> big goals like being an astronaut often begin with flipping burgers down at the Mickey D's
And end there, because you can't pay down your debt load with that kind of a job.
Remember: Student loans can't be discharged through bankruptcy.
And end there, because you can't pay down your debt load with that kind of a job.
Remember: Student loans can't be discharged through bankruptcy.
Quite frankly I'm disgusted at the whole thing, and I blame both political parties for it. The young are getting screwed over royally by previous generations who knew economics but failed to apply it in their policy decisions. You can't pay for something for somebody else without a very detailed and tight feedback loop. You'll only end up driving up prices and getting less value.
But to your direct point: I can't play the hypothetical game here. It has no end. I'll propose a counter-argument and you'll shoot that down, and on we go ad infinitum. My point was that it is critical to view yourself as adapting to the market, wherever that is, not the other way around. If you sit in your figurative parent's basement waiting for that management job, it's not only bad for you it's also bad for the rest of us. You have to accept your role is adaptation, and the even more bitter truth that you might have spent four years gaining nothing but a bad attitude and a boat load of debt. Blech. Not a good place to start. But for some, that's the reality of where they are.
You have to make decisions and baby steps toward adaptation. What those decisions are and what those steps are is going to vary from person to person.
ADD: Note that this is the very definition of a startup. Go find something people want and give it to them. Adapt and pivot based on what the market wants, not what you want (or have been trained) to do.
In fact I would go as far as saying our public schools and universities actively discourage independent thinking and creativity. When we graduate, we are thrown into a world that we aren't prepared for. We have been prepared to memorize facts and follow routine, now everything is the complete opposite of that?
Even assuming I'm wrong and most graduates can adapt to life after graduation, it still takes a while to mentally pivot. Six months is not long in the scheme of things, but when it happens to lots of graduates, articles like this start to pop up; occupy movements start to pop up; etc.
Am I missing something?
Basically they are making money available that wouldn't be there without government intervention.
Not to mention that they are directly subsidizing the interest in many cases.
Also, I thought govt. loans were much smaller in total than private loans. Is that incorrect?
To put it differently, if the government announced that failed startups could not discharge their debt through bankruptcy and that the founders would be held responsible for paying off the debts, would you call this government subsidization of small business?
It appears that the direct and indirect (i.e., backed by the govt.) loans by the federal govt. account for 80% of the market.
So yes, the relaxed standards for govt. backed loans is keeping college costs high. And the word 'subsidy' can be reasonably applied to the current situation.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020344010457440...
They will, however, start you off on doing things which are far more demeaning, gruelling and uncomfortable than merely flipping burgers, before you ever get to fly a goddamn fighter jet or a spaceship.
Flipping burgers isn't a particularly good pathway to anything, but all the good pathways to anywhere start off just as shite.
The point is that flipping burgers can't be a path to anywhere because once you graduate college, your debt load is so high that a minimum-wage job can't possibly help you pay it down. Especially if you need to live on that wage, too.
Getting a government job (including something in the Navy or Air Force) is a different matter entirely, due to massive amounts of tax money being poured into the military (which implies massive amounts of tax money not being poured into anything else). It is a world unto itself.
From a career perspective, starting your career by flipping burgers at McDonalds can yield greater dividends (in the long-term) than being a programmer.
There are a few programmers who have become managers and executives too of course. But yes there are executives who would sooner bring in a graduate of Hamburger U than promote talented technical people.