|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Died By Bear
Joined: 13 Jul 2010
Location: On the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
|
 Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 6:48 am Post subject: |
 |
|
| Steelrails wrote: |
| Frenetic wrote: |
| I'll pay back my 100,000 dollar loan (half of that is probably interest) when I can get a job paying at least 70K a year. Until that day comes, they can kiss my elbow. |
Thanks to people like you, my interest rates are higher and therefore the cost of everything is higher.
They need to bring back debtors prison. |
THEY CAN HAVE IT WHEN THEY PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS.
Oh, by the way - THANK YOU for paying for my education. I really mean that. Thank you! |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 7:29 am Post subject: |
|
|
| recessiontime wrote: |
You also said something funny - that people should be able to return their degrees so they can get their money back. If this was possible, most would seeing how worthless it is in the job market back home. I can't tell you how many lawyers saddling 150k+ in student loans would give ANYTHING to be able to hit that reset button you jokingly mentioned.
|
No they shouldn't get the money back. They didn't have the money to begin with. The money they borrowed was used towards a degree. If they don't want to pay the money, they shouldn't keep the degree.
You don't get $150,000, you get no debt and no degree.
If thats what you want, then fine. Seems fair. See you on the next plane outta Korea and back home at Starbucks.
| Quote: |
| OMG! That is funnier than the botanical gardens comment! Really! Please. please, please tell me this is a joke! I know people who have claimed bankruptcy. The day it was claimed and thereafter were the best sleeps of their life. One person described it as being able to breath again! I wonder how on god's green earth one can predict the actions and conscious of one's future by not paying one's debts to banks. Do yourself a favor and check out the profits banks make. Do you think they have a conscious when they call your house demanding payments that you can not make? |
The issue isn't bankers' conscience. The issue is your conscience.
Is such a course good for your conscience?
So all you people out there endorsing the 'take the money and run' approach. Would you loan money to yourselves and others with this attitude? Do you feel you should be able to be issued credit cards given this attitude? Heck, would you even lease out an apartment towards someone with this attitude vs. a person who is going to do what it takes to make the rent?
Not to mention none of you would be upfront and honest with this kind of attitude towards the lender. You'd talk about what a responsible person you are and how you're mature and disciplined and a good credit risk. All the time in the back of your head is something totally different.
I know the banker is scum. I go in there assuming that. What I care about is youwhoclaimstohaveaconscience. How are you any different than that predatory lender?
| Quote: |
| I just want to say one thing to you. You don't understand human nature at all. People are selfish. I'm not trying to justify it, it's just a fact of life. If you give people motive and opportunity they will take it and run off into the sunset. |
No, I do. And word, if you want to play the game and be shady, more power to you. But don't try and play the whole 'victim' and 'exploited' card. Be a true scammer. Embrace the identity. You are sleaze who is out there to grab every penny they can, society's laws be darned. As Jesse Pinkman said- "I am the villain." Fine, be the villain. Just be straight up. None of this "I'm feeding my starving family" nonsense.
| Quote: |
| THEY CAN HAVE IT WHEN THEY PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS. |
Give it 10 years. If enough people decide to default I guarantee legislation to make those degrees null and void will crop up. They won't need to pry it away. They'll just pass a bill. Thank goodness. Finally some of the riff-raff with degrees will be cleared out and a degree may be worth something again.
Go ahead and not pay, get more people to join. I can be patient for 10 years and reap the benefits of such a mentality.
Seriously though, I think its in your interest and mine that the idea of credit continues to exist. I think its also wise to consider that a mass default of student loans could lead to very negative consequences for the defaulters as well as those who made good on their payments.
The best way to preserve our interests as a whole is to make sure those loans get paid and that credit continues to be issued.
People knock the people of this country, but lets remember during the IMF when Korea faced a big debt the people of this country sublimated their individual interests and contributed money so that the debt would be paid off as quickly as possible and Korea could continue to enjoy foreign credit. The people saw the big picture. They could have blamed "The Banks" or "The Man" and not done anything about it and turned their country into a 3rd world banana republic. They decided that that might, possibly, not be the wisest course of action. That things such as credit are essential to financial well-being. And that financial well-being does lead to certain freedoms, freedoms that may be worth more than the freedoms that are given up as a result of telling "The Man" to take a hike.
