Unless you’re born privileged, it’s damn near impossible to be “successful” in this society. Yet society blames us for being “lazy” like it’s a skill issue.
Can’t blame the player when the game itself is a broken system.
I would call it rigged because it works just fine at keeping the poor on the brink of starving and the rich wealthy while labeling the poor as being "lazy" as the reason for not being successful. I have gone from poor to wealthy to poor again. The difference is I did literally anything to change my situation. You have to cut corners, undermine people, do away with faithfulness, be willing to lie, cheat, and steal and if your lucky you'll find wealth. Then you are encouraged to gatekeep as well, because, if everyone was wealthy, the ones already wealthy will become, probably barely, less wealthy than if you shared your connections, gave support, and made your wealth a little bit of everyone's wealth. It sucks and maybe that's partly why I'm where I am now. I did what was empathetic and not what's profitable.
One of my friends didn't drop out of high school, but he went to prison for trespassing, took classes while serving his sentence and turned his life around and is a union electrician with a wife and kids, owns a house, etc.
I have a bachelor degree with no student loan debt but still got a bit of credit card debt. He's doing better than I am. The pay at my job sucks ass.
namely because there is little to no unionization for white-collar work, never-mind the shortage of jobs and overabundance of knowledge workers. there is currently a deficit for skilled trades labor, and most of it is pro-union.
a large percentage of white-collar work employs people who can barely function with computers & technology. most of those jobs pay 50-100k and you also need to play the uni-game for the privilege of building slide decks & attending remote meetings. and companies are racing to eliminate those positions.
"a bachelor degree" says nothing. its veey important what degree it is. if its a degree in.. idk.. literature.. im not surprised. being an electrician on the other hand....
My degree is in business administration, which is definitely more practical than literature but sadly the whole higher education system is still a scam for the most part. We were told repeatedly when we were younger that the only way to make it in life was to go to college get a degree then a full time job and we'll have it "made" but the older we get, we found out that it was horseshit. Preaching to the choir but still.
right, not everyone drops out because they're just a burnout. And if they are a burnout at that young an age, maybe ask some questions about why that is instead of just dismissing a human life
Your framing still implies that someone would deserve to be priced out of food and housing if their reason for dropping out was that they were willfully ignorant, lazy, and morally corrupt.
That the drop-out needs to have some excuse to prove their moral worth before being able to afford to live.
It was ages ago where I read a huge chunk of high school drop outs were kids who had at one point been considered gifted. With one exception that I suspect was related to abuse/PTSD for how suddenly that person went from near the top of the class to crashing out all the ones I've spoken to who left school early was some combination of being bored in their classes, not wanting to deal with shit classmates and/or staff and/or feeling like getting a job was a better use of their time.
The fact you cannot declare bankruptcy on student loan debt after a certain amount of time is insane. I understand not being able to declare it right after you graduate but after a certain period of time like five years, absolutely.
I heard the reason is because there's no physical asset to take back. There's a lot of bankruptcy where there's no physical asset they can take back. If you file for bankruptcy for medical debt that saved your life it's not like they are going to turn around and undo the surgery or kill you. You run up your credit cards, it's not like Express or Saks 5th Avenue is going to repossess the clothing you bought with said credit cards or the fine-dining you ate at is going to pump your stomach to get the food back or make you wash dishes.
School in general has become completely pointless and redundant in terms of jobs. Same thing with internships. Corporate greed and automation has completely ruined all of the useful ways to get experience for a job from the past. Even if you graduate from college with a masters degree any job in the field you want is going to want years of experience that college just can’t give you, and it’s going to be difficult for you to intern anywhere when most places aren’t even gonna pay you for your time. Then even at that they’ll have absurd requirements for even entry level positions which start at bare minimum salaries.
You are literally just as valuable as a high school drop out as you are as a college graduate nowadays, and in that scenario you spent way less money and have way less debt.
This is patently untrue. We had a long period where degrees were basically proof of intelligence, and so any degree at all was a guarantee that you were clever enough to be worth employing. Now that everyone has a degree and grades have been inflated to the point where degrees are totally meaningless, yeah, merely getting a degree means very little.
That doesn't mean that school is pointless. If you actually make a plan for what kind of job you're aiming for, find qualifications pertinent to that job, and then actually make a point of mastering the skills needed, you'll find work. Smart and capable people will always be in demand. If your expectation is that school will make you smart and capable, well that's not true, but school can absolutely be a valuable stepping stone to becoming smart and capable.
Students who are going to university because they don't know what else to do and are postponing making decisions about their lives should not be going to university. They won't learn anything of value and will end up in debt. People who are making an informed decision to go to university with a realistic idea about how it propel them forward will benefit from it.
Last I checked, uni graduates earn a decent bit more than drop outs and people who only went to highschool, on average. Roughly googling stats Today seems to show the same story in every link I click on. Of course, you're going to be earning more on trades against some drama school graduate, but as a whole, it's just better to have a uni degree. Even if it is a bachelor's. If you take white vs blue collar averages and return on investment over a lifetime, it also holds.
