To be fair, it isn't boomers whose votes are being bought....
But most boomers are starting to die off of old age, they literally don't have any stake in what happens now. They could quadruple the debt, who cares? They'll be dead.
But most boomers are starting to die off of old age, they literally don't have any stake in what happens now. They could quadruple the debt, who cares? They'll be dead.
I think I've figured out why I feel so much differently than a lot of people who are calling for student loan forgiveness. I saw one post the other day saying that student loan forgiveness would just be an advance on social security which future generations are unlikely to receive but pay into their entire lives.
One of the greatest tricks that the government has played on people is pretending that it has money. The only money it has is either money that it took from people, or money that it stole from future generations.
So where would billions of dollars for so-called student loan debt forgiveness come from? The majority of government income comes from the income tax, and much of the income tax is paid by the middle class. On the other hand, new spending is not paid for with taxes, it's paid for with debt.
We've already established that the governments today have no intention of ever paying down the debts they run up today, so what we're doing is the equivalent of running up all our credit cards and leaving them for our kids to pay off, which most people would consider evil.
The moral reasoning fails miserably. "The boomers stole from us by setting up social security which we pay into but are unlikely to get, so we should steal from future generations by getting our outstanding student loans paid for" -- it's sort of works as an appeal to inertia, but somebody doing you wrong really doesn't justify you doing wrong to somebody else. Moreover, some people point out that student debt is an investment in the future. The problem is, there's always going to be that particular investment in the future. Once this generation's education is complete, the next generation will also need to have their education paid for, and the next generation after that. Intending to run perpetual debts to pay for recurring payments just isn't fiscally prudent. We are in the verge of several sovereign financial crises exactly because people don't care about where the money is coming from. Part of the reason they don't care about where the money is coming from is that Congress is 11 billion years old and they're all going to be dead within 10 years.
It also fails miserably as a class argument because the only people who end up getting this supposed "advance" are people who made a number of very specific decisions. Rather than it being sort of reparations for a class containing generations that have been screwed over by poor decisions, it ends up becoming reparations for a very narrow class of people who have large amounts of unpaid student debt.
Among the supposed beneficiary class of millennials and gen z, you have:
-A large number of people who didn't go to college at all.
-a number of people who went to college without ever accruing student debts for example by working to pay for a state school tuition and living frugally at home.
-a number of people who went to college, I crude small debts, and didn't pay them off but the debts aren't meaningfully enough to really be relevant if they are paid off.
-a number of people who went to college, accrued small debts, and paid them off.
-a number of people who went to college, accrued larger debts, and paid them off.
So the major beneficiary of a student loan forgiveness program would be people who did go to college, likely went to an expensive enough College to justify large student loans, took out those student loans, and then didn't pay them back. What exactly privileges this particular group of people?
Now some people might think "well it's just the schools anyway", that's not really true. Student loans often pay for people's cars, they pay for people's rent, they pay for those big kegger parties you see, and there's even people who use some of their student loans to pay for fancy vacations to exotic locations.
Some people think that the problem is that tuitions are too high. There are options for college with relatively low tuition costs. In the us, you can attend a state school very little money. Up in canada, I attended a community college which I was able to pay my entire tuition using a less than minimum wage job I worked in a dying rust belt town. The thing is, the people who end up racking up giant debts often don't want to go to a state school, they want to go to a fancy School. In other words, these people who are trying to enter the upper classes by and taking courses above their station in life want regular working Joes and future generations to pay for their entry into the upper class. It's kind of messed up when you think about it.
If you have two students, going to the same school, and one of them used their student loans to help buy a car, and to go to parties, and buy nice food, and to go on fancy vacations, and the second student took the bus, studied instead of going to parties, ate inexpensive meals, and didn't go on any vacations, why should the first student ultimately have all those frivolous costs paid for, while the second student who sacrificed to make it through college sustainably does not?
So I have only one way I think would be acceptable to everyone in order to deal with the excess loans: every year private schools get billions of dollars of taxpayer funds, so just take that money and put it towards paying down a certain number of student loans, and stop giving any public money to private schools. Then, once all the student loans are paid back (of course this would imply there would be no further government subsidized student loans given because if they need to be forgiven then obviously people can't be trusted with them) we can take back that several billion dollars every year and reduce the total budget.
