The Federal Takeover Of Colleges Through Paying Off Student Loans

Please forgive this wall of text. I think it’s important, and is relevant to today’s topic.
With regards to Joe the Usurper canceling some student debts: You have to understand how modern banking works, especially at the federal (“We own the printers!”) level. It costs them nothing in the short term to cancel debt. That doesn’t mean they won’t still raise your taxes, though.

Debt is money created out of nothing. It’s an entry in a spreadsheet. When you pay it off, the money returns to being nothing, a ‘0’ in the spreadsheet. Only while the debt is active does the money exist. The trick is that you have to pay real money as the interest. When debt is canceled, the bank loses nothing but the income stream of interest payments.

Paying off debts is deflationary. The money is returned to sender and destroyed. Canceling debts is inflationary, because the money isn’t destroyed. It’s still out there, being traded around. It’s exactly the same as printing money and handing it out. Okay, well, to be honest, it’s the issuance of the debt in the first place that is inflationary. But if the money isn’t zeroed out again through repayment, it is a permanent net increase in the money supply, making the rest of the currency worth just that bit much less.

Ah, the joys of modern banking. What, you thought that the banks could only lend out money they actually had on deposit? Silly citizen, that hasn’t been the case for decades.

In traditional fractional reserve banking, if a bank maintained a 5% reserve, they could lend out 95% of total deposits. In modern fractional reserve banking, they can lend out 19 times their total deposits. And if you put the loaned money back into a bank account, it counts as a deposit.

As an item of curiosity, the current mandatory reserve rate is: zero. Banks can create all the debt money they like, with no limit. They’re just numbers on spreadsheets, after all. Until the Fed monkeys around with the reserve percentage, forcing small banks to call in their loans, bankrupting small businesses. (Anybody else remember 2008? This is what really happened then to collapse the economy. And when small banks couldn’t meet the new, higher standard, the Fed forced them to sell out to the big banks.) (Never forget that the 2008 recession was a choice the government made. It didn’t happen by accident.)

@McChuck: That’s all well and good until the people who make stuff you need refuse to take those dollars. Unfortunately we live in a global economy and, if we are lucky, the dollar will be the last bad man standing. If we are not ….

We’re not using the US dollar anymore anyway. What was known as the Greenback ended in 1913. Now all currency is Federal Reserve Notes. Except the Federal Reserve isn’t federal, and there are no reserves. So I guess it’s just Notes …

But coming back to the federal takeover, I suppose this is the ultimate destination. The government will own everything, eventually. Until it all collapses.

Unrelated, but rest assured citizens, DIE does not result in lowered standards or quotas. No way, no how…

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/penn-medical-school-expands-minority-candidate-program-does-not-require-mcat

Of course there is to be no debt forgiveness. Forgiveness is alien to the Whos: We do not forget, we do not forgive. The debt will be shifted to taxpaying dupes.

The Whos “buy” everything with wealth extracted by saddling dupes with usurious debt ponzied-up into a babeling clown tower that they imagine makes them masters of the universe. Until it comes crashing down.

But just don’t be a dupe and the problem is solved.

Masturbation? They’re going to need more than that, they’re going to need a degree
in prostitution if they want to eat in the brave new world that is upon us.

Truly, the planet-killing asteroid cannot arrive soon enough.

Back in the dark ages of the Obama era, during the debate over Obamacare, I bought a t-shirt printed with the curt phrase: “Why do I have to pay for your healthcare…”

I see I’ll need a new addition to my t-shirt collection: “Why do I have to pay your college loans…”

Everybody’s jumping in and missing the point.

The students aren’t taking money from you, the government is.

I can’t help but think there was an element of fraud in student loans; these students were lead to believe that these degrees would pay off and they did not. If they didn’t in fact get their moneys worth, at what point does the lender lose his investment?

In the Mosaic code, loans were forgiven every seven years, but you can’t discharge student loans even under bankruptcy. Everybody is lining up to bury the 18 year olds who were propagandized about college from the time they were five, when we should be lining up against the brain washers, the banks, the government, and the schools at least as much.

Sure there is responsibility with the student, but if someone loans me a “new” car to start a taxi service and the car explodes like a firework the first time I turn the key, should I really owe full blue book?

