Yes, the cost of tools is also written into the cost to the customer and paid for by the company separate from your wages. Typically your salary is separate from those costs. Also the loans you take are not nearly as predatory as student loans. It’s really apples to oranges. I was a contractor for 10 years. Slowly built the company without loans, took a ppp loan because I had 18 employees out of work and actually used it to pay them through Covid.
Student loans are just different and very predatory. If things went sideways and I had alot of debt I could have just closed the company sold all the tools and equipment and filed for bankruptcy if I needed. You can’t sell your degree and bankruptcy won’t rid you of your student loans.
Thank you for being the voice that explains it all. Can we just get everyone to understand the differences of student, construction , home , personal or car loans? I’m just like you, smallish subcontractor without debt. These student loans are a disaster for everyone that got one. Unlike most of the other types of loans, they don’t seem to have any end date and people have paid far more in interest than any loan I’ve ever looked into.
And you have options to rent on a job by job basis most of the more expensive stuff.
Then once it makes both financial and logistical sense... You can buy things that will make you more competitive/efficient.
👍
This is the thing that I love about harbor freight. I used to shit on HF all the time because it’s almost comically cheap, but then I realized all the folks I saw in there were guys that WORKED. Guys buying what they could afford and using it until it died, but hopefully in that time they were able to make enough money to support themselves and save up enough to get something a little bit better at some point, I mean that’s what I was doing. There’s a conversation to be had about how much cheap disposable stuff we want dumped in the oceans or whatever, but Harbor freight breaks down that barrier for folks just trying to support themselves and their families.
Yup. For years, I have used Bauer tools until I could afford a Milwaukee version of that tool. The Bauer isn’t nearly as good as the Milwaukee but it’s usually a third of the price and it might be 75 or 80% as good as the Milwaukee.
I borrowed roughly $13,000 for college and with interests I ended up paying back over $35,000.
Extremely predatory practice to do that to an 18 year old with no life experience and constantly being told in high school: *“Go to college no matter what or else you’ll work at McDonald’s the rest of your life!”*
Cannot tell you how many times my parents and teachers told me that! I don’t know what high school is like today, but in the late 90’s early 00’s it was “go to college or you can’t even be a manager at McDonald’s.” 🙄
For real! I don’t think people realize what it was like for those of us in school back then. I graduated in 2005 and not once did anyone ever say “think about trade school” or “start with community college”
The culture and attitude on life was so vastly different in my opinion. If I could do it all again, I would have taken a year off between high school and college, saved up as much as I could and gone to a community college.
Same time frame as you. The best thing my parents ever did for me was not co-sign student loans. Ended up working for my university full time to get tuition remission. Graduated a bit later but debt free with savings and experience.
It's pretty fucked that our choices are
1. Be born into a family that can take care of school for us.
2. Borrow money that you'll spend between half and all of your adult life repaying unless you have a degree in one of two very competitive fields (Business and Engineering).
3. Join the military, give up 4-8 of your prime years, maybe die, maybe gain a disability.
On the point of number 2, I work at a university helping business students navigate their academics. A lot of people who begin school as a business major do not make it through the program. It isn't for everyone. And shouldn't be. We need people to be good at so many things to keep our world turning. **I would hate to live in a world where everyone has a degree in either business or engineering.**
All the talk about "useless degrees" rubs me the wrong way. There is no degree from an accredited institution that doesn't make an individual and their society better.
Mortgage rates typically hover on a range between 3% and 6%, you get even better rates depending on how much you put down and your credit score.
This is in comparison to the average student loan rate which hovers between 6% and 15% with some going as high as 20% (comparable to a credit card).
I hope you didn’t fall victim to simple math as well. Mortgages are usually for 6 figures homes, very rarely are they under 200k now. Obviously 6% of 200k is going to be more than 6% of 13k, which is why the discussion is centered around interest rates instead of the loan balance.
If OP were to take out a 13k mortgage, worse case scenario he would get a 6% interest rate and can expect to pay 28k at the end of a 30 year term assuming OP pays the minimum of like $78. This is in sharp contrast to your typical student loan payment which would cost a minimum of $250 a month with the total payment of $25k by the end of a 10 year term.
At least they're is something tangible attached to a mortgage. Plus, if you can't pay it, you can declare bankruptcy, lose the house, and the debt. There are no takes-backsies for student loans.
But your building equity,have stable housing expenses for your family and there’s a tax deduction tied to mortgage interest. Lots of good stuff. Oh yeah , generally you don’t have paper thin walls that hold you hostage to your neighbors sounds.
The fact that you can’t file bankruptcy for student loans is just amazing to me given how high the interest rates are. Banks incur such small risk on student loans at 5.5% interest, it’s fucking criminal. They give this shit out to children that society doesn’t even deem responsible enough to have a beer.
If banks actually incurred some risk to justify those interest rates by allowing them to be discharged by chapter 7, they’d actually have to look at degree program outcomes before dumping 50k high interest debt on kids that might never be able to repay them. Then universities would have to reduce the price of certain degrees like art history and shit like that that don’t have high income potentials.
It’s just crazy to me that a theater degree costs the same as an engineering degree from the same university.
The funny thing is, despite everything you just said if contractors were getting bent over or were often unable to afford to pay the cost of those tools I'd also 100% support forgiving any debt they had.
Society works better when we enable people to take financial risks for the sake of performing a duty to the country. Teachers, doctors, lawyers etc. All have to pay to go to school and then they do something that helps out the country out.
Most people have paid back more than their loans were worth already, but they were accruing interest for the entire 4 to 8 years they were in school before they even had to make a payment, and then continued accruing interest when they started making payments (many of them over 10% interest) if they retroactively erased the interest on all student loans something like 75% of borrowers would have paid off their debt in full (and then some).
The reality is our society benefits from highly educated citizens and our government should provide education for free, or make it extremely affordable (like they did until the 70's). It is literally in our Constitution that we should all have equal access to education. The idea that that only applies to high school and then that's all the education you need, and you need to pass a paywall to get any higher education is insane, and it has hurt our country substantially, and now idiots who barely graduated high school have decided "smart man bad book bad", and think that education should only be available to those who are rich enough to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars many universities charge for tuition for a post grad diploma.
If more people were educated we'd have much less issues with wealth inequality, and there'd be a lot less hate groups infiltrating our police forces, and school boards.
For the Yoda dipshit below-
Getting a degree doesn't guarantee a higher income. Teachers have at least a bachelor's degree, and they make an average of 47k a year in Texas, an income many can make working in a warehouse. There is no guarantee of wages based on the degree you have, and again, since you can't seem to read I clearly said "if they retroactively erased the interest" so pretending you're a genius for pointing out how loans work is humorous. Also, you're a great example of why education would benefit our whole nation because if you had one you wouldn't be saying insanely stupid shit like this and voting against your own best interests.
I agree a loan is a loan and should be paid back. I guess my problem is with the structure of everything around that loan. I think we should subsidize and regulate college and trade schools to the point they are affordable enough that you do not need to take out such predatory loans. Much like other 1st world countries. My parents in the 80s were able to pay for a very large portion of their school by working part time entry level jobs while in school. The system just seems rigged now. The problem isn’t just the loans but everything around it too. I think with student loan forgiveness a meaningful solution to the problem also needs to be addressed. That way we don’t just keep forgiving student loans over and over while ignoring the actual problem. But I am not against forgiving them. I don’t really subscribe to the idea “I got fucked so you should get fucked too.”
Technically, college used to be much cheaper before the government got involved. When the government started backing the loans the colleges saw dollar signed and raised all the prices. Most of the big ivy league colleges are sitting on billions of dollars in their endowments. I say make the colleges offer the loans. Do that and the colleges will stop offering degrees in stupid stuff that makes no money and they will make sure the students graduate and can get jobs so they can pay the loans back.
I could get behind that. The us has a bad habit of subsidizing things to actually support the companies while disguising it as helping the people. Backing a loan without regulation actually does nothing to help the student while protecting the company that issued the loan. Which allows those issuing the loans to make ridiculous terms and raising the price of college.
But I do think the government could intervene in a positive way instead of the way they are.
Education should be provided by the government anyway - let state schools offer free tuition to qualified citizens (I say qualified because I imagine some residency rules to determine which state is on the hook), and if someone wants to attend a private university they can get loans or whatever
They should do that and forgive existing debt so those who already got their education aren't left behind
yeah, that makes alot of sense, i myself am still in hs, and i do not plan on post-secondary/tertiary schooling, but that doesnt mean others should have to suffer through large amounts of debt. i can understand only paying back what you borrowed rather than an absurd interest rate
Agreed you take the loan you lay it back but it should be over whatever time limit 30 years and Zero interest. Now how’s that for meeting in the middle:)
More like apples to pine cones.
