Ah you are right, I misread it initially. My apologies for the misread, it was not intentional.
In regards to your question, I am not sure at the moment I would consider the a sufficiently large difference in opporutnity to be unfair or unbalanced. I suppose I’d need to at least understand what exactly we mean by the phrase “difference in opportunity.” If I knew what at least this involved, I’d probably be in a better position to answer your question.
If, however, we are merely discussing a numerical value, such as person X has more opportunities than person Y, then I likely do not agree. I think more would have to be taken into consideration, such as how those opportunity differences came into existence, but I do not think a mere difference in numbers renders it unfair or unbalanced.
I am not so concerned about the CEO of SP500 making a lot of money and sure they are making more money compared front line workers than they used to but American wages have been depressed by foreign labor in a way that foreign CEO compensation has not.
I am concerned with teh WAY our CEOs get paid, They are being paid in a way that encourages gaming stock prices, taking really big risks and lying about how much money the company made.
The treatment of carried interest is a glaring case of inequity but after Chuck Schumer’s donors told him to shut up about it, it hasn’t gone anywhere.
On taxes, we will never keep any system simple.
On bailouts, they will occur so it is better to regulate and collect insurance premiums on teh front end rather than on the back end.
So assymetrical information doesn’t bother you?
I think there is at least some evidence of this.
You want to stop congress from making a simple tax system complicated? First you would have to simplify the real world and then get congressmen to not screw with the tax code once you have is simplified. Good luck with that.
Well, you posited that the student had access to the most important adult advice he can get-- that of his parents and his school councilors. I also think it’s a fallacy that there are all these adults out there telling kids they will be guaranteed a job if they go to college. Any kid who thinks otherwise is an idiot, and doesn’t have some mean old adult to blame for thinking that.
I don’t know what you think. That’s why I asked.
I don’t see how those actually solve the problem other than shifting the burden onto someone else. Banks aren’t going to take a hit without trying to make up for it with other fees or costs put on other customers. And is there any evidence that a short-term tax cut for new college grads is going to do anything but undercut the ability of “old” college grads to compete in the job market?
John Mace, are you familiar with The Market for Lemons? Are lemon laws a good thing? They protect consumers from information asymmetry. Or is that burdensome regulation?
Some college educations have essentially become lemons.
I wouldn’t quite go that far. But I will say that a bubble phenomenon that was seen in recent years in tech stocks and real estate might be happening now to higher education. In these situations, where even in a crash you might need an education or a home to live in, the best response is to keep your own investment conservative, your debt manageable, and your expectations reasonable.
Except that college education doesn’t meet the first criteria for such lemon markets:
And, even if it were a lemon market, lemon laws as applied to colleges would make the college refund money for a bad education. It would not hold the lender responsible. Is that what you want?
Therefore, you would presumably not respond to OWS protesters by simply saying “hey, we have capitalism and democracy, things must be fair by definition”. Which is what the original point of this thread was.