You're free to discount it as pointless, but you're doing yourself and whoever takes this message seriously a disservice. Better advice would be having a goal and work towards reaching it. Getting some random uni degree on some shit subject just to get a degree is shit, but getting a degree in a field you're looking to work in, like some engineering branch, is going to open you to jobs that a random, average high school graduate will only be able to dream of. If you're smart, and self teach and can manage to build a good portfolio in your own time, then that's another story, but the raw percentage of people that manage to pull that off is abysmally low.
Tale as old as time, talk to anyone that's not achieved success they're comfortable with, most answers you're going to get is that they should've done better in school, or pursued education while they had the chance. While some new, other venues have opened for exceptional people, for majority, that's still the case.
You do. If not right off the bat, then a bit later. In the end, the investment tends to pay off. Average person with a little bit of planning and paying on time is going to end up on top. Again, just by throwing google searches and clicking all the links, outside some super niche hypotheticals, on average, you'll just have a better quality of life if you're a graduate.
In your comment you say someone took a 40k loan, paid 65k over some given period of time, has 30k left. What's the period of time here? What are the monthly payments? What about the career these people start and continue to grow in as they keep paying? It's like a mortgage. You buy a house, you keep paying your mortgage. You took a loan for 300k, it ends up being 550k two decades later if you make minimal payments. What the fuck, you were robbed of 250k? Meanwhile your house/career value has grown several times more than that. Of course differences between liquid and non-liquid investment. Career one also pays dividends, but you get the point.
Also, the rest of the world really doesn't function this way. UK has student loans, for example, and while those loans might seem high in numbers, you really start paying on the amount that you hit after a certain threshold so you're never garnished into oblivion. EU unis lean more towards being free, if not free, way cheaper. Don't know much about how SEA/APAC are setup.
Again, I don't know what world you guys live in, but being educated opens you up to a lot more opportunities. It's not rocket science. I get that some working conditions can suck, especially in America with all the union busting shit and so on, but do you really, whole-heartedly feel like getting education is pointless? Which work environments, do you think, tend to be more oppressive and predatory - those which employ people with less opportunity due to having less necessary qualifications and education for a better job or those which employ higher educated, learned workers and pay statistically more? Which group of employees has more leverage?
In the end, you can critique things and try to make commentary in order to get the talks of improvement going, that's fine, but please don't sabotage yourself. It's quite the worst thing you can do.
but do you really, whole-heartedly feel like getting education is pointless?
I used to work for a University, and yeah I kinda do think so for most people. We were charging kids $75k/yr for undergrad and setting them up for jobs making half that. The go-to diatribe has been "do STEM or something actually useful" but I work in the T of STEM. The T of STEM is flooded (because it was one of the only places with wage growth and capitalists can't allow that), especially at lower levels, so wages are being drug down over here. Entry level with degree requirements can be barely over minimum wage around here. Flipping burgers is competitive and I'd suspect waiting tables and making drinks both beat it. Meanwhile I'm over here, a college dropout (because no money to keep going and a touch of getting fucked by the school), making more than anyone that worked in my hometown k-12 school district and wasn't working in upper administration. Most of them needed masters+ and had decades of experience, I have like 10-15 years and a diploma.
Which work environments, do you think, tend to be more oppressive and predatory - those which employ people with less opportunity due to having less necessary qualifications and education for a better job or those which employ higher educated, learned workers and pay statistically more? Which group of employees has more leverage?
Weirdly, both. We have such credential inflation because we pushed everyone to college that practically every job that's not manual labor can use the degree as a filter. Even if the job doesn't really need a degree. Even if it doesn't pay enough for the degree to have been worth it. Even if 20 years ago it didn't need one.
In a perfect world, getting a degree would be great. But now it's just.. useless unless the career you want to go into genuinely needs it. White-collar, degree-holders are actually more fucked over than blue-collar diploma-holders in a lot of places because the white-collars are too independent to unionize and get better working standards.
Then they’re not paying off their loans correctly. Or they got predatory loans. Or, could be the unfortunate scenario where they never found a good enough job after to be able to correctly pay the loans.
I’ve been able to pay mine off easily and have made six figures since like.. 29. And I’m not in a STEM field. (And my college degree was PoliSci which has never had to do with any job I’ve had)
I did not live with my parents, though I moved back during COVID for three months to be with them. I’m very family oriented with no extended family and my mother has kidney failure and takes care of my advanced dementia mother, so I was flying back as often as I could wherever I lived.
I just kept my interests on autopay at the same level I was used to to pay off principal, so the interest freeze was a non factor.
I’m also 36 so I’m well passed time the pandemic or living with parents would’ve been a common situation (relative to the time).
Since parents seem to be a “gotcha” to you, my father was laud off around 2012, and started a business which has had single digit profitable years since. They declared bankruptcy this year and will lose their house as it was in a personal guarantee loan for the business.