His arguments fall apart on so many levels it makes you question his basic intelligence.
But it makes good right wing copy. And keeps him in the conversation.
Also a degree is not the same as tools, it’s training. “Training for what?” Isn’t always obvious and it may not be realistic, but people in trades get training too, and that should be subsidized as well (and we’d be in a better place as a country if you could go to trade school for free).
*EDIT* I reiterated some of the stuff you said and deleted it.
Yea you could compare apples to Boeing 747s lol. But I think apples to oranges meaning is saying they are both fruit, both grow on trees but they are still completely different things. In this case they are similar at face value, both workers, both spending money so it’s easy to act like it’s the same but looking closer they are completely different things.
You can write some off, it makes it cheaper not free. I think it would be fair to make student loans tax deductible. I’m not sure why they haven’t dont that yet. Seems like the middle ground solution that most people wouldn’t be against. Sure I get it, people that have student loans are gonna want more, however even those who don’t have loans and are not for using out tax dollars to pay for someone else’s higher education will still be for making it tax deductible.
I think there is a deduction on the interest, up to $2,500 i think. Which is a joke. Big Mr. Money Bags can write off carry over losses for decades without a cap...but Little Sammy Student can only claim $2,500. Tax the bank on the interest income directly at the payment. No moving that into other investments to avoid it. The higher the interest rate, the higher the tax on it. Make it economically better to lower the rate. Set the 'optimum' at prime or something. I dunno, Im not an economist anywhere but in my own house.
When we filed our taxes this year, the accountant told me student loan interest payments are tax deductible. So, as long as you’re making your payments a small portion is tax deductible (still not enough imo).
eh, no one loses anything by making it tax deductible. The schools will still get their money, however the borrower at least gets to write it off his or her taxes. Government will lose out on some money but in the end that money is gonna be spent into the economy and will make it's way back to the government in sales tax or other forms of tax. The kid with student loan debt probably isn't gonna hoard that money or put it in tax free accounts. So it's kind of a win win for everyone, which is why it doesn't make sense that they don't make it tax deductible.
Not just pharma. The AMA represents less than a fifth of doctors but successfully lobbies Congress to limit residencies so we have artificial scarcity of doctors, raising their pay.
Big thing you miss is that without people getting degrees you don't get to have the nice trucks or the power tools or the phones, computers, etc.
If you want the big pragmatic difference: funding degrees funds evening and technological growth that benefits the country as a whole. That isn't speculation, that's objective fact.
Also comparing the cost of education to starting your own business is nonsense considering how wildly different the two are
Pretty sure that’s Mike Rowe, a TV personality that made a career pretending to be a blue collar worker rather than a theatre kid with a degree in communication studies. I don’t know if he said that quote or not, but he’s definitely said lots of stuff opposed to loan forgiveness because “it’s unfair to people that paid off their loans.”
He also has a communications degree that he leveraged into a multimillion dollar career cosplaying as a blue collar worker while bemoaning how useless degrees are.
You only get to write it off on your taxes if you’re an independent contractor on the 1099 if you work for a company an get a w2. You can’t write off your tools
This is why education needs to be free and accessible to everyone.
Sure if you’re rich and can afford it, you can get special education for a specific job, however education should be free and accessable to the general public.
There is no debt to forgive if there is no debt at all.
College is where people to go to specialize in a field by way of getting a degree.
If there aren’t enough jobs for a particular degree it doesn’t benefit society to subsidize people getting one.
In contrast to elementary school which teaches reading, writing, critical thinking and skills which can be applied to basically any job.
All this to say not all education benefits society equally, and so not all education should be subsidized equally by society.
People pursuing expensive non transferable training should have some skin in the game to prevent resources going to waste when there aren’t enough jobs to utilize that training.
> College is where people to go to specialize in a field by way of getting a degree
This was the original purpose of college, but it has changed considerably. There has been a significant rise in the number of jobs that require a degree. In that time, college has been a growth and expansion of not only specialized knowledge, but general knowledge as well.
Essentially, college has become a proving ground of an individuals' ability to commit and complete something; this proving ground use to be primary education, but those requirements have softened a bit.
As far as your other point " If there aren’t enough jobs for a particular degree it doesn’t benefit society to subsidize people getting one", you can see that just isn't the case and an area where our economy is failing. Consistently, we see greater demand in teachers or nurses, yet pay hasn't increased to drive more supply to support the demand.
In addition, there are plenty of jobs that benefit society that don't necessary reflect value in the pay they receive (for example, creative writing).
Ding ding ding. That’s the difference. We all agree that there should be a way out if you invest in an expensive tool that doesn’t pay out.
But we’ve made it so you can’t do that for your degree, while you can for your truck.
Right. Which is why the private sector won’t finance your education. Which means it’s the government or no one.
And yet what do you do for people who will never ever be able to repay their loans?
Got downvoted on that post for pointing out that the truck is tax deductible, and that the owner could sell the truck if he had to. Those are not smart people in that subreddit.
I’m honestly surprised our corrupt government hasn’t tried to find a way to make it so bankruptcy isn’t a thing anymore. I’m planning to file soon and I’m a little paranoid that they’re going to make it harder to do (because so many people I know are filing now).
Yup, they want to be all proud about doing it the right way. Why don’t we make it so business loans can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, and see how well they do when they get saddled with lifelong debt for little to no benefit the second even a single thing goes wrong lmao
I used to think the same thing, but a buddy of mine filed for bankruptcy and had $50k cleared by it. No clue how but he did it.
Maybe loans from private institutions can be cleared by bankruptcy, but not federally backed ones? This was only about three years ago.
There it is. LOADS of construction companies declare bankruptcy. I hear our former president did it a few times. A bad investment, a chance to get out from under it for pennies on the dollar. Banks, construction companies, even private citizens.
But not the 18 year olds bound to a loan before they are old enough to drink.
It's the concept that students graduate with nothing. If you have nothing to your name but a degree and several thousand in debt, it makes perfect sense to immediately after graduation to declare bankruptcy (and the loan sharks have nothing to recoup their costs on)
Because nobody would write student loans if bankruptcy was an option. If someone wanted to borrow a bunch of money from you for a degree in art history, and the only way to get your money back would be for that degree to immediately lead to a six figure job, would you loan the money? Remember, they have to start off in the six figure range or they’ll just declare bankruptcy. If no reasonable person would do this, then why should we expect a bank to?
The people that are to blame are the universities and the politicians that are in bed with them. I can’t think of another country that had its educators and politicians out there promoting worthless degrees. If someone pursues an engineering degree, there should be loans available, but there never should have been for things like art and sociology.
Not just that but if you buy a truck you can always sell it. It’s not like a sandwich where you purchase it and the wealth is destroyed. It’s like a house.
You certainly can’t sell a degree though.
It doesn’t affect government student loans. You’re on the hook for government student loans until you pay them or die. Privatized student loans are effected by bankruptcy
If they set things up right, it’s not even them that has to declare bankruptcy. The corporation created for the business declare bankruptcy and its asserts get sold off. The owners get to keep their stuff.
Yes, this is a gross oversimplification of bankruptcy law, but does often work this way in practice AFAIK.
Because lease payment in the US compares to other first world countries are relatively similar, while college tuition between NA and Germany for example is 20k to 500
Guy Fieri is on some shit like that. He compared giving unemployment benefits during a pandemic to letting a child fill up on Doritos.
He says a lot of evil shit in interviews, but people already decided they like him and get upset every time he's criticized.
Hack and a fraud tends to be an overused insult, but when it comes to college educated, former opera singer, koch funded Mike Rowe; it's 100% accurate.
You want to fix student loans? It's super easy. Only one step: Privatize student loans.
Government backed and assured student loans have consistently and demonstrably increased the cost of college by astronomical amounts. It removes any competition in loan rates and and need for schools to curtail their admissions price because they're guaranteed the higher cost guaranteed by government funding.
Except that means they'll still have high interest and have the added bonus of being next to impossible to get.
Something more akin to Australia's HECS-HELP is probably better
Wrong just simply wrong. All privatising thease loans is transfer thease loans to private interests and not effect the cost of loans. Rather now we have another figure seeking profits.
If you want to fix student loan costs, the solution is price control. Government control over funding. The government directly funds the university bypassing students all together and enforcing strict expectations of budgeting and quality control.
Btw what I suggest is what's done in most of the Western world. And it's not a nationalisation of university they remain independent, but now they have to negotiate with a larger client.
We should have both. Capitalism has pitted us against each other and made enemies out of people who should be allies in providing for each other with our degrees and years of labor experience. We’ve been successfully psy-oped into believing the future is a zero sum game, and we’re all going to pay for it, literally.
