i would now like to talk to the youth of america. i realize that you are going through a tough time right now, although it is always tough growing up these times are especially hard and troubling. you might find yourself making poor decisions in an attempt to escape your present reality.
i understand the pressures facing todays youth are more than you feel you can bear. during this time you may feel peer pressure to go along with what many sports heroes, actors, rock stars, and other role models you look up to seem to be telling you to do in order to be "in" and "hip". you know what i'm talking about, you can barely go anywhere these days without hearing it "be cool, stay in school".
i know how tempting it can be. i bought into it, and i'm here to tell you that while you may feel "cool" when you are in school, one day you will hit rock bottom. while you're having fun being "hip" and "in" school you are racking up debt. debt that will prevent you from doing things you want to later in life. trust me. don't go to school, and if you are in school presently drop out now while you still can. school is not worth sacrificing your future, your career, your family. school will only bring you lifelong poverty.
sure, there are plenty of rich kids out there whose parents can afford to buy them fancy cars and cocaine. these kids parents can pay for them to go to school forever, but chances are your not one of them and school will only bring you debt for the rest of your life. do these sports stars, actors, and musicians have degrees when they tell you to stay in school? no. they are only telling you this so they can pick up a check. they are living proof that knowledge is not power, it just gets you in debt.
neilbert said at 10:58 PM 03-10-2002: Hey Ted, I just got through being beat up by two goons the student loan corp. hired to rough me up. I'm sorry Ted, they threatened to take away all my porn and my TRON tape, so I had to drop some names to get em off my back. Your name was one of them.
Seriously though, how in the fuck are you going to pay back your student loans? Even if you got a "real" job paying $30 grand a year, it still would be a struggle. Anyone out there knows what happens if you default on your loans? Do they take it out of your paycheck?
mary [email] said at 11:02 PM 03-10-2002: They will garnish your wages. Even bankruptcy won't make it go away. However, there are things you can do before it gets to that.
mary [email] said at 1:05 PM 03-11-2002: Don't be a smartass. I really did research this.
The only way you can get them discharged at the moment is by proving "hardship." And I mean, "I lost both of my legs in a car accident and no my wife can't work either and our kids are only 3 and 5" hardship. As in "No, we can't sell the house to pay off the student loan, because the bank has already foreclosed on it and we are living under a bench in Malcolm X Park" hardship.
If you borrow money to start some shitty business that fails, the government is more than happy to let you off the hook. Or if you racked up thousands in credit card debt buying CDs, Steve Maddens and iced mochas at Starbucks, that's fine too. But education? No way. You must be held RESPONSIBLE!
I figure they will start throwing us in debtor's prisons soon.
anotherben said at 1:11 PM 03-11-2002: i have made a neat little arrangement with my loaners where i send them a little money every month for the next 10 or so years and after that they will forgive me my debt unconditionally. no questions asked.
anotherben said at 3:57 PM 03-11-2002: my point is, that whatever they did, they did of their own free will. no one forced them to go to college. no one forced them to take a loan to pay for it. no one promised them a great job if they went to college. as for your lawyer friend, im sure he/she will make out alright in the end. most do.
kiche [email] said at 11:09 AM 03-13-2002: hmmm... ben, you took out loans for six years? if you don't mind me saying, for a conservative you seem awefully complacent about the $300+ monthly loan payments that you will be paying for the next 10 years...
in fact most consevatives generally go into a tirade about how we should have huge tax cuts in order to pay off student loans (before you launch into that remember that about 80% of your taxes go to the military).
anotherben said at 11:57 AM 03-13-2002: if that is so i am certainly not most conservatives. its not like i didnt understand the implications of taking out loans. and i am pretty handy with a calculator..so there werent any real surprises. it just seems odd to me to hear people complaining about having to pay off loans..as if they thought that when payback time came..someone would say..aw shucks! dont you worry about that $$$. in truth, i mostly think of the payments as penance for losing my scholarship. if i would have played along better..i wouldnt have any debt. thats my fault.. why should taxpayers be forced to shoulder my laziness?
mary [email] said at 1:34 PM 03-13-2002: See my response above about what people think when they take out those loans. They think, "It's not that much" and they think, "I'm gonna be making 50K right after graduation."
Where do people get these ideas? Well, one of the tenets of the American religion is that "education=success." All anyone has to do to get a good-paying, satisfying job is go to college. In fact, the common wisdom is that you MUST go to college to be financially successfully.
So then people will borrow up to their backpacks to pay for this mythical ticket to $ucce$$.
You and I got lucky, anotherben. We graduated into a sweet job market, and after a few adventures, got jobs that pay well enough to allow us to pay back our loans and not subsist on Ramen. Things are tougher now, and for a lot of people, that's just not possible.
