Great blog post.

And here's a fun article. From NPR. Which is adored by academics, who are similarly unworldly and dependent on government largess:

Myth Busted: Turns Out Bankruptcy Can Wipe Out Student Loan Debt After All

January 22, 20207:13 AM ET

The rig is installed from the beginning.

Nobody getting a free ride from others will ever vote to get off.

Nobody fed for generations by "government" gives a damn about you and your possessions.

"You didn't build that", said God Himself.

College costs are too high. College costs are too high because there are way to many administrators and they get paid more than they did before. Also, because students expect really fancy facilities now.

I think we need to kind of bare bones it. Sure, there's some equipment that is going to cost a ton... fancy computers for the computer researchers, particle accelerators, etc, which research universities in the sciences are going to need.

But if we want cheap colleges, we're going to have to pare back on public colleges and make sure they really focus on teaching, and not country clubs. Maybe kids live at home and go to their local school which focuses on teaching and research and not every kind of club or house for every group possible, and not fancy gyms and things like that.

too not to. Gah. Can't edit.

Great blog post. ~ Crid at November 15, 2020 11:32 PM

Yep. I thought so, too, when I posted a link to it and excerpts from it on the November 15, 2020 Linkblots thread.

Myth Busted: Turns Out Bankruptcy Can Wipe Out Student Loan Debt After All ~ Crid at November 15, 2020 11:49 PM

One can get even federally-guaranteed loans dismissed if one can show extreme hardship in making the loan payments. Difficulty in making the payments does not count. The rules about dismissal are pretty restrictive, but they're not absolute.

Warren ignores that and demands loan dismissal and forgiveness for those "impoverished" by student loan debt. It's the first step down a slippery slope toward "free college" for all. Take out a loan, cry poverty, and get it forgiven. Wealth Transfer 101.

> Yep. I thought so, too, when I posted a link to it and excerpts from it on the November 15, 2020 Linkblots thread.

Is this what you do when your wife is out with Jamal?

Radwaste reads like a warnout copy of the National Review. His intellectual ability curtailed and limited to infantile cries for tax cuts. Me thinks you stinks.

This is not me:

Crid at November 16, 2020 5:38 AM

Listen, if I say something offensive or accusatory, that doesn't me that it's…

We'll, I'm not sure how you'll know or not.

Follow your heart. Don't take any wooden nickels. Always let your conscience be your guide, but remember the Alamo.

I meant that doesn't me that it's mean...

Anyway the point still stands, if it doesn't sound like my writing it's as real as a 2 cent coin...

Again, impersonated.

Crid at November 16, 2020 6:42 AM

I don't want to be here when these people see comeuppance.

This. Right here. All of it.

Remember, government has no money or source of income of its own. It has to take from people who do.

College costs are too high.

When you have an influx of money for a good or service that is relatively inelastic, prices will go up. In this case, it is one way to keep enrollment under control. It also gives them a nice boost in available money, to hire more administrators and to build fancy facilities to lure in the "best" students. Out of necessity, they will also charge you fancy prices for those facilities.

If you look at the local school board level, you'll see similar growth curves for administration personnel over the last 30 or so years.

> Remember, government has no money or source of income of its own. It has to take from people who do.

Yawn. did you lern yer economiks from good Ol' boyz Milton Freedman and Hoppa DVDs?

You should learn some MMT (modern monetary...)

I would recommend Carol Quigley's books.

Schumer is already pushing for Biden to cancel the first $50,000 in student loan debt via executive order.

========================================

When you have an influx of money for a good or service that is relatively inelastic, prices will go up. In this case, it is one way to keep enrollment under control. It also gives them a nice boost in available money, to hire more administrators and to build fancy facilities to lure in the "best" students. Out of necessity, they will also charge you fancy prices for those facilities. ~ IRA Darth Aggie at November 16, 2020 7:35 AM

The problem is that there's too much free money floating around the system.

With unlimited student loans, schools can get more of that free money by raising their prices until the entire student loan goes for tuition only. The original intent of the student loan was to provide a subsidy to students, helping to pay for housing, books, tuition, and the other myriad expenses of going to college.