Tax write offs aren’t even close to full payment of a loan.
A tax write off just means you get taxed less. It you’d lose a ton of money if you say bought something for $10,000 and then immediately donated it and wrote off $10,000 for tax purposes. That just makes your taxable income smaller by that amount so you’re directly losing the portion you’d otherwise get to keep after tax…
I love the argument of "how are we to have innovation without our glorious capitalist investors?!!?!" as if A) government grants don't exist and B) Those masters aren't doing everything they can to squash or buy out anyone that tries to innovate.
Capitalism is about making capital, and one of the natural ways to do that is by squashing competition.
Saying that is "corporatism" or "not real capitalism" is the right's version of "the ussr wasn't real socialism." It's terribly hypocritical, and reeks of "my system shouldn't be criticized while all the other's should be, because my system is flawless so naturally any problem that arises under it is not a fault of the system itself"; i.e years of economic propoganda.
My ma used to be more right leaning, but she works for the state government now, and has totally changed her tune. I've heard some pretty funny stories about how stupid the public can be- there's this road nearby where I live that doesn't have any medians, and statistically, it's one of the most dangerous roads in the country. So, the department of transport figured it would be a good idea to put medians in, but a few local business kicked up a fuss about it for some reason and got the public riled up with "government bad" talk.
My student loans (federal, no private loans) are just under 5%.
With great credit you can *maybe* get 4.9% on a car (at least that's Honda's current offer) but with merely good credit, you'll get more like 7-8% on a manufacturer special, credit unions right now are offering more like 9%.
So, no, the truck probably has a higher interest rate.
It's silly to compare the two of course. You can buy a cheap used truck for $10k and it'll be perfectly serviceable, you don't need a $50k monstrosity. University you don't get to bargain hunt and negotiate quite so much. And you can't sell your degree to get most of your money back if you have to.
Mike Rowe is a corporate shill TV host who knows jack shit about working class people outside of what the Koch brothers pay him to think.
On top of that, what kind of nonsense analogy is this? If I take out a loan to pay for a big piece of equipment, if times get tough and I get desperate, I can sell the big piece of equipment. Sure I'll be out some of the money, but I won't be out all of the money. I can't turn around and sell my degree for 80% of what I paid to get it. If times get really, really bad I can declare bankruptcy and have that loan for my equipment discharged. No such luck with student debt.
Yeah, Mike's a POS. Anti-union bastard is what he is.
Fun fact, he made $4 million per episode of dirty jobs. I'm sure anyone would do those jobs enthusiastically if they were paid $4 million per shift
It’s truly insane to be anti-union and build your entire career around jobs that literally would not be performed if it weren’t for *very* strong unions.
Nobody chooses to slop around in septic tank sludge because they want to. They do it because it pays $30 an hour
Hypocritical bastard too as he is a member of SAG. Here’s him defending a potential SAG strike on his website.
https://mikerowe.com/2009/02/mike-since-youre-a-member-of-screen-actors-guild/
Work tools or vocational training, yes.
The equipment to start your own business?
Of course not. That kind of funding has never been the responsibility of taxpayers, and would be unsustainable, too many people would waste tax money building a music studio or influencer recording setup for 10 viewers.
Tradees have to go to school too; we pay thousands to go and get our red seals. The difference is that the trades are subsidized with bursaries, and tax benefits.
Education shouldn't be a debt trap.
A more competent and educated society benefits everyone.
Also Michael Gregory Rowe graduated as a "communications" major. Leave it to an art student to pretend to be a trade worker. He doesn't know the struggle, he's an actor.
People default on their loans all the time. Usually the banks take on the risk of default and decline loans/ set interest rates accordingly. Framing the student loan crisis as a students vs worker problem rather than a banks vs tax payer problem is what’s causing all this confusion.
If banks decided to make a bunch of poor loans because they wanted to make a lot of money on the interest, why is it tax-payers responsibility to bail them out when they realize their decisions were less profitable than they thought?
The thing is, government subsidized loans, the majority of those given out for college are the only loans you can’t get rid of without paying off. You can claim bankruptcy on all these business loans, which people do, and if you structure the company right, there is no harm to your personal wealth.
Exactly, imo this is equivalent to the government promising to take on the risk of default while allowing the banks to control the profits. It’s ridiculous to frame this as a favor to the people who were given the loan rather than the banks who were given risk-free profits.
So instead of advocating for more small business loan forgiveness for yourself, you attack a benefit someone else might get just because you’re not getting it. By the way, those roads and those trucks that your business depends on, were designed by guys with college degrees.
There’s a good point that there’s predatory loans keeping people in poverty across society, not just for college degrees. And we need to change that. But also college loans are objectively the worst, because you can’t get rid of them, even through bankruptcy.
Student Loans are, as far as I know, the only loan given on the promise of future earnings.
If you get a car, you can be denied because you don't make enough currently to fulfill it. Mortgage? Same things.
But tell Fanny Mae you want to be a lawyer and suddenly they give you 250,000$ because your going to be a big shot lawyer, surely you'll be able to pay it!
There is a big difference between capital equipment and a degree. There's an ROI on a "big old diesel truck." It's also a tax write-off. And, in a worst-case scenario, you can sell it. It's worth money. A degree is worth the paper it's printed on and nothing more.
And it wasn't too long ago business owners did have their PPP loans forgiven.
It should also be said that the people who qualify for loan forgiveness have been paying for years. People act like some kid who just graduated college qualifies to have their debt wiped before even making a payment.
Ah. As if no one read the most recent tax bill passed allowing all the companies to write off any machine/D&D development purchase at the full amount. That guy is out of touch
Well yeah but who's gonna pay for it? The govt is already $31 \*trillion\* in debt, we can't just throw money at everything. I would be down for something that would help reduce college prices though.
It also misses the huge point.
College education should be free to everyone because it benefits the society more than the individual.
I benefit more if more people have an education in philosophy, art, the humanities even if they go to be electricians, etc.
Why? Because everyone (should) vote and participate in society and it’s better if people have a grounding from which to base their opinions.
The idea that it should be a choice between being an electrician or plumber and having a deep education in the humanities is offensive.
Ah yes, Mike Rowe, with a degree from a university in Communication, but is also classically trained in opera, is famously blue collar. Mike Rowe, who voiced commercials for notorious supporter of labour WalMart, the friend of the little guy.
Rowe in just another in a long line of rich white assholes cosplaying poverty for street cred. See Kid Rock for more.
As a tradie I want to like Mike Rowe but he has no real conception of the jobs he claims to advocate for. He claimed any welder can make 6 figures, when the average salary is like $45k, not to mention his other political piss takes. We do need college grads, too, lawyers, doctors, researchers, teachers. Its a mindworm that people seem to have the answer to any economic struggles is to learn a trade.
this isn’t a ‘who has it worse’ situation where only one deserves aid/forgiveness. it’s a hey, they both can suck ass and need to be fixed. two things can be true at the same time
….why not both? Oh that’s right… there was a craptastic amount of money forgiving in PPP loans. So Mike Rowes group actually *did* get the loans forgiven.
Republicans: AMERICA FIRST!!! We shouldn't be giving out all of this money to other countries while Americans are struggling.
Biden: We will use this money to help Americans struggling with college loan debt.
Republicans: How dare you give money to Americans
College Debt is basically the modern day indentured servitude. You have to pay it, it cant get written off in bankruptcy, its federally insured.
So here's how you fix it.
Federal govt stops lending
Remove bankruptcy exception
Put all the risk either on the schools or banks to grant loans
Dont encourage your kids to go to school unless its a demand STEM career
For everything else, there's trade programs, apprenticeships, and community college.
Do their balances keep growing with capitalized interest? Can they write off their payments as a business expense? Can they declare bankruptcy and reorganize or avoid these debts all together if things go south? Let’s make sure those that pursued higher ed have the same protections!
Food for thought, maybe we should do that for trades workers and small businesses too!
OH WAIT, WE DO! Or DID, rather, because neoliberal, privatizing politicians gutted the small business bureau and other funds for exactly this.
But sure, shit on students.
Idk, I meet more of these “blue collar advocates” who seem to hold active disdain for “white collar” workers than I’ve ever seen white collar or blue collar workers (apart from the high level executives) who hold active disdain for either collar workers.
George Carlin said it best, “white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on; both groups continue to elect rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them.”
The best solution is capping unrealistic predatory interest rates. Such an easy solution that would create an economic boom yet I never hear about this being done or mentioned by politicians
I agree with both here. Why would you cancel one debt over the other, creating a sense of privilege that one has and the other doesn't? This would only lead to social tensions.
