h/t to @michellemalkin for the photo: I wanted to share this REFRESHING sign. I love this hardworking kid, whoever he/she is!
When other major stories are not crowding it out, the media occasionally gets around to a story or two on student loan debt. The college graduates of the last ten years or more are drowning in student loan debts. There is a radical solution to this problem.
What is it?
Abolish the student loan program.
Liberals will immediately scream that I am anti-education. I want to see the great masses of Americans stuck with 6th grade educations, forced to work the fields and flip burgers or hit the highlight of their career by being able to say, “Welcome to Wal-Mart.”
Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. I do object to state funded colleges and universities being used to indoctrinate students in liberalism and I do object to stupid programs like gay studies. But I believe the state university and college secondary education system is one of the best things that state government does. I believe the state college secondary education system should do what it was designed to do, namely provide a reasonably affordable college education to the tax paying residents of a state.
The unwashed liberals, in the case of Occupy Wall Street, that is literally true, just want student loans forgiven. There is irony in Bill Clinton endorsing the Occupy Wall Street anarchy and their demands for complete forgiveness of student loans. He was the President who signed the law making student loans non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.
In wanting student loans forgiven, the left is focusing on the symptoms and not the cause of the problem. Student loans are the problem. The easy access to student loans distorts and destroys the free market. Students to not realize the cost of what they are getting. They don’t write the check. They just fill out the paperwork. Sometimes instead of writing a check, they get a check back. The money they receive back is then spent on, hopefully living expenses. Back in the day when I was a college student, pizza and beer were considered living expenses. Somehow I doubt that has changed.
For colleges, the student loans take the sting out of the market place. Who cares if they have to raise tuition by twenty percent? Instead of students talking about alternatives to State U., they just ask for more student loans.
The student loan program is probably one of the worst programs for encouraging bad behavior. Since the federal government guarantees loans, it is a no lose proposition for banks. They can make the loans and make a profit when people pay them back and if they fail to pay them back, the government covers the loss.
What if banks made those loans without the government guarantee? For one thing, there would be many fewer loans. That is not a bad thing, as the banks would be asking some important questions.
For example, if someone wanted to borrow $100,000 to get a nice Ivy League degree, the bank might ask, what are you going to major in and what are you going to do after college and how much will you make? If the student said, well I am going to major in social work, become a social worker and probably make about $30,000 a year, the bank is going to turn that student down. With guarantees, the bank doesn’t care whether the risk is good or not. After all, the taxpayer will pay the bank back if the loan defaults.
The state college systems have a lot of affordable options. Maybe a student wants to go to State U., but does not have the money. Every state has affordable regional junior colleges where someone can start. Students can work and help pay for their college. There are many options if we abolish this really bad program.
One of the other benefits of abolishing Guaranteed Student loans is, it will deflate the education bubble and tuition will come down. Market factors will start to play a role in the cost of education again.
The Guaranteed Student Loan program is the classic case of a well intentioned government program that has destroyed the market, cost the tax payers a lot of money and is now hurting the very people it was intended to help.
Ronald Reagan was right when he said the most feared words in the English language are, “I’m from the Government. I’m here to help.”
Posted by Judson Phillips on TPN
The Education Trap
Oct 14th, 2011 | By Jeff Berwick
For decades, governments have been promoting school as being necessary. Celebrities, probably thinking they are doing the “right thing,” often promote the message “stay in school,” from people like Mr. T. and NBA players and rappers.
No one ever thinks to ask, “Hey, Mr. T., did you learn to be an actor and how to work out and grow a mohawk in school?” Nor do they ask the same questions of a bunch of multi-millionaire basketball players and rappers. Did Michael Jordan learn to play basketball “in school”? For the rappers, I don’t remember there being Hip Hop 101 in college.
All public schools in the U.S. today are prep camps for jail or for being a cubicle rat for the rest of your life.
THE SCHOOL “SYSTEM”
Jim Rohn said, “formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.”
Today, however, formal education, often, does not even make you a living, as the cost of schooling has increased dramatically ever since the government subsidized it with grants, loans and tax benefits.
But education is not the real goal of the education system. As William Torrey Harris, U.S. commissioner of education in 1906, said, “Education… scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, head of philosophy and psychology at Prussian University in Berlin, said it even more clearly: “Education should aim at destroying free will, so that after pupils are thus schooled, they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished.”
THE 99% HAVE HAD THEIR FREE WILL DESTROYED
The saddest thing I have seen in a long time is the “We Are the 99%” page.
And it’s not necessarily sad because of the tough situation these thousands of people have found themselves in.
What is sad is that you can see how broken they are as individuals. How they bought into a system and have had all their free will drained from them. This is particularly shown by the fact that thousands of people would take the time to write out on a piece of paper all of their concerns and unhappiness with the expectation that this will CHANGE anything!