Go ahead and turn yourself into an individual 3rd worlder. Whatever. Its your life. i can only preach so much. In the end, live and let live. Have at her. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 8:22 am Post subject: |
|
|
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-raises-cap-at-eleventh-hour-to-keep-student-loans-flowing/article1696833/
| Quote: |
The recession-fuelled rise in postsecondary enrolment has maxed out the federal student loan program at $15-billion, forcing Ottawa to hastily change the rules to keep the money flowing as classes resume for the fall.
Without the last-minute boost for the cap on total student debt, the federal government estimated, 50,000 students would have been denied about $300-million worth of loans. |
Instead of issuing new loans, or allocating credit to post-sec education, why not apply to money to the schools directly to diminish tuition?
Why? Because then we wouldn't be turned into interest paying organisms. You all remember The Matrix.. How humanity was turned into batteries for a parasitic overclass of robots? That's actually a good description. We have been turned not into entities that produce energy for an overclass but entities that produce interest for the overclass.
See, when you all talk about the moral obligation to pay interest you are assuming a world without incentives and context. The context is severe middle and lower class stress and the incentives are such that egregious use of debt is the primary mechanism that the middle and lower classes are given to live a life that is materially middle class.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion/03reich.html?_r=2&src=me&ref=homepage
| Quote: |
This crisis began decades ago when a new wave of technology � things like satellite communications, container ships, computers and eventually the Internet � made it cheaper for American employers to use low-wage labor abroad or labor-replacing software here at home than to continue paying the typical worker a middle-class wage. Even though the American economy kept growing, hourly wages flattened. The median male worker earns less today, adjusted for inflation, than he did 30 years ago.
But for years American families kept spending as if their incomes were keeping pace with overall economic growth. And their spending fueled continued growth. How did families manage this trick? First, women streamed into the paid work force. By the late 1990s, more than 60 percent of mothers with young children worked outside the home (in 1966, only 24 percent did).
Second, everyone put in more hours. What families didn�t receive in wage increases they made up for in work increases. By the mid-2000s, the typical male worker was putting in roughly 100 hours more each year than two decades before, and the typical female worker about 200 hours more.
When American families couldn�t squeeze any more income out of these two coping mechanisms, they embarked on a third: going ever deeper into debt. This seemed painless � as long as home prices were soaring. From 2002 to 2007, American households extracted $2.3 trillion from their homes.
Eventually, of course, the debt bubble burst � and with it, the last coping mechanism. Now we�re left to deal with the underlying problem that we�ve avoided for decades. Even if nearly everyone was employed, the vast middle class still wouldn�t have enough money to buy what the economy is capable of producing. |
This has been my understanding of the system since the beginning of the crisis we're currently in. We are addicted to debt because it is only with debt that the huddled masses can live at a standard that is presented to them through the media as middle class.
So, I'll be the radical on this. Interest is immoral. We have no obligation to participate in an immoral system that sucks the wealth out of us and sends it up to the overclass of creditors. The best way to behave is to not take on debt and to get rid of the debt you have. If you can't handle the debt, you should work to have it diminished/abolished. In the United States many firms actually check credit for jobs. A good apartment/condo building will check credit. That's the system. It is in our interest not to be on the bad end of that system. But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. We only get one life and must be able to retire. It is completely irrational to work to pay interest.
So you say, oh Mises just doesn't want to pay his debts. Untrue. I have no debts. I simply stand morally outraged by our neo-feudal political-economy. The reality of it is covered up with gadgets (iPads?) and circuses (entertainment). This will not continue for ever and we should really be considering what will follow. That aside, we must not accept the propaganda that inserts morality into creditor contracts. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 9:20 am Post subject: |
|
|
Well you certainly raise an interesting point.
I will agree that our present system is Neo-Feudal. On the other hand I would submit that a significant part of the population is incapable of living outside of a Feudal system.
The fact is that most of the people here tacitly agree with the Feudal system. What most people on this board seem to desire is a job that pays them a comfortable wage while working for some sort of company. There doesn't seem to be any great desire to be an entrepreneur or to be a self-sufficient agrarianist or a member of some sort of communal society.
Were that to be the case then in fact the people on this board WOULD be farmers or small business owners, neither of which requires a university education. Instead it seems that people here are wishing for some sort of plot from their sovereign that provides a comfortable lifestyle.
How can one fault the head of the manor for implementing such a system when so many wish to be a part of it?
If you are against this feudal-banking-debt machine, great! More power to you. You're probably right as to how the world works. But don't rail against the system when all you desire is some 70k a year job for those very feudalists. You're not a rebel or fighting the machine. You're just being wishy-washy. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 9:28 am Post subject: |
|
|
Tuition inflation compared
If anybody thinks our generation got a bum deal, what about today's 10-year-olds? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hugo85
Joined: 27 Aug 2010
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 10:51 am Post subject: |
|
|
Banks are supposed to weigh risks when lending money, thing which they forgot to do in recent years (refer to subprime mortgages).
