Posted on 06/08/2015 5:27:26 AM PDT by Sir_Humphrey
Years later, I found myself confronted with a choice that too many people have had to and will have to face. I could give up what had become my vocation (in my case, being a writer) and take a job that I didn’t want in order to repay the huge debt I had accumulated in college and graduate school.
Or I could take what I had been led to believe was both the morally and legally reprehensible step of defaulting on my student loans, which was the only way I could survive without wasting my life in a job that had nothing to do with my particular usefulness to society.I chose life. That is to say, I defaulted on my student loans.
As difficult as it has been, I’ve never looked back. The millions of young people today, who collectively owe over $1 trillion in loans, may want to consider my example.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My son is finishing his junior year in High School. He is in the National Honor Society and gets straight A’s.
I was having a discussion with another parent in my office last week about colleges. He is the resident liberal. I told him I would not send my son to schools like Amherst College, Bowdoin, or other high priced liberal arts colleges. He was awarded a scholarship for $15k/year to Elmira College(50k/year). I told this guy my son was going to a school that taught Chemical Engineering or something similar. The liberal guy said these schools train you to be critical thinkers. He expressed the value of reading Falkner and such. I told him if my son wants to read Falkner, I will buy him the book on Amazon.
People that go to these liberal arts colleges, unless they are getting a full ride are just setting themselves up for
problems later in life. The only reason to go to these schools is for pre-med degrees.
FYI, I know two guys I worked with that went to Amherst College and Bowdoin College on full sports scholarships. They were both high school starting quarterbacks at local schools. Both came out of college with a smug cocky arrogance(they are also good looking). The one is now in his mid 30’s married to a rich girl he met at Bowdoin and has two kids. He has become more humble as he has aged. His wife works at a very expensive private school in Mass.
The other guy worked here for about a year. He was a nice guy but he was lazy. He was not that self motivated. I think because he had been given everything. He now works for an insurance company in Boston.
She cosigned. His mother was hurt.
Can't declare bankruptcy against a student loan. I assume LEE SIEGEL's writing this because (thankfully for his mother's sake) she has died.
Lee fits well with liberal elite organizations like the New York Times. They deserve each other.
That said, if this guy had a conscience he would rage against the college system that rips off students. College that have loan sharks right there on campus and sometimes 'take a cut'.
Liberal elite colleges charge as much as students can handle... and then some. Colleges don't offer more - they just charge more - for less. Much less. And they don't care if they ruin the student, ruin his parents, ruin the country. Liberal elites have raised tuition 5000% because they know they can destroy trusting mothers who love their worthless sons. Can we assume Lee's father was dead - and would have cautioned Less mother NOT to sign?
In the world outside of liberal elites - those who rob young people - and the New York Times types - those that celebrates lowlifes, YOU LEE SIEGEL are scum.
And no, not because you 'defaulted'... (again - it hit mama not you...)but because you celebrate your lack of understanding and conscience toward t he person who gave birth to you..
And besides Lee, those kids who didn't con their mothers into signing are not able to 'default' because courts have ruled banks can go after them until they die. The last years of your mother's life she was hounded by bill collectors. Must have been fun for her. That's the real reason you're not admirable. Who does that to their mother?
Oh, and the 'advice' you gave isn't even accurate. Anyone who didn't con their mothers can't 'default' on their loans.
Don’t worry. If the dems have their way they’ll make college “free” (paid for by the suckers).
Banks stay in business by lending money, charging interest, and being repaid. When someone defaults, ultimately the taxpayers lose.
Imagine “You didn’t build that” applying to (mostly) liberal college institutions.
Image of ouroboros suddenly comes to my mind.
“This moron will soon realize that they can come after him twenty-plus years down the road to collect that debt, especially if they are federally backed. And federally backed student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.”
Until the left declares a free for all on it.
It sounds like he caused his parents divorce and his father's bankruptcy.
Liberal Arts: what is work?
Yes. His attitude is poor. What it boils down to is a loan is a business arrangement. I have not defaulted, but I am seriously behind. I have an arrangement with the lender to pay less. They gambled on me and are losing. Do I want a higher paying job, any job? YOu bet, but it hasn’t worked out like that. The choice for me is homelessness and hunger or to repay and even then, I could not fully pay. They understood this going in. They INVESTED in me hoping to make money and lost. I would have been happy to oblige and I still am. That happens in business, though, in this case they will not lose due to my co-signer, the federal government.
I had a friend recently who bought a house years ago as an investment. The market went bad. Ended up under water. He would never recover his investment. He could not do a short sell, so he abandoned the home. He is an accountant with a good income and could pay but it was an investment, a business decision. THis was the agreement between him and the private bank. The business failed. He abandoned that venture. It happens.
Businesses and business ventures fail all the time, one could say more often than not. Many of these loans were essentially made to children, not a smart business move.
By the way, the feds can and do garnish wages and tax returns. His credit is crap, as is mine. As far as credit cards go, that is between a private bank and the card holder. Debtor prisons are not a good idea.
So, this LEE SIEGEL is an admitted thief.
It figures. He writes for the New York Times.
The DOE should pursue this loser and dock any proceeds from his illustrious writing career until his debt is paid. If not someone else has had to pay it.
His notion of free tuition is laughable.
Never thought I would find an American bragging about their lack of character in the New York Times. A man is only as good as his word.
If this is a plain degree (non-doctor or non-scientist)...the gov’t itself ought to keep you from a unlimited dimwit attitude of taking as much money as they might offer you.
He calls his decision “morally and legally reprehensible,” and then proceeds to brag that he never looked back. So I guess that moral reprehensibility wasn’t much of a deterrent, eh? But then again, he’s a liberal so any mention of morality is just a pose.
Life is full of choices. When people make the wrong choices over and over you wonder what their future holds.
It’s guys like this who promise one thing and give something else or nothing in return.
It’s guys like this who accept debt is ordinary and normal but not the responsibility to repay it.
It’s guys like this who believe the end justifies the means (i.e. a situation in which the final aim is so important that any way of achieving it is acceptable).
It’s guys like this who take for themselves but never give back to others.
I’m sure one can think of something else, but I see him as having a future in politics or bank robbery.
Sounds like my mother-in-law's meatloaf. It's probably worse still than he's even willing to admit. He's probably on disability now because of the trauma of his parents' divorce and bankruptcy and the death of his pet gerbil and....
“Now he’s trying to excuse what he did.”
Would be fun to do a citizens arrest on him with video and everything. Could make for a good campaign commercial.
Once we have a real president again, and I'd be happy with Walker or Cruz, he had better do a thorough job of undoing these eight years of damage. If the next real president doesn't repeal everything Obama did to our country, there won't be another chance for a peaceful restoration of freedom.
Debtors prisons were particularly useful for folks with this deadbeat’s mindset. He would have plenty of time to pursue his passion for writing from the comfort of his cell.
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