Their title is... ehhhh, I initially thought "oh a bunch of kids with heavy student loan debt for their liberal arts degrees are finding out adulating is hard" but in reality it is:
(paraphrasing) my step-father was arrested for a DUI, can't prove citizenship, and my mom needs money to drive to another state to visit him in custody (/)
This isn't novel, I've been hit up dozens of times on the street outside of shows, at gas pumps, in parking lots etc. This is just people hoping to hit a larger audience by soliciting twitter. You used to find Jains (or at least similarly dressed individuals) outside of airports begging for money.
And then this...
>Fans of “The Bachelor” sent contestant Becca Kufrin wine money on Venmo after she was dumped on national television, and more than 3,000 people sent a 23-year-old college student beer money after he held up a sign with his Venmo handle on the “College GameDay” telecast.
... one is just fans blurring the lines of what is appropriate and the other is just a guy hoping to get lucky and presumably making at least 3000 dollars for holding up a sign. What?!
Maybe I should walk around with a sign "Will likely have to work til I die, no one wants to give a GED holder a decent wage, only need 700k to retire, @ryancarlmercer", maybe I should stop maintaining an emergency fund and eating beans 10 meals a week to stretch funds.
"Technology makes it easier for individuals to beg strangers for money".
I can't open social media without seeing kickstarter/indiegogo this, gofundme that, need money quick, can someone paypal/venmo me money for thing, etc. Then a day, week, month later you see pictures of their brand new cabinets or of their vacation or they are hitting people up for money again for something else because people gave last time so now they expect regular handouts.
Instead of getting creative, people now just go "hey, stranger, you have it better than me, give me your hard earned money!"
>I'm having trouble figuring what you're actually saying here.
I'm saying the internet, specifically social media and payment apps/crowd funding sites, allow people to unabashedly give their (true or otherwise) sob story and beg complete strangers for money, I imagine the vast majority of people on sites like gofundme would hesitate to even phone family for financial assistance and I suspect nearly all of the people begging on social media simply wouldn't ask if they had to walk up to random strangers in person and ask.
Keep in mind, I say this while my nephew currently has a gofundme trying to raise 260,000 USD (!!!) for his mother for some experimental, questionable (cryotherapy for her kidney cancer, when it's usually used for skin cancer for example), cancer treatment in China.
I think these sites/methods serve a useful purpose, I think however trying to get gas money to give to your mother to go see your undocumented step-father in another state because he was drink driving and is likely to be deported or remain incarcerated... or hitting people up for beer money... is not a valid use of such sites/methods.
> gas money to give to your mother to go see your undocumented step-father in another state because he was drink driving and is likely to be deported or remain incarcerated... [...] is not a valid use of such sites/methods.
I’m a little confused why I would be flagged when most of my comment history is on topic, and it seems most of the comment history of the account I was replying to is political and divisive.
Two reasons. One is that it was you who first swerved onto a generic ideological tangent, which was the original sin of this subthread.
The other is simply that we don't see all the comments—there are far too many. It's understandable that people want us to be consistent and even-handed, but that's not fully possible. It's also not fully necessary, since someone else violating the site guidelines doesn't make it ok for you to do so. (You get a speeding ticket even though others were going faster—which of course they usually are.) But I've taken a look at the other comments now, and did some additional moderation.
It looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Doing that is against the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it because it destroys the curiosity that HN exists for. Could you please stop posting like this? Also, please don't post in the flamewar style generally.
I think both of these themes are equally true. Informal (and formal) community organizations have long supported those they feel are most in need, and people have long begged strangers for money. The internet simply makes it easier to do both.
The third definition of community from dictionary.com:
a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists
A prerequisite for finding community support is to be a member of one. There are many communities. The commonality and social bonds between members form the basis of trust and the expectation of reciprocity.
When people perceive that their resources are simply being expropriated to benefit people they have nothing in common with, may never meet, and certainly cannot expect reciprocal investment from, they tend to withdraw from voluntary participation. Without that participation, communities simply die.
It's true that some communities have a larger pool of resources to share than others. But consider this before you condemn a synagogue for helping out a local Jewish family with money that could have gone to taxes to help someone arguably more in need.
It's sad that not everyone has a home, but the solution is not to demolish the entire block and apportion to each person an equal share of lumber.
Well, yea, this is why implementing social welfare and safety nets is far better done at the government level, where you have accountability and a justice system.
An attractive person holding a clever, written-in-English sign, at a football game that cost them 100$ (or whatever) to attend, garners 3000$ for beer. The ugly, dirty, illiterate homeless person that stands outside of a train station gets 5$ for food.
Unfairness can exist at the bureaucratic level (shit like judges being tired and being less lenient towards the evening, or just plain and simple sexism and racism in the justice system), but it's far better than "marketplace of begging for welfare."
Similarly why a robust welfare state is preferable to charity. Charitable giving is free to discriminate and there's no mechanism to try and move it towards those who most need it.
Do you think welfare state actually distributes funds to whoever needs them? They are giving funds away to everyone who can check x boxes on a form, no one in the government ever verifies if the person actually needs the money, like a charity would do.
You verify it when you select where to give your money. Otherwise they are forcefully taken from you and distributed, and the most you can say about it is filling a ballot every two years.
I find it hard to see how a charity would be able to see into people's lives enough to make that decision, compared to the state which can and does prosecute if you lie on the form.
I implied there are mechanisms in a welfare state that can be used to try to move resources to where they are needed most.
There are no mechanisms whatsoever to force Bob the billionaire to do a god damn thing with his own money, other than to give the billionaire more tax breaks.
I also used to work in certification for government benefits, and I can assure you there are, in many cases, safeguards and verification.
These issues aren't solved with "social welfare and safety nets", that's just throwing good money after bad. I'm totally fine with a kick-ass safety net for people who are actually in poverty, aka have trouble funding their basic needs despite very serious, sometimes strenuous efforts. But someone who is advertising their Venmo ID online is almost certainly not poor in this legitimate sense. Spending more money than you earn, and then on vapid things like social media, etc. has nothing to do with poverty.
Exactly, that's the point. The government is much better positioned to distinguish between genuine need vs. boredom and a clever pitch that the Venmo-using public at large.
The idea that people asking for donations online are deservedly poor because they spend too much money on social media is probably the oddest thing I've heard all year.
Social media costs $0. Venmo costs $0. Internet access costs under $50/month, and is one of the most valuable purchases anyone can make in modern society.
The social media account costs $0. If you actually want to play at being a social media "influencer" online and reaching strangers to a non-trivial extent, you'll definitely be looking at some real costs.
There was a local pan-handling couple who was outted on local TV for "scamming people". They were seen shopping at expensive grocery stores and driving with their car. Apparently begging was just their job and made more than a few hundred dollars a day.
What you should take away from this article is "community members help each other out with money, the Internet makes communities bigger".
For the Bachelorette, I would assume that most of the donaters were young women that have experienced being dumped - the focus being the "community" (or perhaps it would be better to say population) of young women. It's not just random strangers donating.
Prostitution is certainly exploding. Anyone see appropriate reactions to this? How do we combat the loneliness epidemic that "social" media has caused? So many people raised on "social" media have no idea how to get to the kind of real, healthy relationship they want.