Students and banks alike should be able to assess the ability for the loan to be paid back and when a student's expected salary according to the data is roughly 12 bucks per hour the bank should know better than to lend a hundred grants. That is begging for default on the loan. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 1:29 pm Post subject: |
|
|
http://www.mybudget360.com/the-privateers-of-education-student-loan-debt-larger-than-credit-card-debt
| Quote: |
The privateers of education � How banks collude with the government to inflate college costs. Student loan debt now surpasses total credit card debt.
One of the more ominous statistics coming from this recession is that student loan debt has now surpassed total credit card debt in the United States. The reason for this is based on the deep impact of the recession. Credit card debt peak at $975 billion back in September of 2008 and is now down to $826 billion. This is good news right? Well the main reason for the decline has been through the rise of bankruptcies. As this number decreased student loan debt has continued to soar and is now larger than total credit card debt. Part of it has to do with the fact that you are not allowed to discharge student loan debt through bankruptcy. The government is the biggest player in the student loan market but the banks are the folks dishing out the loans. Similar to the housing bubble, when banks and government combine you usually end up with inflated prices and very wealthy bankers. The working and middle class end up paying for the bad bets in the end with inflated prices and giant amounts of debt.
...
Past and current students carry a stunning $829 billion in student loan debt. The cost of a college education has far outpaced the rate of inflation. Private institutions realize the government will cover the cost of students going to college through loans so subsequently, they raise fees and push the government to increase their loan caps. How in the world can education costs be going up at a time when the economy came to a standstill in the last three years? In fact, in the last year we have been dealing with a deflationary environment yet costs of education still keep going up. If schools can increase prices and have the government subsidize loans, then you can rest assured the banks will be pushing these things out like candy.
�This is the problem when you have a government for the banks, run by the banks, and designed by the banks.�
...
The same too big to fail banks also rear their familiar faces in this market as well. There is nothing better than a student loan for banks. If students default, the bank will be reimbursed by the government. The government can then sell the loan off to a collection agency and go after the student by garnishing wages and other venues that even loan sharks don�t have. Is this double dipping? Absolutely. It is pure economic wizardry when banks are merely serving as middlemen with no risk at the table and are dolling out government backed loans.
...
What is interesting to note is that college costs haven�t even adjusted during this recession. Even the housing bubble popping has brought home prices lower. Why? Because if you can�t pay for a home then foreclosure is an option. Can�t pay for a student loan? Too bad. The bank that made the loan is already backed by the government so they don�t care and the government is going to use debt collectors to get their money through a variety of ways:
...
The student loan market has enriched a few while pushing on the inflated cost of education to the working and middle class of the country. Clearly people can�t afford the cost of education as it stands and thus go into massive debt (just like housing). As usual, this is part of a bigger theme of squeezing out the middle class from an elite and increasingly desperate banking class. The banking class is bent on making money through usury rates and basically skimming money off people via non-productive means. Plus, they are lending taxpayer backed money. There is a specific reason why college costs have gone up (and are still going up) even though the working and middle class are getting poorer.
...
So banks now had the same protection as all federally backed student loans. The same thing that happened with the housing market is happening with student loans except this is more nefarious. There is no way to walk away from a student loan. This might not be a problem if students were coming out with high paying jobs and able to service their debt. Unfortunately this crisis is hitting every corner of the economic spectrum:
....
This is the highest unemployment rate for college graduates ever recorded. Think about that. As college education reaches and enters a new price apex each year, the growth of unemployment for college graduates inches higher and higher. Now the mission of education isn�t necessarily to get a job. But when you put such a giant price tag there should be some direct career added benefit. In many cases this is true. Yet in other cases there is a severe self selection bias. That is, most of the ambitious people in this country go to college (not all of course). So trying to justify a high cost for this reason usually hides a lot of the reasons for career success.
Yet the challenge is revealed when you realize some people are going to college for four years at $50,000 per year with degrees that have little marketability in the economy.
...
China is graduating nearly three times the engineers compared to the U.S. They are much larger in proportion as well but so is India yet we graduate (for now) more engineers. Yet this is where we have shifted and outsourced most of our manufacturing base. So we have many questions to examine including what do we want from our education system if the price is so high?