In my early 20s, there were a lot of people around me who went to college, and honestly it reinforced the idea that college wasn’t some guaranteed win. Either we were working the exact same job, or I was actually making more money than them. Seeing that play out in real time made it really hard to buy into the idea that a degree automatically puts you ahead.
I hate people who are like: “Why did you go to school? Why did you get a loan when that was the interest? Don’t you understand loans?” NO. NO WE DON’T! BECAUSE YOURE ASKING AN 18 YEAR OLD TO SIGN FOR A HUGE AMOUNT OF MONEY ON A CAREER THAT HOPES TO MAKE IT BACK. So no, we don’t understand the student loans we take out. They could explain it over and over and we still won’t get it, because 99.99% of the time, you’re asking a teenager to take out a huge amount of money and you’re not telling us about any of it. Not everyone goes to school later, in fact, most don’t go to school later, a lot of kids do the normal thing, which is go straight from high school to college. Some might do the military first and then use the GI Bill to make loans not even a thing for them, or some go College to ROTC to Military and get their loans paid for in return for service. But the majority of people? They’re 18 years old, on their own for the first time usually, going to school usually away from home, with parents who refuse to talk finances. So no, most of us have no idea what our loans are doing, and we keep paying it even if it doesn’t make a damn dent.
The fact that student loans are the only loans/monetary item that you specifically can’t discharge in bankruptcy claims is absolute bullshit. Absolute bullshit. If you’re insolvent enough to claim fucking bankruptcy, if you can’t pay consistently for anything despite your best options and working fulltime, then obviously you’re not going to be able to pay your fucking student loans. So, why not let them discharge away? We don’t hold fucking medical debt over people’s heads, College is essentially required, it’s essentially compulsary to complete at this point in time, unless you want to fuck your body up for life attempting to do the trades. So why do we hold it over people’s heads? Especially when older generations are the same fucking one’s telling us to do the whole: “Go to college, get a degree, you’ll make enough money to pay off those loans quick.” Are same ones later yelling at us saying “Why did you go?! Why did you get a loan you didn’t understand? Fucking pay it back!” Bitch, You fucking told us to! Everyone older than us told us to! We’re just doing what you told us to do!
If they want to fix this? If they want to make this fair? Either start letting people declare bankruptcy on their student loans, or, remove the interest and zero out the interest. Move the amount of money that originally went to the interest to the principle amount on the loan. Have you paid enough of pure interest that it zeroes out your principle? Congratulations! Your loan is now fully paid and you no longer have student loans, those have all been paid off because you paid the full principle. If there’s times where you’ve paid more than the principle? You get a check/refund for the extra that you’ve paid from the financier. Done, everyone has paid loans, everyone is happy, those who got loans have fully paid them, and no one is pissed off because: “Why did I have to pay off my loan but they get theirs deleted? I want them to suffer like I did!”. This is the bare fucking minimum at this point.
I don’t give a flying fuck if it takes every Student Loan financier out of business. Fucking good, it’s a predatory practice. They should be out of business, if their business is a predatory practice, then they shouldn’t be in business.
One extra detail you're missing here is that teenagers spent their teenage years being programmed by most of the adults in their lives to go to college and being told that the loans will sort themselves out after.
And even if you make a relatively educated decision and decide to go to school for a field with good opportunities, who knows how that field is going to look in 4-5 years? To a certain extent you have to just gamble that the job you're going to school for still exists when you're done being taught how to do that job.
God, I feel that so hard, went to school for tech, graduated a couple of years ago (freshly post-COVID so everyone was going back into the office), manage to have a career in a vaguely related area to what I studied. Lost my job this September and now Tech as a whole sector has essentially shit the bed, right when I actually need/want to join it. Getting an entry level job and starting out there is basically impossible, everyone wants Senior-level people and I shit the bed by not waiting for an actual tech role because while I have experience, it’s not experience doing anything technical.
Never took out a student loan, went the hard route and decided physical labor was the answer.
It was a skilled trade so it still pays but I have read many posts about the interest rates and payments and imo it’s overwhelming!
They lured them into preparatory loans and it’s the sole reason they should wipe the slate clean.
... people still frame this as a personal failure. Like these are reckless spenders.
I was discussing financial difficulty with somebody the other day and they asked me if I had been a reckless spender in the past. I laughed so hard, at them in the face and said I never ever made enough money to be a reckless spender, I watch every penny, buy things on sale as much as I can and saved what little was leftover. It's impossible to get ahead even when you do everything right.
The new model for anyone making under 50k a year is to just be permanently in grind-mode until they can either find an opening and out-compete for the next bump, take the initiative to spend most of their free-time trying to up-skill instead of enjoying the bits of free-time that should be used to relax and recharge for the next week, or just do nothing interesting, living like a monk for decades and hoping their modest savings / retirement account doesn't crater before they are forced out of the work-force due to age or skill mis-match.
Also like.... so they're saying that high school drop outs should just die? 'Cause you kind of either need to make a living wage or die in poverty. So like, hey, maybe reassess your beliefs because that's some evil shit
I have severe ADHD, I was fucked and didn't even go to college. I finished high school with a 70.1 in Algebra 2 when I needed a 70 to pass. All the jobs I feel I'd be good at have been automated away.
