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sdduuuude
Participant[quote=sdrealtor]I didnt say that! The only thing I can say is abuzz with 100% certainty is moi![/quote]
I’ll drink to that !
Participant[quote=zk]Well, it is different from bailing out the banks. Risky investments by banks are not necessary for our country to be competitive. Availability of college, in my opinion, is.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that student loans, the way they’re currently structured, are the reason that tuition costs have gone up. What do we do to fix it? I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know what it isn’t, and that’s making college unavailable to those who can’t pay cash for it.[/quote]
In your opinion. Not every opinion should be funded by the government.
One reason why we shouldn’t bail out the banks is because it keeps weak banks alive that shouldn’t be alive. Same with students and colleges. The loans keep people going to school who simply aren’t willing to work for it and it keeps schools in business who would otherwise go broke.
You don’t have to fix it, really. In fact, stopping the attempts to fix it may fix it.
Instead of borrowing cash from Uncle Sam, people can go to school part-time and work part time, they can room together to save money, they can find employers or bosses to sponsor them, borrow from relatives, work on research projects, work as an intern, and otherwise suffer a bit to get an education they really want. Or they can attend a 2-year program, or a trade school instead of a 4-year college.
I have a friend, now an IT Vice President, who came from nothing, lived in a 20-foot trailer in Encanto while he scrapped his way through SDSU, worked while he was in school, and made it in life. We need more of that and less of debt-financed education. If you aren’t willing to do that, then maybe college isn’t for you and I just don’t see how it is the responsibility of taxpayers to fund people’s schooling who aren’t willing to make the sacrafices.
Limiting per-student loans would certainly help. Limiting to less expensive programs would help. Limiting loans to those with the best grades who attend programs in schools that produce graduates who can actually use their education to get a well-paying job would help. Blank checks don’t help.
More and more student loans is simply not a sustainable way to get more people into school. It is just like government-sponsored programs to increase home ownership, which subsequently failed once the market realized that the value of the homes hadn’t gone up – only the amount of funding.
They made it easy for people to go into debt, so people spent more on houses, and the result is housing prices went up, which made it more difficult to increase home ownership.
Participant[quote=sdrealtor]Data pleases data hounds but often does nothing for market participants.[/quote]
Neither does saying the market is “abuzz” when nobody really knows what that means.
Participant[quote=UCGal]Unless you’re a teacher applying to a charter school (publicly funded, but non-union)
Or an aerospace engineer applying to Boeing. (Private industry, unionized engineers.)[/quote]Boeing in Seattle, maybe. Not Boeing in South Carolina 🙂
Participant[quote=CA renter][quote=sdduuuude][quote=jpinpb]pri_dk – my brother is involved in the auto industry and claims union as the problem. Couple of questions that maybe you can give me some feedback/answers. How many factory auto workers are living in mansions and fly in private jets?
Should labor be brought to the low levels of third world countries, working conditions and pay, so that the head guys at corporations can continue to enjoy their rich lifestyle?
When companies are making record profits off the backs of workers in third world countries, tax breaks by our government that the rich paid politicians to pass and the loss of jobs here, do you really still hold on to the unions being the cause of these problems?
Should our labor (pay and conditions) be as cheap as third world countries so we can keep jobs and companies can make record profits?[/quote]
Unions serving government seem to be the problem, not so much unions serving corporations. As far as I’m concerned, the unions and corporations can battle it out in their own way. Both are private enterprises, really.
Unions serving government, however, seem vey crooked to me. The unions gain a monopoly on providing services, they block individuals from working in their area, then trade votes for higher wages. It is true thug behavior and needs to stop. Unions serving government are really an unregulated monopoly. Not sure how anyone can love that.
Because fat-cat corporate officials supply the funds for corporate union workers, I can understand how you might side with the union there. However every-day taxpayers bear the brunt of paying public union wages. In a sense, the union is the private corportion here, milking the public coffers and taxpayers.[/quote]
Do you think private corporations aren’t guilty of gaining a monopoly on services, blocking individuals (or other buisinesses/entities) from working in their area, and trading votes (or campaign contributions) for higher pay (contracts, etc.)?[/quote]
Whether I think that or not isn’t relevant to the point I was trying to make – that unionized labor fighting against government employers is much much worse than unionized labor fighting against private employers and needs to be stopped.
But I don’t think corporations can block anyone else from working in their area the way unions can. If I’m a teacher, I cannot approach the city and ask for a job. I must go through the union to get the government contract. If I am an aerospace worker, I can work for one of many different private firms that each may have several government contracts.
ParticipantMy brother did it for a couple years. He worked 10 hour days and did 8-on in LA, then 6-off in Vegas. Had a little apartment in LA.