There's no incentive for colleges to contain costs, just raise prices and petition the government to expand the student loan program.

Today, colleges set their tuition rates to maximize the amount of the standard student loan that they can collect. Take away the free money the prices will have to stabilize at a level the average college student can afford.

That means lowering the administrative costs of running a university - i.e., no more high-six-figure incomes for "diversity" department heads. No more grievance studies departments providing sinecures for minimally-educated activists. No more classes on "The Philosophy of Homer Simpson."

Loan forgiveness is not the answer. It compounds the problem. Blanket loan forgiveness would provide no incentive for cost control and once the tuition spirals to a level at which the $50,000 forgiveness amount makes little dent in the overall debt, the bar will be raised, along with taxes to pay for it.

Warren, the Democrat consensus choice for Treasury Secretary, has thus far resisted the siren call of Modern Monetary Theory, but her resistance will crumble when she discovers that there are not enough rich people to tax in order to pay for the Lefty social agenda. With MMT comes hyperinflation.

Not me…

Crid at November 16, 2020 7:48 AM

If you add up all the taxes (state, fed, property, sales, tolls) I pay probably 35% of my income in taxes. It hurts.
In addition to creating resentment, handouts can create a culture of dependence, where working hard is viewed as being a chump. This is very destructive as a cultural trait.
fake crid favors Modern Monetary Theory which says the gov can just print money with no repercussions. As Weimar Germany or Venezuela today how that works out. Hint: not so well.

Another looooong post from Conan., zzzzzzzzzz!

MMT empowers governments to inflate and deflate the currency as needed. Would you prefer that we return to the gold standard and 19th century fiscal policy? Well that creates a deflationary spiral and depressions (like the Great dep...)

LeQon and Tyrone must really be giving it to your wife. No wonder you have so much time to bore us with your poorly thought out treatises on economics. Shouldn't you be out getting your wife's son a Christmas present?

No Crid, it's not me. And again I am not the same person as HOR. Like I said on Friday, this place is an old boy's club and any new kid on the block with new opinions is going to get attacked.
It's not worth my time to impersonate you Crid. I'm just going to move on.

> It compounds the problem.

Absolutely— But I think the irresistible attraction of student loan forgiveness for Warren et al is that it directly benefits Democrats in academe, as almost all of them are... As she herself has lived. It reinforces the idea that a typically naive academic is worth so much that Americans need not even consider the price.

How might that work out? Again, I don't want to see what happens. It will be a bloodbath for the college & university campus, which was the setting of my childhood. I have intimate nostalgia and love for the realm, though essentially zero surviving respect… When I was kid, I despised the assholes around me, but I know see that they were actively evil.

But of course, this collapse will torment the half of society that hasn't benefited from the pornographic adoration of higher ed as well. Their suffering will be just too unpleasant to contemplate.

I have this theory that in 200 years, people will correctly regard divorce with children as cruelty on par with the abject slavery of blacks.

A sidecar fantasy is that our presumptive mollycoddling & subsidizing of heavily- if not well-school brains is similarly loathsome.

> I'm just going to move on.

Go with God.

Not me:

Crid at November 16, 2020 8:21 AM

Good riddence Ben. The less crypto racist covert cyber Nazis the better. Maybe if you were honest and just told us what you really think about the darker sorts being god's foibles I would respect you. But scum and villainy like you shrouds your racisms in the thin veneer of science. Go away we don't want your intellectual aids.

Not me:

Crid at November 16, 2020 8:41 AM

I really must have soured Ben's puss. Was it that whole kiss a girl thing?

Yeah, somebody's wounded.

I mean, obviously. After sixteen years of being an ass on here, this guy thinks I need help getting on people's nerves. ~ Crid at November 16, 2020 8:37 AM

It's not other people's nerves he's trying to get on. It's yours.

Amy does really need to do something about blocking this guy. He says he was blocked before. So, Assholio?

Not me:

Crid at November 16, 2020 8:46 AM

To misquote a mediocre movie: i'm getting to bold for this shit.

