Politics

[Hunt anything]

The dumbasses in favor of this student loan forgiveness don't realize the storm its going to cause. It's far, far worse than just spending trillions of dollars that go onto the national debt.

The average student loan debt is $400 a month. Forgiving that will infuse $400 more into the economy per borrower resulting in more dollars chasing fewer goods. <- Put another way, it will cause inflation because its growing the money supply, so everyone suffers twice.

First by the additional national debt that will require more money printing to service the debt, paid by all.

Second by the glut of new money from these borrowers will now have to spend on discretionary purchases, creating shortages from new demand, leading to cost inflation.

Lose - Lose.

My question is if these people can’t pay off $400 a month what the hell kind of job do they have? Probably a stupid question , I’m sure they $1000 phones $60,000 car and much more!

 

[flatwater bill]

My youngest son and his girlfriend are vacationing in Vietnam. Renting scooters and staying at a beach resort. It is cheap, fun and safe.
But it wasn't always.
In 64 South Vietnamese Commandos conducted a series of raids into the North...damaging piers, radar sites and bridges. And killing a lot of people. The CIA planned and funded these incursions, called OPLAN 34A. They provided money and planning, but got the South Vietnamese to do the dying.
On the day of one such raid, the USS Maddox, in the Tonkin Gulf, was attacked by Patrol boats from the North. Twice. Unprovoked. Even though North Vietnam had been repeatedly attacked, it was called unprovoked.
Documents declassified in 2005 show that the attacks were mostly fabricated. Mostly BS. Although the Captain of the Maddox tried to correct the incident report, admitting it was crap, President Johnson used the lies to go to war. The Tonkin Gulf Incident. 58,000 US boys died as a result. Maybe 2 million Asians, who knows?
Johnson wanted to stop the spread of Communism. The Domino Effect. The World would disintegrate if Vietnam fell. Communists would run over the World like lemmings. Senator J. William Fulbright sold this BS to the Senate and the American people. He was LBJ's agent. Only Sen Wayne Morse of Oregon had the balls to object, saying that the US would come to regret the decision. He was right. In later years, Fulbright apologized to both Congress and the American people for lying to them. He spent his last years trying to repair the harm he had done. He often spoke against "the arrogance of power". The "War Powers Act", limiting rogue Presidents, was the result. It didn't bring back the 58,000 boys.
Whether it was "remember the Maine" weapons of mass destruction, or the Tonkin Gulf, the false flags always fly, major news media beats the drum, and the American people fall for the propaganda. Again and again. Flush the chunks, they call it.
The US left Vietnam in March of 73. Saigon fell in 75, and the North and South reunited in 76. The World did not end. They have become major trading partners of the USA. So much for the Dominoes.
And my boy and Cybil drink umbrella drinks by the bay, in an area that I once knew very well.
Stay free. Think for yourself.......FWB

 

[mdwest]

My question is if these people can’t pay off $400 a month what the hell kind of job do they have? Probably a stupid question , I’m sure they $1000 phones $60,000 car and much more!

thats the problem in a nutshell..

of course they have low paying, entry level jobs.. they are recent grads (you would hope)...

the difference is... when I was in my young 20s and had a couple of student loans to pay off.. I did 2 things...

I worked multiple jobs.. I easily did 55-65 hours a week, every week, for the first few years I was out of school.. I had my "real" job.. plus I worked a night a week, and most saturdays at a bar earning extra cash... plus I picked up occasional shifts at a camera shop down the road.. and I was serving in the national guard.. thats simply what it took to pay my bills... I wanted to be a big boy, live on my own, and have a life.. I had no desire to live at home with mom, or have a half dozen roommates.. so I freaking worked my butt off to earn enough to make things work...

and....

I was very careful about spending... I drove a beater truck.. I never went out to eat unless I was taking someone on a date.. I didnt buy expensive electronics ($1K phones didnt exist back then, but there were plenty of other stupid things I could have foolishly spent money on.. I just didnt).. I didnt hang out in coffee shops paying $6 for a non fat latte.. etc..etc..

It took a few years.. but I paid my dues.. and by my late 20's I wasnt worried so much about finances.. I carried very little debt.. I had worked my way into a couple of promotions and was significantly better compensated, etc..etc..

Most (although certainly not all) young people these days arent interested in particularly hard work, and certainly arent interested in large volumes of work.. and they definitely think they are owed high wages despite that..