Don't really follow your logic here, you're conflating prostitution and a "loneliness epidemic"? Prostitution is as old as civilization itself. Older, probably. I don't see rising prostitution as indicative of anything other than 'poor people are low on options'
This is pretty common among the coming-of-age generation that has grown up on the Web. It's more likely to be tried in communities organized around shared attribute, circumstance, or interest, than just shouting into the ether. Typically, these are posted on sites where the person has followers in a similar situation, and are shared on that platform until it slowly propagates outward. Many people who share the same adverse circumstances can't donate, so they share the posting instead, spreading it further. Eventually, someone sees it who is in a position to donate. It's likely that those who donate the most are on the fringes of the original community, but feel a sense of solidarity or guilt.
The article mentions a few communities in particular. The unifying dimension seems to be that some people's real-life safety net is outweighed by their online one, even if they don't always receive the donations they ask. It's worth a try.
Waiting for help to find you probably isn't much of a plan, and you won't know if you'll get help unless you ask for it. Finding help is hard, as is swallowing your pride when the help that is offered isn't exactly what you were hoping for.
"millennial culture is just passing around the same $20 to whoever needs it at the time forever." I see this a lot on my Twitter feed. Recently, a guy with metabolic issues and chronic pain (whose own GoFundMe was "trending" for a while) is setting up a charity livestream for someone else's surgery. https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1148022827917938695
I'm sure people who fought in WW2 said that about the boomers, who in turn said it about the gen Xers. In 20 years time we'll be reminiscing about emoji and snap chat and hipsters and whatever the kids are doing now.
My point was about the usefulness of generational constructs as cultural boundaries, not "damn kids got no culture!". And according to sibling, I have "denouncements" to rebut. What a thread.
Well culture changes, someone from the 19th century has a different culture to someone from today. Yes I accept the fact that some arbitrary date isnt that useful, and some (most?) people wont fit the pattern, but I suppose you could say that about any stereotype.
Nevertheless it is a useful shorthand for people going through the same life experiences at the same time.
I say this as someone who's technically a millennial, but old enough to remember when we were generation Y, doesn't eat Avocado toast, didn't have particular problems affording a house and don't particularly like facebook/snapchat/grindr or whatever the kids are on now. So I'm not really a representative Millennial.
That reminds me of a great anecdote from Graeber's Debt:
"The anthropologist Keith Hart once told me a story about his brother, who in the '50s was a British soldier stationed in Hong Kong. Soldiers used to pay their bar tabs by writing checks on accounts back in England. Local merchants would often simply endorse them over to each other and pass them around as currency: once, he saw one of his own checks, written six months before, on the counter of a local vendor covered with about forty different tiny inscriptions in Chinese."
I forget what book I read it in, but there was a story about Moshe Dayan, the Israeli military leader.
He apparently liked to shop for stuff in the various bazaars. He would pay for his purchase by check. The seller, instead of cashing the check, would frame it, and sell it to tourists as an authentic check with Moshe Dayan's signature for much higher than the value of the check.
This resulted in a win-win situation. Moshe Dayan never had to actually pay for his purchases, the seller made far more money than the actual check, and the tourist got to have an authentic check with Moshe Dayan's signature to hang up in their home as a conversation piece.
Social Security also covers adult disability and even survivors benefits for the depends of those who die. Making us a vital safety net for those under retirement age.
Right, because SS isn't a retirement account, it's a "you get disabled and broke" insurance policy.
It just so happens that it's very hard and expensive to verify all citizens' age-related disabilities in different job-fields, so the "retirement age" is like a "we might as well trust them when they say they can't work and they're this old" cutoff.
It can also include free or mostly free healthcare, food stamps, as well as various forms of financial help for those in need, such as scholarships or family allocations, as well as those facing extraordinary circumstances (edit: see other comment on disability, etc)
I don't where you're from, but it wildly varies from one country to another.
No, that's a common misconception, which I suspect is spread partly by right-leaning finance-industry lobbyists, as their companies salivate over the thought of busting open the piggy-bank and collecting a percentage-fee on the flood of money that would be wildly thrown into the stock-market.
SS is INSURANCE policy. Quite literally, "insurance" in the name of the law. Oh, sure, there are lots of extra quirks, but fundamentally it's insurance, you can tell because you don't get a "refund" when the insured-against event (alive + disabled + broke) fails to occur. Instead, your payments will go to the other people who got hit by disaster, the same way others' premiums could have gone to your disaster. That's normal in insurance.
In contrast, using a retirement account is an investment, its total value is part of your estate when you die and goes to your heirs, but if the stock market tanks you shit out of luck and will still starve on the street. (The thing SS is supposed to prevent.)
When you keep this "insurance, not investment" distinction in mind, a whole ton of "weird" things about SS suddenly make a lot more sense.
That isn't the whole picture, either. After a certain age you can collect Social Security whether or not you need it -- a healthy, able-bodied person of retirement age can collect. In your terminology, it's disability & old-age insurance. Only it's guaranteed that anyone still living will qualify to collect, unlike traditional insurance.
I think the most unique thing about SS (that almost nobody understands) is that current payouts are funded by current contributions -- there's no "pot" or "account" you pay into per se, not like a 401k for instance. Instead you earn points by paying in over time, and the points map to an amount you're guaranteed which is in turn paid for by future taxpayers.
Latin Americans have been doing this for a long time:
>A tanda is formed between ten friends and family. Each member gives $100 USD every two weeks to the group's organizer. At the end of the month, one participant gets the "pot", $2000. This continues until each member has received the pot.[4]
>Tandas are formed for many reasons, but often because at least one member is in need of money to pay a debt right away, or an emergency arises. But they can also be formed with no pressing financial obligations.
>Among Mexicans, these forms of informal savings associations play an important role sustaining the livelihood of many people living in both Mexico and the United States.
A chit fund is a type of rotating savings and credit association system practiced in India. Chit fund schemes may be organized by financial institutions, or informally among friends, relatives, or neighbours.
The chit fund is said to be an institution that's been handed down since ancient times. In 1887, William Logan, erstwhile Collector of the Malabar district of the Madras Presidency, described the custom of chit funds among friend groups in that region.
What I don't understand is why people don't band together and simply refuse, collectively, to pay bills that are well known in the culture to be unreasonable. In particular, student loans. But also a few other things. My god, I know so many people who are struggling that it seems like everyone is struggling. I know people making six figures who are worried about losing their homes. In fact, I've known so many people who have either lost their home, almost lost their home, or are worried about losing their home that it makes up probably a majority of the people I know. Did we forget somewhere along the line that a home is just a patch of dirt with four walls and roof thrown on it? Should it really be that precarious of a thing? How many people do you think go to bed every night worrying about becoming a homeless person? We've turned into a culture that literally has a market that gambles on whether or not people will be able to keep their homes! For christ sake! What kind of sick shit is that? And the whole thing is predicated on people accepting the idea that they have to pay all their unreasonable bills and stressing themselves out willingly over the process of paying them. At what point do people throw their hands up and say "fuck it, this is unreasonable"?
Only if we're also collectively telling people not to take them in the first place. The current culture telling everyone to go to expensive private colleges, then bitching that they're burdened with loans and not pay them, is pretty toxic.
Its should be a multi step thing.
- Tell people how bad student loans are and how they shouldn't take them if they don't have a plan to pay them back.
- Educate people on alternative, like trade schools, apprenticeships, etc. Stop glorifying bachelor degrees beyond what they are (that should and often happens even in countries where education is paid by the gov!)
- Then, yeah, start doing something to reduce debt burden on those who were affected before the previous two steps were in place.
Otherwise, if we keep pushing for school loans but then tell people not to pay them, or forgive them, it's basically free education (a good thing) without actually collectively agreeing on making education free (which is kind of sketchy)
I get what you're saying. I agree that college and university should be looked at differently going forward for a lot of people. It's just that there is a problem that exists right this minute, with an entire generation of people who already took the loans, not realizing the outcome they would face. I'm just looking at all the wreckage and sense of instability people have all around me right now, and it seems to make sense that some collective action should take place. Unless we just want to punish people until they are middle aged or older for not being financially savvy when they were 18 years old.
