Disgusted with the Government thread

posted by brutus161

Exactly. Instead of figuring out how Americans are going to pay for things like student loans and health care. Start focusing on why these things cost what they do. I understand initial costs of items, but when colleges force text books that cost hundreds of dollars, and the book is never used, there is a breakdown in the process. Additionally, paying a huge markup for simple drugs that have been around forever is also stupid. Yes, it costs millions upon millions to develop a new drug, but that is why drug manufacturers have a window of exclusivity before a generic version can be made. This allows for the companies to get their investment back. However, paying more than a few cents for a tylenol or motrin during a hospital stay is straight robbery. 

Concur. College text books should be simple PDFs, which I think more and more are now a days. I get the rest of your point as well.

My point is for profit colleges have preyed on and screwed over many people simply looking for higher education. That is an example of where trusting colleges to do the right thing does not work well. 

posted by Dr Winston O'Boogie

Guaranteed government student loans are why college educations worth little cost $30k per year.  Had government never gotten involved, it is reasonable to think college education would have been attainable to those who wanted it without loans (perhaps with a job during college to help pay).  This is how college worked for many decades.  It was a privilege but it was affordable to anyone determined to go without the baggage of years of debt.  Once easy money came into the picture, colleges started jacking up tuition and  building shit at a ferocious rate.  Meanwhile, the entire population was brainwashed into this idea that everyone should go to college.  

So I disagree that government student loans are done well.  I see them as part of the overrall racket.  

The flip side of that is states and the feds have been gutting the federal aid and grant portion to fund colleges. The price of a Pell Grant has actually decreased and many states, like Ohio, have dramatically cut the money that goes for grants. Once the grants dry up that colleges have been using, they have to fill in the gaps someone....and tuition is increased. I think that is one reason why we have seen the increase in prices since the days I went to school in the early 2000s. 

It may be easy for people to say, well the endowment can cover the cost, and for some schools, they are tapping into that: Ohio St being one of them, with their announcement a month or so ago. But, most schools do not have an endowment large enough to cover the costs alone, without the grant funding. This leads to higher tuition over the years. 

On your last point Federal backed student loans are also better than the private sector as usually interest rates are lower, they are more forgiving if you to go into forbearance, their customer service is usually better, and the last year or so interest has not accrued. Whereas, Sallie Mae has higher interest rates, shitty customer service, little concern for forbearance, and if you do not have federal backed student loan, you have been accruing interest since last year. 

I had both federal student loans, through Fedloan, and private loans through Sallie Mae. Sallie Mae fucking sucked at every turn. 

posted by ptown_trojans_1

The flip side of that is states and the feds have been gutting the federal aid and grant portion to fund colleges. The price of a Pell Grant has actually decreased and many states, like Ohio, have dramatically cut the money that goes for grants. Once the grants dry up that colleges have been using, they have to fill in the gaps someone....and tuition is increased. I think that is one reason why we have seen the increase in prices since the days I went to school in the early 2000s. 

It may be easy for people to say, well the endowment can cover the cost, and for some schools, they are tapping into that: Ohio St being one of them, with their announcement a month or so ago. But, most schools do not have an endowment large enough to cover the costs alone, without the grant funding. This leads to higher tuition over the years. 

On your last point Federal backed student loans are also better than the private sector as usually interest rates are lower, they are more forgiving if you to go into forbearance, their customer service is usually better, and the last year or so interest has not accrued. Whereas, Sallie Mae has higher interest rates, shitty customer service, little concern for forbearance, and if you do not have federal backed student loan, you have been accruing interest since last year. 

I had both federal student loans, through Fedloan, and private loans through Sallie Mae. Sallie Mae fucking sucked at every turn. 

What is different about colleges now versus 25 years ago?  Their campus physical plant is about twice as big - filled with fancy classroom, residence, recreational, food and other buildings.  Ohio State, as an example, is like a fucking resort today compared to 1990.  Is the education twice as good today than it was then?  No way.  Like most places, it markets the shit out of itself to score well on rankings so that it can whore itself to out of state tuition payers at the expense of it's land grant mission.  OSU is not unique in this way.  

Easy student loans make the decision to pay these exorbitant fees mindless because the loan comes easy and "well that's just the way it goes now".  Is state funding less than it used to be?  Yes and I think that should be changed.  But it isn't less by a factor or three - the way tuition has risen.  On top of it, places like OSU fuck over their state residents who support the place with taxes by chasing out of state payers in order to more than cover their funding gap.  Drive around virutally any college campus today and I defy you to find anything that resembles, "Boy, this place sure doesn't look like it gets the funds it used to."  It's a racket and cheap loans are the primary culprit.  Ask the VP of or dean or whatever the head of one of the 27 "offices" at Ohio State to explain their $300k salary and how it relates to the academic mission of the school.  Good luck interpreting that rationalizing.

It is like Milton Friedman said, "Is political self interest nobler somehow than economic self interest."  When government bureaucrats are inefficient, incompetent, or power hungry shitbags their revenue stream does not suffer from the consequences of their actions.  You can't even decrease the baseline rate of growth or the cries of impending human suffering will go out.  Many times the purported reason for their failures is a lack of sufficient revenue.