And then you get the ding dongs who troll this sub looking for someone to point and laugh at.
Who then complain that nobody’s having kids. Like, why would I bring kids into this world knowing that people will be waiting to kick them any time they fall down?
My life isn’t even bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I still hate having to exist because I’ve seen how awful human nature really is. I’m not subjecting a child to this.
The system isn’t broken , it’s actually rigged ! so the rich keep gaining wealth and the poor slave away barely staying afloat in comparison it’s literally by design , they dangle the carrot so people have the illusion maybe one day they can join the upper echelon, similar vibe to people who put their hope in the lottery to escape being at the bottom . But at this point capitalism is deeply ingrained and like a tick that is fully latched on, only an extreme war or cataclysm will reset the cycle to probably one day repeat again , people just can’t/will not revolt at this point. all throughout history a few live like kings on the backs and suffering of others . Get comfy people, we allow this and this is our lives now
Everyone wants me to go back to school and all I can think is. Once I get out will that job be available with the way the economy is working or will the desk job be taken by AI.
We are just the peasants living on a kings land. We have more niceties but it’s the same as 1500s.1950-1980 we had it but the people who got it all turned greedy and didn’t want to pass it on. BOOMERS ARE THE WORST GENERATION OF ALL TIME. When they are all gone not gonna be sad
Its actually funny that I worked installing solar panels, only 2 guys other than me graduated high-school, and I made more at that job that any I've worked.
And this is why I regret going to college. And why I thought my friend lost her ever-loving mind when she moved to another state to go back to school at 35. And I'm so grateful to see my Gen Z niblings seeing the light and choosing alternatives (military, trades, etc.)
I mean, what idiot would loan thousands of dollars to someone who's unemployed and barely even educated? Then, say we need to learn financial responsibility.
As someone with a six figure salary, I can assure you that's not always—or even often—the case. The only benefit we have as a couple is that as long as we're careful about expenses, we can get by on a single salary. Now don't get me wrong, having a kid, that's a really big deal, since we don't have to play that stupid game of choosing between daycare or a stay at home parent and still not making ends meet. That said, we're still just a couple of paychecks short of financial disaster.
And just to end this myth, what non-idiotic degrees do you think even earns people a six-figure salary anymore? And let's be real, a six-figure salary was a meaningful goal 30 years ago. That same goal has crept up to nearly $200k in just 30 years. I'm barely any closer now than I was then, and people who came after me are much, much worse off.
Hey I’m a software engineer and a top 10% earner in the US. I would say that I fully support Capitalism with some oversight. Here’s my 2 cents:
From an individual perspective it is very easy to say “if I were poor, I would do this, this, and that, then I wouldn’t be poor anymore”.
However, the number of high paying jobs is limited and capitalism demands that some people will out-compete others. Therefore, our current system unfairly expects more out of people with less resources, since they have to constantly make more optimal decisions to progress than those with lots of resources. Being born wealthy affords you the luxury of making the same suboptimal decisions as someone who is not rich, but with far fewer consequences.
This is why we need social safety nets. Just because someone made a bad choice or got unlucky doesn’t mean they should have no life. It’s a net benefit for society if everyone is afforded the opportunity to take risks and innovate!
Maybe you do possess superior decision making abilities compared to your peers, but if everyone was smart like you then you wouldn’t be a special cookie. Try to have some empathy :)
Winning should be rewarded, but losing shouldn’t be fatal.
We are punished just for being alive
Unless you’re born privileged, it’s damn near impossible to be “successful” in this society. Yet society blames us for being “lazy” like it’s a skill issue.
Can’t blame the player when the game itself is a broken system.
It isn’t broken, it’s rigged.
Both things can be true.
I would call it rigged because it works just fine at keeping the poor on the brink of starving and the rich wealthy while labeling the poor as being "lazy" as the reason for not being successful. I have gone from poor to wealthy to poor again. The difference is I did literally anything to change my situation. You have to cut corners, undermine people, do away with faithfulness, be willing to lie, cheat, and steal and if your lucky you'll find wealth. Then you are encouraged to gatekeep as well, because, if everyone was wealthy, the ones already wealthy will become, probably barely, less wealthy than if you shared your connections, gave support, and made your wealth a little bit of everyone's wealth. It sucks and maybe that's partly why I'm where I am now. I did what was empathetic and not what's profitable.
Unless you're born into wealth/power, then you can potentially use nepotism to be one of the ones doing the punishing
Respawned without armor and the rent is the boss
Not punished, exploited.
It's the same picture
It's dehumsnizing, demoralizing and exhausting. I hope that when my time to die, I will finally at peace.
Sue your parents
Honestly I’d be so much less angry at them if they seemed even slightly apologetic for thrusting me into this hellscape.
One of my friends didn't drop out of high school, but he went to prison for trespassing, took classes while serving his sentence and turned his life around and is a union electrician with a wife and kids, owns a house, etc.
