Sorry, Goober, that makes no more sense than your earlier nonsense. You cannot kill people whose death will benefit you and be legally and morally justified. You are neither the center of the universe or particularly capable with the language.
"(CNSNews.com) -- Since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, the cumulative outstanding balance on federal direct student loans has jumped 517.4 percent. The balance owed as of the end of May was $739,641,000,000.00. That is an increase of $619,838,000,000.00 from the balance that was owed as of the end of January 2009, when it was $119,803,000,000.00, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement." http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/obamas-balloon-federal-student-loan-debt-517-5-years But, I'm sure it's President Bush's fault. And some think the taxpayers should be forced to pay that.
Making loans that cannot be settled or removed, especially directed towards youth & unsophisticated borrowers, is immoral, predatory & should be illegal. It is a policy return to the dark ages & indentured servitude. Young people don't even have to ask their parents, but can stack up a mountain of debt in student loans. I understand the reasoning why they did it. Banks wouldn't lend to students & let them pile up huge loans, because they would just declare bankruptcy. But then academia would lose money, so they got their politicians to make this plan, glossing over any problems that might arise. It is unfair to saddle young people with the burden of inescapable debt. The academians pushed the debt on them, promising them pies in the sky if they would only go to college & support the academic agenda. Let them help in paying them off, & end the practice. Sure, some loans will dry up, but so will the mountain of debt. Colleges will have to be competitive & provide a real product. Many will not & will fail because of mismanagement & an impractical mission statement, but that is how the open market works. Why should academia be guaranteed a place in the market? They are just a business like any other. So, who is likely to foot the bill for this? Any guesses? American taxpayers very high on the probability list? Here is my solution? 1. End the practice. It's just a loan like any other. Secure it, or take a chance. 2. Share the loss. The student shouldn't be the only loser in this scam. The banks & academia should too. Provide a renegotiated loan with the original school giving some back & the banks cutting their part, too. Cancel the interest & let reasonable payments be made until the student's part is done. The banks & academia will howl, but they should not have engaged in predatory lending practices, which is exactly what student loans are. 3. Fire the politicians. This was my fault, kids. I and my generation were not watchful & alert to the scams & schemes that these unscrupulous charlatans came up with. We'll fire them & get people who will look out for the people's interests & bring freedom back to America. It will be tough to change the culture.. politicians are too used to the grab bag of money in washington, but we can cut their money & limit the corruption. We'll find some honest people who will cut the fraud, waste & corruption. It will take some time, so we better get started asap. I don't know how we could implement it, but i think it would be a good idea if the profiteers from govt scams like this had to pay it back, & even go to jail. That would certainly discourage future scammers, & we could get some of our tax money back. It would be a drop in the bucket, but how about the heads of fannie mae, etc, have to repay all their bonuses & salary for their failures? How about if the politicians who voted for spending packages had to repay out of their pocket any waste, fraud or corruption? There would be a little more care in the voting process, i'm sure.
Student debt should be forgiven and higher education should also be free. Cutting off funding to education after high school guarantees that the rich will be more advantaged in education than the poor. As someone mentioned on the first page, higher education stimulates the economy and eventually pays for itself. Since finding a quality job without higher education is nearly impossible, it is frankly hypocritical to support free education for elementary, middle, and high school, but not for higher education.
I disagree. I think that if someone comes into my house, and threatens my life or my family, I think I should and do have the right to defend myself and my family, even with lethal force, assuming there is no other way. -Meta
Nobody was talking about someone coming to your house and threatening you. The example given was if you needed food and someone had food it was both legal and moral to kill them for the food. That is ludicrous. Goober: "And if you can't find a job, rob a wealthy person, kill 'em if they make a fuss, just don't depend on the state for welfare...." Goober: "Someone can't find a job, and you don't want them getting welfare, they still gotta eat, so if robbing people is what stands between them and starvation, robbing people is the moral thing to do....morality is relative, and you want them to starve to death, so robbing you or people like you, is justifiable self defense.........from a moral standpoint....." Goober: "If someone has to eat and you have food, and it's the only way he can eat, killing you and taking the food is legal and moral. That's my point, it's like after a shipwreck, killing someone over a piece of wreckage to hold onto is legal if not doing so will result in death. The same principal applies, if people need to eat and all legal recourse is exhausted, then what is normally deemed illegal is allowed. In a democracy, too much concentration of wealth will generate a populist government with super majorities. The confiscatory tax policies that are enacted will all be perfectly legal. The alternative to populist government is revolution, in which case the landlords are executed in public to the cheers of the crowd. What Liberals want is a pressure relief valve built into the system. A tax system that moves enough wealth from the ultra rich and a system of middle class entitlements that grows the middle class, and increases the wealth of the middle class. Pre-Reagan America......." Goober: "You keep trying to change what I said, and set up strawmen. If a person has a choice between death, and killing someone to acquire the means of survival, killing is legal or at least highly mitigated. In the case where there is active resistance presented to block the means of survival, the justification is self evident..." I didn't copy all of the Goober crap but if you want to join him more power to you. But, for god's sake, don't get between Goober and what he thinks he needs because he can legally and morally kill you.
