So your college degree seems to have been poor quality, as your approach to discussing a topic is to just insult the other person to try and make your point. You’re also conflating your personal experience, from the sound of things, with the framing I was referencing in the article. Pointing out that the article is highlighting an extreme example of an outlier, who works in a field that most people find ‘more respectable’, is a valid criticism of the article’s bias. The article would read a lot differently if it was someone who’d gone to an ivy league school to get an arts degree, went into debt for $500k doing so, and now works as a Starbucks barista struggling to make payments. The way the article is structured is intended to cause people to get triggered and be all out-ragey, without properly engaging with the subject / thinking about what’s going on, the issues, and potential tweaks to make things work.

The article does include a reference to the ‘average’ debt level of ~40k, for people that took out student loans. But it doesn’t comment on how those “average” students debt servicing amounts are changing due to the changes in policy. It references via secondary links a more regular example, one where the person is just 2-3x more in debt than average – where a woman comments that her payments are going from $250 to $900.

One of the ‘horror’ stories we hear out of the American system, is that people will be paying these amounts for decades and decades, without chipping away at the principle. Not a surprise, if your payments are less than the monthly interest costs – and if she’s paying just $250 out of a payment that ‘should’ be $900 on a 10 year term, she isn’t covering the interest at all. If they’re allowed to take out loans from regular FIs, they could theoretically get that down to around $450-500 by extending the amortization out to 25 years and adding options for over payments if they want to get out of debt faster. You could get that even lower, if you have a guarantor (ex. Parent) or other security behind the loan to reduce the interest rate further – with that setup, you get a monthly payment of like… $250. A more practical middle ground. Yes, it’d potentially increase the payments, but it’d also remove the common complaint of not being able to get ahead on principle payments.

And again, that referenced example is one where someone’s gone into twice as much debt as the average person who uses that system. The average person, based on the numbers in the article, is looking at a payment of about $400 after the change, from the look of it. A difficult, yet far more manageable change than putting out there that people are suddenly seeing a 10x increase up to $5000, which is the ‘shock and outrage’ approach taken in the article.

I don’t think anyone from a more sane country is looking at the American system and thinking its ‘good’. In another response, I noted that here in Canada, from what I recall at least, we cap our tuition amounts for Canadian citizens / undergrads – so its far less common to hear of people going into massive debt to get degrees from local universities. Doing so aims to place the ‘pressure’ on Universities to figure out how to fund their operations. Many ended up relying on foreign student income, where tuition isn’t capped. Even with some restrictions, universities still have massive endowment funds, so they aren’t ‘hurting’ for money at the institutional level – for example the University of BC is sitting on about $3billion in its fund. Putting pressure on the Universities/institutions to give students a fair shake, is more practical in my view than saying the government should cover student loan debts / interest issues. I mean, if the Universities “fraudulently sold degrees that they claimed would get you 6 figures”, shouldn’t they be the ones holding the bag – not the government / regular tax payers?

You say you graduated HS 22 years ago. It may be time to act more like an adult, and treat other people/discussions with some decorum.

*just an edit to add in, that if you watch the clip of the lady with the 5k payment… she openly admits that, while complaining about the increase, they’re aiming to put in about $7k/month to get it all paid off in 5 years, while still having more left over for ‘prioritizing other investments too’. So, the article’s ‘outrage’ increase, is one where the person clearly got a really high paying job out of it, and isn’t exactly ‘hurting’. So they earn way more than enough to cover their debts – and are essentially 1%'rs who were getting subsidized by the government by thousands of dollars per month.

Sure, I get that not all lawyers are scum – though I do know a few that fit the very description I gave. But the point is more that you can find less ‘noble’ examples of people in massive debt, which may alter opinions on the subject. The article chooses to use a specific outlier to make the case more persuasive/concerning.

