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Comment by torstenvl | Hacker News Reader

Seems like you're victim-blaming. Do you really think a 17-year-old has the capacity to sort through the wrong career guidance?

This problem is emphatically not of the students' own making. It's on the teachers and guidance counselors who insist on a college degree at any cost and brook no disagreement.

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If you don't believe a 17 year old has the capacity, then perhaps the federal government shouldn't be giving him a subsidized student loan of that size. Private institutions would decide and charge the appropriate rate based on risk. Private organizations often do this and loans from Sofi or others are often below the federal rate, which creates a perverse selection bias where federal loans are the most likely to have issues.

I do actually since when I was 17 I got advice by all my teachers, parents, etc to go into something that pays. Also it's just common sense that you need money to pay your bills, therefore you need a job that is in demand.

The part of the brain responsible for critical reasoning about consequences isn't fully developed until 25 (see: car rental company age limits). Also, congrats on your strong support system! A lot of people don't have that, and you can't form public policy based on your sole experience.

Ok, so he can now study something that pays and then pay off his debt. Nobody forced him to take loans.

I paid for my own education in the US, and I worked while studying. It wasn't easy, but I recognized the value of money.

I'm not even sure what your argument is for. Do you want us to pitch in for his bad financial decisions? Why don't you pay him from your checking account, show us how it's done?

> I paid for my own education in the US, and I worked while studying. It wasn't easy, but I recognized the value of money.

A single anecdote holds no value for broad policy decisions.

> I'm not even sure what your argument is for. Do you want us to pitch in for his bad financial decisions? Why don't you pay him from your checking account, show us how it's done?

I financially support candidates who support discharging student loan debt. It's a drag on the US economy, and would provide more financial stimulus than tax cuts for the wealthy.

I assume "discharging student loan debt" is the euphemism for "let the taxpayer pay for that undesirable pile of shit that he chose to study".

That will only worsen the situation - more young people will study shit that's not in demand.

The recently approved $717 billion in defense spending increased military spending by $80 billion dollars, far in excess of what would've been necessary to provide free college to everyone. Hard to argue the moral hazard on education spending when you're firehosing billions of dollars of taxpayer money into a dumpster fire already.

"Those concerns were brushed aside Monday night, as the Senate overwhelmingly approved an $80 billion annual increase in military spending, enough to have fully satisfied Sanders’s campaign promise. Instead, the Senate handed President Donald Trump far more than the $54 billion he asked for. The lavish spending package gives Trump a major legislative victory, allowing him to boast about fulfilling his promise of a “great rebuilding of the armed services.

Or with $80 billion a year, you could make public colleges and universities in the U.S. tuition-free. In fact, Sanders’s proposal was only estimated to cost the federal government $47 billion per year."

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/18/the-senates-military-spe...

Or with $80 billion a year, you could do lots of stuff like have a lower deficit.

Reducing defense spending being good does not mean that using it to discharge bad student loans is the best use.

You can argue all day about the 'best' thing to spend $80bn on, but there's no way the 'defense' budget will be reduced by any meaningful amount for the foreseeable future.

Yeah, and if we redirect $500 of your paycheck to me, I can eat for free. I find it extremely useful. Let's do it!

And yeah, I get what you're saying about the ridiculous military budget, I don't like it either. But can you change it is the real question. If you can't, it's all just a beautiful fantasy.

What qualifies a degree as an "undesirable pile of shit?" Studying English is not at all useless. It definitely provides value to our society and produces people with useful skills applicable across disciplines. Being burdened with student loans pigeon holes great minds into safe jobs that don't make use of their skills.

It's quite simple - if you can't pay off your student debt with the skills you paid for, it's generally undesirable by outside world.

Whether English or history is somewhat useful is irrelevant - pretty much any area of knowledge is. They clearly are not in high demand.

Just because the brain isn't done developing, that doesn't mean you can't start using it when you're a teenager. However, getting an English literature degree is crazy and the only reason a kid would think that was a good idea is if everybody around him lied to him about it.

Not a single person gave me that advice.

From the article, he had a BS and a MA. I guess he decided to double down on "English literature" at age ~21 and take on even more debt.

>I enrolled for an evening class in French at New York's Cooper Union, as that deferred my having to start paying off the debt, and the cost of the new class was cheaper than the monthly repayments I would have to make.

He did, and I'm not sure the best way to educate people that, while actions like this will defer their payments, interest does still accrue (afaik).

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