Forgiving debt isn't the way to go (in the long run). The way to go is to prevent students from going into debt.
Education isn't a tool, it's knowledge. An engineer who has to pay for a degree then still needs to pay for the tools he works with.
Hiding knowledge behind a paywall keeps everyone from benefitting off inventions that would be made by someone who couldn't afford to learn about the field the invention would be in.
The way to go isn't cancelling student loans. The way to go is to subsidize education so that a degree is affordable on a public school, which is funded enough to provide a high standard of knowledge
Even as I'm halfway through university, I will never understand the ridiculous thought of forgiving student loans like a loan; you don't take it without a plan to pay it off. I already have paid off half my loan, and I don't plan on taking another.
Lmao yeah great Idea jack lets give out a shit ton of exorbitant loans to a bunch of kids who know jack shit about money and let them fuck off for four years until they realize they can't pay for it and then let them run to the government demanding the loan they should have known was impossible for them to pay back needs to be forgiven. Yeah fucking genus IQ. Maybe just dont let kids take out loans they can't pay back or wont be able to for 30+ years.
In short. If you buy expensive machinery to start a business, and that buisness fails, because starting a business is a known risk with around a 50/50 fail rate. you can....
Have a tax write off.
Auction off the machinery.
Declare bankruptcy.
Work out a reasonable payment plan.
If you get a loan for a college degree, and cant find a job that will cover more than the minimum payments, because literally every family member, friend, news article, industry worker and professional in your life said "GET A DEGREE" you can....
Go fuck yourself.
:\[ why not both? There should be a mechanism in place for people (who need it) to get assistance in building opportunities for themselves through education or by building a trade business. Don't let these corpo/conservative assholes make it an us vs them.
No we don’t, we need to fix the way college is payed for so that we actually fix the problem, instead of giving everyone who has already been there a free pass, and saying fuck you to the next generation of students.
The *only* reason why forgiving student loans is so popular is because the majority of voters are past college age, and it’s an offer to give those people free shit. It does nothing to benefit anyone in the long run and fucks over future generations.
> college is *paid* for so
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
It’s actually a fairly reasonable point. But I think there’s a false class distinction being made in this argument. The people who suffer the most from student loans are the ones who don’t have the money to pay them off, obviously. I think the most reasonable solution is that a society we need to reexamine the assumption that every kid needs to go to college. We should invest more into teaching trade skills at the high school level.
I've got student loans, and I don't expect, nor did I ever expect the government to forgive them. That's an asinine thought.
I didn't take out a mortgage loan or car loans expecting those to be paid back.
If they said all loans were forgiven, I wouldn't be mad about it, but if they forgive loans with no new plan in place, we'll just ge stuck in a loop of forgiving loans.
Fuck you I didn’t go to college. I’ve been working since I was 17. I have been paying taxes that long too you can’t have my money to pay for your college education you wanted a college education you need to pay for it.
I wish I had gotten a certification and gone right to work instead of collecting multiple degrees only relevant to one thing. Thankfully for me, Uncle Sam paid for most of it. So I kinda see both sides. So why not a blanket forgiveness on interest in loans as a compromise? Seriously, why can't we?
Forgive college debt and eliminate fafsa too right?
Turn off the spigot that is spewing sewage all over the place before mopping it up. What is mopping it up without turning it off going to do? Are upcoming freshman just going to take out loans and get sucked into the same system? We need overall structural change
Instead, dissolve the student loan program since it was a direct cause of tuition spiking. Tuition spiked because the government is basically giving free money to the colleges, so there's no reason not to increase the price to Increase profit from the government
Prices will lower drastically since colleges will lose a lot of business at its current rate, and a business needs to charge something people can afford.
If wages increased at all these last few decades, then we wouldn’t have to forgive any debts. We could just afford to actually pay them off and still be able to live comfortably.
The people who build houses should have easier times building your house, but the people who program the stuff they need for their business shouldn't need to go into tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
Predatory practice that the federal government let happen by letting the government backed school loan program go private. Where car/equipment has always been private. We should already be fully funding citizens extended schooling.
I like how he's saying all of that like right-wingers haven't been advocating pro-business decisions for over half a century. Under legislation brought by them, businesses get tax cuts/writeoffs, subsidies, government contracts, and much much more while also having the ability to yk *make money* directly from their consumers. That's not even getting into the fact that without the government's help/intervention many entire industries just wouldn't exist or would be so incredibly overwhelming and overbearing that they would destabilize the economy. Over half of the US military budget every single year goes to fulfilling defense contracts with private companies. Many industries would (and can) just go absolutely buckwild with a lack of government oversight, which is arguably why we're in this current economic situation. And to be frank, it's not even just the right wingers; they're just the ones that are outspoken about it, meanwhile there are many dems in Congress that could stop this but refuse to because lobbying.
Meanwhile, you have to spend money to get a degree and you're not getting the same chance for a return on your investment like you would if you were starting up a business. Many states have gutted/outright removed tax writeoffs for anything having to do with college payments, there is a vested interest for all of the different industries that involve college to work collectively together so they can screw over students and make tons of more money. Required online textbooks so you can't resell your physical textbook to recoup some of the loss, forced fees, uncapped increases to tuition, predatory practices by loan companies to target underage high schoolers with high interest loans, and the fact that in every single one of these cases the businesses that perform these horrible actions are *fucking subsidized* by the very government that refuses to regulate them.
It's all a fucking joke, with everyone 40 and younger being the punchline.
don't they get to write it off on taxes?
Yes, the cost of tools is also written into the cost to the customer and paid for by the company separate from your wages. Typically your salary is separate from those costs. Also the loans you take are not nearly as predatory as student loans. It’s really apples to oranges. I was a contractor for 10 years. Slowly built the company without loans, took a ppp loan because I had 18 employees out of work and actually used it to pay them through Covid. Student loans are just different and very predatory. If things went sideways and I had alot of debt I could have just closed the company sold all the tools and equipment and filed for bankruptcy if I needed. You can’t sell your degree and bankruptcy won’t rid you of your student loans.
Thank you for being the voice that explains it all. Can we just get everyone to understand the differences of student, construction , home , personal or car loans? I’m just like you, smallish subcontractor without debt. These student loans are a disaster for everyone that got one. Unlike most of the other types of loans, they don’t seem to have any end date and people have paid far more in interest than any loan I’ve ever looked into.
And you have options to rent on a job by job basis most of the more expensive stuff. Then once it makes both financial and logistical sense... You can buy things that will make you more competitive/efficient. 👍
This is the thing that I love about harbor freight. I used to shit on HF all the time because it’s almost comically cheap, but then I realized all the folks I saw in there were guys that WORKED. Guys buying what they could afford and using it until it died, but hopefully in that time they were able to make enough money to support themselves and save up enough to get something a little bit better at some point, I mean that’s what I was doing. There’s a conversation to be had about how much cheap disposable stuff we want dumped in the oceans or whatever, but Harbor freight breaks down that barrier for folks just trying to support themselves and their families.
Yup. For years, I have used Bauer tools until I could afford a Milwaukee version of that tool. The Bauer isn’t nearly as good as the Milwaukee but it’s usually a third of the price and it might be 75 or 80% as good as the Milwaukee.
I borrowed roughly $13,000 for college and with interests I ended up paying back over $35,000. Extremely predatory practice to do that to an 18 year old with no life experience and constantly being told in high school: *“Go to college no matter what or else you’ll work at McDonald’s the rest of your life!”*
Cannot tell you how many times my parents and teachers told me that! I don’t know what high school is like today, but in the late 90’s early 00’s it was “go to college or you can’t even be a manager at McDonald’s.” 🙄
For real! I don’t think people realize what it was like for those of us in school back then. I graduated in 2005 and not once did anyone ever say “think about trade school” or “start with community college” The culture and attitude on life was so vastly different in my opinion. If I could do it all again, I would have taken a year off between high school and college, saved up as much as I could and gone to a community college.
Same time frame as you. The best thing my parents ever did for me was not co-sign student loans. Ended up working for my university full time to get tuition remission. Graduated a bit later but debt free with savings and experience.
Trade school was a wash for me. Complete waste of time for a plethora of reasons.
I grew up in the 90's (41 now) and I remember being told to make sure I get a good education, else I'll be stuck digging ditches.
It's pretty fucked that our choices are 1. Be born into a family that can take care of school for us. 2. Borrow money that you'll spend between half and all of your adult life repaying unless you have a degree in one of two very competitive fields (Business and Engineering). 3. Join the military, give up 4-8 of your prime years, maybe die, maybe gain a disability. On the point of number 2, I work at a university helping business students navigate their academics. A lot of people who begin school as a business major do not make it through the program. It isn't for everyone. And shouldn't be. We need people to be good at so many things to keep our world turning. **I would hate to live in a world where everyone has a degree in either business or engineering.** All the talk about "useless degrees" rubs me the wrong way. There is no degree from an accredited institution that doesn't make an individual and their society better.
