Coming from a country with heavily subsidized education, watching Americans lose it on each other over providing support for education is baffling to me. Why are Americans so against helping people?

likefunnysmarthelpful
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Too many Americans are convinced they earned everything they have, and also the inverse, that people who have less must not have tried as hard.

likesmartfunny

I’m in Alabama. For my kids, public high school paid in great part by local/my taxes. One child went to state college and two to private liberal arts college. I’ve lived in my community many years and my experience is not uncommon. The reason a lot of people are upset is because it is specifically NOT an exception, and that crosses all kinds of political lines. Your making zero argument for paying for bad decisions. Car debt? Financing my replacement A/C unit? Credit cards? Take responsibility for yourself and your actions. What certain political leaders tell you to believe is not based in reality. Again, the people who were essentially tricked into taking on debt without the reasonable expectation of a degree have already had their debt forgiven - and I agree with that because it will partially be repaid by fines against those institutions.

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Because this “give away” is a naked political (and stupid) stunt, temporarily changing the rules. Everyone who worked to support themselves through college loses out. Everyone who scrimped to pay off their loans loses out. Only 4/10 adults even went to college. This is a naked virtue signaling to a bubble population - “surely everyone has to go to college; this will help those worst off”. Its terrible policy and bad politics.

likefunnysmartupliftinghelpful

it’s going to cost the country 400 billion dollars. Billion, with a B.

It’s blatant vote buying.

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Because they think that if something doesn’t directly benefit them, they shouldn’t have to pay for it.

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M6, no, people here are legitimately saying that's the problem

likesmart

Why should someone with a high school degree, that passed up college because they didn’t want to take on the debt, have to pay for someone that did?

likefunnysmart

Americans belong to the cult of selfish individualism. So gross to see how people behaved at the height of the pandemic. And yes, I was born in the great United States.

likefunnysmarthelpful

Think about the information you receive. I agree that some people behave badly, regardless of a pandemic. There are truly evil people too. So do you look at life and the world through a lense that shows “most” people that way? I promise you that isn’t the case. Most people I’ve ever met have been very decent. I meet someone with the assumption that they are too and adjust only if they give me reason to - and even then recognize that some people act a certain way because they’re hurting.

I’ve traveled a fair amount too. People across countries are quite similar. What is different is how they initially feel about a stranger - cultural norms or suspicions.

So think about dialing back your generalizations and assumptions. You’re not correct, and you’re going to have a much less happy life than you could have.

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Because privileged people think everyone else should pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

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If only everyone had bootstraps. Sucks for everyone who doesn't.

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"If I had to walk across broken glass to get to where I wanted to go, the first thing I’d want to do after getting there is to sweep the broken glass away so others wouldn’t have to do the same. Is that fair to me? No. But fairness is an illusion. We all start from different points and have different advantages and disadvantages. I want to live in a world where we we don’t obsess over what is ostensibly fair and instead we all try to clear the path for those behind us. Not because it is fair, but because it is right."

It's sad to see how many ppl on fish bowl lack empathy. I paid off all my student loans because I was fortunate enough to have a job that lets me to that. Just bc I don't benefit from this policy, it doesn't mean it is not needed or that I can't be happy for other people that needs it.

likeuplifting

A5 I can’t tell if that’s a strawman attempt, or just plaim irrelevant information

Because now, not only do I have to pay for my own student loans... I have to pay for someone else's as well.

likefunnysmart

I love it here 😂😂😂😂

funnylikeuplifting

The only people who are mad are the idiots who don’t realize that the government has literally forgiven billions in PPP loans for rich corporations. It’s about time they did something to help actual people.

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SE2 - I know many small business owners who applied and did not get the PPP. Most of the money went to larger companies who can well afford business interruption insurance unlike sole proprietors. Why didn’t they behave, as you say, in a fiscally responsible manner?
Also suggest you take a look at the actual budget for this country so that you understand how minuscule this forgiveness amount is.

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If you’re talking about the loan forgiveness, its because now I’ve paid 10K-20K more than my fellow classmates who had student loans, which is unfair. If they want to give everyone 10K refund from tuition, I’m fine with that but only giving it to some people is just unfair.

likefunnysmart

Yeah but I paid a ton more for college for you if I went even a few years later, which is unfair. Life isn’t always fair, but that isn’t a reason to make it suck more for people at different points in their life than you.

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Because it doesn’t help me.

GOD HELP EVERYONE BUT HELP ME FIRST.

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Partially racism.

Significant underinvestment in black and brown areas led to a larger percentage of black and brown households falling into poverty and needing government support.

Instead of fixing the inequities, one political party decided to create a narrative of a lazy, aggressive people with poor culture taking advantage of the real citizens of America (to be fair, there is abuse).

This allowed them to cut government programs and send the savings mostly to the rich. Left is a populace that no longer wants to help each other and only views what is best for yourself. It’s why all social constructs are failing (schools, politics/infrastructure/etc.) and/or will fail and we’ll be owned by China one day.

likehelpful

And isn’t it interesting that all those claiming voter fraud aren’t questioning the outcomes of any other elections? So only the POTUS election was fraudulent but NONE of the Congressional ones? I’d give a LITTLE credit if election deniers like MTG and Gaetz questioned their own victories.
Conveniently, they don’t.

likeupliftingsmart

Americans are not against helping people.

