I feel a lot of sympathy to kids graduating in this decade in most careers. Tons of debt, ever increasing asset prices, and terrible job market with stagnating wages.
If you don't have rich parents, you are in a terrible spot.
If you don't have rich parents, you are in a terrible spot.
0. https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/us-consumer-price...
Yes I know there are a lot of progressives / young people who were hopeful the current administration would "cancel" their student debt. While the idea that the executive can simply erase a few trillion of gov't owned debt with an executive order was and is legally dubious, I think a lot of folks aren't aware that the administration is, in fact, wiping out almost 10% of their existing student loans per year via inflation.
Meanwhile, the admin has continued to extend the moratorium on student loan payments and interest accumulation, so they are, in fact, fulfilling that campaign promise, at least partially. Though I'm not sure they want to advertise that, lol.
But the only real reason it feels like the moratorium got continued is because Build Back Better failed and the Biden administration didnt want to compound that political failure with also breaking a major campaign promise. Though continuing student loans during election season also seems politically non viable as well. Especially if an astute Republican hits the drum of "make them zero interest!" to combat the issue.
The real problem is that I had heard (https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/302247-lo...) that provisions of Obamacare actually use student loan interest payments as source of paying for that program. So a major democratic program is reliant on Student loans. This makes it even mnore of a political vulnerability because Republicans attacking student loans also weakens Obamacare.
To put the cherry on top. The Federal Reserve probably really wants student loans to continue. People paying those again is a powerful deflationary measure and puts less liquid capital in the market. It feels like the current admin from a policy perspective REALLY wants to start them back up, but know its politically damaging to do so.
Interesting about the Obamacare funds. Obviously all debt payments to the gov't are subsidies to some other group, but I did not know that these indebted students were literally funding another program that they themselves advocate for (though they assume it can be paid for if they just tax the "billionaires" a bit more). Their heads would explode if someone told them that we could have Medicare for all (another huge line item they want) if we just bumped up the interest rates on their own student debt.
Funny how none of the progressive politicians (e.g. AOC) who claim to want Biden to cancel the debt have not come clean with their Twitter fans - that in order to cancel the debt, it'd come at the expense of Obamacare subsidies for people much poorer than most of the indebted grads who want the debt wiped away.
I wonder how much wage growth is actual a shift in the average from the lowest wage people losing their jobs. There has been a marked increase in hidden unemployment / non-participation.
There seems to be a hope that inflation will act as a debt forgiveness, or a gateway into MMT to support progressive spending. My point is inflation will exacerbate wealth inequality which is worse than the gain from the 'debt forgiveness' of student loans and MMT requires high taxes to avoid inflation. Which is fine until you're the one paying those taxes.
This all assumes earnings rise with inflation, which does seem to sort of be happening.
But I also think the student debt problem is more nuanced than just "terrible majors". Tuition has increased faster than just about anything (sans healthcare, I believe) while wages were mostly stagnant. Previous generations could largely get through college debt-free working part-time at minimum wage, regardless of major. So I don't think the student debt crisis can be chalked up to "terrible major" selection. The level of student debt is, in part, driven by the way universities spend money to attract "customers" err...I mean students. I think we need to find a way to mitigate colleges being run like businesses in that respect.
Just the nature of this thread (cost, ROI, supply & demand) shows how much of college is thought of in a business mindset which is a departure from how it used to be viewed.
I would also argue that while the economy may not need humanities majors, society probably does. E.g., An engineer can tell you how to do something (e.g., develop facial recognition for public cameras or develop attention maximizing social media algorithms) but an engineer with a grounded understanding of philosophy can help determine if that's the right thing to deploy as policy and whether they, at the individual level, wants to support that with their career choice.
I'm not saying you're doing this, but you often hear a chortled reply about "underwater basket weaving majors" in these discussions being blamed. Certainly, people are accountable for their college choices, but the whole discussion is based on the idea that college is a business transaction that requires some ROI and ignores the systemic effects that have driven costs to a ridiculous level.
But there is! Few parents say "I hope Jimmy grows up to become a great carpenter." White collar professionalism is what we groom our kids for.
Sure some will hang out all day. But some could be the ones that think of the next jump in technology. Some could be amazing artists.
We need to stop tying self and societal worth to dollars earned per hour.
The people in this world who do the least take the most. It needs to stop.
Those of us that scored in the 95th percentile and above were singled out by the recruiters and all 40 of us got a 15 minute sales pitch to join the military.
They never got any engineers, programmers, doctors, construction managers, tile setters, welders, insurance adjusters, lawyers, police officers, nurses, radiologists, tugboat captains, pipefitters, machinists, draftsmen, etc...
People say this, but it is so often said by people not in these industries. My brother in law is an electrician and he gets paid badly, works rough hours, and is provided fairly limited safety by his employer. This is obviously a data point of one, but the fact that he feels incapable of finding a better job in his city indicates to me that this is the norm.
Coincidentally, I also have a brother in law who is an electrician, and he is not doing well. But then again he's a self proclaimed communist and has zero work ethic.
I chose not to pursue higher education personally (at the time for the wrong reasons), and one thing I remember very distinctly was just how much it was promoted as “the path forward”. A counselor was visibly shocked when I as a sophomore, hadn’t been grooming myself to appeal to colleges and universities in a few years.
I’d say I’m pretty progressive on most issues, and obviously I have sympathy for my friends that ended up this way, but I have to agree with you that one way we could end up with fewer people limping along is to just keep them from shooting themselves in the foot.
At least a few years back you could get in as long as you could code.
I got to 6 figures without a degree, it might be harder now, but you don't need to attend a top school to become a programmer.
I was refuting this. I've never heard of anyone needing to attend a prestigious University to become a programmer?
As a side-note, I don't think "respectable" and "prestigious" are synonymous, so you might be reading too much into their claim.
Most employers, aside from I guess a few select fields, don't care what you majored in. My degree's in some non sense, but I know it helps me get past automated filters. My first decent job was with a startup which are easier to get into.
I mean, I've heard that shitty customer service jobs with abusive customers, abusive bosses and terrible pay are having a lot of trouble hiring right now - but you can get customer service jobs without a college degree.
It seems like healthcare was axed in many countries to pay for the bank blunder.
Did not backfire at all.
Poor next generation. I at least got the 90s. Anything after 2001 has basically been one crapload after the other in mass surveillance and debt collection for the masses.
Uff
This time seems worse in ways. I can’t imagine having to have been locked down at that age. It felt stunting and anemic enough as it was.
The good news is that when you’re broke, you don’t have any material reasons to shun exploring personal philosophy in earnest. You’ve got nothing to really lose.
The hard part is staying fed and paying rent at the same time.
I don’t know that there’s an easy answer to that last one. For me, I paid my rent by working as much warehouse overtime as I could and stripped my grandmother’s soda bread recipe down to flour, soda, salt, water and a sliver of butter.
Tempus fugit, kids. Life is rich in spite of any dysfunction. Time will keep moving, and nobody gets to stop it.
As Neil Young aptly put it:
“don’t let it bring you down, it’s only castles burning”