But my point wasn't really to pick out just student loans. Not just due to people being burdened with student loans but a wide variety of other issues... We're more and more seeing people who hope to be able to save their own lives with GoFundMe campaigns because they can't afford to stay alive. We're seeing the idea of owning a home fade for giant swaths of the population. One third of the country is currently "subprime" in the eyes of financial institutions. And my understanding is that percentage is expected go up. The Dollar Store's massive growth is predicated on the forecast of "a permanent underclass in America". I'm seeing, hearing, and reading about so many people having a hard time every single day. And I'm reading about the country readjusting to accommodate the situation as a permanent reality. If the institutions cannot help, then I do think it's probably reasonable for the people to force the issue, given how prevalent we are seeing these problems become.
Yup. Thats why I think all 3 of my points above need to happen at the same time. Working toward forgiving debts while still handing them out is counter productive.
Only semi related, but I also take issue about how we got there in the first place.
"Lets make college free!"
"No, this is AMERICAH!~ People should pay for things!"
"Ok, then lets give out loans! Gov will insure them, so its win win! People get to go to college but it doesnt cost anything!"
"Ok, lets do that!"
"Waaaah! People can't pay back, lets forgive their loan"
"Err, wait a minute...didn't we say they were gonna be loan exactly so it wouldn't end up with the gov paying for it?"
Its even worse than if it had just been made free straight up, since infinite loans basically made education prices skyrocket mostly unchecked. This bullshit happens everywhere in the US (see: healthcare). And this is the worse of all world: you have "free market" problems, unbound pricing problems, AND the government picks up the tab. Fail on all counts.
But that's a different issue. For now, yes, lets do something about all the people who are fucked, BUT AT THE SAME TIME lets tackle the root cause.
I don't disagree with any of these points, just had a tangentially-related thought: wouldn't making college "free" be a forcing function to tighten admission criteria, further stratifying social classes? Schools can be a bit loose today since basically anyone with a pulse can get student loans.
Just thinking out loud; I suspect looking at other countries who do this would be informative...
>The current culture telling everyone to go to expensive private colleges
"Everyone" doesn't go to expensive private colleges. Of those who continue on from high-school at all, 75% attend a publicly owned institution, usually community college.
I didn't say go to expensive private colleges, I said TELLING people to go to expensive private colleges. And of course, "everyone" is an hyperbole in this context.
Are state colleges not also publicly owned? Those ain't nearly as affordable as community colleges.
When I was in high school, being railroaded into prioritizing CSU or UC admission requirements over graduation requirements was the norm even for students (like me) who had effectively zero chance of getting into one of those schools immediately after high school (let alone getting a scholarship or meaningful financial aid or any other way to avoid a predatory student loan).
> The current culture telling everyone to go to expensive private colleges, then bitching that they're burdened with loans and not pay them, is pretty toxic.
These values aren't pushed by the same people.
The people telling everyone to go to college and take out the loans are the people enriched by the status quo.
The people telling everyone that this is bullshit are the ones who aren't. The people saying the latter are specifically trying to counter the former. There's no single monoculture that's pushing both ideas at the same time.
And pushing debt forgiveness as a policy to support is a pretty good step, in my mind, towards changing the incentives for the folks who are pushing and profiting the loans...
Debt forgiveness punishes people who worked their ass off to pay their loans off. Every single person who took out a student loan consented to the terms of the loan. Why is it okay to just mindlessly take out a life ruining amount of money to pursue a degree in something of absolutely no marketable value to society? Why are taxpayers suddenly encouraging the continued subsidization of educations which have been proven to have been valueless to society? In fact, I would argue that the majority of these valueless educations are actually worse than valueless, they're ideologically indoctrinating with a divisive and destructive set of principles.
Stop federally backing loans, change the culture to move away from defacto bachelor's degree, and reign in the absurd admissions for public universities. It is not morally justifiable to suddenly foist the collective horrible decision making of a generation onto the larger society.
If we're really at the point where people are incapable of providing real market value to society, we need to talk about UBI. What we shouldn't be talking about is financially incentivizing behavior that is not desirable.
> Debt forgiveness punishes people who worked their ass off to pay their loans off.
So we should just continue burdening people into the poorhouse (or worse)? I feel for everyone burdened by ridiculous student loans (I am one of those people), but I would gladly take on everyone else’s debt forever if it meant people could have their education and be debt-free. Should we talk about my friends who have to decide if they pay their rent or their student loans every month? Does your righteous indignation do anything to help them? “I suffered so you have to suffer too” is toxic; it’s basically frat hazing.
As for why it’s okay to take out a ruinous loan, I was 17, and I didn’t fucking know any better. Everyone told us to go to college or else we’d wind up destitute. And they were partially right, at least if you managed to get a “profitable” degree. My high school-educated friends have shitty service jobs and alcohol addiction now. I have loans, and I’d rather not, but at least I have any hope for a future. That’s more than I can say for a lot of my other friends.
> It is not morally justifiable to suddenly foist the collective horrible decision making of a generation onto the larger society.
That would be the Baby Boomers, right? Because I’m pretty sure they (and their parents) are the ones who all voted to end state funding for universities. They also voted for politicians with ties to the financial industry, so conveniently the same people making it necessary to take out loans are also shareholders of large financial institutions.
No, what’s morally indefensible is bankrupting someone for getting an education, and then berating them for making a bad decision when they were 17, a decision practically guaranteed by a rigged system. What’s also morally indefensible are the attitudes that this is someone their faults, because at the end of the day, we all still have student loans, and no amount of your pedestal-sitting is going to change that.
> that this is someone (I assume somehow) their faults
They certainly don't take zero blame, especially if it happened in the last decade. The student debt crisis has been front and center for a while now. If in the last few years someone did that, and they don't know any better, they're seriously living under a rock.
The system should change, and Im not even against forgiving debts because it might just be straight up better to do for society, but saying the people who take on those loans and sign at the bottom have zero responsibility? They turn 18 long before they're completely crushed with the debts, and if I was to tell an 18 years old that they can't make decisions they're responsible for, I'd get an earful.
It’s about incentives. We were told in no uncertain terms that as a 17 year old making this life changing decision: do it, or be poor forever.
Now. I personally didn’t listen properly, dropped out after two years and did something else. But I don’t blame those who didn’t. Everything in modern middle class society and schooling was based around it.
So focusing on the individuals responsibility above and beyond that of the broken system that we have no choice but to join seems, well, cruel to me — even if I did personally follow your advice.
Treating degrees as only being useful if they teach a direct marketable skill is a shame, I think, but with how expensive it is now I understand why there’s a push towards it.
Perhaps it could start with, yeah I don't need that unreasonable brand new car with a 72 month payment plan, or I can take these college courses for 1/10 the cost at a community college rather than a more unreasonable expensive school, or I don't need that unreasonable 5500 square foot McMansion in that fancy neighborhood, or I don't need that unreasonable 10th pair of jeans, that unreasonable new iphone, etc. People bury themselves with debt - and not because they can't do math, but because they DON'T. Instead they make impulsive, emotional decisions. Hardly anything good ever comes from them. Unreasonable bills usually come from unreasonable decisions (Medical bills being an obvious exception).