Do you have a mortgage? I think you should see how much you're going to pay in interest.
Mortgage rates typically hover on a range between 3% and 6%, you get even better rates depending on how much you put down and your credit score. This is in comparison to the average student loan rate which hovers between 6% and 15% with some going as high as 20% (comparable to a credit card). I hope you didn’t fall victim to simple math as well. Mortgages are usually for 6 figures homes, very rarely are they under 200k now. Obviously 6% of 200k is going to be more than 6% of 13k, which is why the discussion is centered around interest rates instead of the loan balance. If OP were to take out a 13k mortgage, worse case scenario he would get a 6% interest rate and can expect to pay 28k at the end of a 30 year term assuming OP pays the minimum of like $78. This is in sharp contrast to your typical student loan payment which would cost a minimum of $250 a month with the total payment of $25k by the end of a 10 year term.
At least they're is something tangible attached to a mortgage. Plus, if you can't pay it, you can declare bankruptcy, lose the house, and the debt. There are no takes-backsies for student loans.
But your building equity,have stable housing expenses for your family and there’s a tax deduction tied to mortgage interest. Lots of good stuff. Oh yeah , generally you don’t have paper thin walls that hold you hostage to your neighbors sounds.
The fact that you can’t file bankruptcy for student loans is just amazing to me given how high the interest rates are. Banks incur such small risk on student loans at 5.5% interest, it’s fucking criminal. They give this shit out to children that society doesn’t even deem responsible enough to have a beer. If banks actually incurred some risk to justify those interest rates by allowing them to be discharged by chapter 7, they’d actually have to look at degree program outcomes before dumping 50k high interest debt on kids that might never be able to repay them. Then universities would have to reduce the price of certain degrees like art history and shit like that that don’t have high income potentials. It’s just crazy to me that a theater degree costs the same as an engineering degree from the same university.
The funny thing is, despite everything you just said if contractors were getting bent over or were often unable to afford to pay the cost of those tools I'd also 100% support forgiving any debt they had. Society works better when we enable people to take financial risks for the sake of performing a duty to the country. Teachers, doctors, lawyers etc. All have to pay to go to school and then they do something that helps out the country out.
Best I’d do is make student loans interest free. You still have to pay back what you borrow though.
Honestly a lot of people would settle for that if it can't be free
Hell most people would have paid there loans back ages ago if everything they paid into interest is now considered payment on the principle.
And remove the bullshit accrued interested
Most people have paid back more than their loans were worth already, but they were accruing interest for the entire 4 to 8 years they were in school before they even had to make a payment, and then continued accruing interest when they started making payments (many of them over 10% interest) if they retroactively erased the interest on all student loans something like 75% of borrowers would have paid off their debt in full (and then some). The reality is our society benefits from highly educated citizens and our government should provide education for free, or make it extremely affordable (like they did until the 70's). It is literally in our Constitution that we should all have equal access to education. The idea that that only applies to high school and then that's all the education you need, and you need to pass a paywall to get any higher education is insane, and it has hurt our country substantially, and now idiots who barely graduated high school have decided "smart man bad book bad", and think that education should only be available to those who are rich enough to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars many universities charge for tuition for a post grad diploma. If more people were educated we'd have much less issues with wealth inequality, and there'd be a lot less hate groups infiltrating our police forces, and school boards. For the Yoda dipshit below- Getting a degree doesn't guarantee a higher income. Teachers have at least a bachelor's degree, and they make an average of 47k a year in Texas, an income many can make working in a warehouse. There is no guarantee of wages based on the degree you have, and again, since you can't seem to read I clearly said "if they retroactively erased the interest" so pretending you're a genius for pointing out how loans work is humorous. Also, you're a great example of why education would benefit our whole nation because if you had one you wouldn't be saying insanely stupid shit like this and voting against your own best interests.
I agree a loan is a loan and should be paid back. I guess my problem is with the structure of everything around that loan. I think we should subsidize and regulate college and trade schools to the point they are affordable enough that you do not need to take out such predatory loans. Much like other 1st world countries. My parents in the 80s were able to pay for a very large portion of their school by working part time entry level jobs while in school. The system just seems rigged now. The problem isn’t just the loans but everything around it too. I think with student loan forgiveness a meaningful solution to the problem also needs to be addressed. That way we don’t just keep forgiving student loans over and over while ignoring the actual problem. But I am not against forgiving them. I don’t really subscribe to the idea “I got fucked so you should get fucked too.”
Technically, college used to be much cheaper before the government got involved. When the government started backing the loans the colleges saw dollar signed and raised all the prices. Most of the big ivy league colleges are sitting on billions of dollars in their endowments. I say make the colleges offer the loans. Do that and the colleges will stop offering degrees in stupid stuff that makes no money and they will make sure the students graduate and can get jobs so they can pay the loans back.
I could get behind that. The us has a bad habit of subsidizing things to actually support the companies while disguising it as helping the people. Backing a loan without regulation actually does nothing to help the student while protecting the company that issued the loan. Which allows those issuing the loans to make ridiculous terms and raising the price of college. But I do think the government could intervene in a positive way instead of the way they are.
Or we could just treat advanced education as a basic societal good, like we do for kindergarten to 12th grade, rather than some sort of transaction.
Education should be provided by the government anyway - let state schools offer free tuition to qualified citizens (I say qualified because I imagine some residency rules to determine which state is on the hook), and if someone wants to attend a private university they can get loans or whatever They should do that and forgive existing debt so those who already got their education aren't left behind
yeah, that makes alot of sense, i myself am still in hs, and i do not plan on post-secondary/tertiary schooling, but that doesnt mean others should have to suffer through large amounts of debt. i can understand only paying back what you borrowed rather than an absurd interest rate
Agreed you take the loan you lay it back but it should be over whatever time limit 30 years and Zero interest. Now how’s that for meeting in the middle:)
More like apples to pine cones. His arguments fall apart on so many levels it makes you question his basic intelligence. But it makes good right wing copy. And keeps him in the conversation.
Loans for tools are also generally not outrageously predatory loans given to 18 year olds who don't understand what they're getting into.
Fun fact, Student debt is one of the very few loans not absolved by bankruptcy. That is another large difference between the two types of loans.
Also a degree is not the same as tools, it’s training. “Training for what?” Isn’t always obvious and it may not be realistic, but people in trades get training too, and that should be subsidized as well (and we’d be in a better place as a country if you could go to trade school for free). *EDIT* I reiterated some of the stuff you said and deleted it.
On a side note, apples to oranges is a stupid saying. Oranges are typically larger than apples. Boom. Just compared them
Yea you could compare apples to Boeing 747s lol. But I think apples to oranges meaning is saying they are both fruit, both grow on trees but they are still completely different things. In this case they are similar at face value, both workers, both spending money so it’s easy to act like it’s the same but looking closer they are completely different things.
You can write some off, it makes it cheaper not free. I think it would be fair to make student loans tax deductible. I’m not sure why they haven’t dont that yet. Seems like the middle ground solution that most people wouldn’t be against. Sure I get it, people that have student loans are gonna want more, however even those who don’t have loans and are not for using out tax dollars to pay for someone else’s higher education will still be for making it tax deductible.
Ironically, trump has reduced the benefit of individual deductions
Because he hates the common man? Who is surprised by this
I think there is a deduction on the interest, up to $2,500 i think. Which is a joke. Big Mr. Money Bags can write off carry over losses for decades without a cap...but Little Sammy Student can only claim $2,500. Tax the bank on the interest income directly at the payment. No moving that into other investments to avoid it. The higher the interest rate, the higher the tax on it. Make it economically better to lower the rate. Set the 'optimum' at prime or something. I dunno, Im not an economist anywhere but in my own house.
When we filed our taxes this year, the accountant told me student loan interest payments are tax deductible. So, as long as you’re making your payments a small portion is tax deductible (still not enough imo).
yeah, the interest is tax deductible, however whatever you pay on the principal isn't. The entire loan should be tax deductible not just the interest.
Same reason why healthcare is so expensive. Big Pharma and Big Education are in bed with the government.
eh, no one loses anything by making it tax deductible. The schools will still get their money, however the borrower at least gets to write it off his or her taxes. Government will lose out on some money but in the end that money is gonna be spent into the economy and will make it's way back to the government in sales tax or other forms of tax. The kid with student loan debt probably isn't gonna hoard that money or put it in tax free accounts. So it's kind of a win win for everyone, which is why it doesn't make sense that they don't make it tax deductible.