I have a bachelor degree with no student loan debt but still got a bit of credit card debt. He's doing better than I am. The pay at my job sucks ass.
namely because there is little to no unionization for white-collar work, never-mind the shortage of jobs and overabundance of knowledge workers. there is currently a deficit for skilled trades labor, and most of it is pro-union.
a large percentage of white-collar work employs people who can barely function with computers & technology. most of those jobs pay 50-100k and you also need to play the uni-game for the privilege of building slide decks & attending remote meetings. and companies are racing to eliminate those positions.
👍🏿
"a bachelor degree" says nothing. its veey important what degree it is. if its a degree in.. idk.. literature.. im not surprised. being an electrician on the other hand....
My degree is in business administration, which is definitely more practical than literature but sadly the whole higher education system is still a scam for the most part. We were told repeatedly when we were younger that the only way to make it in life was to go to college get a degree then a full time job and we'll have it "made" but the older we get, we found out that it was horseshit. Preaching to the choir but still.
Hot Take: High school drop-outs should not be punished for the rest of their lives by being unable to afford food and housing.
right, not everyone drops out because they're just a burnout. And if they are a burnout at that young an age, maybe ask some questions about why that is instead of just dismissing a human life
Your framing still implies that someone would deserve to be priced out of food and housing if their reason for dropping out was that they were willfully ignorant, lazy, and morally corrupt.
That the drop-out needs to have some excuse to prove their moral worth before being able to afford to live.
I do not care why they dropped out.
I do not care if they have a good reason.
That wasn't the intent, the intent was more to question why we're dismissing anyone's life, but I can see how that could be a takeaway
It was ages ago where I read a huge chunk of high school drop outs were kids who had at one point been considered gifted. With one exception that I suspect was related to abuse/PTSD for how suddenly that person went from near the top of the class to crashing out all the ones I've spoken to who left school early was some combination of being bored in their classes, not wanting to deal with shit classmates and/or staff and/or feeling like getting a job was a better use of their time.
Aye, I kinda fit the bill, and that was definitely the angle I was taking.
Later come to find out (like, within the last 5 years) I'm auDHD, which explained a lot.
Welcome to life. Where the masses get fucked at both ends.
And without lube. Because that’s the way the government likes to give it to people.
The fact you cannot declare bankruptcy on student loan debt after a certain amount of time is insane. I understand not being able to declare it right after you graduate but after a certain period of time like five years, absolutely.
I heard the reason is because there's no physical asset to take back. There's a lot of bankruptcy where there's no physical asset they can take back. If you file for bankruptcy for medical debt that saved your life it's not like they are going to turn around and undo the surgery or kill you. You run up your credit cards, it's not like Express or Saks 5th Avenue is going to repossess the clothing you bought with said credit cards or the fine-dining you ate at is going to pump your stomach to get the food back or make you wash dishes.
School in general has become completely pointless and redundant in terms of jobs. Same thing with internships. Corporate greed and automation has completely ruined all of the useful ways to get experience for a job from the past. Even if you graduate from college with a masters degree any job in the field you want is going to want years of experience that college just can’t give you, and it’s going to be difficult for you to intern anywhere when most places aren’t even gonna pay you for your time. Then even at that they’ll have absurd requirements for even entry level positions which start at bare minimum salaries.
You are literally just as valuable as a high school drop out as you are as a college graduate nowadays, and in that scenario you spent way less money and have way less debt.
This is patently untrue. We had a long period where degrees were basically proof of intelligence, and so any degree at all was a guarantee that you were clever enough to be worth employing. Now that everyone has a degree and grades have been inflated to the point where degrees are totally meaningless, yeah, merely getting a degree means very little.
That doesn't mean that school is pointless. If you actually make a plan for what kind of job you're aiming for, find qualifications pertinent to that job, and then actually make a point of mastering the skills needed, you'll find work. Smart and capable people will always be in demand. If your expectation is that school will make you smart and capable, well that's not true, but school can absolutely be a valuable stepping stone to becoming smart and capable.
Students who are going to university because they don't know what else to do and are postponing making decisions about their lives should not be going to university. They won't learn anything of value and will end up in debt. People who are making an informed decision to go to university with a realistic idea about how it propel them forward will benefit from it.
Last I checked, uni graduates earn a decent bit more than drop outs and people who only went to highschool, on average. Roughly googling stats Today seems to show the same story in every link I click on. Of course, you're going to be earning more on trades against some drama school graduate, but as a whole, it's just better to have a uni degree. Even if it is a bachelor's. If you take white vs blue collar averages and return on investment over a lifetime, it also holds.
You're free to discount it as pointless, but you're doing yourself and whoever takes this message seriously a disservice. Better advice would be having a goal and work towards reaching it. Getting some random uni degree on some shit subject just to get a degree is shit, but getting a degree in a field you're looking to work in, like some engineering branch, is going to open you to jobs that a random, average high school graduate will only be able to dream of. If you're smart, and self teach and can manage to build a good portfolio in your own time, then that's another story, but the raw percentage of people that manage to pull that off is abysmally low.