The people loaning them money bear some responsibility, also. If it’s obvious to you that it’s a bad loan it should be even more obvious to the bank, but they shield themselves from their poor decision making by wrapping the debt into instruments that they unload onto some other poor sucker.
certainly the banks fail to do their due diligence on a lot of these loans, but in some cases they are actually required by the government to issue them, even if it goes against their better judgment.
I can understand this sentiment. And it certainly applies to some people. But honestly I don't think the majority of people struggling are driving fancy cars or living in McMansions. Most of the people I personally know (which is a lot of people) drive an average car, live in an average home or condo, and don't live lavish lives. Most are just saddled with some combination of common factors like high cost of housing, student loans, unexpected medical bills, etc. The majority of people are just trying to live average lives but are constantly having to walk a tightrope for just that.
What's your definition of average? Because a $30k Mazda should not be average. It's way too expensive for most people. Also, you probably don't need one for each member of the family.
A 3,500 sq ft house with granite countertops and hardwood flooring for 4 people should probably not be average either.
With the exception of a few markets with very expensive land, we have a consumption problem. We have a keeping up with the Jones problem.
You don't have nearly as much worry about losing your home if you spend below your means.
I have spent a lot of time with a lot of families from wildly varied economic backgrounds. I'm not talking about people with brand new cars and 3,500 square foot houses (that would be a McMansion, I believe). I'm talking about Hondas and weather-worn Dodge pickups parked at a condo or a very modest house in a working class neighborhood.
Sure, the keeping up with the Jones thing is happening with a lot of people. But that does not appear to be the bulk of the problem. Heck, just drive through the country and tell me if you spot more McMansions or more McShacks.
I feel my 3300 sq ft house for me, 2 kids and a dog is reasonable. Even townhouses these days are huge. I consider McMansions to be excess of 4000 sq ft.
But then, are some of these things really needed? I don't have a car, I have a basic smartphone, and old basic laptop, not much in terms of clothes, and I don't travel abroad for holidays (all this because I cannot afford something better without getting into debt) and I get by fine (and I'm 40). Most millenials have at least a car (even a cheap one) or nice phones with nice data plans, or clothes, or travel to nice places at least once a year. Most of their debt is self-chosen.
Would you mind putting in concrete examples the sentence "most Americans do not live in areas where you could reasonably live without a car". It's not a critique, I'm not american so I don't understand how could this be, given the level of development of the country and the proliferation of cities that you are supposed to have.
* The stores are generally large big-box stores that is often kilometers from ones' house; there are no small corner shops and restaurants, because they are illegal.
* If you're still determined to walk, you probably need to cross large, high-speed roads with short crossing times, and your origin and destination are probably separated from the road by a large parking lot. And you may not even have sidewalks or crossing facilities. Example: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Panera+Bread,+143+Alexander+...
* Public transit in American suburbs is a joke. Because it's so hard to walk around, ridership is very low, making frequency hard to justify, causing even lower ridership. And this is before you consider that
Americans are anti-tax
American suburbs have an associated history with white flight post-segregation, so people often object to transit because it'll let "criminals" in
keep in mind, DiffEq is responding to a post that mentions people making six figures who are struggling to keep their homes.
there are certainly a lot of people out there who would be feeling the squeeze anywhere, but if you're making six figures and you're in danger of losing your home, you are probably doing something wrong. your house is too big, you live in the wrong place, or both.
right now I'm living pretty comfortably spending <$30k a year. I understand salaries and COL vary in different places, but most people who make six figures in an expensive area could certainly take a more humble job in a less expensive region and live a fine life.
There are many who would argue that the willingness of a 18 year old to shoulder enormous financial responsibility to gain benefits largely denied to them by the way modern American society is constructed is not a real defense of the reasonableness of student loans.
Sure, but that opens up a lot of other difficult topics, all of which are very nuanced. If we're not going to consider 18 year old's adults, we need to re-visit the age limits on voting, military service, and other large financial contracts.
In the end, it always comes down to (some degree of) personal responsibility. Just because the government (or your job, or your family, or some guy you met on the street) offers you a new and novel way of ruining your life, it doesn't mean you have to take it. If the choice is pay your student loans and keep your credit score, or pay your rent and avoid being homeless, well, that's a terrible choice to have to make, but the answer is obvious, and the manner by which someone ended up in that situation is also pretty obvious.
But is that the type of society we want? One in which a rather large percentage of the population is dealing with those terrible choices regularly? And the rest of the population says "you should have been smart enough to not fall for it"?
Personal responsibility matters for sure. And to have freedom we have to allow personal responsibility rather than try and protect everyone from everything. But if someone comes up with a clever way to put a massive number of people in debt by leveraging common human failings, to the point that it threatens their ability to have shelter, do we not do something about it rather than allowing that clever someone to just become king (metaphorical)? Not to mention, wouldn't we want to head off both the growing apathy by some and the growing anger by others towards the rest of us lest it eventually threaten the country itself and its character?
I disagree massively with your last point, on the manner by which someone ended up there being obvious. Our current children are being raised by parents who grew up in a very different time, and the world has never been more complex. The tradeoff isn’t as simple as an educated adult making a bad financial decision, it’s actual children taking on huge burdens with little to no guidance in complete accordance with what society is telling them to do to get ahead, cause thats what worked 30 years ago.
> taking on huge burdens with little to no guidance
I don't know if this is still the case but when I took out student loans nearly two decades ago I had to go through "entrance counseling" and "exit counseling", explaining very clearly and meticulously what I was getting myself into.
Sure, not legally, but relative to the life experience required to even somewhat competently navigate the complexities of the modern world, 18 year olds are functionally children. Your entire life to that point is school, for many people, sheltered from the harsher realities of life and finances.
That entrance and exit loan counseling is a privilege for sure. I just graduated from a top 25 ranked private school and was never given loan counseling, and none of my peers were either. Thankfully I picked a high paying field, succeeded in it, and had parents with a ton of financial knowledge to help me effectively plan how to pay for it all, but the vast majority of my peers had no such luck on those three fronts. It’s especially telling that you went to school two decades ago, as no one going to school right now legitimately thinks the college student loan process is clearly presented in terms that are easy for the AVERAGE 18 year old to understand. Meanwhile, the costs have gone up...I don’t know, at least 100% since you went to school? Shit, tuition went up 4 grand while I was still in school.
> as no one going to school right now legitimately thinks the college student loan process is clearly presented in terms that are easy for the AVERAGE 18 year old to understand
I went to university nearly 30 years ago, and I didn't take out any loans the first few years. I did the last year, and even then I didn't think the process was remotely understandable. I remember getting a check and there was a pretty hefty fee that had been taken out, reducing my net by a moderate percentage. I couldn't find any good explanation of this, nor anyone at the school who could explain it.
> That entrance and exit loan counseling is a privilege for sure. I just graduated from a top 25 ranked private school and was never given loan counseling, and none of my peers were either.
Entrance/exit counseling is required for any federal student loan. Perhaps your loans weren’t federal?
> Meanwhile, the costs have gone up...I don’t know, at least 100% since you went to school? Shit, tuition went up 4 grand while I was still in school.
UCLA, one of the top schools in the world, costs $13k in tuition for the year for residents. Think about that, a world-class education for a little more than $1k/month.
Nope, I had federal loans. No counseling. Not sure what to tell you. A quick search of my student email account reveals a "required" exit counseling session, which I was not aware of until searching for it in my email at this very moment. No other attempt to contact me to get the counseling, and I very much successfully graduated without going. So seems the school at least doesn't really care too much.