The problem with the financial aid model and availability of "guaranteed" student loans is that it has led to exorbitant tuition prices that are not even tied to educational outcomes.

If you are a school and the actual cost of education is, say, $5000, but the government gives a student $25,000 to use in the form of a loan - with no credit, no job, simply by signing at the dotted line- wouldn't you as a school you be inclined to raise your tuition? Instead of charging $5,000 now you can charge $25,000.

The "guaranteed" (Stafford) loans are only guaranteed in that the school will be paid. The student is never off the hook, these are known as cradle-to-grave loans and can't be included in bankruptcies. Now, how many 18-year-olds are mature enough to make smart choices?

35 years ago I was able to pay for my Bachelors out of pocket simply by working a side job. My employer paid for 85% of my MBA, I paid the rest out of pocket. Today that would not possible.

Colleges have accumulated billions of dollars in endowments; why don't they forgive tuition? Instead, the average tax payer - even those who paid for their own loans and tuition are asked to subsidize those who didn't.

Every informed person should be outraged by these pre-election giveaways.

likesmartfunny

SM4, just to your last point- many universities with billion dollar endowments actually do give huge amounts of financial aid. Many of my friends in college came from very poor backgrounds and paid very little. It’s the much-derided middle class which had to bear the burden of full tuition.

Many good points here. It’s also because people think “I had to do it and pay it all off, why shouldn’t everyone else?” And “kids need to learn responsibility and not everything is free.” 🙄 These sentiments seem to come mostly from republicans, I saw a lot of the conservative friends I have make comments on it on Facebook. Honestly, like housing, university has become very expensive and something needs to be done, not saying this is the right answer but hopefully it’s a start to something better.

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Annnd the whole minimum wage not changing for however many decades now, on top of this insane inflation. What a time to be alive.

If we want to have a broader discussion on education, let’s do it.
Yale cost slightly more than a state school in 1960. You could work a summer job and the money you’d make would cover a good portion of your tuition. You’d get a campus job and that would cover the rest. Life was good.
Then the government decided kids shouldn’t have to work while doing school and started giving loans. Those loans encouraged schools to escalate prices beyond what all but the richest could pay knowing the government would give endless loans. Then the government, never doing anything without extracting their pounds of flesh, handcuffed students with payments.
When government subsidizes something, it’s distorted.

likefunny

While I agree, this is only one part of a more complicated story. First tell the story of access, particularly for black and brown students that were often shut out of good “summer jobs” working for a company they got an internship from due to family connections. Also how schools were incentivized to raise tuition prices to signal they were a Veblen good to upper-class parents, putting squeezes on middle class kids. Now discuss MBA programs that shipped lower and middle-class jobs to China, which put a huge dampener on salaries across the board, making tuition far outpace salary increases.

likehelpfulfunny

Even in countries with "free" college education, best universities and best programs are "reserved" for the richest, most priviledged citizens. And the competition is brutal.
Also: foreign students always have to pay if they're accepted.

So...about "helping people"?

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I’m sorry ADOT1, but scaling up and scaling down doesn’t work like this. The % of people wanting to go to college would theoretically be a constant, regardless of the overall population size. Therefore lower population would just mean fewer institutions to cater for the students, larger population means more institutions

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Because we have horrible quality education and it shows in people's logic and thinking

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I don’t support student loan forgiveness (even though I’d benefit from it) because I believe it will have several negative effects. It will likely exacerbate inflation issues, which hurts low income, disabled, and retired folks the most. With the household income limitation set to $250k, those with HHIs that are double or triple the median HHI would benefit from this forgiveness at the expense of those less fortunate and/or on a fixed income. Aside from inflation, I see this forgiveness further exacerbating the student debt crisis in two ways: students will potentially take on more debt under the assumption that forgiveness will continue and schools will charge more for education like they charged more when the federal government began administering student loans (a 2017 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that the average tuition increase associated with expansion of student loans is as much as 60 cents per dollar)

likefunny

Thank you for sharing!

Here’s why I think, as others have said, that Republicans have lost their marbles. Firstly, $10 or $20K is really not so much money compared to the actual four-year cost of college, which is at minimum $40K and easily double or triple that. My very hard working and self-sacrificing parents paid $200K for mine. People still have to work hard to pay for college, this just helps a lot of people quite a bit. All the incentives against moral hazard etc still exist. You still have to work your ass off to pay the other $30K. This is just a subsidy, like farmers and plutocrats get subsidies. And I’d rather subsidize education than many other things. Which brings to my next point- I pay more than $250K in taxes a year and I can damn well say that education helped me get here. If we can help more people get to where I am, I’d rather pay for that than subsidize almond farming in a desert or machine guns for the Uvalde police or to forgive Marjorie Taylor Greene’s PPP loans. Lastly, this all just reminds me of Republican grievances against ‘Obamacare’ and how that was all going to lead to death panels and communism. Guess what- the result was better health insurance and better health, period, just like the experts said it would. And the Republican Party has yet to propose anything better. So I’m not holding my breath for the GOP to propose anything other than yelling “handouts to welfare queens” or whatever their latest moral outrage is…

likesmartuplifting

I think you’re highly confused Arias 1. Please read more carefully. I never took on any debt, courtesy of my parents. And in any case going to my highly expensive college was a great financial decision for me, if you can read in between the lines a bit.

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Cause Murica 😈

likefunny

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