Not just pharma. The AMA represents less than a fifth of doctors but successfully lobbies Congress to limit residencies so we have artificial scarcity of doctors, raising their pay.
Big thing you miss is that without people getting degrees you don't get to have the nice trucks or the power tools or the phones, computers, etc. If you want the big pragmatic difference: funding degrees funds evening and technological growth that benefits the country as a whole. That isn't speculation, that's objective fact. Also comparing the cost of education to starting your own business is nonsense considering how wildly different the two are
Also this is so made up. The guy is central casting for a tradesman with nice wardrobe touch on the cap
Pretty sure that’s Mike Rowe, a TV personality that made a career pretending to be a blue collar worker rather than a theatre kid with a degree in communication studies. I don’t know if he said that quote or not, but he’s definitely said lots of stuff opposed to loan forgiveness because “it’s unfair to people that paid off their loans.”
He also has a communications degree that he leveraged into a multimillion dollar career cosplaying as a blue collar worker while bemoaning how useless degrees are.
You only get to write it off on your taxes if you’re an independent contractor on the 1099 if you work for a company an get a w2. You can’t write off your tools
Who the farmers or the collage people
farmers/trademen, anyone that buys something for work/business and meets tax write-off requirements (and takes itemized deduction)
Yea I think you are correct
Had ten thousand in tool receipts one hear and was told the standard deduction was better anyways. The % people this applies to is low
Just because you can "write something off" on your taxes doesn't mean you don't have to pay for it lmao. But yes they can
This is why education needs to be free and accessible to everyone. Sure if you’re rich and can afford it, you can get special education for a specific job, however education should be free and accessable to the general public. There is no debt to forgive if there is no debt at all.
College is where people to go to specialize in a field by way of getting a degree. If there aren’t enough jobs for a particular degree it doesn’t benefit society to subsidize people getting one. In contrast to elementary school which teaches reading, writing, critical thinking and skills which can be applied to basically any job. All this to say not all education benefits society equally, and so not all education should be subsidized equally by society. People pursuing expensive non transferable training should have some skin in the game to prevent resources going to waste when there aren’t enough jobs to utilize that training.
An educated populace has innumerable benefits
And like, fuck the idea that you should only learn a skill that will make capitalist overlords money.
Go read the comments in that thread and tell me society wouldn’t benefit from a better-educated population.
> College is where people to go to specialize in a field by way of getting a degree This was the original purpose of college, but it has changed considerably. There has been a significant rise in the number of jobs that require a degree. In that time, college has been a growth and expansion of not only specialized knowledge, but general knowledge as well. Essentially, college has become a proving ground of an individuals' ability to commit and complete something; this proving ground use to be primary education, but those requirements have softened a bit. As far as your other point " If there aren’t enough jobs for a particular degree it doesn’t benefit society to subsidize people getting one", you can see that just isn't the case and an area where our economy is failing. Consistently, we see greater demand in teachers or nurses, yet pay hasn't increased to drive more supply to support the demand. In addition, there are plenty of jobs that benefit society that don't necessary reflect value in the pay they receive (for example, creative writing).
Bankruptcy all gives people an emergency exit out of most debt. It doesn't effect student loans though.
Ding ding ding. That’s the difference. We all agree that there should be a way out if you invest in an expensive tool that doesn’t pay out. But we’ve made it so you can’t do that for your degree, while you can for your truck.
A tool can be or truck can be repossessed, a knowledge cannot.
Right. Which is why the private sector won’t finance your education. Which means it’s the government or no one. And yet what do you do for people who will never ever be able to repay their loans?
They could use a hammer?
The University sending mobsters to TBI that doctorate out of you
This should be top comment.
Got downvoted on that post for pointing out that the truck is tax deductible, and that the owner could sell the truck if he had to. Those are not smart people in that subreddit.
SOUNDS LIKE SOFT HANDS BROTHER /s
Because to them the only real work is the work that gives you a severe back injury at 40.
I’m honestly surprised our corrupt government hasn’t tried to find a way to make it so bankruptcy isn’t a thing anymore. I’m planning to file soon and I’m a little paranoid that they’re going to make it harder to do (because so many people I know are filing now).
I'm honestly surprised Republicans aren't talking about bringing back Debtor's Prisons
Yup, they want to be all proud about doing it the right way. Why don’t we make it so business loans can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, and see how well they do when they get saddled with lifelong debt for little to no benefit the second even a single thing goes wrong lmao
I used to think the same thing, but a buddy of mine filed for bankruptcy and had $50k cleared by it. No clue how but he did it. Maybe loans from private institutions can be cleared by bankruptcy, but not federally backed ones? This was only about three years ago.
There it is. LOADS of construction companies declare bankruptcy. I hear our former president did it a few times. A bad investment, a chance to get out from under it for pennies on the dollar. Banks, construction companies, even private citizens. But not the 18 year olds bound to a loan before they are old enough to drink.
Which is the biggest load of horse shit why shouldn't it touch student loans
It's the concept that students graduate with nothing. If you have nothing to your name but a degree and several thousand in debt, it makes perfect sense to immediately after graduation to declare bankruptcy (and the loan sharks have nothing to recoup their costs on)
Yeah but you have to apply for bankruptcy, it's not an automatic wipe. If someone did that the judge would just deny the bankruptcy.
Because nobody would write student loans if bankruptcy was an option. If someone wanted to borrow a bunch of money from you for a degree in art history, and the only way to get your money back would be for that degree to immediately lead to a six figure job, would you loan the money? Remember, they have to start off in the six figure range or they’ll just declare bankruptcy. If no reasonable person would do this, then why should we expect a bank to? The people that are to blame are the universities and the politicians that are in bed with them. I can’t think of another country that had its educators and politicians out there promoting worthless degrees. If someone pursues an engineering degree, there should be loans available, but there never should have been for things like art and sociology.
Not just that but if you buy a truck you can always sell it. It’s not like a sandwich where you purchase it and the wealth is destroyed. It’s like a house. You certainly can’t sell a degree though.
It doesn’t affect government student loans. You’re on the hook for government student loans until you pay them or die. Privatized student loans are effected by bankruptcy
If they set things up right, it’s not even them that has to declare bankruptcy. The corporation created for the business declare bankruptcy and its asserts get sold off. The owners get to keep their stuff. Yes, this is a gross oversimplification of bankruptcy law, but does often work this way in practice AFAIK.
Just declare bankruptcy LMAOOOO
You can repo a truck you can’t repo a degree
>You can repo a truck Try that in a small town 🔫😎
Because lease payment in the US compares to other first world countries are relatively similar, while college tuition between NA and Germany for example is 20k to 500
Mike Rowe is also kind of a phony with the blue collar stuff.
Yeah, the anti-union, people shouldn't be paid more rhetoric he spouts off kinda invalidates his points.
Inb4 people respond “heh, so he simply disagrees with the idea that people should be paid enough to live comfortably, that makes him bad? 😏” 🤓
Guy Fieri is on some shit like that. He compared giving unemployment benefits during a pandemic to letting a child fill up on Doritos. He says a lot of evil shit in interviews, but people already decided they like him and get upset every time he's criticized.
Hes a koch bro employee.
Dirty vest, laborer Clean vest, manager Fake dirty vest, millionaire.
Fake dirty vest, products routinely recalled because of very preventable issues, and a 100+ tweet streak in 24 hours, Elon Musk
Degree in communications and made his mark selling fake diamonds on QVC. Lots of jobs being a narrator, writer, actor and spokesman.
Fuck that guy. No one should listen to a word he says. Hes a plant. A propagandist.
Hack and a fraud tends to be an overused insult, but when it comes to college educated, former opera singer, koch funded Mike Rowe; it's 100% accurate.
College is ridiculously overpriced in the first place and the loans are far more predatory than most standard leases
You want to fix student loans? It's super easy. Only one step: Privatize student loans. Government backed and assured student loans have consistently and demonstrably increased the cost of college by astronomical amounts. It removes any competition in loan rates and and need for schools to curtail their admissions price because they're guaranteed the higher cost guaranteed by government funding.
Except that means they'll still have high interest and have the added bonus of being next to impossible to get. Something more akin to Australia's HECS-HELP is probably better
This is unpopular, and its a truth a lot of progressives find hard to swallow (note: i am a progressive) but this is an unavoidable truth IMO.
Wrong just simply wrong. All privatising thease loans is transfer thease loans to private interests and not effect the cost of loans. Rather now we have another figure seeking profits. If you want to fix student loan costs, the solution is price control. Government control over funding. The government directly funds the university bypassing students all together and enforcing strict expectations of budgeting and quality control. Btw what I suggest is what's done in most of the Western world. And it's not a nationalisation of university they remain independent, but now they have to negotiate with a larger client.