As for your last point, I'm not sure how that matters? By my count, 14 of the top 25 universities globally are American private institutions. Not all of us were lucky enough to be raised in states with the caliber of public universities of California, and for us, the chance at a better life was one of those top private universities. That was a dream sold to me by the educational system my entire primary and secondary school life, and while it did work out for me, it's not working for thousands of young people and needs to be changed.
There are lot's of other options than taking out massive loans. Community College for two years then transferring to a state school is still fairly affordable and won't impact the vast majority of individuals in post-college job searches/careers.
It's just a lot less fun than going to a Big 10 school or the big name school.
Well-endowed private schools often offer more grant-based financial assistance than public schools, to the extent that the net cost for people who aren't upper income can be less than CC plus state school, as well as providing much better career prospects.
"In fact, I've known so many people who have either lost their home, almost lost their home, or are worried about losing their home that it makes up probably a majority of the people I know."
Doesn't seem to match up with
"Did we forget somewhere along the line that a home is just a patch of dirt with four walls and roof thrown on it"
I guess these people aren't struggling to afford a hut on a patch of dirt. I also guess you aren't condemning the majority of people you know as spendthrifts. So how are you reconciling the 2?
I respect the Irish in this regard when they refused to pay for a water bill that was introduced. They collectively managed to have it reversed as far as I can remember.
I would add medical bills to that as well. Some emergency room bills have asinine charges, and many aren't itemized very well. For example, you could have a bill that says:
And maybe you just went in with chest pain from asthma where they took some quick labs and an x-ray, sent you home after breathing treatment and no prescriptions for anything, and now you have a $7,000+ bill after spending 13 hours in the ER. Most of that time was spent sitting around staring at a wall.
> Did we forget somewhere along the line that a home is just a patch of dirt with four walls and roof thrown on it?
The cost of home is largely the right to live in a certain location and have timely access to certain places. That's what everyone wants. No only walls but clean water, air, safety, culture, groceries, jobs, parks, entertainments, infrastructure, government protection, good schools, and so on. There are probably thousand little things that make the cost of a home, all of which are highly desirable everyone.
I don't think you can say concretely that this would be stealing. That would be an extremely simplistic view. Remember, I'm talking about "bills that are well known in the culture to be unreasonable". For example, we can firmly say that the price of higher education has been inflated beyond reason and certainly beyond its actual value. Many have said it. Papers, articles, documentaries, and so on have been produced about it. The current popular theory is that the government guaranteeing the loans incentivized the colleges to hike up the fees drastically, screwing an entire generation by gouging them unreasonably. And if you want to say that students didn't have to make the choice to go to college, well, then you're ignoring the fact that people have been drilling it into young people for quite some time that they won't be able to make it in future America if they don't get a higher education degree. I know parents today who are extremely cash-strapped who nonetheless feel they need their kids to go to college so they won't become serfs in the future economy. I even know parents who have gotten divorced purely so that their kid could receive some form of financial aid (only one parent income shown) so they would be able to afford college. So a ton of students and parents felt like they had no choice but to accept these loans if they wanted to make it in America's future economy. And this idea continues today, though it's slowly starting to receive some pushback. On the whole, these people didn't go to college purely because it would be a fun way to study creative writing. Essentially, the colleges rode the wave of fear and hiked up the price, bolstered by the government guaranteeing they would get paid no matter what. One can ultimately argue that the colleges stole from the students who have historically felt like they had to go if they wanted to make it and be able to secure a middle class position in society.
Unreasonable price inflation combined with a sense of necessity or even physical necessity (health care) exists elsewhere in our economy as well. You can argue that our current political situation is due largely to people who are mad as hell over their life being impacted negatively by these things.
As for what life essentials they'll spend the money on, well, we can ask the burgeoning van dwellers movement (people who live in their cars) as well as those people who are running GoFundMe campaigns so they can afford medicine or a medical procedure. You can ask people who are moving out of the country because they can afford a better life in places like India (I just read about this the other day). You can ask the people who just marched to Canada to buy insulin at a reasonable price.
The debt-owners have spent a lot of money lobbying politicians to pass laws that make it harder to declare bankruptcy.
The debt-owners can hire much more expensive lawyers than you can. The debt-owners have gotten you to sign a contract that says any disputes will be handled by an arbitration bureau, in person, in a state where the laws are most in their favor.
The debt-owners have the cops on their side.
What are you doing about this? Who do you vote for, who do you give money to? Both in terms of political or charitable donations and in terms of who your landlord's giving money to, what the entertainment corporations you patronize are giving money to, etc.
(Not just you: everyone who agrees with this. Including me. I know I'm sure not dropping everything to fight the creeping economic injustice that's burning the Earth alive and concentrating more and more money in the hands of fewer and fewer people.)
>What I don't understand is why people don't band together and simply refuse, collectively, to pay bills that are well known in the culture to be unreasonable. In particular, student loans.
Or taxes, when they are being used to recklessly loan so much money.
What will happen is that some very unpleasant men will come by and take things from you until you have paid it off or are so miserable you will start paying again. These guys are essentially paid to take things from you, so it's not like they'll stop either.
Try building your own house or your own car and then you might have some respect for the amount of work and expertise that goes into it. A house is not dirt with four walls and a roof... that's a tent. I've built one solo, banging nails and cutting wood. Buying one or renting one lets you skip a lot of work.
>>> "Children grow up aspiring to be Youtubers. Teenagers rake in thousands of dollars selling slime,"
No. They are not selling slime. They are selling themselves. Just like any hollywood starlet, they are marketing their youth and sex appeal. Customers buy a fantasy, a perceived connection with the attractive or famous person. If that makes the customer happy then that's great, but don't pretend that just anyone can start a youtube channel and start getting paid. Being young and attractive is 99% of the game.
You are aware there are many slime instagram accounts and channels that involve nothing but footage of their hands manipulating slime? I'm not sure what part of that involves being young and attractive.
There’s a less palatable side of this. It’s now very common to see people openly offering to exchange money for sex, at least in the LGBT community.
On Grindr, it’s an everyday occurrence to see people seeking Venmo “donations” with the implication or overt offer of a meeting in exchange.
I doubt if you asked many of the people who do it they would equate it with prostitution in the same way I’m guessing the legal system might. It’s often younger people who are probably exposed to “Venmo culture” elsewhere and decide to apply it here.
“There’s no shame in having to do it. Women of color, trans folks, queer folks — these institutions aren’t built to love us and support us. These institutions don’t care about our well-being,”
Does anyone else think that stereotyping is getting out of hand?
There are soso many reasons you might need or not need money outside of your race or sexual orientation and vic-versa. Maybe you have cancer. Maybe your house burned down. etc. Assuming that a person of a certain identity group needs financial support seems like a ridiculous assumption.
The amount of focus we put on identity groups these today seems unhealthy.
I understand their point, but it’s just not even close to the first we should bring up when encouraging people to ask for help.
No. But those institutions don't care about -anyone-. Prefacing it with <insert identity of the day here> only weakens their case in my eyes. If you want my support for a cause, don't exclude me specifically.
157 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] thread(paraphrasing) my step-father was arrested for a DUI, can't prove citizenship, and my mom needs money to drive to another state to visit him in custody (/)
This isn't novel, I've been hit up dozens of times on the street outside of shows, at gas pumps, in parking lots etc. This is just people hoping to hit a larger audience by soliciting twitter. You used to find Jains (or at least similarly dressed individuals) outside of airports begging for money.
And then this...
>Fans of “The Bachelor” sent contestant Becca Kufrin wine money on Venmo after she was dumped on national television, and more than 3,000 people sent a 23-year-old college student beer money after he held up a sign with his Venmo handle on the “College GameDay” telecast.