I literally had a mid 20's male (who has a fairly good amount of student loan debt) tell me just 3 or 4 weeks ago that his goal in life was to marry well and be a house husband.. he didnt want to work at all..

I asked him if he didnt realize that a housewife is one of the hardest working people I know.. you dont sit at home on your ass... if youre not going to work, youre going to be expected to do the lions share of the cleaning, cooking, caring for the kids, running family errands like getting cars serviced, doing grocery runs, etc..

he no shit thought thats what the maid was for..

when asked "how are you going to afford a maid? you dont work? and shouldnt the maid be given the same opportunity to sit on their ass all day and do nothing just like you? why should they toil for low wages? you clearly dont want to..

he just got frustrated and refused to continue the discussion..

 

[Red Leg]

Red Foot, there's some kind of confusion. Skobeeva called Boris Johnson "our" - "our British Johnson." And this one with glasses is "the Johnson there, American."

Russia State TV Claims Mike Johnson As 'Our Johnson'

Referring to Mike Johnson, state TV host Olga Skabeeva claimed him as "theirs," just like Trump.

crooksandliars.com

She loves Boris dearly and came up with the nickname "Johnsonyuk" for him.

Well, now she has a real one to go with the ironic one.

 

[DillonG]

Short sales are a legal tool anyone can use.
Trump’s company is not the only one people are shorting.
When you become a public company you are at the mercy of the market.

Do you support the public artificially inflating the stock value of AMC and GameStop a year or two ago?

 

[Doubleplay]

Do you support the public artificially inflating the stock value of AMC and GameStop a year or two ago?

If you believe in capitalism you have to believe in fairness of the stock market.
Manipulation and insider trading is also being done by the hedge funds every day.
My opinion won't make a difference.

 

[LivingTheDream]

Do you support the public artificially inflating the stock value of AMC and GameStop a year or two ago?

That was kind of awesome. Wall Street over extending itself to short a stock into oblivion. They got greedy and overextended, the fact people saw it and took advantage of it is pretty awesome.

 

[freefall]

I thought AMC went bust after they ruint Harley Davidson.

 

[Tanks]

Election day needs to be held on the Tuesday after April 15th.

Guess you read Mike Ramirez cartoons.

 

[freefall]

Guess you read Mike Ramirez cartoons.

Doesn't everybody?

 

[Tanks]

Just wait. I'll bet the DOJ/FTC is hatching a plan to go after Trump for going public with his social media stock, and the ensuing losses on the short sales.
They will scheme anything to get him into court and try to bankrupt him.

Actually SEC might have a case due to Trump pumping up the stock. Here is an explanation with precedence from a Federal court.

 

[freefall]

Actually SEC might have a case due to Trump pumping up the stock. Here is an explanation with precedence from a Federal court.

Man, I hope no one ever hates me the way you do Trump!

 

[Tanks]

SEC went after Musk for saying similar things in regard to Tesla. Nothing to do with hate but just pointing out past cases.

 

[rookhawk]

Man, I hope no one ever hates me the way you do Trump!

Nonetheless, in this case @Tanks forwarded legal analysis on SEC rules is correct.

I do think Trump could beat an accusation that his statements about his company on his own social media network are insufficient. He shouldn’t have to use FB or X to get the word out since he is competing with those platforms.

But Trump’s “pitchman” rah-rah about the health and fundamentals of his social media company will absolutely cause a class action. He’s unbridled, has no media relations oversight, and he basically invited anyone that bought at X price and loses money in the future to file a claim.

How often does this happen? All the time. At least 3-4 times in the past ten years I’ve received class action offers and settlements because I owned shares in XYZ company and their management made misleading statements that injured me upon later sale. I didn’t go looking for a lawsuit, but I did receive class representation with the click of a button because I was eligible. Trump has no business speaking on behalf of any public company, he lacks the composure to follow the necessary rules.

 

[freefall]

Anybody seizing every opportunity to snipe at me the way you do him, I would regard that as enemy action. Just saying.

 

[Saul]

As a Democrat, the widespread support within the party for student loan forgiveness utterly baffles me.

Whichever party manages to right their ship first will win a huge swathe of the electorate. But as it stands, it is a choice between political malpractice or maleficence.

 

[rookhawk]

As a Democrat, the widespread support within the party for student loan forgiveness utterly baffles me.