One thing is certain however and that is that we cannot continue to have the banking industry and the government so closely intertwined. Every industry in the last two decades that banks have touched have sprouted out bubble tentacles. Technology, real estate, and now the college market. Keep in mind as many more people are unable to pay these loans, the taxpayer is paying the bill yet banks are being paid full face value here. Banks have dumped trillions of dollars of bad housing debt onto the taxpayers and have been pushing student loan debt onto the taxpayer as well for years. Al Lord and Tim Fitzpatrick, both Sallie Mae big names have pulled in over $400 million over the last decade. Glad that the new mission of education is now paving the way for subsidizing the salaries of big financial lenders. |
A very ethical system, no? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
kardisa
Joined: 26 Jun 2009
Location: Masan
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 1:31 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| mises wrote: |
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-raises-cap-at-eleventh-hour-to-keep-student-loans-flowing/article1696833/
| Quote: |
The recession-fuelled rise in postsecondary enrolment has maxed out the federal student loan program at $15-billion, forcing Ottawa to hastily change the rules to keep the money flowing as classes resume for the fall.
Without the last-minute boost for the cap on total student debt, the federal government estimated, 50,000 students would have been denied about $300-million worth of loans. |
Instead of issuing new loans, or allocating credit to post-sec education, why not apply to money to the schools directly to diminish tuition?
Why? Because then we wouldn't be turned into interest paying organisms. You all remember The Matrix.. How humanity was turned into batteries for a parasitic overclass of robots? That's actually a good description. We have been turned not into entities that produce energy for an overclass but entities that produce interest for the overclass.
See, when you all talk about the moral obligation to pay interest you are assuming a world without incentives and context. The context is severe middle and lower class stress and the incentives are such that egregious use of debt is the primary mechanism that the middle and lower classes are given to live a life that is materially middle class.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion/03reich.html?_r=2&src=me&ref=homepage
| Quote: |
This crisis began decades ago when a new wave of technology � things like satellite communications, container ships, computers and eventually the Internet � made it cheaper for American employers to use low-wage labor abroad or labor-replacing software here at home than to continue paying the typical worker a middle-class wage. Even though the American economy kept growing, hourly wages flattened. The median male worker earns less today, adjusted for inflation, than he did 30 years ago.
But for years American families kept spending as if their incomes were keeping pace with overall economic growth. And their spending fueled continued growth. How did families manage this trick? First, women streamed into the paid work force. By the late 1990s, more than 60 percent of mothers with young children worked outside the home (in 1966, only 24 percent did).
Second, everyone put in more hours. What families didn�t receive in wage increases they made up for in work increases. By the mid-2000s, the typical male worker was putting in roughly 100 hours more each year than two decades before, and the typical female worker about 200 hours more.
When American families couldn�t squeeze any more income out of these two coping mechanisms, they embarked on a third: going ever deeper into debt. This seemed painless � as long as home prices were soaring. From 2002 to 2007, American households extracted $2.3 trillion from their homes.
Eventually, of course, the debt bubble burst � and with it, the last coping mechanism. Now we�re left to deal with the underlying problem that we�ve avoided for decades. Even if nearly everyone was employed, the vast middle class still wouldn�t have enough money to buy what the economy is capable of producing. |
This has been my understanding of the system since the beginning of the crisis we're currently in. We are addicted to debt because it is only with debt that the huddled masses can live at a standard that is presented to them through the media as middle class.
So, I'll be the radical on this. Interest is immoral. We have no obligation to participate in an immoral system that sucks the wealth out of us and sends it up to the overclass of creditors. The best way to behave is to not take on debt and to get rid of the debt you have. If you can't handle the debt, you should work to have it diminished/abolished. In the United States many firms actually check credit for jobs. A good apartment/condo building will check credit. That's the system. It is in our interest not to be on the bad end of that system. But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. We only get one life and must be able to retire. It is completely irrational to work to pay interest.
So you say, oh Mises just doesn't want to pay his debts. Untrue. I have no debts. I simply stand morally outraged by our neo-feudal political-economy. The reality of it is covered up with gadgets (iPads?) and circuses (entertainment). This will not continue for ever and we should really be considering what will follow. That aside, we must not accept the propaganda that inserts morality into creditor contracts. |
That was exceedingly well stated. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 1:40 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| ^ Thanks. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Died By Bear
Joined: 13 Jul 2010
Location: On the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 2:03 pm Post subject: |
|
|
If the USA can elevate welfare programs to a whole new level like the current administration is doing, then they should bail out people like me as well. Education should be free to those who are willing to work and study for their degree.