Oh, well in that case I agree completely. There is no justification for killing someone for food when one has the option of simply getting a job or going on welfare. ......although here, it kind of sounds like he's setting up a scenario in which there isn't access to a job or welfare... I disagree here though. I don't believe morality has anything to do with it. There is nothing moral or even immoral about stealing or killing people in order to survive. It is just...amoral. Saying it is moral or immoral is like suggesting that a bird or a snake is being moral or immoral when it kills and eats a worm or mouse. But that's just a silly thing to suggest. It isn't moral or immoral for the bird and snake to simply do the things necessary for their own survival self-preservation and eventual reproduction. You might be able to say the bird and snake are justified,...but moral??? It isn't.... Its just nature. -Meta
I wonder if the 517% increase in student loan debt since President Obama took office is due to the belief that the taxpayer will pay off the student loans? My neighbor voted for Obama so he wouldn't have to pay for health insurance but, of course, he's still paying for health insurance. A cousin voted for Obama because he was going to pay off her mortgage. Of course, he didn't. A friend of mine voted for him because he's a communist. At least he got it right. http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/...bt-517-5-years
A good friend of mine voted for obama because he thought he'd get free healthcare.. he's got some old sports injuries, & wants to get some things fixed, but doesn't want to pay for them himself.. It is just the great fiction bastiat talked about: "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." ~Frederic Bastiat
More likely just an increase in folks going back to school. When the economy is good, you go to work. When it's not folks re-evaluate their skills and many go back to school.
He's setting up a situation where a person might choose to believe he had no option but to rob and murder. His purpose is to justify a broader claim that it's OK to take from those who have it, if you "need" it. But belief isn't always reality and people have more choices than they often want to believe. Berkowitz believed he didn't have a choice, his neighbors dog forced him to kill people. He was still convicted despite that belief. No one needs to kill because he couldn't find a job today. In the U.S. there are more options, often hard ones. And even on a deserted island no one knows what resources are possible tomorrow. At the end of the day, you can choose to grow, build and make or you can convince yourself that, like an animal, the only way for your to have it take from someone else. It's a choice.
How about man-ing up and pay your loans like a responsible adult. Anyone who thinks otherwise is part of the entitlement crowd for sure.
That's where I disagree. If one needs to do something as a function of their own survival, there's really no such thing as to say its OK, good, or moral, or that it's not OK, bad, or immoral....it just is....its fundamental,....its nature. Berkowitz?...Didn't he admit that that was just a lie? Of course not. They've all got welfare. Yes it is a choice, if one knows the choice exists. If on the other hand you're on that island and, even after a reasonable amount of searching, have no perceivable resources or alternative ways of obtaining them, the "choice" to continue searching or to wait around for resources to come to you becomes not a choice, but rather a gamble. -Meta
Proving "need" isn't easy. You'd certainly fail in showing that you need to kill a man "if they make a fuss" just because you don't have a job. And even on a deserted Island, you'd have a hard time defending the choice to kill a man for his coconuts, because you got tired of looking for your own.