... one is just fans blurring the lines of what is appropriate and the other is just a guy hoping to get lucky and presumably making at least 3000 dollars for holding up a sign. What?!
Maybe I should walk around with a sign "Will likely have to work til I die, no one wants to give a GED holder a decent wage, only need 700k to retire, @ryancarlmercer", maybe I should stop maintaining an emergency fund and eating beans 10 meals a week to stretch funds.
1. Community has always supported people in times of need, more so than government services.
2. The Internet had created distance amount community members
3. Use of the Internet for funds like this (or for Gofundme, etc.) is bringing that back, though with strangers
4. Shifting attitudes and values on whether this is acceptable
5. One Millennial is now setting aside funds for direct contributions. I would not be surprised if that trend continues.
6. Continued pressure on Millennials to make ends meet with access to new technology has been leading to this.
7. Disadvantaged groups and their economic struggles are becoming more visible, along with means for the community to help.
"Technology makes it easier for individuals to beg strangers for money".
I can't open social media without seeing kickstarter/indiegogo this, gofundme that, need money quick, can someone paypal/venmo me money for thing, etc. Then a day, week, month later you see pictures of their brand new cabinets or of their vacation or they are hitting people up for money again for something else because people gave last time so now they expect regular handouts.
Instead of getting creative, people now just go "hey, stranger, you have it better than me, give me your hard earned money!"
Do you not like that people can beg? Or that they have to at all?
I'm saying the internet, specifically social media and payment apps/crowd funding sites, allow people to unabashedly give their (true or otherwise) sob story and beg complete strangers for money, I imagine the vast majority of people on sites like gofundme would hesitate to even phone family for financial assistance and I suspect nearly all of the people begging on social media simply wouldn't ask if they had to walk up to random strangers in person and ask.
Keep in mind, I say this while my nephew currently has a gofundme trying to raise 260,000 USD (!!!) for his mother for some experimental, questionable (cryotherapy for her kidney cancer, when it's usually used for skin cancer for example), cancer treatment in China.
I think these sites/methods serve a useful purpose, I think however trying to get gas money to give to your mother to go see your undocumented step-father in another state because he was drink driving and is likely to be deported or remain incarcerated... or hitting people up for beer money... is not a valid use of such sites/methods.
Why not?
This isn't new. This is the basis of some rather infamous socio-economic systems which have resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people.
The other is simply that we don't see all the comments—there are far too many. It's understandable that people want us to be consistent and even-handed, but that's not fully possible. It's also not fully necessary, since someone else violating the site guidelines doesn't make it ok for you to do so. (You get a speeding ticket even though others were going faster—which of course they usually are.) But I've taken a look at the other comments now, and did some additional moderation.
Thank you for clarifying.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Sure, if you are the right gender, race, and religion.
a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists
A prerequisite for finding community support is to be a member of one. There are many communities. The commonality and social bonds between members form the basis of trust and the expectation of reciprocity.
When people perceive that their resources are simply being expropriated to benefit people they have nothing in common with, may never meet, and certainly cannot expect reciprocal investment from, they tend to withdraw from voluntary participation. Without that participation, communities simply die.
It's true that some communities have a larger pool of resources to share than others. But consider this before you condemn a synagogue for helping out a local Jewish family with money that could have gone to taxes to help someone arguably more in need.
It's sad that not everyone has a home, but the solution is not to demolish the entire block and apportion to each person an equal share of lumber.
...because? Do some people have more of a right to shelter because their ancestors raped, killed, and enslaved better?
An attractive person holding a clever, written-in-English sign, at a football game that cost them 100$ (or whatever) to attend, garners 3000$ for beer. The ugly, dirty, illiterate homeless person that stands outside of a train station gets 5$ for food.
Unfairness can exist at the bureaucratic level (shit like judges being tired and being less lenient towards the evening, or just plain and simple sexism and racism in the justice system), but it's far better than "marketplace of begging for welfare."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/01/the-perverse-l...
If you give charity to someone on gofundme, what charity ever verifies if the person actually needs the money?
The government has no incentive to reduce or even investigate this type of fraud. Enforcement is selective at best.
There are no mechanisms whatsoever to force Bob the billionaire to do a god damn thing with his own money, other than to give the billionaire more tax breaks.
I also used to work in certification for government benefits, and I can assure you there are, in many cases, safeguards and verification.
[1] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/lifeline/
For the Bachelorette, I would assume that most of the donaters were young women that have experienced being dumped - the focus being the "community" (or perhaps it would be better to say population) of young women. It's not just random strangers donating.
This reminds me strongly of this YouTube video where an adjunct professor who's popular in the Magic TCG community asks for money for support, and gets quite a lot of it: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/35pjuq/tolarian_c...
Loneliness is increasing.
So if true, you expect prostitution to go up.
The article mentions a few communities in particular. The unifying dimension seems to be that some people's real-life safety net is outweighed by their online one, even if they don't always receive the donations they ask. It's worth a try.
Nevertheless it is a useful shorthand for people going through the same life experiences at the same time.
I say this as someone who's technically a millennial, but old enough to remember when we were generation Y, doesn't eat Avocado toast, didn't have particular problems affording a house and don't particularly like facebook/snapchat/grindr or whatever the kids are on now. So I'm not really a representative Millennial.
"The anthropologist Keith Hart once told me a story about his brother, who in the '50s was a British soldier stationed in Hong Kong. Soldiers used to pay their bar tabs by writing checks on accounts back in England. Local merchants would often simply endorse them over to each other and pass them around as currency: once, he saw one of his own checks, written six months before, on the counter of a local vendor covered with about forty different tiny inscriptions in Chinese."
He apparently liked to shop for stuff in the various bazaars. He would pay for his purchase by check. The seller, instead of cashing the check, would frame it, and sell it to tourists as an authentic check with Moshe Dayan's signature for much higher than the value of the check.
This resulted in a win-win situation. Moshe Dayan never had to actually pay for his purchases, the seller made far more money than the actual check, and the tourist got to have an authentic check with Moshe Dayan's signature to hang up in their home as a conversation piece.
What a simple time to live in when you can go to a bazaar and buy something with just the sellers word that it is genuine
Everyone knows scams only started in the late 2000
See: https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/disability/ and https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/survivors/
PS: This also makes the ROI for retirement seem much worse than it is as retirees only get ~72% of what is being paid into the program,
It just so happens that it's very hard and expensive to verify all citizens' age-related disabilities in different job-fields, so the "retirement age" is like a "we might as well trust them when they say they can't work and they're this old" cutoff.
I don't where you're from, but it wildly varies from one country to another.
SS is INSURANCE policy. Quite literally, "insurance" in the name of the law. Oh, sure, there are lots of extra quirks, but fundamentally it's insurance, you can tell because you don't get a "refund" when the insured-against event (alive + disabled + broke) fails to occur. Instead, your payments will go to the other people who got hit by disaster, the same way others' premiums could have gone to your disaster. That's normal in insurance.
In contrast, using a retirement account is an investment, its total value is part of your estate when you die and goes to your heirs, but if the stock market tanks you shit out of luck and will still starve on the street. (The thing SS is supposed to prevent.)
When you keep this "insurance, not investment" distinction in mind, a whole ton of "weird" things about SS suddenly make a lot more sense.
So it’s not forced?
ಠ_ಠ
I think the most unique thing about SS (that almost nobody understands) is that current payouts are funded by current contributions -- there's no "pot" or "account" you pay into per se, not like a 401k for instance. Instead you earn points by paying in over time, and the points map to an amount you're guaranteed which is in turn paid for by future taxpayers.