Tale as old as time, talk to anyone that's not achieved success they're comfortable with, most answers you're going to get is that they should've done better in school, or pursued education while they had the chance. While some new, other venues have opened for exceptional people, for majority, that's still the case.
But do you make more than the student loan payment difference?
The one where folks can have $40k in loans, pay in $65k, and still owe $30k after that?
You do. If not right off the bat, then a bit later. In the end, the investment tends to pay off. Average person with a little bit of planning and paying on time is going to end up on top. Again, just by throwing google searches and clicking all the links, outside some super niche hypotheticals, on average, you'll just have a better quality of life if you're a graduate.
In your comment you say someone took a 40k loan, paid 65k over some given period of time, has 30k left. What's the period of time here? What are the monthly payments? What about the career these people start and continue to grow in as they keep paying? It's like a mortgage. You buy a house, you keep paying your mortgage. You took a loan for 300k, it ends up being 550k two decades later if you make minimal payments. What the fuck, you were robbed of 250k? Meanwhile your house/career value has grown several times more than that. Of course differences between liquid and non-liquid investment. Career one also pays dividends, but you get the point.
Also, the rest of the world really doesn't function this way. UK has student loans, for example, and while those loans might seem high in numbers, you really start paying on the amount that you hit after a certain threshold so you're never garnished into oblivion. EU unis lean more towards being free, if not free, way cheaper. Don't know much about how SEA/APAC are setup.
Again, I don't know what world you guys live in, but being educated opens you up to a lot more opportunities. It's not rocket science. I get that some working conditions can suck, especially in America with all the union busting shit and so on, but do you really, whole-heartedly feel like getting education is pointless? Which work environments, do you think, tend to be more oppressive and predatory - those which employ people with less opportunity due to having less necessary qualifications and education for a better job or those which employ higher educated, learned workers and pay statistically more? Which group of employees has more leverage?
In the end, you can critique things and try to make commentary in order to get the talks of improvement going, that's fine, but please don't sabotage yourself. It's quite the worst thing you can do.
I used to work for a University, and yeah I kinda do think so for most people. We were charging kids $75k/yr for undergrad and setting them up for jobs making half that. The go-to diatribe has been "do STEM or something actually useful" but I work in the T of STEM. The T of STEM is flooded (because it was one of the only places with wage growth and capitalists can't allow that), especially at lower levels, so wages are being drug down over here. Entry level with degree requirements can be barely over minimum wage around here. Flipping burgers is competitive and I'd suspect waiting tables and making drinks both beat it. Meanwhile I'm over here, a college dropout (because no money to keep going and a touch of getting fucked by the school), making more than anyone that worked in my hometown k-12 school district and wasn't working in upper administration. Most of them needed masters+ and had decades of experience, I have like 10-15 years and a diploma.
Weirdly, both. We have such credential inflation because we pushed everyone to college that practically every job that's not manual labor can use the degree as a filter. Even if the job doesn't really need a degree. Even if it doesn't pay enough for the degree to have been worth it. Even if 20 years ago it didn't need one.
In a perfect world, getting a degree would be great. But now it's just.. useless unless the career you want to go into genuinely needs it. White-collar, degree-holders are actually more fucked over than blue-collar diploma-holders in a lot of places because the white-collars are too independent to unionize and get better working standards.
Then they’re not paying off their loans correctly. Or they got predatory loans. Or, could be the unfortunate scenario where they never found a good enough job after to be able to correctly pay the loans.
I’ve been able to pay mine off easily and have made six figures since like.. 29. And I’m not in a STEM field. (And my college degree was PoliSci which has never had to do with any job I’ve had)
So how long did you live with your parents to make that happen and did you pay them off during the interest freeze implemented during the pandemic.
Be honest.
I did not live with my parents, though I moved back during COVID for three months to be with them. I’m very family oriented with no extended family and my mother has kidney failure and takes care of my advanced dementia mother, so I was flying back as often as I could wherever I lived.
I just kept my interests on autopay at the same level I was used to to pay off principal, so the interest freeze was a non factor.
I’m also 36 so I’m well passed time the pandemic or living with parents would’ve been a common situation (relative to the time).
Since parents seem to be a “gotcha” to you, my father was laud off around 2012, and started a business which has had single digit profitable years since. They declared bankruptcy this year and will lose their house as it was in a personal guarantee loan for the business.
Yeah… no. At least at every corporations I’ve worked in or looked for jobs a college degree was always a minimum.
This is why some of the most profitable skills aren’t taught in schools
It’s almost like school has no relationship to working.
university is daycare for teens. corporate is kindergarten for adults.
In theory I should have been able to pay mine off by now but after twenty years I have barely managed to get them to below 6k.
In my early 20s, there were a lot of people around me who went to college, and honestly it reinforced the idea that college wasn’t some guaranteed win. Either we were working the exact same job, or I was actually making more money than them. Seeing that play out in real time made it really hard to buy into the idea that a degree automatically puts you ahead.