A lot of the private schools receiving public money are sitting on massive endowments, so for some reason for example Harvard gets something like 800 million dollars a year from the federal government. With their billions of dollars of endowments, they can run their own institution.
It's also key, my argument that if we do forgive student loans and we should end government funded student loans. At that point student loans can either be doled out by the Banks based on the likelihood of people working in certain majors successfully getting jobs and paying off the loans, or by having a parent co-sign for the loan and if the student fails to pay back their student loans then it will be the responsibility of their parent. Unlike the massive risk of putting all of society on the line for a few people's student debts, then it would leave the responsibility on the banks or the parents to ensure that loans are paid back.
One of the greatest tricks that the government has played on people is pretending that it has money. The only money it has is either money that it took from people, or money that it stole from future generations.
So where would billions of dollars for so-called student loan debt forgiveness come from? The majority of government income comes from the income tax, and much of the income tax is paid by the middle class. On the other hand, new spending is not paid for with taxes, it's paid for with debt.
We've already established that the governments today have no intention of ever paying down the debts they run up today, so what we're doing is the equivalent of running up all our credit cards and leaving them for our kids to pay off, which most people would consider evil.
The moral reasoning fails miserably. "The boomers stole from us by setting up social security which we pay into but are unlikely to get, so we should steal from future generations by getting our outstanding student loans paid for" -- it's sort of works as an appeal to inertia, but somebody doing you wrong really doesn't justify you doing wrong to somebody else. Moreover, some people point out that student debt is an investment in the future. The problem is, there's always going to be that particular investment in the future. Once this generation's education is complete, the next generation will also need to have their education paid for, and the next generation after that. Intending to run perpetual debts to pay for recurring payments just isn't fiscally prudent. We are in the verge of several sovereign financial crises exactly because people don't care about where the money is coming from. Part of the reason they don't care about where the money is coming from is that Congress is 11 billion years old and they're all going to be dead within 10 years.
It also fails miserably as a class argument because the only people who end up getting this supposed "advance" are people who made a number of very specific decisions. Rather than it being sort of reparations for a class containing generations that have been screwed over by poor decisions, it ends up becoming reparations for a very narrow class of people who have large amounts of unpaid student debt.
Among the supposed beneficiary class of millennials and gen z, you have:
-A large number of people who didn't go to college at all.
-a number of people who went to college without ever accruing student debts for example by working to pay for a state school tuition and living frugally at home.
-a number of people who went to college, I crude small debts, and didn't pay them off but the debts aren't meaningfully enough to really be relevant if they are paid off.
-a number of people who went to college, accrued small debts, and paid them off.
-a number of people who went to college, accrued larger debts, and paid them off.
So the major beneficiary of a student loan forgiveness program would be people who did go to college, likely went to an expensive enough College to justify large student loans, took out those student loans, and then didn't pay them back. What exactly privileges this particular group of people?
Now some people might think "well it's just the schools anyway", that's not really true. Student loans often pay for people's cars, they pay for people's rent, they pay for those big kegger parties you see, and there's even people who use some of their student loans to pay for fancy vacations to exotic locations.
Some people think that the problem is that tuitions are too high. There are options for college with relatively low tuition costs. In the us, you can attend a state school very little money. Up in canada, I attended a community college which I was able to pay my entire tuition using a less than minimum wage job I worked in a dying rust belt town. The thing is, the people who end up racking up giant debts often don't want to go to a state school, they want to go to a fancy School. In other words, these people who are trying to enter the upper classes by and taking courses above their station in life want regular working Joes and future generations to pay for their entry into the upper class. It's kind of messed up when you think about it.
If you have two students, going to the same school, and one of them used their student loans to help buy a car, and to go to parties, and buy nice food, and to go on fancy vacations, and the second student took the bus, studied instead of going to parties, ate inexpensive meals, and didn't go on any vacations, why should the first student ultimately have all those frivolous costs paid for, while the second student who sacrificed to make it through college sustainably does not?
So I have only one way I think would be acceptable to everyone in order to deal with the excess loans: every year private schools get billions of dollars of taxpayer funds, so just take that money and put it towards paying down a certain number of student loans, and stop giving any public money to private schools. Then, once all the student loans are paid back (of course this would imply there would be no further government subsidized student loans given because if they need to be forgiven then obviously people can't be trusted with them) we can take back that several billion dollars every year and reduce the total budget.