Yes, we should pay back the loans if we can. What I object to is the way student loans are treated differently from other loans that the federal government guarantees. A business loan can be discharged in bankruptcy. Student loans should be as well.
(Fundamentally, though, I don't think we should have our higher education system based on loans.)
kiche [email] said at 11:39 AM 03-14-2002: ok, ben, didn't you ever go talk to the people at the financial aid office at lsu? the way they made it out, your student loan company would be understanding because the loan is federally insured and because you had a college degree you would be making plenty enough to pay it back. to an 18-year old kid this sounds very reasonable.
and yes, you are not like most conservatives if you don't want a tax cut (oh yeah, since when don't you want a tax cut?)...
anotherben said at 12:24 PM 03-14-2002: im a little confused about your statement.. how would a tax cut help pay off student loans? nobody that is complaining about not being able to pay off student loans pays enough in taxes such that even a considerable reduction in their taxation would really change their life that much. but to answer your question.. tax cuts have been implemented...and barring any reversal..will be around for a good while. the recent vasilation (sp?) over wether there will be a surplus or a deficit makes me think the tax cuts were just about right. what do you mean by "understanding"? they had no problem giving me a forbearance (why wouldnt they..they make more on interest..) when i moved to ny before i got my feet on the ground. eventually, the money has to be repaid tho. that is the only point i am trying to make. just because things dont work out to the idyllic fantasy of college kids cramming a 20 minute video in between skipping classes doesnt negate that fact.
mary [email] said at 1:21 PM 03-11-2002: I'll pass that idea along to the lawyer who e-mailed me whose monthly student loan payment exceeded his take-home pay. I'm sure he'll be relieved to know that you have found The Way.
A big part of the problem is that we just don't realize what we are getting into when we borrow this money while we are in school. I read the results of a survey recently where they asked students how much they owed and how much they thought they were going to make after graduation. They all underestimated how much they owed by about 20 percent, and the estimate they gave for their future salaries was about DOUBLE the median wages for the professions they chose. I'm all about optimism, but sheesh.
Mary said at 2:55 PM 03-12-2002: He makes about $45K a year, which is average lawyer salary. Yes, many lawyers make more. Many make less. I guess that all lawyers imagine they will be rich when they go to law school. Foolish kittens.
josh [email] said at 9:20 PM 03-12-2002: The government isn't guaranting those loans, though. That's why they are dicks about student loans, right? They are basically the cosigner.
josh [email] said at 11:55 AM 03-14-2002: Yeah? You shouldn't be able to there, either. Just because you start a business, and speaking as someone who has started a business, you shouldn't be able to get around the rules.
mary [email] said at 12:07 PM 03-14-2002: In fact, I don't have the exact figures on hand, but I'd bet money that the default rate on small business loans is higher than that of student loans.
Being able to discharge loans that you can't afford to pay is the whole point of bankruptcy. Exempting student loans from this usual procedure is a new development.
josh [email] said at 12:33 PM 03-14-2002: I think if the government guarantees your loan (for whatever reason), you should not be able to get around it.
Because if you default, that means I'm paying, we're all paying for that person's inability to manage their finances.
(Unless the money to repay the loans doesn't come out of tax revenue somehow... Instead, maybe out of interest on the student/business loans that were repaid... But it's my understanding that that interest doesn't go to the government, since they aren't directly loaning the money.)
Incidentally, shouldn't you be writing your column? Not reading Killoggs?
josh [email] said at 1:22 PM 03-11-2002: The key to success as I see it :
Go to school for something you enjoy, or don't go.
Besides that, or in conjunction with that, learn a valuable skill.
If you have a valuable skill, you are employable.
I learned my computer skills on my own time. Now they are working out for me. Very well, in fact.
Ben did the same thing... He learned layout, now he has a good job doing that. He learned his skill while in school, but not in class... Same as me.
Mary did the same thing... She learned to copy edit and write. But not in her Ag classes.
Getting a degree is useful, for example, my job would not hire me without a degree of some kind. But they didn't care that my degree was unrelated to my skills.
I'd suggest picking up a useful skill, if you don't already have one. College degrees do not mean you are employable in themselves.
Craig said at 1:53 PM 03-11-2002: Beyond that, it's never to late to pick up skills of any kind. I would go so far to say that you must always be picking up new skills in order to succeed.
kiche [email] said at 11:12 AM 03-13-2002: this actually wasn't meant to be a serious post. while i was bitching, it was really supposed to be a more satyrical post.
my feelings on the bitching, though, is that i have to pay them a large chunk of my lifetime earnings, so i get to bitch.
