Election 2023

[PokerPacker]

5 hours ago, Fergasun said:

Re: Student loans / education costs

Have no idea how to fix long term moving forward. Trump floated some type of national university.  Part of this is related to rising costs for housing, etc. that drive up cost of living on campus. 

 

Bring back discharge of college loans in bankruptcy is one no brainer.

Part of the problem is there's no collateral to repossess when it comes to student loans.  You can declare bankruptcy, but you don't lose your education.  A rational person might take out loans, earn their degree, and then declare bankruptcy upon graduation since they don't really own anything yet and they get a clean slate to start.

[dfitzo53]

1 hour ago, MintHillSkinsFan said:

See, we do have common ground on most of these points.

Comprehensive immigration reform for sure.  I'm torn on DACA because they did come here illegally but with some framework around it, I think it's workable.  Definitely go after companies that hire illegals. 

Student loans - I agree with all you said and I have no idea how to fix it either.  I am fortunate that I had the foresight to sign my twins up for the Florida Prepaid program when they were two months old.  I paid around $250 a month for 18 years and they both have their tuition and two years of housing fully paid for.  I'm big on personal responsibility so this is one of the reasons I'm against student loan forgiveness.  In general, we are so self indulgent as a society that we don't plan for the future and want someone else to bail us out when we get in over our heads. 

Healthcare - Again I tend to agree.  The independent local family doctors office has all but ceased to exist.  They are all selling out to the conglomerates to leverage their power.  It's almost like de facto unions.

Small businesses - Here I still disagree.  One example off the top of my head is the self employment tax.  Why impose an additional 15% on top of a self employed individuals income tax?  I know I can file LLC, S-Corp, etc... but that has it's own tax structure as well.  Ridiculous $15+ minimum wages is another "soft tax".  It actually de-incentivizes hiring and puts the load back on the business owner.  Minimum wage was never meant to be a full time career wage.  For example, if I want to open a mom and pop coffee shop in a small town, I would want to hire local kids to work the counter.  It gives them something to constructive to do and puts a little money in their pocket.  If I have to pay $15 an hour, I can only hire one when I could have hired two at $8 an hour.  Or, I have to raise my prices which then runs the risk of running customers off. 

Not that there aren't plenty of poor business plans out there but the government doesn't make it any easier.

Food for thought on taxes:

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59149

 

Middle-class families and small business owners wouldn't have to feel such a tax squeeze if corporations were made to pay their share.  Corporations pay historically low taxes while also posting record profits.

 

I'll give you one guess which side of the aisle makes that possible.

[MintHillSkinsFan]

6 minutes ago, dfitzo53 said:

 

7 minutes ago, dfitzo53 said:

 

 

 

I'll give you one guess which side of the aisle makes that possible.

They all do.  The lobbyists spread it around without discrimination as to red or blue.

[dfitzo53]

4 minutes ago, MintHillSkinsFan said:

They all do.  The lobbyists spread it around without discrimination as to red or blue.

Facts don't bear this out.

 

It's quite trivial to look at the historical data and see which party was in control when taxes on the wealthy have been increased or reduced over the last 50 years:

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates

 

Spoiler alert: Republicans reduce (sometimes slash) taxes on the rich.  Democrats consistently attempt to reverse this trend.

[Larry]

1 hour ago, PokerPacker said:

Part of the problem is there's no collateral to repossess when it comes to student loans.  You can declare bankruptcy, but you don't lose your education.  A rational person might take out loans, earn their degree, and then declare bankruptcy upon graduation since they don't really own anything yet and they get a clean slate to start.

 

I think that's part of the reason for disallowing bankruptcy for student loans. It was just so common for students to declare bankruptcy on graduation day. I mean, after all, I'm unemployed, Your Honor. And the only penalty was that they couldn't buy a house for 7 years. 

[PokerPacker]

6 minutes ago, Larry said:

 

I think that's part of the reason for disallowing bankruptcy for student loans. It was just so common for students to declare bankruptcy on graduation day. I mean, after all, I'm unemployed, Your Honor. And the only penalty was that they couldn't buy a house for 7 years. 

Which these days, they wouldn't be able to afford a house in that time, anyways.

[Fergasun]

Norhing specific on policy, but philisophically the America that I know is a bit of a paradox.  We are the hardest working country in the world and I think number 1 in GDP  (would like to see GDP per person compared to EU though).  Yet we fight and argue over so many ridiculous things like health care, housing and education.  We choose non-ideal systems that we all agree favor coroporations -- but can't really fight them when our claim to fame as a nation was beating the Brits.  When disaster comes to the world we are the most generous to other countries, but accept our own citizens need to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" or have more "personal responsibility".  Even in our divided partisan world -- we yell and scream at strangers on TV or the Internet, but for the most part we work side-by-side with people of all types, partisanship, religions, etc.  You might hate LGBTQ people in general, but the one you randomly know from somewhere is one of your best friends.  We have the most heterogenous culture in the world -- in fact my kids jokingly say the most racist offensive things to their friends out of terms of enderment.  But if a stranger said it with ill intent -- time to throw hands.

 

And our political leaders always act like they have to constantly be at war with each other.

[Cooked Crack]

 

[The Evil Genius]

[GhostofSparta]

Liberty went 5% for the Dems? Wow, that place has gone woke!

[PleaseBlitz]

The question of how to "fix" student loans has been addressed at good length in the Student Debt thread.  My solution is (1) if you take out loans, you should pay them back (with certain policy-based exceptions) and (2) the interest on them, as government insured loans, should be like 1% (to cover administrative/servicing costs) and not 5x to 8x that, which is what the rates are now.  In this way, students pay for the education they received but don't get caught in a never ending debt trap when they can't pay just the interest each month and so the debt never gets paid down even though they are making payments. 

 

Just to put that into numbers, let's say a student went to Virginia Tech and is from Virginia (I just chose VT randomly as a middle-of-the-road school).  4 years of tuition and basic expenses comes to roughly $135,000.

 

The interest on that over 10 years at 1% is about $6,900, or $57/mo.

The interest on that over 10 years at 8% is about $61,500, or about $513/mo.

Edited November 14, 2023 by PleaseBlitz
Changed it to in-state from out-of-state

[Cooked Crack]

 

[LadySkinsFan]

Vote because it counts!

[Cooked Crack]

 

[DCSaints_fan]

On 11/14/2023 at 12:11 PM, PleaseBlitz said:

The question of how to "fix" student loans has been addressed at good length in the Student Debt thread.  My solution is (1) if you take out loans, you should pay them back (with certain policy-based exceptions) and (2) the interest on them, as government insured loans, should be like 1% (to cover administrative/servicing costs) and not 5x to 8x that, which is what the rates are now.  In this way, students pay for the education they received but don't get caught in a never ending debt trap when they can't pay just the interest each month and so the debt never gets paid down even though they are making payments. 

 

Just to put that into numbers, let's say a student went to Virginia Tech and is from Virginia (I just chose VT randomly as a middle-of-the-road school).  4 years of tuition and basic expenses comes to roughly $135,000.

 

The interest on that over 10 years at 1% is about $6,900, or $57/mo.

The interest on that over 10 years at 8% is about $61,500, or about $513/mo.

 

I was shocked at how much tuition has increased since.  It was something like $10k / year back in the late 90s when I went, including (I think) room and board.   Now its like 3x that.  The problem is that salaries haven't increased by that much.  I remember circa 2000 you could maybe expect $50k/year straight out of something like engineering (less so for other majors).  But nowadays the starting engineers are barely breaking $100k unless they're super talented and get in one of the FAANG, which is pretty tough to do straight from undergrad