When there is a "government shutdown" all we hear about is the pain and suffering these noble public servants are enduring.  Little ends up changing and in the end an any financial burdens for them are erased.  No one's life ends up in ruin. 

I watched over the past year many of these same bureaucrats and politicians run to microphones demanding shutdowns of many small businesses.  Restrictions causing massive decreases in their revenue.  Did their lost revenue get restored?  No.  They got pittance.  Nearly all of the aid package passed in the name of their relief went to political self interests.  If that does not make you disgusted with your government nothing will. 

posted by Dr Winston O'Boogie

What is different about colleges now versus 25 years ago?  Their campus physical plant is about twice as big - filled with fancy classroom, residence, recreational, food and other buildings.  Ohio State, as an example, is like a fucking resort today compared to 1990.  Is the education twice as good today than it was then?  No way.  Like most places, it markets the shit out of itself to score well on rankings so that it can whore itself to out of state tuition payers at the expense of it's land grant mission.  OSU is not unique in this way.  

Easy student loans make the decision to pay these exorbitant fees mindless because the loan comes easy and "well that's just the way it goes now".  Is state funding less than it used to be?  Yes and I think that should be changed.  But it isn't less by a factor or three - the way tuition has risen.  On top of it, places like OSU fuck over their state residents who support the place with taxes by chasing out of state payers in order to more than cover their funding gap.  Drive around virutally any college campus today and I defy you to find anything that resembles, "Boy, this place sure doesn't look like it gets the funds it used to."  It's a racket and cheap loans are the primary culprit.  Ask the VP of or dean or whatever the head of one of the 27 "offices" at Ohio State to explain their $300k salary and how it relates to the academic mission of the school.  Good luck interpreting that rationalizing.

Who the fuck are you and what did you do with Dr. Boogie?

posted by like_that

Who the fuck are you and what did you do with Dr. Boogie?

I've always felt this way.  I went to OU undergrad and OSU graduate.  In both cases, tuition wasn't cheap, but it was certainly affordable.  I could pay my own way.  I borrowed a little for graduate school, but I didn't have to - it was my choice.  My debt was such that I could pay it back in 18 months.  

I think it is ridiculous that this isn't really an option anymore.  Neither place offers something today that is twice as good as what I had, and yet here we are. 

Where I live now, Alabama, I see the state doing the same thing to it's flag ship school that Ohio's done with Ohio State.  The University of Alabama's campus is about twice a large as it was 20 years ago (in terms of number of buildings - it's palatial too) and the state is aggressively going after out of staters.  For the first time, this generation of HS grads in the state who have maintained a B average are having a difficult time getting admitted to the premier state school.  That is losing the plot.  But I'm sure the $350k/year VP of Accountability and Advancement could better explain it than me.  

Waste.

BREAKING: House approves $1.9 BILLION to bolster security at Capitol after Jan. 6 riot - AP

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) May 20, 2021

When your businesses burned they stood down. When their office got an unscheduled tour they robbed you of billions to ensure it's safety. They hate you. https://t.co/wglkSc0sd7

— Liberty Lockdown (@LibertyLockPod) May 20, 2021

*its

Spending $1.9B on this is stupid, wasteful and deserves around-the-clock mocking/insulting. But playing the "just an unscheduled tour" card in doing so is the sort of delusional bullshit world that people like Quaker live in.

I forgot, it was as bad as 9/11.

Probably somewhere in between an "unscheduled tour" and "9/11". But it's orders of magnitude closer to the former than the latter. 

posted by justincredible

I forgot, it was as bad as 9/11.

Yes. I totally said that. What the fuck has happened in politics to make everyone an "it's one extreme or another!" idiot?

posted by Heretic

Yes. I totally said that. What the fuck has happened in politics to make everyone an "it's one extreme or another!" idiot?

See my follow up. I was mainly just shitposting. And the 9/11 comparison is being thrown around all over the place.

The main point of the tweet is that they do not give a shit about us peons. They will let cities burn all summer, but god forbid people put a scare into the entity responsible for slowly bleeding the country dry.

posted by justincredible

See my follow up. I was mainly just shitposting. And the 9/11 comparison is being thrown around all over the place.

The main point of the tweet is that they do not give a shit about us peons. They will let cities burn all summer, but god forbid people put a scare into the entity responsible for slowly bleeding the country dry.

Ah, that I agree with totally. The thing that sucks is how that's essentially the entirety of the system. Big $$$ interests buy and pay for the politicians, who pander to the people while using their money/support to entrench themselves while looking out for the well-being of those big $$$ people/groups and, at most, giving lip service to the people who voted them in. It's a nice pipe dream to imagine them all being removed, from the far-left Squad members to the far-right QAnon ones and everyone in between...but odds are the next group would wind up being just as crooked because, with the current climate with social media and political hostility, who would want to hold one of these offices for any reason other than "get in, get rich and gain power"? And with the recent rising of Squad/QAnon types, it seems like way too many people care more about "loud-n-crazy" than having reps who might actually be willing to work with others or compromise, which sucks in its own right because it basically says that, as things are now, improvement looks impossible.

Sucks to be us!