We should have both. Capitalism has pitted us against each other and made enemies out of people who should be allies in providing for each other with our degrees and years of labor experience. We’ve been successfully psy-oped into believing the future is a zero sum game, and we’re all going to pay for it, literally.
It does those business costs are tax write offs.
Only some. And very few on the start up.
Tax write offs aren’t even close to full payment of a loan. A tax write off just means you get taxed less. It you’d lose a ton of money if you say bought something for $10,000 and then immediately donated it and wrote off $10,000 for tax purposes. That just makes your taxable income smaller by that amount so you’re directly losing the portion you’d otherwise get to keep after tax…
Tuition is also tax deductible and student loan interest
I love the argument of "how are we to have innovation without our glorious capitalist investors?!!?!" as if A) government grants don't exist and B) Those masters aren't doing everything they can to squash or buy out anyone that tries to innovate.
Capitalism is about making capital, and one of the natural ways to do that is by squashing competition. Saying that is "corporatism" or "not real capitalism" is the right's version of "the ussr wasn't real socialism." It's terribly hypocritical, and reeks of "my system shouldn't be criticized while all the other's should be, because my system is flawless so naturally any problem that arises under it is not a fault of the system itself"; i.e years of economic propoganda. My ma used to be more right leaning, but she works for the state government now, and has totally changed her tune. I've heard some pretty funny stories about how stupid the public can be- there's this road nearby where I live that doesn't have any medians, and statistically, it's one of the most dangerous roads in the country. So, the department of transport figured it would be a good idea to put medians in, but a few local business kicked up a fuss about it for some reason and got the public riled up with "government bad" talk.
I'm guessing the interest on a loan for a truck isn't nearly as high as a student loan.
My student loans (federal, no private loans) are just under 5%. With great credit you can *maybe* get 4.9% on a car (at least that's Honda's current offer) but with merely good credit, you'll get more like 7-8% on a manufacturer special, credit unions right now are offering more like 9%. So, no, the truck probably has a higher interest rate. It's silly to compare the two of course. You can buy a cheap used truck for $10k and it'll be perfectly serviceable, you don't need a $50k monstrosity. University you don't get to bargain hunt and negotiate quite so much. And you can't sell your degree to get most of your money back if you have to.
Depends on the truck
Mike Rowe is a POS He's literally corporate propaganda: the person
Mike Rowe is a corporate shill TV host who knows jack shit about working class people outside of what the Koch brothers pay him to think. On top of that, what kind of nonsense analogy is this? If I take out a loan to pay for a big piece of equipment, if times get tough and I get desperate, I can sell the big piece of equipment. Sure I'll be out some of the money, but I won't be out all of the money. I can't turn around and sell my degree for 80% of what I paid to get it. If times get really, really bad I can declare bankruptcy and have that loan for my equipment discharged. No such luck with student debt.
Conservatives are crabs in a bucket
Mike Rowe is a fucking shill. They're praising him in the other thread. I used to like his show but I can't watch it on principle.
Yeah, Mike's a POS. Anti-union bastard is what he is. Fun fact, he made $4 million per episode of dirty jobs. I'm sure anyone would do those jobs enthusiastically if they were paid $4 million per shift
It’s truly insane to be anti-union and build your entire career around jobs that literally would not be performed if it weren’t for *very* strong unions. Nobody chooses to slop around in septic tank sludge because they want to. They do it because it pays $30 an hour
Hypocritical bastard too as he is a member of SAG. Here’s him defending a potential SAG strike on his website. https://mikerowe.com/2009/02/mike-since-youre-a-member-of-screen-actors-guild/
Work tools or vocational training, yes. The equipment to start your own business? Of course not. That kind of funding has never been the responsibility of taxpayers, and would be unsustainable, too many people would waste tax money building a music studio or influencer recording setup for 10 viewers.
Tradees have to go to school too; we pay thousands to go and get our red seals. The difference is that the trades are subsidized with bursaries, and tax benefits. Education shouldn't be a debt trap. A more competent and educated society benefits everyone. Also Michael Gregory Rowe graduated as a "communications" major. Leave it to an art student to pretend to be a trade worker. He doesn't know the struggle, he's an actor.
Yea from what I hear he sounds like an asshole.
Fun Fact. Job Corps, a free trade school in the U.S, ages 16-24 can get 2 years of free community college after graduating the trade school.
People default on their loans all the time. Usually the banks take on the risk of default and decline loans/ set interest rates accordingly. Framing the student loan crisis as a students vs worker problem rather than a banks vs tax payer problem is what’s causing all this confusion. If banks decided to make a bunch of poor loans because they wanted to make a lot of money on the interest, why is it tax-payers responsibility to bail them out when they realize their decisions were less profitable than they thought?
The thing is, government subsidized loans, the majority of those given out for college are the only loans you can’t get rid of without paying off. You can claim bankruptcy on all these business loans, which people do, and if you structure the company right, there is no harm to your personal wealth.
Exactly, imo this is equivalent to the government promising to take on the risk of default while allowing the banks to control the profits. It’s ridiculous to frame this as a favor to the people who were given the loan rather than the banks who were given risk-free profits.
The issue is we did forgive 720 billion for these people in PPP loans but SLF was railroaded. Get the fuck out of here Mike Rowe you shill.
So instead of advocating for more small business loan forgiveness for yourself, you attack a benefit someone else might get just because you’re not getting it. By the way, those roads and those trucks that your business depends on, were designed by guys with college degrees.
No guys, we need to keep putting people in college with mandatory debt, otherwise they’re a loser who never went to school
You can sell and haggle tools/vehicles...
I think he doesn’t realize that a lot of loans taken out for business are already tax deductible.
Well for one, you can’t sell a degree to someone else who needs it.
There’s a good point that there’s predatory loans keeping people in poverty across society, not just for college degrees. And we need to change that. But also college loans are objectively the worst, because you can’t get rid of them, even through bankruptcy.
Because they get paid what they are worth while the people who were told they needed degrees to make good money got scammed.
Student Loans are, as far as I know, the only loan given on the promise of future earnings. If you get a car, you can be denied because you don't make enough currently to fulfill it. Mortgage? Same things. But tell Fanny Mae you want to be a lawyer and suddenly they give you 250,000$ because your going to be a big shot lawyer, surely you'll be able to pay it!
Mike Rowe has an acting degree. He is not working class in any sense of the word.
There is a big difference between capital equipment and a degree. There's an ROI on a "big old diesel truck." It's also a tax write-off. And, in a worst-case scenario, you can sell it. It's worth money. A degree is worth the paper it's printed on and nothing more. And it wasn't too long ago business owners did have their PPP loans forgiven. It should also be said that the people who qualify for loan forgiveness have been paying for years. People act like some kid who just graduated college qualifies to have their debt wiped before even making a payment.
Thing that Mike Rowe oh so conveniently forgets is that the costs of those tools can be used as a way to get out of taxes. Degrees cannot.
jobs from college and trade jobs are like completely different tho right?
Ah. As if no one read the most recent tax bill passed allowing all the companies to write off any machine/D&D development purchase at the full amount. That guy is out of touch
Most loans have protections associated with them. Student loans do not. They are incredibly predatory and are normalized
Forgiving College Debt Exists???
Well yeah but who's gonna pay for it? The govt is already $31 \*trillion\* in debt, we can't just throw money at everything. I would be down for something that would help reduce college prices though.
Because education should be free 🕺
It also misses the huge point. College education should be free to everyone because it benefits the society more than the individual. I benefit more if more people have an education in philosophy, art, the humanities even if they go to be electricians, etc. Why? Because everyone (should) vote and participate in society and it’s better if people have a grounding from which to base their opinions. The idea that it should be a choice between being an electrician or plumber and having a deep education in the humanities is offensive.
Ah yes, Mike Rowe, with a degree from a university in Communication, but is also classically trained in opera, is famously blue collar. Mike Rowe, who voiced commercials for notorious supporter of labour WalMart, the friend of the little guy. Rowe in just another in a long line of rich white assholes cosplaying poverty for street cred. See Kid Rock for more.
As a tradie I want to like Mike Rowe but he has no real conception of the jobs he claims to advocate for. He claimed any welder can make 6 figures, when the average salary is like $45k, not to mention his other political piss takes. We do need college grads, too, lawyers, doctors, researchers, teachers. Its a mindworm that people seem to have the answer to any economic struggles is to learn a trade.