Like another thing I’d be curious about is the variance in debt levels between professionals who train at “regular” schools/colleges, and ones who train at “elite” schools like Harvard or MIT or whatever’s good down there these days. The impression I get as an outsider to the US system, is that the costs vary wildly between different tiers of schools – and that it’s entirely possible to get a decent career (middle class) even without a top tier school education. I’d suspect then that there’s a tranche of people who are going in to massive debt attempting to go to these more expensive options, without good reason for doing so – but it’s the individuals choice, at the end of the day.

And contrary to what some folks seem to think on here, an 18 year old is an adult in most countries, as far as I know. They’re old enough to be accountable for their actions. They can vote and all that. And these folks are often mid 20s by the time they get out / have fully accumulated their debt – so even more ‘old enough’. As long as they have ‘options’ to choose from, I find it questionable that people choosing the highest/most expensive options should be given the biggest break.

It’d make more sense to me to regulate the hell out of your schools, and have government enforce things like tuition caps for American citizen under grads etc – rather than have a kind of manic approach to debt forgiveness that flips every four years, which turns education affordability into a lottery. University endowment funds are a fairly clear argument for clipping those institutions wings a bit, and forcing them to give a break to the students. Heck, even here in Canada where we cap tuition, some of our universities have absurd amounts of money stockpiled.

Yeah, I don’t really see a reason to engage with your posts either, at least not with any real conviction. It’s not a sign that you’re approaching a topic / other person in good faith if you’re defaulting to insults. Insulting people isn’t very persuasive, and just serves to further alienate moderates – it makes you seem like an unreasonable extremist with the personality of sandpaper underwear.

Sure, but you’re framing that in a way to be as positive as possible about it. How about, “the 18 year old that wanted to defend criminals and get them out of violent crime offenses for huge profits”, and went into debt to pursue what they thought was going to be a hugely profitable career? Do you really think regular people, who go into debt just ~40k based on what the article states, should also be comp’ing that other case with perks/debt forgiveness? The article is specifically using an outlier case, who went into debt for a profession that’s respectable, to skew opinions…

Student debt is an issue in the states, I don’t disagree on that as far as I understand it at least. It’s just that a lot of the articles around the subject seem very heavily skewed by political bias, which is annoying. And me being annoyed by that, and wanting more neutral discussion, I don’t think of as bootlicking.

This seems… misleading, in a weird way. Even some of the comments are confusing, though I may be just clueless as I’m not American (I’m Canadian, so don’t know any people directly impacted by this to question in person).

There are comments here saying it’s really tough because low interest private loans are less available. People noting huge increases in their monthly payments (by percent, but often not noting the actual dollar value from what I can see?).

The article notes that the average student loan debt is around $38k. Even with a terrible interest rate of like 12%, which is what my local Credit Union offers for personal loans, that’s a monthly payment of $500 for ~10 years. The guy in the article is an outlier it seems, in that he has a 6.3% interest rate and payments around $5000 – so while the average person is out 38k, this guys in the hole by like $400k+?? The reason it costs them as much as a mortgage payment, is cause they spent as much as a house getting his education. I doubt education costs ‘skyrocketed’ partway through his education, so he would’ve seen that bill coming. And for the price of that education, I’m guessing he could run the numbers with more accuracy ahead of time, and make an informed/educated decision on whether to take out those loans.

pot -> kettle

The states has been moving towards authoritarian corporate control for a long time though. The freedom cities controlled by big tech, setup in whatever country they want, operating outside ‘local’ regulations, with services via satellite and protection via US military, very much fits with what Starlink has done. Techs push for ‘rare earth’ (uranium) is likely about powering these sorts of cities, without needing to rely on a ‘countries’ power grid – to make them autonomous and impervious to local issues.

A few big military powers to allow for the “constant enemy” setup similar to 1984, with a corporate backend to prop up oligarchs that can act based on the whims of the oligarch without fear of repudiation.

Authoritarianism is on a big upswing lately, and egalitarian ideals are busy eating themselves alive – mired in demographic politics. And the conspiracy gremlin in me says it’s been intentional on the part of the democrats/progressive sorts, as they’re just as beholden to ‘rich’ authoritarian leaning tech people as the right wing/republican sorts.

