Posted on 04/25/2019 5:41:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
It’s the greatest crisis facing the country today and threatens not only the present, but the future as well. It’s not the national debt, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change, health care, or any of the other issues Democratic candidates for president routinely ramble about, no. This is something far more serious – people making informed, really bad choices. And the Democratic Party is rallying to their defense.
Out of pure self-loathing, I watched most of the 5-hour lovefest on CNN Monday with Democratic candidates for president. One hour each for Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg. These back-to-back town halls featured pre-selected questions from a screened audience of college students looking to government to solve their problems. Of course, government can’t solve your problems, especially when your biggest problem is looking to government to solve your problems.
Still, it was a look not only into the minds of the candidates, it was a look into the minds of people who, someday, will be in elected office themselves. It was scary.
A day after more than 300 people were killed in a terrorist attack because of their faith, I don’t remember a single question or statement from anyone about it. There were, however, a lot of questions about student loans.
Judging by the amount of coverage student loan debt has gotten this year, you’d think there were loan officers hiding in bushes outside of high schools waiting to jump out and force college bound seniors to sign their lives away to big banks.
That’s not happening, of course, students are signing those documents willingly after actively seeking out loans for college. But you’d never know it by the way the candidates talk about student loans.
The issue isn’t so much an issue as it is an opportunity to pander. Candidates dangle varying versions of loan forgiveness and “free” college to students with more debt than many companies as a way to buy votes. It’s also a way for Democrats to advance an idea that is at the core of progressive politics: no personal responsibility.
So much of what Democrats are pushing this year is designed to insulate people from the bad choices they make – don’t worry about consequences, government is here to “fix” it. It’s the “let mommy kiss your booboo” of 2020.
Nothing captures this attitude like student loan forgiveness. Fully informed people making bad choices to borrow more money than their education will ever be worth, flocking to politicians promising to make it all better.
Rather than stealing from taxpayers to absolve people of their bad decisions, here’s an alternative that will serve the much more important purpose of teaching future generations about responsibility: tell the truth.
One questioner at Monday’s CNN event asked what can be done for her. According to her question, she’d amassed $25,000 in loans for just her freshman year of undergraduate studies at Saint Anselm College, which cost $38,000 per year in 2017. Rather than pander to someone like this girl, all candidates, and all Americans, should ask her why in the hell she chose to attend such an expensive school. Ask what undergraduate degree she thought could justify such a move. These people need to be taught that a degree in interpretive dance or 1940s bisexual polar bear studies might make you super-woke in your Young Socialists of America drum circle, but they aren’t viable for future employment.
Additionally, every student with a complaint about student debt should be asked the following:
1. Why go to an expensive school if you can’t afford it without taking on massive debt?
2. Why would your parents allow you to choose a school if you have to take on upwards of $100,000 in loans?
3. Do you understand the concept of a loan?
Knowing those questions had to have gone through their heads at some point, they should then be asked why they should be absolved of their debts when they willingly and knowingly made bad decisions?
They won’t have an answer, at least not a good one.
Candidates should pat them on the back, tell them they’re sorry but there’s nothing they can do for them. Not everyone is meant to lead a life of example, some people serve as cautionary tales – so let it be with these people.
Future generations can learn from the high self-esteem, snowflake generation whose parents should have but didn’t tell them “no,” so they can avoid their mistakes. Unless you’re going to be roommates with the next Mark Zuckerberg, no undergraduate education is worth $100,000 or more in debt. If you can’t pay for it with savings, scholarships, grants, and some moderate amount of loans, don’t go to that school. There are other options.
There should be no student loan forgiveness. It’ll be a tough lesson for kids to learn, but it’s one they need. Their parents failed them, their guidance counselors failed them, and they failed themselves. Let a group of liberal billionaires step-up, put their money where their mouths are and help, but don’t force an autoworker in Michigan or farmer in Wisconsin who’s helping their kid work their way through a state school or commuter college do it.
Choices have consequences, especially bad ones. At least they should. Government is supposed to protect people’s rights, not from themselves. And certainly not at the expense of everyone else. Let these people serve as an example of what not to do. It won’t help them, but it’ll do wonders for the next generation.
There is also much more massive demand for a college education than there is for college educated workers.
In the past, poor grades kept inadequate students out of college. Now schools hand out A’s and B’s for not much more than mediocre attendance. Everyone thinks they are college material. But when they get there and find there is actually work involved they look for the easiest path forward. Which is usually a major that only requires regurgitating socialist propaganda.
Colleges love these students because they are easily manipulated into borrowing way too much money and hand it over to essentially remain uneducated with a worthless degree.
I went to ITT Tech. back in 83-85. Then it was as decent school that taught what I wanted to learn. Electronic Technology. I knew when I signed up I wasn’t going to walk out and earn a 6 or 7 figure Salary.
My Wife went through the College I started working after after Graduating Tech School. She now works at a fortune 500 Corporate HQ making what I earn.
We both paid less than 10k for our Education that allowed up to enter the Professional world. We have both since then taken other courses needed to allow us opportunities for promotion.
I’ll be damned If I will pay for some punks decision to spend 4-6 years at some Commie reservation learning how to destroy MY Country and get a degree in gender studies or interpretive dance.
I am not saying they shouldn’t have the right to take such classes but part of College is learning that one’s choices have consequences.