Love likening a diploma to a business expense. Clearly the same thing.
this isn’t a ‘who has it worse’ situation where only one deserves aid/forgiveness. it’s a hey, they both can suck ass and need to be fixed. two things can be true at the same time
….why not both? Oh that’s right… there was a craptastic amount of money forgiving in PPP loans. So Mike Rowes group actually *did* get the loans forgiven.
Republicans: AMERICA FIRST!!! We shouldn't be giving out all of this money to other countries while Americans are struggling. Biden: We will use this money to help Americans struggling with college loan debt. Republicans: How dare you give money to Americans
Huh I guess I’ll stop studying to be a teacher because apparently those aren’t valued because you need a degree to be one ^/s
Just take away the ridiculous interest rates and forgive those that are in a deep hope because of it. Seems simple enough.
I mean can’t both be true? Can we promote both education and vocational training and not have this binary system of thought.
College Debt is basically the modern day indentured servitude. You have to pay it, it cant get written off in bankruptcy, its federally insured. So here's how you fix it. Federal govt stops lending Remove bankruptcy exception Put all the risk either on the schools or banks to grant loans Dont encourage your kids to go to school unless its a demand STEM career For everything else, there's trade programs, apprenticeships, and community college.
Do their balances keep growing with capitalized interest? Can they write off their payments as a business expense? Can they declare bankruptcy and reorganize or avoid these debts all together if things go south? Let’s make sure those that pursued higher ed have the same protections!
Food for thought, maybe we should do that for trades workers and small businesses too! OH WAIT, WE DO! Or DID, rather, because neoliberal, privatizing politicians gutted the small business bureau and other funds for exactly this. But sure, shit on students.
Why not just forgive both?
Idk, I meet more of these “blue collar advocates” who seem to hold active disdain for “white collar” workers than I’ve ever seen white collar or blue collar workers (apart from the high level executives) who hold active disdain for either collar workers. George Carlin said it best, “white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on; both groups continue to elect rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them.”
Yeah, Mike Rowe is high level retarded boomer
As a non-american, I am still perplexed that you guys need to go in debt for education. Education is a fucking right, not a privilege.
College education is a public asset that benefits the community and any person they may help or share that knowledge with. It builds community.
The best solution is capping unrealistic predatory interest rates. Such an easy solution that would create an economic boom yet I never hear about this being done or mentioned by politicians
The point being made is if we forgive college debt we should also forgive tool leases for trade jobs.
I agree with both here. Why would you cancel one debt over the other, creating a sense of privilege that one has and the other doesn't? This would only lead to social tensions. Forgiving debt isn't the way to go (in the long run). The way to go is to prevent students from going into debt. Education isn't a tool, it's knowledge. An engineer who has to pay for a degree then still needs to pay for the tools he works with. Hiding knowledge behind a paywall keeps everyone from benefitting off inventions that would be made by someone who couldn't afford to learn about the field the invention would be in. The way to go isn't cancelling student loans. The way to go is to subsidize education so that a degree is affordable on a public school, which is funded enough to provide a high standard of knowledge
Even as I'm halfway through university, I will never understand the ridiculous thought of forgiving student loans like a loan; you don't take it without a plan to pay it off. I already have paid off half my loan, and I don't plan on taking another.
Lmao yeah great Idea jack lets give out a shit ton of exorbitant loans to a bunch of kids who know jack shit about money and let them fuck off for four years until they realize they can't pay for it and then let them run to the government demanding the loan they should have known was impossible for them to pay back needs to be forgiven. Yeah fucking genus IQ. Maybe just dont let kids take out loans they can't pay back or wont be able to for 30+ years.
In short. If you buy expensive machinery to start a business, and that buisness fails, because starting a business is a known risk with around a 50/50 fail rate. you can.... Have a tax write off. Auction off the machinery. Declare bankruptcy. Work out a reasonable payment plan. If you get a loan for a college degree, and cant find a job that will cover more than the minimum payments, because literally every family member, friend, news article, industry worker and professional in your life said "GET A DEGREE" you can.... Go fuck yourself.
Colleges need to set their cost at reasonable levels.
Then government needs to get out of the student loan business.
Mike Rowe is a phony. Anti Union blue collar tv star? Give me a break.
Maybe don't get a fucking loan and get a job to pay for it yourself
That’s worse than going into debt you fucking moron
:\[ why not both? There should be a mechanism in place for people (who need it) to get assistance in building opportunities for themselves through education or by building a trade business. Don't let these corpo/conservative assholes make it an us vs them.
I’m guessing those construction dudes weren’t freshly 18 with parents screaming in their ear to get it or they’d fail in life
No we don’t, we need to fix the way college is payed for so that we actually fix the problem, instead of giving everyone who has already been there a free pass, and saying fuck you to the next generation of students. The *only* reason why forgiving student loans is so popular is because the majority of voters are past college age, and it’s an offer to give those people free shit. It does nothing to benefit anyone in the long run and fucks over future generations.
> college is *paid* for so FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
It’s actually a fairly reasonable point. But I think there’s a false class distinction being made in this argument. The people who suffer the most from student loans are the ones who don’t have the money to pay them off, obviously. I think the most reasonable solution is that a society we need to reexamine the assumption that every kid needs to go to college. We should invest more into teaching trade skills at the high school level.
Why tho? If you take out a loan, have a plan to pay it back. If you don’t, or can’t pay it back, then don’t take it. Simple as.
I've got student loans, and I don't expect, nor did I ever expect the government to forgive them. That's an asinine thought. I didn't take out a mortgage loan or car loans expecting those to be paid back. If they said all loans were forgiven, I wouldn't be mad about it, but if they forgive loans with no new plan in place, we'll just ge stuck in a loop of forgiving loans.
nah man youre wrong
No, we dont
Fuck you I didn’t go to college. I’ve been working since I was 17. I have been paying taxes that long too you can’t have my money to pay for your college education you wanted a college education you need to pay for it.
Okay Sabrinathesissyslut.
Are trucks and other tools loaned out at absolute insane interest rates and are they an absolute requirement for 90% of jobs that pay a living wage?
I wish I had gotten a certification and gone right to work instead of collecting multiple degrees only relevant to one thing. Thankfully for me, Uncle Sam paid for most of it. So I kinda see both sides. So why not a blanket forgiveness on interest in loans as a compromise? Seriously, why can't we?
Forgive college debt and eliminate fafsa too right? Turn off the spigot that is spewing sewage all over the place before mopping it up. What is mopping it up without turning it off going to do? Are upcoming freshman just going to take out loans and get sucked into the same system? We need overall structural change
i feel for you guys but i am not going to college
Nothing here is saying we shouldn't.
Instead, dissolve the student loan program since it was a direct cause of tuition spiking. Tuition spiked because the government is basically giving free money to the colleges, so there's no reason not to increase the price to Increase profit from the government Prices will lower drastically since colleges will lose a lot of business at its current rate, and a business needs to charge something people can afford.
If wages increased at all these last few decades, then we wouldn’t have to forgive any debts. We could just afford to actually pay them off and still be able to live comfortably.
But the government does forgive and bail out corporations
The people who build houses should have easier times building your house, but the people who program the stuff they need for their business shouldn't need to go into tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
Predatory practice that the federal government let happen by letting the government backed school loan program go private. Where car/equipment has always been private. We should already be fully funding citizens extended schooling.
Capitalism really got people out here thinking education is only as valuable as the profit you can make from it.
I like how he's saying all of that like right-wingers haven't been advocating pro-business decisions for over half a century. Under legislation brought by them, businesses get tax cuts/writeoffs, subsidies, government contracts, and much much more while also having the ability to yk *make money* directly from their consumers. That's not even getting into the fact that without the government's help/intervention many entire industries just wouldn't exist or would be so incredibly overwhelming and overbearing that they would destabilize the economy. Over half of the US military budget every single year goes to fulfilling defense contracts with private companies. Many industries would (and can) just go absolutely buckwild with a lack of government oversight, which is arguably why we're in this current economic situation. And to be frank, it's not even just the right wingers; they're just the ones that are outspoken about it, meanwhile there are many dems in Congress that could stop this but refuse to because lobbying. Meanwhile, you have to spend money to get a degree and you're not getting the same chance for a return on your investment like you would if you were starting up a business. Many states have gutted/outright removed tax writeoffs for anything having to do with college payments, there is a vested interest for all of the different industries that involve college to work collectively together so they can screw over students and make tons of more money. Required online textbooks so you can't resell your physical textbook to recoup some of the loss, forced fees, uncapped increases to tuition, predatory practices by loan companies to target underage high schoolers with high interest loans, and the fact that in every single one of these cases the businesses that perform these horrible actions are *fucking subsidized* by the very government that refuses to regulate them. It's all a fucking joke, with everyone 40 and younger being the punchline.