>A tanda is formed between ten friends and family. Each member gives $100 USD every two weeks to the group's organizer. At the end of the month, one participant gets the "pot", $2000. This continues until each member has received the pot.[4]
>Tandas are formed for many reasons, but often because at least one member is in need of money to pay a debt right away, or an emergency arises. But they can also be formed with no pressing financial obligations.
>Among Mexicans, these forms of informal savings associations play an important role sustaining the livelihood of many people living in both Mexico and the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanda_(informal_loan_club)
A chit fund is a type of rotating savings and credit association system practiced in India. Chit fund schemes may be organized by financial institutions, or informally among friends, relatives, or neighbours.
The chit fund is said to be an institution that's been handed down since ancient times. In 1887, William Logan, erstwhile Collector of the Malabar district of the Madras Presidency, described the custom of chit funds among friend groups in that region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chit_fund
Only if we're also collectively telling people not to take them in the first place. The current culture telling everyone to go to expensive private colleges, then bitching that they're burdened with loans and not pay them, is pretty toxic.
Its should be a multi step thing. - Tell people how bad student loans are and how they shouldn't take them if they don't have a plan to pay them back.
- Educate people on alternative, like trade schools, apprenticeships, etc. Stop glorifying bachelor degrees beyond what they are (that should and often happens even in countries where education is paid by the gov!)
- Then, yeah, start doing something to reduce debt burden on those who were affected before the previous two steps were in place.
Otherwise, if we keep pushing for school loans but then tell people not to pay them, or forgive them, it's basically free education (a good thing) without actually collectively agreeing on making education free (which is kind of sketchy)
But my point wasn't really to pick out just student loans. Not just due to people being burdened with student loans but a wide variety of other issues... We're more and more seeing people who hope to be able to save their own lives with GoFundMe campaigns because they can't afford to stay alive. We're seeing the idea of owning a home fade for giant swaths of the population. One third of the country is currently "subprime" in the eyes of financial institutions. And my understanding is that percentage is expected go up. The Dollar Store's massive growth is predicated on the forecast of "a permanent underclass in America". I'm seeing, hearing, and reading about so many people having a hard time every single day. And I'm reading about the country readjusting to accommodate the situation as a permanent reality. If the institutions cannot help, then I do think it's probably reasonable for the people to force the issue, given how prevalent we are seeing these problems become.
Only semi related, but I also take issue about how we got there in the first place.
"Lets make college free!" "No, this is AMERICAH!~ People should pay for things!" "Ok, then lets give out loans! Gov will insure them, so its win win! People get to go to college but it doesnt cost anything!" "Ok, lets do that!" "Waaaah! People can't pay back, lets forgive their loan" "Err, wait a minute...didn't we say they were gonna be loan exactly so it wouldn't end up with the gov paying for it?"
Its even worse than if it had just been made free straight up, since infinite loans basically made education prices skyrocket mostly unchecked. This bullshit happens everywhere in the US (see: healthcare). And this is the worse of all world: you have "free market" problems, unbound pricing problems, AND the government picks up the tab. Fail on all counts.
But that's a different issue. For now, yes, lets do something about all the people who are fucked, BUT AT THE SAME TIME lets tackle the root cause.
Just thinking out loud; I suspect looking at other countries who do this would be informative...
Thats why apprenticeships and trade schools need better marketing. The glorification of bachelor degrees is toxic.
"Everyone" doesn't go to expensive private colleges. Of those who continue on from high-school at all, 75% attend a publicly owned institution, usually community college.
When I was in high school, being railroaded into prioritizing CSU or UC admission requirements over graduation requirements was the norm even for students (like me) who had effectively zero chance of getting into one of those schools immediately after high school (let alone getting a scholarship or meaningful financial aid or any other way to avoid a predatory student loan).
They are publicly owned, and can be made affordable by legislatures without interfering in private organizations.
These values aren't pushed by the same people.
The people telling everyone to go to college and take out the loans are the people enriched by the status quo.
The people telling everyone that this is bullshit are the ones who aren't. The people saying the latter are specifically trying to counter the former. There's no single monoculture that's pushing both ideas at the same time.
And pushing debt forgiveness as a policy to support is a pretty good step, in my mind, towards changing the incentives for the folks who are pushing and profiting the loans...
Stop federally backing loans, change the culture to move away from defacto bachelor's degree, and reign in the absurd admissions for public universities. It is not morally justifiable to suddenly foist the collective horrible decision making of a generation onto the larger society.
If we're really at the point where people are incapable of providing real market value to society, we need to talk about UBI. What we shouldn't be talking about is financially incentivizing behavior that is not desirable.
So we should just continue burdening people into the poorhouse (or worse)? I feel for everyone burdened by ridiculous student loans (I am one of those people), but I would gladly take on everyone else’s debt forever if it meant people could have their education and be debt-free. Should we talk about my friends who have to decide if they pay their rent or their student loans every month? Does your righteous indignation do anything to help them? “I suffered so you have to suffer too” is toxic; it’s basically frat hazing.
As for why it’s okay to take out a ruinous loan, I was 17, and I didn’t fucking know any better. Everyone told us to go to college or else we’d wind up destitute. And they were partially right, at least if you managed to get a “profitable” degree. My high school-educated friends have shitty service jobs and alcohol addiction now. I have loans, and I’d rather not, but at least I have any hope for a future. That’s more than I can say for a lot of my other friends.
> It is not morally justifiable to suddenly foist the collective horrible decision making of a generation onto the larger society.
That would be the Baby Boomers, right? Because I’m pretty sure they (and their parents) are the ones who all voted to end state funding for universities. They also voted for politicians with ties to the financial industry, so conveniently the same people making it necessary to take out loans are also shareholders of large financial institutions.
No, what’s morally indefensible is bankrupting someone for getting an education, and then berating them for making a bad decision when they were 17, a decision practically guaranteed by a rigged system. What’s also morally indefensible are the attitudes that this is someone their faults, because at the end of the day, we all still have student loans, and no amount of your pedestal-sitting is going to change that.
They certainly don't take zero blame, especially if it happened in the last decade. The student debt crisis has been front and center for a while now. If in the last few years someone did that, and they don't know any better, they're seriously living under a rock.
The system should change, and Im not even against forgiving debts because it might just be straight up better to do for society, but saying the people who take on those loans and sign at the bottom have zero responsibility? They turn 18 long before they're completely crushed with the debts, and if I was to tell an 18 years old that they can't make decisions they're responsible for, I'd get an earful.
Now. I personally didn’t listen properly, dropped out after two years and did something else. But I don’t blame those who didn’t. Everything in modern middle class society and schooling was based around it.
So focusing on the individuals responsibility above and beyond that of the broken system that we have no choice but to join seems, well, cruel to me — even if I did personally follow your advice.
I think what you don't understand is how math works.
A 3,500 sq ft house with granite countertops and hardwood flooring for 4 people should probably not be average either.
With the exception of a few markets with very expensive land, we have a consumption problem. We have a keeping up with the Jones problem.
You don't have nearly as much worry about losing your home if you spend below your means.
Sure, the keeping up with the Jones thing is happening with a lot of people. But that does not appear to be the bulk of the problem. Heck, just drive through the country and tell me if you spot more McMansions or more McShacks.
But there are other criteria as well.
* The roads are long, winding, and poorly connected (so walking distances are excessive). This leads to ridiculous scenarios like https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/02/28/sprawl-madness-two-ho...
* The stores are generally large big-box stores that is often kilometers from ones' house; there are no small corner shops and restaurants, because they are illegal.