Besides that, imagine what this generation will expect if their Post Secondary Education is paid for.... Free Houses, Free Health Care.
What a bunch of tools!
My wife went to college anticipating in majoring in French because she had a bunch of “advanced credit” from all her high school French. Then she learned when she got there that she had so much advance credit (for which she got no REAL credit) that in order to complete that major she would have to begin by taking every 400 level French course they offered. She changed her major.
Setting aside the fact that young adults may or may not be in debt for bad reasons, if the government really wanted to solve this problem they’d fix it at the level where it needs fixing.
1) Get the government out of school loans. Make the only way for loans to be issued come from private banks who will then scrutinize your chosen major, ability to get a job, and the projected salary to see what you can pay off. The lower the salary, the higher the interest rate they can charge. Maybe pass a law to cap the rate at a certain level because it does benefit society to have its populace educated.
2) What this will do is drastically reduce the number of kids being given loans. Or, reduce they amount they can borrow. This will cause a rapid and drastic reduction in college tuition when student rolls start decreasing. Think about it. Colleges know that the government will fund loans, in effect guaranteeing their customer stream. Until that stops, colleges have no incentive to lower their tuition.
3) I see it first hand. My youngest son is very smart. Excellent grades academically, solid SAT scores, football player, boy scout, community service, holds a job... He has had trouble getting into schools that have the program he wants because its so damn competitive. He’s being squeezed out because applications are through the roof.
4) This will fix the problem but it will be painful of course for the colleges. But you tell me - is it reasonable for the In State Tuition of a college my son applied for to be approx. $8,000 per year and the Out of State Tuition to be $32,000? I get that you want to give the in-state kids a break but come on? 4 times as much. It’s not like they have any added costs. It’s pure profit for the school.
I actually think Elizabeth Warren’s idea has some merit. At least she’s only soaking the UBER UBER UBER wealthy in her plan. (in theory) But the lesson is wrong. And it penalizes those that have lived responsibly and saved for school. Or chosen a good major and not 18th Century French Poetry.
In the end, I doubt anything will happen. It’s all just bluster. And that’s probably the saddest part of all.
This kind of thinking is how we got Medicar Part “D” under “W”. OK tactical move but terrible strategery.
Makes you wonder how much of this is insiders recognizing that Universities are a bubble popping, and you can avoid or delay thatby publicly subsidizing student financing
IF our Congress critters were really interested in doing anything other than buying votes by promising to “forgive” student debt, they could take almost immediate action by reducing or removing interest paid on those loans. The federal government took over student loans under Obama and it regulates the interest rates. That would be a quick debut reduction plan they could to relatively easily, yet for some reason they haven’t thought of that.
And, in addition, the Yuge salaries of professors. Some back 10 years ago earned nearly $200K and taught 3-5 classes per week. None over summer. Then...guess who they donate to...Democrat ticket nearly 95%!!!
Hello?!!! Article is spot on. Snowflakes would melt if they had to address this question on TV.
GREAT article. I hear parents saying Little Honored One is so in debt with student loans. So, for birthday and Christmas, give them a loan boost payment instead of all the crap from China.
All that being said, I could never have made the money I did in the computer industry without SOME education but these days that can all be done online. End tax-exempt status for obscene college campuses and their tax-free real-estate empires. Sell off the property and help former students with their obscene loans.
In the end you KNOW nothing will be done. Revisit your “premise” about gummint solving problems. It’s painfully obvious this gummint can’t do that.
The tuition ‘bomb’ is not connected in anyway to any reality in the actual cost of an education.
Well, if we do vacate the college loan debt, the debtor should be required to listen to Dave Ramsey tapes 24/7 for one year.
Ole Liawatha Warren makes 465k a year.
Revoke the degrees after 10 years if they don’t pay. Notify their employers.
“It’s also a way for Democrats to advance an idea that is at the core of progressive politics: no personal responsibility.
Abolishing personal responsibility is the primary goal of the democrat party.
Bingo.
Government loans ARE the problem, they’ll let you go into debt for any degree and there’s no incentive for colleges to keep costs down. There will always be more “help” from government. Making college “free” will only make the situation worse!
I will say something has to change. The ratio of debt to first-job paycheck has become too extreme. You could buy a home for the cost of these degrees. That said, let market forces compete for the best solution - relying on the government is the worst choice.
My nephew and his wife complain about their student loans all the time. It’s not about them being stretched, though. It’s about them wanting to buy BMWs and a $600,000 house to keep up with their friends who don’t have to repay loans.
Knowing the sickness among many millennials, I wonder how many aren’t really hurting, but just can’t get their instant gratification.
I NEVER went into debt.
Going into debt is like taking the canoe out with the tide and coming back against the tide.
I was smart enough to figure that out.
I am not sympathetic to people who go into debt.
I am particularly unsympathetic to those who bask in relative luxury, go into debt, and expect other people to bail them out.
One of the smartest things I ever learned was to say this to myself:
Nobody can or will do it for me. I must do it for myself.It's my own damn fault--nobody else's.
BTW: In addition to myself, I also put my wife through college, both of my children (each went through three times), and my grandchildren, and after I became a multi-millionaire, I set up a scholarship fund to help indigent people, especially adults, go to college. I don't know how many people I sent to college.
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