I will probably never pay back my loans, and neither should anyone that isn't making anywhere close to 50K a year. I bet one day they'll forgive all the student loans, just wait. The dummies that paid theirs off will be wishing they never did.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
yawarakaijin
Joined: 08 Aug 2006
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 3:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Mises has consistently proven to be far more informed than anyone else on this topic. One example summed up the entire situation perfectly.
Why is the Canadian government so intent on providing these loans when it could just as easily fund the education system directly? With a more reasonable price tag for an education and a part time job one could easily afford a BA or what not from a Canadian university.
I personally count myself quite lucky in many regards as I have no debt. I thought it was all gravy after landing a respectable job in Vancouver at the tender age of 22. Then one day, I went to Rogers to pick up a shiny new cellphone as I was about to move into a new apartment. Guess what happened then?
"Oh you have no credit rating sir."
"Yeah, I know. I don't owe anyone any money and I don't ever want to."
"But sir, you don't have a credit card, we can't trust you to pay your bills on time."
"So let me get this straight, I have to carry a debt in order to prove to you that I can pay my bills?"
"That's correct sir."
"So what do we do now?"
"Well, you could ask your friend to cosign for you and maybe we can set you up on a monthly plan or you could get a pre-paid card and pay as you go"
"So my friend who is 45,000$ in debt can cosign for me to prove fiancial repsonsibility?"
"That is correct sir."
"F#ck you, goodbye" |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
yawarakaijin
Joined: 08 Aug 2006
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 4:04 pm Post subject: |
|
|
A few people have mentioned that it was the person's choice to take out a loan and so it is there responsibility to pay it off. Let's take a closer look at that statement.
-I would say about 90% of the families I grew up around ( in a middle class Ontario city ) were in no position to simply pony up the cash for their kids' education. Quite a few simply refused to pony up the dough. Telling me and my friends to just take out that government loan. It will make a man out of you Billy!
Number of times I heard the phrase "you simply have to go to university in order to have a life!" Parents, teachers, guidance counsellors...you name them. Teachers who told me to take a mechanics course, encouraged me to learn about investing and the stock market........BIG FAT ZERO!
What is a kid supposed to do in this kind of environment? Is a 19 year old supposed to know and understand the ins and outs of life by then? Let's not forget that in some provinces kids head off to uni around 17. Are they supposed to be wise to the ways of the world by then?
No..they listen to what everyone else around them is telling them. Primarily the people in their lives they are supposed to trust the most. Their very own parents and teachers.
It's sad really. It took us a while to get to this situation and it was a winding road. Mises understands how we got there. A few more parents or teachers like him is what is needed. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
eamo
Joined: 08 Mar 2003
Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 4:38 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I'm of the opinion that 3rd level education in the western world used to be about making sure that there was an educated class to keep the respective country moving in the right direction. To provide a country with a body of people equipped with the skills and expertize to keep the wheels turning......
.......but somewhere in the last 30 years it all seemed to turn into just another slimy business model where students were exploited and made into debt and interest -payment units without there being the reward that a college education used to bring.
I have to laugh at those high and mighty voices here who keep saying that paying back debts is the right thing to do just because it morally is.......nuts. You've been duped.
Anyone who has an enormous student loan has been duped. Shafted. You've just been made into a debt-payment unit where banks etc make lots of easy interest off of you.
Ask your parents or grandparents if they left college with massive debts.....I doubt it. The generation before me in the UK didn't pay a penny! Not even for living expenses!
It doesn't take a genius to see what's happening.
I could pay back my student loan easily.....it's only 5000GBP.......but I don't want to because I believe me needing to borrow it in the first place was down to a nasty and malicious change of direction by my government and the banking system. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Louis VI
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
Location: In my Kingdom
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 5:15 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| My father told me I'd have to fund my own university education if I was serious about it. I worked p/t during semesters and had summer jobs every year and paid my way through. I went onto a career then then I decided to teach in Korea and I met a guy in Busan who bragged he was on student loans until he was 28, owing a hundred thousand dollars, avoiding it all by living overseas until enough time has passed so that he could declare bankruptcy. Such a guy would have made me upset back in my uni days, but these days I just shrug and think the world is full of all types. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Died By Bear
Joined: 13 Jul 2010
Location: On the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
|
| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 6:29 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| eamo wrote: |
.......but somewhere in the last 30 years it all seemed to turn into just another slimy business model where students were exploited and made into debt and interest -payment units without there being the reward that a college education used to bring.... |
Bingo
There are doctors that can't pay off their loans. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