I hate people who are like: “Why did you go to school? Why did you get a loan when that was the interest? Don’t you understand loans?” NO. NO WE DON’T! BECAUSE YOURE ASKING AN 18 YEAR OLD TO SIGN FOR A HUGE AMOUNT OF MONEY ON A CAREER THAT HOPES TO MAKE IT BACK. So no, we don’t understand the student loans we take out. They could explain it over and over and we still won’t get it, because 99.99% of the time, you’re asking a teenager to take out a huge amount of money and you’re not telling us about any of it. Not everyone goes to school later, in fact, most don’t go to school later, a lot of kids do the normal thing, which is go straight from high school to college. Some might do the military first and then use the GI Bill to make loans not even a thing for them, or some go College to ROTC to Military and get their loans paid for in return for service. But the majority of people? They’re 18 years old, on their own for the first time usually, going to school usually away from home, with parents who refuse to talk finances. So no, most of us have no idea what our loans are doing, and we keep paying it even if it doesn’t make a damn dent.
The fact that student loans are the only loans/monetary item that you specifically can’t discharge in bankruptcy claims is absolute bullshit. Absolute bullshit. If you’re insolvent enough to claim fucking bankruptcy, if you can’t pay consistently for anything despite your best options and working fulltime, then obviously you’re not going to be able to pay your fucking student loans. So, why not let them discharge away? We don’t hold fucking medical debt over people’s heads, College is essentially required, it’s essentially compulsary to complete at this point in time, unless you want to fuck your body up for life attempting to do the trades. So why do we hold it over people’s heads? Especially when older generations are the same fucking one’s telling us to do the whole: “Go to college, get a degree, you’ll make enough money to pay off those loans quick.” Are same ones later yelling at us saying “Why did you go?! Why did you get a loan you didn’t understand? Fucking pay it back!” Bitch, You fucking told us to! Everyone older than us told us to! We’re just doing what you told us to do!
If they want to fix this? If they want to make this fair? Either start letting people declare bankruptcy on their student loans, or, remove the interest and zero out the interest. Move the amount of money that originally went to the interest to the principle amount on the loan. Have you paid enough of pure interest that it zeroes out your principle? Congratulations! Your loan is now fully paid and you no longer have student loans, those have all been paid off because you paid the full principle. If there’s times where you’ve paid more than the principle? You get a check/refund for the extra that you’ve paid from the financier. Done, everyone has paid loans, everyone is happy, those who got loans have fully paid them, and no one is pissed off because: “Why did I have to pay off my loan but they get theirs deleted? I want them to suffer like I did!”. This is the bare fucking minimum at this point.
I don’t give a flying fuck if it takes every Student Loan financier out of business. Fucking good, it’s a predatory practice. They should be out of business, if their business is a predatory practice, then they shouldn’t be in business.
One extra detail you're missing here is that teenagers spent their teenage years being programmed by most of the adults in their lives to go to college and being told that the loans will sort themselves out after.
They literally say that twice?
I don't even see it once on a reread.
And even if you make a relatively educated decision and decide to go to school for a field with good opportunities, who knows how that field is going to look in 4-5 years? To a certain extent you have to just gamble that the job you're going to school for still exists when you're done being taught how to do that job.
God, I feel that so hard, went to school for tech, graduated a couple of years ago (freshly post-COVID so everyone was going back into the office), manage to have a career in a vaguely related area to what I studied. Lost my job this September and now Tech as a whole sector has essentially shit the bed, right when I actually need/want to join it. Getting an entry level job and starting out there is basically impossible, everyone wants Senior-level people and I shit the bed by not waiting for an actual tech role because while I have experience, it’s not experience doing anything technical.
Never took out a student loan, went the hard route and decided physical labor was the answer. It was a skilled trade so it still pays but I have read many posts about the interest rates and payments and imo it’s overwhelming! They lured them into preparatory loans and it’s the sole reason they should wipe the slate clean.
I was discussing financial difficulty with somebody the other day and they asked me if I had been a reckless spender in the past. I laughed so hard, at them in the face and said I never ever made enough money to be a reckless spender, I watch every penny, buy things on sale as much as I can and saved what little was leftover. It's impossible to get ahead even when you do everything right.
The new model for anyone making under 50k a year is to just be permanently in grind-mode until they can either find an opening and out-compete for the next bump, take the initiative to spend most of their free-time trying to up-skill instead of enjoying the bits of free-time that should be used to relax and recharge for the next week, or just do nothing interesting, living like a monk for decades and hoping their modest savings / retirement account doesn't crater before they are forced out of the work-force due to age or skill mis-match.
Also like.... so they're saying that high school drop outs should just die? 'Cause you kind of either need to make a living wage or die in poverty. So like, hey, maybe reassess your beliefs because that's some evil shit
Just paid mine off at 38 and I don't even use my degree. what a fucking nightmare
I have severe ADHD, I was fucked and didn't even go to college. I finished high school with a 70.1 in Algebra 2 when I needed a 70 to pass. All the jobs I feel I'd be good at have been automated away.