A lot of the private schools receiving public money are sitting on massive endowments, so for some reason for example Harvard gets something like 800 million dollars a year from the federal government. With their billions of dollars of endowments, they can run their own institution.
It's also key, my argument that if we do forgive student loans and we should end government funded student loans. At that point student loans can either be doled out by the Banks based on the likelihood of people working in certain majors successfully getting jobs and paying off the loans, or by having a parent co-sign for the loan and if the student fails to pay back their student loans then it will be the responsibility of their parent. Unlike the massive risk of putting all of society on the line for a few people's student debts, then it would leave the responsibility on the banks or the parents to ensure that loans are paid back.
It's got to be tough going from getting paid to send annoying emails bothering the only people who are still at work every so often to actually having to go to work like everyone else.
I feel for them. Sounds like a real tough life.
I feel for them. Sounds like a real tough life.
It's ironic that a lot of these people think that they're going to be on "the right side of history", when anyone with an eighth of a brain would realize just how stupid all of it is.
History will remember this era as the dumbest era in all of history, and at the rate we're going, it may look at it that way through the lens of fundamentalist Islam.
History will remember this era as the dumbest era in all of history, and at the rate we're going, it may look at it that way through the lens of fundamentalist Islam.
I think there's merit to the idea that the powers that be are finally starting to realize the poor decisions they've made, and they're having to pivot.
Definitely something that makes libertarianism a thing which can only be used in certain societies: only a society which is just enough not to be governed strictly can live with a few restrictions. If the society without constant watch from the government would annihilate itself, then of course government is going to be required.
But there is a particularly ironic thing that I found out recently: one of the benefits of liberal democratic governance is that a democratic government can take much more from the populace before people start to get upset, but the only sort of society that can really make use of a democratic government is one that is relatively high trust and has social cohesion, the same sort of society that can succeed under libertarianism. A low trust society will quickly devolve into oligarchy or devolve into tyranny which will allow much less of the society being dedicated to the state.
So in this way, paradoxically, the same population that could thrive with the smallest government will also tolerate the largest government, and as conditions that allow a populace to be governed with a small government erode, the maximum size of government that can be imposed on those people also declines.
But there is a particularly ironic thing that I found out recently: one of the benefits of liberal democratic governance is that a democratic government can take much more from the populace before people start to get upset, but the only sort of society that can really make use of a democratic government is one that is relatively high trust and has social cohesion, the same sort of society that can succeed under libertarianism. A low trust society will quickly devolve into oligarchy or devolve into tyranny which will allow much less of the society being dedicated to the state.
So in this way, paradoxically, the same population that could thrive with the smallest government will also tolerate the largest government, and as conditions that allow a populace to be governed with a small government erode, the maximum size of government that can be imposed on those people also declines.
https://www.walmart.com/c/kp/juice-bags
Besides, people in plastic houses shouldn't throw plastic stones.
Besides, people in plastic houses shouldn't throw plastic stones.
I would like to know who the genius was and who chose a four syllable word for putting some food on a piece of wood.
Don't ask me how I know but this has been tested extensively and did not break my thumb ligament -- I mean will not break your thumb ligament. Yours, not mine...
I was thinking just now about "Societal beauty standards".
It strikes me as an anti-human idea. It strikes me as something someone who believes that we're all tabula rasa to be written upon however some powermonger sees fit instead of immensely complex human animals made from human parts would come up with.
Let's consider some things most people consider universally beautiful. Sunrises. Sunsets. The full moon on a clear night. The shining stars. A roaring campfire. Flowers. Did anyone have to tell you these things were beautiful, or did you just know? Did you have to be told a little rabbit or kitten was cute, or did you just know? Did you think certain babies (especially your own) are beautiful, or did you just know?
Do you have anything you find beautiful that nobody really talks about as such? I find traffic lights at night beautiful. The vivid colors against the surrounding darkness, it's always been something I've loved, and I don't think anyone in society really says you should find traffic lights beautiful, and many in society consider traffic lights to be symbols of stress and the ugliness of industrialization, but I like them, I think they're beautiful.
To give the devil his due, of course context can somewhat change how we perceive something. The good inside a person can make an ugly face something we cherish, and the evil inside a person can make a beautiful face something we detest.