Not Me:

Crid at November 16, 2020 8:59 AM

And thanks Conan. But he's not getting on my words. Clearly I'm living in Ben's head rent free.

Again.

Well that creates a deflationary spiral and depressions (like the Great dep...) ~ Crid at November 16, 2020 8:21 AM

Fake Crid's knowledge of economics is as empty as his humor. No one is advocating a return to the gold standard.

If not Assholio, perhaps this is that long-gone BOTU guy who used to argue against having a standing military.

> Fake Crid's knowledge of economics is as empty as his humor.

If you going to impersonate me at least try to be funny.

> Fake Crid's knowledge of economics is as empty as his humor. No one is advocating a return to the gold standard.

90% sure it's Ben, I mean HOR, I mean that guy who hasn't kissed a girl. But maybe Cony is right, Assholio was a real piece C.H.U.D.

BOTU also had a thing about his own bodily functions. As Amy put it after she banned him, "It was the rare post by BOTU that wasn't about his rectum. Yawn."

You should learn some MMT

Ah, the ol' "we have paper, ink, and printing presses that still run!" fiat currency. Maybe you should read up on Weimar, Zimbabwe and *checks notes* Hungary (?). Turns out, war reparations turns you into someone else's bitch.

I know, I know, I shouldn't feed the troll.

I always wondered how did you learn your economics Conan? Are you secretly Jeffery Tucker?

My daughter is going to enter college next year. I guess the smart thing would be to borrow as much as can and hope. I don't think I could stomach doing that what we have other options.

It might be a guy who got cheek-whipped on Amy's twitter account. It started about half an hour after she made a tart tweet on the 13th.

Or the guy who stole my lunch every day of fourth grade. I hate that guy.

The imposter is going with CridComment now I see. Good. That's fine. I'll just keep my original handle as the real Crid. Let the imposter be CridComment from now on. Neither of the last two comments were me.

One way to tell I'm the real Crid is that even though I have chimed in with my two cents on every blog post Amy has written for the last decade and a half I'm not quite enough of a loser to meticulously go through each of her tweets as well. Jeez, I have to have a bit of a life after all.

> Good riddence Ben. The less crypto
> racist covert cyber Nazis the better.

Commas, right?

My daughter is going to enter college next year. I guess the smart thing would be to borrow as much as can and hope. I don't think I could stomach doing that what we have other options.

Curtis at November 16, 2020 10:54 AM

You don’t borrow it. Make her borrow it. You aren’t the student bub. They will repossess your freaking house before they forgive any loan you take out.

If if she isn’t majoring in something useful with a decent payback, like engineering, nursing, or some such, think about two or three years of community college to make sure she is serious before she gets any loans at all.

The less crypto racist covert cyber Nazis the better. ~ [Fake] Crid at November 16, 2020 8:41 AM

Fewer.

You don’t borrow it. Make her borrow it. You aren’t the student bub. They will repossess your freaking house before they forgive any loan you take out. ~ Isab at November 16, 2020 3:25 PM

Definitely. There may be an asset test attached to the forgiveness program and you don't want to get tripped up by that.

NicoleK:

College costs are too high. College costs are too high because there are way to many administrators and they get paid more than they did before.

Some of that is the need to meet and document meeting ever expanding state/federal mandates that have very little to do with the actual mission of the organization. Somebody has to keep track of all that stuff and report that they're in complete compliance on it.

Some of it is that there is an extreme demand for people who fill certain boxes for equal hiring practices. People who can genuinely and honestly fill these positions AND check the right boxes don't exist in numbers that meet demand. Institutions hire people that check the boxes and just carry them as dead or almost dead weight. They have to pay them as if they were the real thing.

Now I wonder how many of these are fake and how many of these are real. 'Ben at November 16, 2020 8:27 AM' wasn't me.

> If she isn’t majoring in something
> useful with a decent payback, like
> engineering, nursing, or some such,
> think about two or three years of
> community college to make sure she
> is serious before she gets any loans

Excellent

> document meeting ever expanding
> state/federal mandates

… Work which requires a very special talent. Performers of that caliber don't grow on trees.