I estimate over 90% of the people on that site appear to be in rough shape due to student loans. But not one of them sees the truth. They’ve all been brainwashed to think a college education is not only a good thing, but is a guarantee of having a great life.
One starving artist had $175,000 in student loans. $175,000 in student loans? To become an “artist”? But he sounds as though it is the system that let him down. He takes no responsibility for his massive error in judgment.
Another 99 Percenter is 47, penniless and in debt after her “college education,” yet what does she want for her daughters? To put them through the same system! She has been brainwashed to believe that a “college education” is a necessary and good thing despite all the evidence in her own life that has provided that it was not.
Rather than realizing their errors, many of these people figure that writing their problems on a piece of paper on the Internet may help! Or by chasing down rich Wall St. bankers (a symptom of the problem) with pitchforks while admonishing the government (the real problem) to play a bigger role in the economy.
STUDENT LOANS ARE SLAVERY
Rather than hoping the government helps them, many of these people with student debts should be looking at ways to get out of the country.
Why? First of all, student debt is the only debt in the U.S. that is not able to be defaulted on in a bankruptcy. In other words, the starving artist above with $175,000 in debt will never be able to remove that chain from his neck as long as he lives in the country. If he were to expatriate, he could at least start fresh somewhere else.
And now the U.S. government has dropped many hints that in order to get a passport in the future, you will need to have your government debts (taxes, loans, etc.) up-to-date.
It is not much of a stretch of the imagination for the U.S. government to demand that all those behind on their student debt will be ordered to report to duty with the military. Any opposition will be met with unlimited prison sentences.
There are plenty of opportunities in the world. Look for employment in places like the Canadian oil sands, where they can’t even find enough employees. Or in booming places such as the Middle East (try Qatar) or in Asia (plenty of finance-related jobs in Hong Kong — and a 15% income tax rate).
But remember, in life, there are no “sure things” or guarantees. The government fooled you into thinking there are, but there aren’t. In real life, you just have to get out there and do it.
KEEP YOUR KIDS OUT OF SCHOOL
For those with children, keep them out of school. Any school.
Real education, today, is all free and can be done via the Internet from anywhere. All you have to do is ensure your child can read and from there they can self-educate.
MIT’s entire curriculum is available online for free via MIT’s OpenCourseWare. As well, University of the People is a tuition-free online university. Not to mention there is a YouTube video or a Wikipedia article on any subject matter you’d ever want to know.
BE A COLLEGE DROPOUT… OR DROP-IN
I am not a college dropout. I’m a college drop-in. I dropped in to college, at the behest of my mother, for a few days and quickly got out of there. Consider doing the same.
Don’t get caught in the education trap.
Regards,
Jeff Berwick
The Dollar Vigilante
JEFF BERWICK
Jeff Berwick, a self-described financial freedom fighter, is the founder of Canada’s largest financial website, Stockhouse.com. He now writes the libertarian, Austrian-economics based newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante and is a regular speaker at many of the world’s most important investment, resource and freedom-focused conferences where he is known as the most dangerous man in finance.
**Glenn Beck produced a personal preparedness and solution list and did a show based around it last week that he feels was given to him (divinely) as a warning. One of the things on it was Apprenticeships. We need to get back to having an apprenticeship system for the trades and stop pushing every child who really has no need, can’t afford it or isn’t college material to want, expect or feel they must attend college. Most of us are for or letting our kids go into major debt for a college degree that will never compensate them in salary or job status for the debt or cost and have allowed our kids to become indoctrinated in anti-American if not down right Marxist doctrine.
They have been dumbing us and our kids down for years in the public school system and then indoctrinating our kids in the college and universities. The indoctrination process is now starting in Kindergarten!
Under the school/education section of Beck’s list was:
COLLEGE/SCHOOL
APPRENTICESHIPS ARE THE FUTURE.
DISCUSS THE VALUE OF SCHOOL FOR WHAT YOU CAN EARN.
DO NOT LOOK FOR LABELS THEY WILL BECOME MEANINGLESS (YALE, HARVARD, Stanford…)
FIND OTHER FORMS OF SCHOOL. ON LINE, JR COLLEGE, STATE SCHOOLS
TEACH YOUNG CHILDREN NOW THAT COLLEGE IS NOT A GIVEN
DEMAND MERIT FROM SCHOOL AND STUDENT OR PULL YOUR TIME AND $
EDUCATE YOURSELF AT ALL TIMES. ALWAYS READ.
HAVE A HARD COPY OF IMPORTANT BOOKS AND DOCUMENTS
LEARN OLD AND OR LOST PRACTICES.
MENDING/CANNING/FARMING/
LEARN TO FIX AN ENGINE
RE-LEARN READING A PRINTED MAP
KNOW WHATS IN THE NEWS (AND WHAT’S BEHIND IT). LIFE CAN CHANGE QUICKLY.
BE ABLE TO DEFEND YOUR POSITIONS BY KNOWING THE OTHER SIDE
Ask Marion~
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