There are examples where a horribly ugly thing is made something desirable. The foot binding of premodern China is objectively disgusting, with women who ended up with this procedure done walking around on twisted abominations for feet, and yet it was considered extremely desirable at the time, apparently with some men having quite the fetish for the practice. Twiggy Tips was an insanely rail thin model in the 1970s who was apparently very popular.
During the Heian period in Japan, it was considered fashionable for the men to act somewhat effeminate, not in pursuit of a modern-day lgbt ideal, but as an expression of masculinity somehow.
Some of these I think do help us because the ugly or undesirable thing being made desirable isn't done so through sheer force of will, but because of the representation of something else. The foot binding represents the willful submission of a wife to her husband. The men who were often acting effeminate in Heian Japan would be Samurai and Daimyo and the like -- masculine men who were fully dangerous and so the disconnect could have a complex ideological context behind it. Twiggy Tips was considered interesting in part because of the convention defying age of the 1970s in which she worked, so her skinny androgynous look epitomized the style of the time, but that didn't mean necessarily people found her beautiful, just that she represented the moment. In that sense, it's rather ironic that she was used as an example of unrealistic and dangerous standards of beauty, since it was a postmodern rebellion against conventional beauty that made her famous.
There's current examples where a lot of people who have been convinced that something not very attractive is highly desirable. "Instagram face" has many women getting plastic surgery to achieve a standard look that nobody outside of very specific social media circles finds remotely pleasing to look at.
Many things considered attractive are considered so exactly because they would be unattractive if you aren't beautiful. A short haired girl who is absolutely gorgeous still pulls it off because she's so beautiful, but anything less and she looks ugly. A young healthy woman with large breasts looks healthy and attractive, but an older, less healthy woman might not look nearly as good.
In a lot of these cases, what I'm finding is that while the "societal beauty standards" may have said a certain thing because of the power of the media, the common man probably didn't actually think these things were all that beautiful. At best, they might see what those standards represented instead of what they were. Without the connection between the particular look and the separate ideal it represented, nobody would consider that look beautiful.
Which brings us to the current moment. It occurs to me that the people most likely to attack "societal beauty standards" are actually likely to just be wanting to place their exact picture on that pedestal instead of someone else's. Objectively non-beautiful things or people are placed into that role, but even in a postmodern society where every message tells us to reject the grand narrative of objective beauty standards and instead believe in a new standard set up by people who would really rather you just worship them. It isn't working because we're human beings, not tabula rasa. That which is unattractive may have beautiful ideas attached to them, but they do not themselves become beautiful by association, they just share in the beauty of their symbiote. And if there is no beauty in the thing they've attached themselves to, then there is no additional beauty to be found there.
With respect to all of us just being tabula rasa programmed by society, that would suggest that in one society everyone would have the same tastes in beauty, which isn't true. While we all have some common traits as humans, just like humans who have different eye color or hair color or skin color, we have subtly different aesthetic preferences. Some of that may be due to environment, but there's also a reason to believe it's partially based on us being different sorts of people genetically.
You see all kinds of people together romantically. You'll see some women like twinky guys, and others prefer big bears. Some like muscular guys, some like fatty guys. You'll see some men with skinny women with flat chests, you'll see others with bigger girls with big breasts. Some like blondes, some like brunettes, some like redheads. There's so much variability, it seems impossible that if society is programming us to like one thing that there'd be such a variance.
Arguably, there are societal standards that do apply, and they're much more rigid. Most people speak English, and most people in a region speak it basically the same. Most people in a region eat basically the same foods. Most of the houses in a region are built basically the same. So where culture actually affects things predominantly, there's a lot less variability.
It strikes me as an anti-human idea. It strikes me as something someone who believes that we're all tabula rasa to be written upon however some powermonger sees fit instead of immensely complex human animals made from human parts would come up with.
Let's consider some things most people consider universally beautiful. Sunrises. Sunsets. The full moon on a clear night. The shining stars. A roaring campfire. Flowers. Did anyone have to tell you these things were beautiful, or did you just know? Did you have to be told a little rabbit or kitten was cute, or did you just know? Did you think certain babies (especially your own) are beautiful, or did you just know?
Do you have anything you find beautiful that nobody really talks about as such? I find traffic lights at night beautiful. The vivid colors against the surrounding darkness, it's always been something I've loved, and I don't think anyone in society really says you should find traffic lights beautiful, and many in society consider traffic lights to be symbols of stress and the ugliness of industrialization, but I like them, I think they're beautiful.