Try Tacos El Gordo in Vegas and you should be OK.
October 17, 2011 at 2:06 PM in reply to: OT- We are the Luckiest people in the U.S.A. (but you already knew that) #730842ParticipantRegression to the mean sucks.
ParticipantMrs. duuuuude and I are big HGTV watchers.
From what I can gather, there are two genes in the human DNA structure that often appear together in a single individual. One makes you gay and the other one makes you a design-freak. I’m a rare case that only received one of the two. Hence – MRS. duuuude is a female and I love design shows. They’re faaabulous. Uh. I mean. Awesome.
In fact, I thought the “G” in HGTV stood for “Gay” but apparently is is “Garden” Huh. Who knew. My wife and I like to play a game when watching those design competition shows. It’s called “spot the straight guy.” It’s a very difficult game. We have been playing for years and are still looking for him.
We have touched every square inch of our little house since buying it in 1998. We have nothing left to redesign so it must be time to buy a fixer-upper and start over.
ParticipantPlus, I’m sure the private schools fund a nice big lobbying effort to convince congress to increase these student loan funds for the poor underprivleged students who can’t afford a college education. Everyone thinks they are helping the students. In actuality, they are jacking up prices and pumping money into private educational corporations.
ParticipantWe all hate the idea of bailing out the banks because it socializes the loss and privatizes the gain.
How is backstopping student loans any different ? The risk of default is on the backs of taxpayers and the student receives all the benefit.
Plus, because the government is pumping money into an industry, it increases the the amount of money people are willing to spend on educations and the cost goes up. And, they loan to anyone, not those who are most likely to repay the loan.
Thus, the government loan program seems to be the direct cause of the outrageous cost of education, which makes it more and more difficult for students to afford an education – which is the problem that the loans are intended to solve in the first place.
It is a perfect example of the government trying to solve a problem and making it worse because of the unintended consequences of their own actions.
Some limits or curbs have to be put in place or we will have ever more who cannot afford an education. Maybe the loans should be limited to degrees and colleges that turn out productive income-earning gradutes. Or we have hiring businesses backstop the loans and decide who receives them.
ParticipantI like Jim, too, but I have to needle just a bit.
Here at Piggington – In God we trust, everyone else bring data.
Einstein once said (paraphrased) – the extent to which we understand something is the extent to which we can describe it with numbers.
“Abuzz” is devoid of data and while Einstein did not say that when we use words like “abuzz” we don’t understand shit, I think he would support that notion.
ParticipantEasy but messy do-it-yourself job.
Just spray the ceiling w/ lots of water, wait a while and scrape with a big, fat putty knife. Done.
Just for fun, try it in a closet – you’ll see how easy it is. Most of your time/work will be spent moving or covering furniture and cleaning up the mess.
If you do have asbestos, I wouldn’t worry about it (but that’s just me) because when you spray the ceiling the asbestos won’t get airborne because of the water.
Participant[quote=briansd1]The financial crisis is partly a result of bad underwriting and putting the wrong people into the wrong financial products.[/quote]
You mean the banking crisis that we turned into a financial crisis by making the taxpayers bail out the banks.
I say let those banks sell whatever products they want, just make sure the banks pay for the error.
Put the responsibility and pain of failure on them and they will be more careful. It isn’t really that complicated.
Participant[quote=jpinpb]pri_dk – my brother is involved in the auto industry and claims union as the problem. Couple of questions that maybe you can give me some feedback/answers. How many factory auto workers are living in mansions and fly in private jets?
Should labor be brought to the low levels of third world countries, working conditions and pay, so that the head guys at corporations can continue to enjoy their rich lifestyle?
When companies are making record profits off the backs of workers in third world countries, tax breaks by our government that the rich paid politicians to pass and the loss of jobs here, do you really still hold on to the unions being the cause of these problems?
Should our labor (pay and conditions) be as cheap as third world countries so we can keep jobs and companies can make record profits?[/quote]
Unions serving government seem to be the problem, not so much unions serving corporations. As far as I’m concerned, the unions and corporations can battle it out in their own way. Both are private enterprises, really.
Unions serving government, however, seem vey crooked to me. The unions gain a monopoly on providing services, they block individuals from working in their area, then trade votes for higher wages. It is true thug behavior and needs to stop. Unions serving government are really an unregulated monopoly. Not sure how anyone can love that.
Because fat-cat corporate officials supply the funds for corporate union workers, I can understand how you might side with the union there. However every-day taxpayers bear the brunt of paying public union wages. In a sense, the union is the private corportion here, milking the public coffers and taxpayers.
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