Plus the government has monkeyed with the economy so hard that part of the reason loans aren’t getting paid back is nobody’s making the kind of money necessary. I’ve been seeing a lot of “get a job” on FB that has been irking me, even guys with sensible majors have had a hard time earning a crust when H1Bs, regulation, inflation, etc. come into play.

Of course the ideal solution would be to restore some basic economic freedoms and not be trying to actively make war on your native population but “lazy millennials amirite?” Now I know WMB isn’t saying this.

In the bigger picture, Big College is just one example of the pervasive human desire to avoid competition and accountability. Unions and monopolies are bigger examples, with a higher cost to the average citizen, in terms of a lowered standard of living.

Humans love the consuming side of capitalism, but hate the providing side. Our society strangely allows some groups to avoid the accountability inherent in true free-market capitalism (college professors with their tenure, union members with their seniority, plumbers and electricians and doctors with government licensing requirements, etc, etc etc). Meanwhile, the much-maligned free-market entrepreneur must provide, on average, $100 in value for every $5 in wealth they accumulate.

Not all the accountability-shirkers have the same degree of control over society, though. When was the last time you hired a plumber for $250 or $500 an hour? If you are even somewhat handy, you do it yourself, screw the local regulations and permit requirements – that bureaucrat at city hall couldn’t care less if an overpaid plumber misses out on the work.

It’s still not clear to me where a college education falls on the spectrum of provider monopolies. Self-paced online learning is growing by leaps and bounds, with much higher efficiency and a better outcome. We shall see, hopefully sooner rather than later, aided by shortages of competent college graduates.

Milton has a good point about online learning. If you just want to learn something, its never been easier than today. What college sells, as the Wizard of Oz noted, is a credential!

Of course credentials matter though!

Want a job as an engineer? You can learn a lot online but not much anyone will accept with the exception of some things like programming. Try practicing medicine or law without a license. Try running a hair salon for that matter.

Same goes for a lot of stuff. The whole “people are lazy” thing is kind of nonsense too. I saw colonial Hong Kong years ago, when people get to keep the fruits of their labor, when there’s a clear connection between your efforts and reward there’s an absolute beehive of activity.

But acting like nothing has changed since the post war economic boom is false. It’s supposedly about “accountability”, but only the accountability of the student, not the government that wrecked the economy through over regulation, or the colleges that sold the idea that a degree is an entree into the middle class and left out that some degrees even decrease your earning potential (e.g. there are times you’re better off being a stocker at Wal Mart than getting some degrees, you can bet colleges didn’t tell anyone that).

Debt forgiveness and liberating slaves is directly from the Bible but American ain’t too keen on that because bankers.

On the other hand P.J. O’Rourke sagely observed one could tell the political direction of a society by looking at the women amongst the protestors which is why he knew the Anti-Vietnam War protesters were gonna triumph – they had scores of babes in mini skirts at their protests.

The right never had a chance…

Look at the photos of pro-debt relief protesters and then you don’t t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing

I have not been able to discover what is actually happening here.

Are A: the institutions who are currently collecting the repayment and interest on the loans Not going to do so?

Or, B: are the loans and interest going to be paid by government printing more ‘money’?

Or something else?

Only A would count as debt ‘forgiveness’. B would just be yet-another semi-plausible way of deliberately adding fuel to the flame of current inflation to produce hyper-inflation – as a step towards the abolition of money and the imposition of the ‘digital currency’ that They desire as a mechanism of totalitarian micro-control.

There is no substitute for face to face tutoring and mentoring and deep learning when it comes to the sciences, medicine, engineering, maths, accounting, computing, music, language, literature, art etc.

Online learning is especially well suited for subjects of little real value, such as those found in grievance studies. I am not optimistic about it; my personal view is it is a step backwards.

Its one thing to have credentials on paper, it’s entirely another to be able to use them.

My wife and I paid back our student loans, like responsible grownups. Now we get to help pay back other people’s loans that we didn’t ask for, didn’t sign for, and didn’t benefit from. Merry Christmas, welchers and leaches.

Hoyos-

I believe there is one additional benefit the large research institutions still offer students in the STEM space. That is access to large-scale laboratories stocked with advanced equipment and technology.

There are some types of experiments and research that are simply cost prohibitive to pursue unless one is independently wealthy.

Trade Schools!! Trade Schools!! Trade Schools!!! Graduates always needed!!

God bless, C-Marie