Whichever party manages to right their ship first will win a huge swathe of the electorate. But as it stands, it is a choice between political malpractice or maleficence.

Thanks for being an honest democrat. The honorable democratic platform positions most folks agree with have been completely hijacked. Examples:

-Student loan forgiveness - isn’t the democrat party the party of the worker? Aren’t most workers tradespeople that got no breaks for trade school? No breaks during their low-pay union apprenticeship? No loan forgiveness when they bought their plumbing van or electricians truck? Unfortunately, the modern democrat platform has discarded their core voters thinking they don’t need them anymore, they’d rather have rich socialist college students with useless humanities degrees as their base.

-Immigration - isn’t the democrat party most concerned about declining worker’s wages? Nothing erodes the quality of life for the lower class and middle class faster than cheap foreign labor coming in legally or illegally, ruining their occupations. You can’t even find a legal, English speaking roofing crew in America today because the prevailing wage requires illegal labor, completely eliminating a trade for American citizens.

With no clandestine angle to throw the election, I ask my democrat friends to seriously consider RFK2. He actually believes the basic principles that were the best virtues of the traditional democrat party of the 20th century. He might win. Even if I don’t vote for him, I can get behind his ideas a lot easier than those of the current DNC.

 

[Corey0372]

As a Democrat, the widespread support within the party for student loan forgiveness utterly baffles me.

Whichever party manages to right their ship first will win a huge swathe of the electorate. But as it stands, it is a choice between political malpractice or maleficence.

Its a really dumb solution to what on the surface is a somewhat legitimate problem, and I agree with @rookhawk, the Dems have completely abandoned their position as the "blue collar party", I remember Nadler saying it out loud at a rally at one point.

People always want to compare how in a place like Germany college is free, but what many people fail to realize is in their system... if you don't have the grades or test scores, you ain't getting in to the program you want, and not everyone just "gets to go" to college on the governments dime because they want to. Their colleges also don't have ridiculously expensive athletic programs like here in the US, where people literally choose a college based on a sports team they like, get a pointless degree, and now have outrageous student loans they don't feel they need to pay off. Granted this is more of a cultural thing than a policy issue.

Some more sensible solutions to the college debt thing (in my opinion) could be eliminating interest on student loans, and in turn the government could give tax breaks to the lending institutions loaning the money. Also, the lending institution could have more of a say in who they give money to based off what the aspiring student is wanting to study.

I also think there could be solutions that include some sort of program that sends people to school to be an engineer for instance, paid for by the government, and upon graduation that individual now owes a period (3-4 years?) of employment to the government at... I don't know call it a GS-6 or GS-7 level? This period of employment would be at the needs of the Federal government, so if NAVAIR in Virginia Beach needs an engineer... pack your bags you're moving. If you went to school for civil engineering and there's a 9 month project with the US Army Corps of Engineers on the Intracoastal Waterway, you're up. After the time you "owe" is complete you can submit a package to stay on as a GS as needed or move into the private sector. What something like this would also allow for is the ability to trim the fat off most of what happens in college. There's lots of people who don't even want to go to school because they don't want to sit through 2 years of "Western society is evil" before gaining any real skills, and going into debt to do it.

I use engineering as an example because it's an easy one to articulate, but I can see many opportunities for a program like this. Language programs for our military and Intelligence agencies, biologists, surveyors for the Forest Service, etc. What this also does is lower the number of people who join the military for the sole reason of getting a GI Bill. Not saying the GI Bill should go away by any means, but that shouldn't be the primary reason you join a warfighting organization.

 

[Doubleplay]

Having properly educated people are one of the biggest assets a country can have and a great investment for the future.
I don't believe in paying off student loans by the government but somehow we should make college education more affordable or free for the ones who deserve it not only who can afford it.
The system we have is unsustainable and broken.
It would be a great use of our tax dollars and will protect our leadership position in the long run.

 

[wesheltonj]

If you want to solve the student loan problem, its very simple, you return to FFEL where the private sector banks make the loans and not the federal government. Of course, the problem with that is Obamacare uses the revenue from the student loan program to help finance "healthcare".

Biden Administration Turns Direct Student Loan Program Into a Permanent Big Spender - AAF

Proposed student loan forgiveness may cost taxpayers significantly more than projected savings.

www.americanactionforum.org