To give the devil his due, of course context can somewhat change how we perceive something. The good inside a person can make an ugly face something we cherish, and the evil inside a person can make a beautiful face something we detest.
There are examples where a horribly ugly thing is made something desirable. The foot binding of premodern China is objectively disgusting, with women who ended up with this procedure done walking around on twisted abominations for feet, and yet it was considered extremely desirable at the time, apparently with some men having quite the fetish for the practice. Twiggy Tips was an insanely rail thin model in the 1970s who was apparently very popular.
During the Heian period in Japan, it was considered fashionable for the men to act somewhat effeminate, not in pursuit of a modern-day lgbt ideal, but as an expression of masculinity somehow.
Some of these I think do help us because the ugly or undesirable thing being made desirable isn't done so through sheer force of will, but because of the representation of something else. The foot binding represents the willful submission of a wife to her husband. The men who were often acting effeminate in Heian Japan would be Samurai and Daimyo and the like -- masculine men who were fully dangerous and so the disconnect could have a complex ideological context behind it. Twiggy Tips was considered interesting in part because of the convention defying age of the 1970s in which she worked, so her skinny androgynous look epitomized the style of the time, but that didn't mean necessarily people found her beautiful, just that she represented the moment. In that sense, it's rather ironic that she was used as an example of unrealistic and dangerous standards of beauty, since it was a postmodern rebellion against conventional beauty that made her famous.
There's current examples where a lot of people who have been convinced that something not very attractive is highly desirable. "Instagram face" has many women getting plastic surgery to achieve a standard look that nobody outside of very specific social media circles finds remotely pleasing to look at.
Many things considered attractive are considered so exactly because they would be unattractive if you aren't beautiful. A short haired girl who is absolutely gorgeous still pulls it off because she's so beautiful, but anything less and she looks ugly. A young healthy woman with large breasts looks healthy and attractive, but an older, less healthy woman might not look nearly as good.
In a lot of these cases, what I'm finding is that while the "societal beauty standards" may have said a certain thing because of the power of the media, the common man probably didn't actually think these things were all that beautiful. At best, they might see what those standards represented instead of what they were. Without the connection between the particular look and the separate ideal it represented, nobody would consider that look beautiful.
Which brings us to the current moment. It occurs to me that the people most likely to attack "societal beauty standards" are actually likely to just be wanting to place their exact picture on that pedestal instead of someone else's. Objectively non-beautiful things or people are placed into that role, but even in a postmodern society where every message tells us to reject the grand narrative of objective beauty standards and instead believe in a new standard set up by people who would really rather you just worship them. It isn't working because we're human beings, not tabula rasa. That which is unattractive may have beautiful ideas attached to them, but they do not themselves become beautiful by association, they just share in the beauty of their symbiote. And if there is no beauty in the thing they've attached themselves to, then there is no additional beauty to be found there.
With respect to all of us just being tabula rasa programmed by society, that would suggest that in one society everyone would have the same tastes in beauty, which isn't true. While we all have some common traits as humans, just like humans who have different eye color or hair color or skin color, we have subtly different aesthetic preferences. Some of that may be due to environment, but there's also a reason to believe it's partially based on us being different sorts of people genetically.
You see all kinds of people together romantically. You'll see some women like twinky guys, and others prefer big bears. Some like muscular guys, some like fatty guys. You'll see some men with skinny women with flat chests, you'll see others with bigger girls with big breasts. Some like blondes, some like brunettes, some like redheads. There's so much variability, it seems impossible that if society is programming us to like one thing that there'd be such a variance.
Arguably, there are societal standards that do apply, and they're much more rigid. Most people speak English, and most people in a region speak it basically the same. Most people in a region eat basically the same foods. Most of the houses in a region are built basically the same. So where culture actually affects things predominantly, there's a lot less variability.
"I'm mortified! I was certain none of you would find out! What I said stands against everything I pretend to stand for to get elected by you retarded wankers!"
This video is like the opposite of Chris Rocks "how not to get ya ass beat by the police" bit.
I'm thinking that the funds are running out and so they need to pretend they're actually fact checkers for a while to get donations from the proles again.
Impressive that snopes has created a very timely fact check to this breaking news item.