Well, it's not about manning up, but dark ages lending practices, that went the way of selling self & your family as slaves for your debt. ..or no due process.. or no other advances in human rights we've taken millennia to achieve. THAT is my problem with it.. the hard sell, like a timeshare, targeting trusting, unsophisticated borrowers, trapping them for life in inescapable debt. It is immoral, & has been illegal for a couple of centuries. But in 1998, the geniuses in washington thought it would be great to make them 'nondischargeable'. That was for govt loans!! Then, in 2005, they extended it to private bank loans... a practice that has been considered barbaric & unjust for centuries is re-implemented by a stroke of a pen, & we can see the results.. the student loan bubble has skyrocketed, tuition has inflated astronomically, & the debt is crushing many young people.. sure, they shouldn't have gotten them, but who was telling them that during the college interview process? The counselors? 'Follow the money'.. that is the basic concept in discovering where problems & corruption lie. I see NO benefit in this move. It burdens many kids with lifelong debt, which they would NOT have without the 'no default' part. It causes tuition inflation, is building a student loan bubble in the SAME way as the housing bubble, & does not accomplish the goals of a more educated citizenry. IOW, it causes more problems than it solves. It was a solution without a problem. It pandered to the banks & money grubbers who profit from the mistakes & weaknesses of others. Better to NOT lend to them, than to burden them with ruined credit & lifelong oppressive debt.
I've always found this question to be profoundly ridiculous. If you're taking 40k/yr in loans to get your bachelor's in art history the problem isn't that college costs too much, the problem is you. What we should do is gear student aid to where we need more people. It's generally agreed that we need more engineers - so let's give buchoo aid to engineer wannabes.
Way too many young people getting degrees that are basically worthless as far as income potential goes. $100K in the hole to get a Women's Study' degree from Brown is a too frickin bad for you issue.
I have an idea have one general studies on-line program per state, that has all the books as free e-books and costs $10,000 payable per year and are loan eligible these could be customized on a few areas as a major area of focus such as education, business and so forth and would be attacked to a state university. There you go and eliminate all other loans unless you tie them to the risk of not being repaid with an interest rate based on high school test scores, major, doing well in college you do better the next loan would be better and likely employment.
Tuition inflation is a DIRECT result of the dark ages lending practices. The easy money, pushed at the kids by the schools & lenders eager to make them, CAUSES tuition inflation. It works just like the housing bubble. Easy money, pushed at unqualified borrowers, with NO collateral, & it all comes crashing down. But the housing collapse just hit the lenders, who were bailed out by the politicians with OUR money! Student loans are like a felony.. they can ruin your life & stay with you until you die. They are non dischargeable, since 2005, coincidentally, the same time the housing bubble started with the easy money loans. The schools, to attract the students, build fancy student unions, with percs & lures to bring the kids to their school.. 'Cost? Who cares what it costs! Just take out a loan & get the best AND have fun doing it! Live a little, these are the fun years of your lives!!' But it snowballs.. the schools have to charge more to pay for these excesses, & the easy money is tossed around like parade queens throwing candy. They can just pass the costs down to tuition, give everyone raises, bonuses for the administrators, & keep everyone distracted with sports. It is a giant step backward for humanity. It depends on predatory lending practices, & drives many people into modern day indentured servitude. I know a lot of kids that have a mountain of debt, just for doing what they've been told they MUST do all their lives. 'The degree isn't important, just go to school for a liberal arts education. That's all most jobs want.' Well, it isn't, many kids are finding out. But what do the universities, counselors, lenders, & all those who have gotten nice fat paychecks off of these kids futures say? 'Sorry, kid. You shouldn't have listened to us & borrowed money.' or, 'you should have gotten a better degree' (ever hear any good advice from a college counselor?), or 'you should have been born rich or in an earlier time, before we made this academic ponzi scheme collapse, like we did with housing, & are doing with the currency.' I don't think anyone gets it. Nobody seems to see the danger to humanity that the bankers can pose. It has taken us millennia to gain the power to restrain them, so they do not slowly acquire all the property in the earth, & reduce us all to sharecropping. So now, we allow the 'nondischargeable' loans, to 'help' people, & gloss over the pandora's box of problems it brings.
My grandfather went to UW - Madison back in the day his father a Union Machinist paid for his tuition and other expenses out of pocket. After he earned his degree in biology pre-med with a teaching credential he had to get a loan for Medical School the bank gave him the money on the fact he HAD a degree and a teaching credential so was a good risk, and he was accepted into the state medical school. Either way they would be paid back and a doctor was never out of work back then, and made solid middle class incomes. So they gave him the money and did that every year based on his grades and references from the school. Why can't they take the risk into account now I would think a high performing student entering school would be a lower risk over an average student entering school and base the loans on grades and progress?