Too many Asians.

I think colleges will collapse under the weight of their own anti-everything agenda. In the North East, several liberal arts colleges have already gone under. There aren’t enough kids coming up in the ranks to fill them. I also predict that we will see lawsuits for discrimination, either gender or racial coming in the next few years as these institutions double down on their discriminatory polices. Look at the payout that bakery got from Oberlin as an example.

I never thought we would send her to a private college, but my daughter attends a very well regarded Christian school which, when compared to my friends whose kids are at state universities, has made a huge difference in the value of the education. No protests, no America hating, actual free thought. She is able to study both computers and classics and will leave there a well rounded individual. She worked her butt off in high school, got great grades, had a high rank, and high SAT/ACT scores. Those things translated into heavy discounts. We pay the rest bc we have saving for college since she was born. CC, if you are only just now trying to figure out how to pay for it, then take Isab’s advice and start at community college, or even think about a gap year. Avoid loans at all cost.

In the mid-1970s the tuition cost for Cal State Northridge (CSUN) was $100.00 per semester, so 200 bucks for a year. Books maybe a hundred for the year. Easy peasey for anyone to afford. Oh, and L.A. Community College before that was free.

What the fuck happened since then?

Well, Quillette says:

This helps explain why, as Sarah Lawrence College professor Samuel J. Abrams has detailed, surveys of college administrators now show them to be more ideologically liberal than their academic colleagues. And again, this has more to do with supply and demand than esoteric discussions of critical theory. While many schools are cutting their academic staff, these are boom times for the bloated administrative and managerial offices that micromanage student life, and which are now tasked with caring for students who suffer even the mildest setbacks and inconveniences.

Jay, the bureaucracy must expand to meet the needs of the expanded bureaucracy!

...think about two or three years of community college to make sure she is serious before she gets any loans at all. ~ Isab at November 16, 2020 3:25 PM

The problem is that the rigor of a college math or science course may not be there in a community college course. I took a semester of community college when I transferred colleges. I had to get an AA to be eligible for the transfer. My math requirement was a statistics course that was less rigorous than a high school course. Having already taken college-level statistics, this class was a joke. From there I went straight into college-level Calculus I. Different world.

Student with rigorous majors hit the wall when they take the weed-out courses each of those majors has. Their friends in Education and Social Sciences are partying every weekend while they're studying. She may be less likely to find those weed-out courses in community college. Have her take the toughest courses they offer in her field of study.

And, if you want it forgiven, put the loan in her name only. I spent many hours on phones dealing with parents or grandparents who got parent loans or cosigned a student loan and were then stuck with the payments when the student bailed. You can volunteer to help with repayment later, but don't get yourself legally obligated to repay it.

“The problem is that the rigor of a college math or science course may not be there in a community college course. I took a semester of community college when I transferred colleges. I had to get an AA to be eligible for the transfer. My math requirement was a statistics course that was less rigorous than a high school course. Having already taken college-level statistics, this class was a joke. From there I went straight into college-level Calculus I. Different world.”

I knew when they started offering remedial math at West Point, that the days of “rigorous weed out courses” were over.

Conan, In addition, Have you seen all the free Internet offerings for higher math? Check our Corsera. I wouldn’t even consider letting my kid go to engineering school til they had finished at least two calculus courses online.

> You can volunteer to help
> with repayment later

Another favorite from Big Mac: McArdle on cosigning.

Another favorite from Big Mac: McArdle on cosigning. ~ Crid at November 17, 2020 3:50 PM

I could only read the first paragraph due to the paywall (I've reached the limit for free articles), but I'd agree wholeheartedly with the advice in the headline, "Never, ever, cosign a loan for anyone." Emphasis on anyone, even family. Cosigning will affect your own credit rating as if you'd taken out that loan yourself.

email

email ~ Crid at November 18, 2020 4:36 AM

Thanks. Got it.

My wife is a mortgage underwriter and agrees with McArdle's comments in the article.

I used to work with a bank collections department in financial planning. Collectors are lazy - they'll go after the easier target, usually the cosigner when the original borrower disappears.