* If you're still determined to walk, you probably need to cross large, high-speed roads with short crossing times, and your origin and destination are probably separated from the road by a large parking lot. And you may not even have sidewalks or crossing facilities. Example: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Panera+Bread,+143+Alexander+...
* Public transit in American suburbs is a joke. Because it's so hard to walk around, ridership is very low, making frequency hard to justify, causing even lower ridership. And this is before you consider that
Americans are anti-tax
American suburbs have an associated history with white flight post-segregation, so people often object to transit because it'll let "criminals" in
So you wind up with situations like this Detroit man who walked 21 miles every day because he didn't have a car. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2015...
"Just don't buy expensive shit" isn't an option when rent is increasing faster than wages.
there are certainly a lot of people out there who would be feeling the squeeze anywhere, but if you're making six figures and you're in danger of losing your home, you are probably doing something wrong. your house is too big, you live in the wrong place, or both.
right now I'm living pretty comfortably spending <$30k a year. I understand salaries and COL vary in different places, but most people who make six figures in an expensive area could certainly take a more humble job in a less expensive region and live a fine life.
In the end, it always comes down to (some degree of) personal responsibility. Just because the government (or your job, or your family, or some guy you met on the street) offers you a new and novel way of ruining your life, it doesn't mean you have to take it. If the choice is pay your student loans and keep your credit score, or pay your rent and avoid being homeless, well, that's a terrible choice to have to make, but the answer is obvious, and the manner by which someone ended up in that situation is also pretty obvious.
Personal responsibility matters for sure. And to have freedom we have to allow personal responsibility rather than try and protect everyone from everything. But if someone comes up with a clever way to put a massive number of people in debt by leveraging common human failings, to the point that it threatens their ability to have shelter, do we not do something about it rather than allowing that clever someone to just become king (metaphorical)? Not to mention, wouldn't we want to head off both the growing apathy by some and the growing anger by others towards the rest of us lest it eventually threaten the country itself and its character?
18-year-olds are not "Actual children".
> taking on huge burdens with little to no guidance
I don't know if this is still the case but when I took out student loans nearly two decades ago I had to go through "entrance counseling" and "exit counseling", explaining very clearly and meticulously what I was getting myself into.
That entrance and exit loan counseling is a privilege for sure. I just graduated from a top 25 ranked private school and was never given loan counseling, and none of my peers were either. Thankfully I picked a high paying field, succeeded in it, and had parents with a ton of financial knowledge to help me effectively plan how to pay for it all, but the vast majority of my peers had no such luck on those three fronts. It’s especially telling that you went to school two decades ago, as no one going to school right now legitimately thinks the college student loan process is clearly presented in terms that are easy for the AVERAGE 18 year old to understand. Meanwhile, the costs have gone up...I don’t know, at least 100% since you went to school? Shit, tuition went up 4 grand while I was still in school.
I went to university nearly 30 years ago, and I didn't take out any loans the first few years. I did the last year, and even then I didn't think the process was remotely understandable. I remember getting a check and there was a pretty hefty fee that had been taken out, reducing my net by a moderate percentage. I couldn't find any good explanation of this, nor anyone at the school who could explain it.
I had no 'entrance' and 'exit' loan counseling.
Entrance/exit counseling is required for any federal student loan. Perhaps your loans weren’t federal?
> Meanwhile, the costs have gone up...I don’t know, at least 100% since you went to school? Shit, tuition went up 4 grand while I was still in school.
UCLA, one of the top schools in the world, costs $13k in tuition for the year for residents. Think about that, a world-class education for a little more than $1k/month.
As for your last point, I'm not sure how that matters? By my count, 14 of the top 25 universities globally are American private institutions. Not all of us were lucky enough to be raised in states with the caliber of public universities of California, and for us, the chance at a better life was one of those top private universities. That was a dream sold to me by the educational system my entire primary and secondary school life, and while it did work out for me, it's not working for thousands of young people and needs to be changed.
It's just a lot less fun than going to a Big 10 school or the big name school.
Doesn't seem to match up with
"Did we forget somewhere along the line that a home is just a patch of dirt with four walls and roof thrown on it"
I guess these people aren't struggling to afford a hut on a patch of dirt. I also guess you aren't condemning the majority of people you know as spendthrifts. So how are you reconciling the 2?
Emergency room: $5,000 ECG: $300 Radiology: $600 Laboratory: $750
And maybe you just went in with chest pain from asthma where they took some quick labs and an x-ray, sent you home after breathing treatment and no prescriptions for anything, and now you have a $7,000+ bill after spending 13 hours in the ER. Most of that time was spent sitting around staring at a wall.
The cost of home is largely the right to live in a certain location and have timely access to certain places. That's what everyone wants. No only walls but clean water, air, safety, culture, groceries, jobs, parks, entertainments, infrastructure, government protection, good schools, and so on. There are probably thousand little things that make the cost of a home, all of which are highly desirable everyone.
Second you don’t want to pay it to spend the money one what life essentials
Third no one made you borrow no one made you enroll, you had a lot of other options accepting responsibility for your choice is a good thing
Lastly whom would you like to pay for your pick of university and your pick of courses
Unreasonable price inflation combined with a sense of necessity or even physical necessity (health care) exists elsewhere in our economy as well. You can argue that our current political situation is due largely to people who are mad as hell over their life being impacted negatively by these things.
As for what life essentials they'll spend the money on, well, we can ask the burgeoning van dwellers movement (people who live in their cars) as well as those people who are running GoFundMe campaigns so they can afford medicine or a medical procedure. You can ask people who are moving out of the country because they can afford a better life in places like India (I just read about this the other day). You can ask the people who just marched to Canada to buy insulin at a reasonable price.
The debt-owners can hire much more expensive lawyers than you can. The debt-owners have gotten you to sign a contract that says any disputes will be handled by an arbitration bureau, in person, in a state where the laws are most in their favor.
The debt-owners have the cops on their side.
What are you doing about this? Who do you vote for, who do you give money to? Both in terms of political or charitable donations and in terms of who your landlord's giving money to, what the entertainment corporations you patronize are giving money to, etc.
(Not just you: everyone who agrees with this. Including me. I know I'm sure not dropping everything to fight the creeping economic injustice that's burning the Earth alive and concentrating more and more money in the hands of fewer and fewer people.)
Or taxes, when they are being used to recklessly loan so much money.
What will happen is that some very unpleasant men will come by and take things from you until you have paid it off or are so miserable you will start paying again. These guys are essentially paid to take things from you, so it's not like they'll stop either.
No. They are not selling slime. They are selling themselves. Just like any hollywood starlet, they are marketing their youth and sex appeal. Customers buy a fantasy, a perceived connection with the attractive or famous person. If that makes the customer happy then that's great, but don't pretend that just anyone can start a youtube channel and start getting paid. Being young and attractive is 99% of the game.
On Grindr, it’s an everyday occurrence to see people seeking Venmo “donations” with the implication or overt offer of a meeting in exchange.
I doubt if you asked many of the people who do it they would equate it with prostitution in the same way I’m guessing the legal system might. It’s often younger people who are probably exposed to “Venmo culture” elsewhere and decide to apply it here.
Does anyone else think that stereotyping is getting out of hand?
There are so so many reasons you might need or not need money outside of your race or sexual orientation and vic-versa. Maybe you have cancer. Maybe your house burned down. etc. Assuming that a person of a certain identity group needs financial support seems like a ridiculous assumption.
The amount of focus we put on identity groups these today seems unhealthy.
I understand their point, but it’s just not even close to the first we should bring up when encouraging people to ask for help.
Do you think they are wrong about the institutions they are talking about?