I’d disagree. I know it’s often interpreted along those lines, but it seems a misread on the situation to me. There are quite a few literary critiques on Hamlet that view him and his dilemma as existential angst – a hero torn between ‘duty and doubt’. I think that reading is far more apt than viewing Hamlet as a suicidal emo fop. The very next lines after the famous intro are literally:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them

So… Whether it’s nobler to sit there and get fucked by ‘chance’, or to take up arms and oppose the status quo/issue. That opening clearly establishes the two sides of his deliberations: to suffer the situation, or to take up arms and opposed it – neither of these is equated to dying until the next part, which pivots to death, because he was opposing the king / considering killing his usurper uncle. Not only would that potentially result in his death, but the act of killing in the ‘christian’ mindset would result in his soul being damned in the next life. He spends a huge amount of the play humming and hawing about this sort of stuff, like when he has an opportunity to top the guy, but stops because his uncle is mid prayer – and he doesn’t want to kill him in a way that might accidentally send him on to heaven, if such a thing existed.

Anyhow, the next part supports my read, I think, where he goes through a list of “mundane” offenses. Thees offenses are basically all sleights that someone would be ‘suffering’ as a result of actions of another - they have an external locus, and there’s no explicit reason to think that the ‘response’ with a bare bodkin (dagger) would be directed internally: the oppressor’s wrong (tyrants), the proud man’s boasting (we hear alot of boasting from certain folks…who are blind to the impact on others), the pain of being shunned romantically, the slowness of the law to achieve justice, the insolence of office (putting up with an idiot in a position of power), and the general pain of generally having to put up with those ‘unworthy’ of your efforts. His bridging line there is to finish the list with a note that you could fix most of those situations with a dagger, before finishing it off with:

Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death,

That’s pretty explicitly saying “why would anyone ‘suffer these slings and arrows’ (mundane offenses) if it weren’t for a fear of death by ‘taking up arms against them’ with a dagger?” (to reference it back to the earlier start for cohesion in the reading, which works just fine).

In the speech he also equates inaction to cowardice, and that to effectively being dead. Near the end:

And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.

Ie our fear of dying, the uncertainty of what’s next, makes us bear those problems / put up with a lot of crap – it makes us into cowards. Our resolve is diminished by the thought of the challenge / potential death, and the possibility of going to hell if you murder the source of these troubles, to the point that we lose the ability to take action.

And again, a huge amount of the play is literally all about Hamlet, trying to sort out the morality of whether he should kill his usurper uncle – an act which he knows would put his own life in jeopardy and cause potential chaos - let alone put his own ‘immortal soul’ in jeopardy of going to hell, if he accepts the idea of heaven/hell. Not so much Hamlet debating if he should kill himself, but rather if he should kill his uncle. He’s out for revenge, he’s not out to be an emo baby.

Reddit’s seeing membership outflows resulting from their more draconian policies. Reddit boss restarts a competitor platform so that he can try and recapture users by owning his own competition, while trying to pretend like there’s no conflict.

idk. Seems pretty suspect to me. Lemmy seems ‘ok’ for news aggregation, and it has a more community / local vibe to it. For example, I can have more confidence that the feeds I see on Lemmy.ca are more controlled / accountable to Canadians, rather than the heavily Americanized subs that exist in Reddit. And I can pick and choose which other subs to see, with better understanding of the likely biases that I’ll encounter. This sort of end user transparency is really refreshing, especially given the burbling propaganda war being waged by the Americans at present against Canada.

I don’t condone wanton violence either, of course… but at the same time I recognise someone like Hamlet as a tragic hero. His most famous soliloquy, the “To be or not to be” one, is largely about whether you should stand up to tyranny, even though it may cost you dearly to oppose tyrants, or whether you should try and keep your head down and try to profit personally as a coward.

Yes, it’s better to achieve those goals through non violent means, but you need to draw a moral line. Luigi drew his.