At least I don't have college debt?
Hah one of the more financially responsible decisions I've made was to drop out of college
And then you get the ding dongs who troll this sub looking for someone to point and laugh at.
Who then complain that nobody’s having kids. Like, why would I bring kids into this world knowing that people will be waiting to kick them any time they fall down?
My life isn’t even bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I still hate having to exist because I’ve seen how awful human nature really is. I’m not subjecting a child to this.
I know 2 high school drop outs that make more then 2 college grads. One of them their spouse is the college grad.
As a high school dropout in the top 5% of earners with dropout siblings that are in the bottom 5% -- sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't lol
Tbf As in all of these depends on the school difficulty, and to a lesser extent the topic studied for graduate and undergraduate school.
Academia is useful only to a point. Then you either have to go out and get a real job or get an academic position, which is, in itself, a real job.
How many trade people are not making a living wage?
High school dropouts are just people who couldn't sit in a prison and do mind-numbing worksheets and graded assignments for 4 years.
Well why didn't you tell your parents to move to a better school then?
/s
The system isn’t broken , it’s actually rigged ! so the rich keep gaining wealth and the poor slave away barely staying afloat in comparison it’s literally by design , they dangle the carrot so people have the illusion maybe one day they can join the upper echelon, similar vibe to people who put their hope in the lottery to escape being at the bottom . But at this point capitalism is deeply ingrained and like a tick that is fully latched on, only an extreme war or cataclysm will reset the cycle to probably one day repeat again , people just can’t/will not revolt at this point. all throughout history a few live like kings on the backs and suffering of others . Get comfy people, we allow this and this is our lives now
Everyone wants me to go back to school and all I can think is. Once I get out will that job be available with the way the economy is working or will the desk job be taken by AI.
We are just the peasants living on a kings land. We have more niceties but it’s the same as 1500s.1950-1980 we had it but the people who got it all turned greedy and didn’t want to pass it on. BOOMERS ARE THE WORST GENERATION OF ALL TIME. When they are all gone not gonna be sad
Its actually funny that I worked installing solar panels, only 2 guys other than me graduated high-school, and I made more at that job that any I've worked.
Exceptions don’t disprove the rule
Go to college or you'll be flipping burgers. So flipping burgers is too good for you? You want how much to flip burgers
Congrats, you unlocked student debt: lifetime subscription required
And this is why I regret going to college. And why I thought my friend lost her ever-loving mind when she moved to another state to go back to school at 35. And I'm so grateful to see my Gen Z niblings seeing the light and choosing alternatives (military, trades, etc.)
That's a choice for sure...
one of my friends had student loans and couldn’t pay them off while working at kroger.
eventually he gets a sales job at mouser and he made so much money he paid them off in 2 years.
I mean, what idiot would loan thousands of dollars to someone who's unemployed and barely even educated? Then, say we need to learn financial responsibility.
Get a non-idiotic degree
Six figures after a couple years and then it's only up
As someone with a six figure salary, I can assure you that's not always—or even often—the case. The only benefit we have as a couple is that as long as we're careful about expenses, we can get by on a single salary. Now don't get me wrong, having a kid, that's a really big deal, since we don't have to play that stupid game of choosing between daycare or a stay at home parent and still not making ends meet. That said, we're still just a couple of paychecks short of financial disaster.
And just to end this myth, what non-idiotic degrees do you think even earns people a six-figure salary anymore? And let's be real, a six-figure salary was a meaningful goal 30 years ago. That same goal has crept up to nearly $200k in just 30 years. I'm barely any closer now than I was then, and people who came after me are much, much worse off.
Sure, ill tell that to my buddy with an engineering degree next time he serves me fries and a burger
Is that 100% guaranteed to work for everyone?
If you do more than the bare minimum or don't spend most of your day doom scrolling, yeah
What is your degree and what do you do for work?
Cool, I'll tell that to all my STEM friends who can't find work in the United States because this administration defunded all the science grants.
Hey I’m a software engineer and a top 10% earner in the US. I would say that I fully support Capitalism with some oversight. Here’s my 2 cents:
From an individual perspective it is very easy to say “if I were poor, I would do this, this, and that, then I wouldn’t be poor anymore”.
However, the number of high paying jobs is limited and capitalism demands that some people will out-compete others. Therefore, our current system unfairly expects more out of people with less resources, since they have to constantly make more optimal decisions to progress than those with lots of resources. Being born wealthy affords you the luxury of making the same suboptimal decisions as someone who is not rich, but with far fewer consequences.
This is why we need social safety nets. Just because someone made a bad choice or got unlucky doesn’t mean they should have no life. It’s a net benefit for society if everyone is afforded the opportunity to take risks and innovate!
Maybe you do possess superior decision making abilities compared to your peers, but if everyone was smart like you then you wouldn’t be a special cookie. Try to have some empathy :)
Winning should be rewarded, but losing shouldn’t be fatal.
I think they should be dischargeable in bankruptcy, provided you lost your credentials and required to enter a gap in your resume without explanation.