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RolStoppable said:
HylianSwordsman said:

You do know what country this is happening in, yes? It's the United States, our justice system is fucked beyond belief. There absolutely could have been other outcomes. He could have gotten off with just a few years or less, or gotten off with just a stern warning if he got the right judge.

Even for the USA, that would be extreme. A deadly car attack means at least one charge for murder, plus over a dozen of charges for attempted murder because he deliberately drove into a large group of people.

Not exactly. Most cases are handled by a jury of 12 randomly selected people and they all have to agree on the final verdict. In most cases the jury would say someone is guily of something for a car accident but it comes down to how the case is handled because they could end up saying that it wasnt intentional and letting the guy go.



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jason1637 said:
RolStoppable said:

Even for the USA, that would be extreme. A deadly car attack means at least one charge for murder, plus over a dozen of charges for attempted murder because he deliberately drove into a large group of people.

Not exactly. Most cases are handled by a jury of 12 randomly selected people and they all have to agree on the final verdict. In most cases the jury would say someone is guily of something for a car accident but it comes down to how the case is handled because they could end up saying that it wasnt intentional and letting the guy go.

So with such an extreme crime as this the chance of him getting a mild punishment is extremely low but it is still existing,that's a bit scary to think about.



jason1637 said:
RolStoppable said:

Even for the USA, that would be extreme. A deadly car attack means at least one charge for murder, plus over a dozen of charges for attempted murder because he deliberately drove into a large group of people.

Not exactly. Most cases are handled by a jury of 12 randomly selected people and they all have to agree on the final verdict. In most cases the jury would say someone is guily of something for a car accident but it comes down to how the case is handled because they could end up saying that it wasnt intentional and letting the guy go.

With a jury this could happen for many deadly car attacks, in many cases I wouldn't imply racism of the jury, but how good are the lawyers the defendant can afford, this is the true crookedness of US legal system, and not just the US one: a poor innocent can be very often screwed, a rich thug can quite often get away with murder.



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Curious on people's views regarding the student loan "crisis". I by no means have a perfect answer, nor do I even know if it is truly a crisis. As a society, however, we have deemed it as such.

In particular, for those who view that this debt should be wiped, I severely struggle with the concept of just wiping >$1T of debt.

For some people, they absolutely had to go into debt to attend college for numerous reasons (family issues, health issues, etc). For others, they chose to go to a private school that may have cost $50,000/year. The brunt majority I would argue, however, fit into a pool that is more along the lines of going to either a "state" school or a "University of State" school. I was around these people, and more specifically, I was one of these people. I'm by no means here to brag, as I absolutely had a relatively privileged childhood, but I was able to graduate through college with absolutely no debt. Had I received no assistance from my parents (allowance that I saved 90% of as a child, a high school graduation gift, and a one time college gift), my amount of debt would have been somewhere along the lines of $5,000 - $10,000.

So what? How does this have anything to do with people graduating with $50,000....$100,000....or more in student loans (I believe average is $37k)? The path I'm going to go down is that state & federal governments often already provide ample resources to get out of college with a minimal amount in loans.

The particular school I went to is approximately $10,000 per year for tuition, fees, and books. This would indicate a 4 year degree should run a total of $40,000. My particular state actually lets you go to college during your Junior & Senior year of high school if you so choose. The only criteria...you have to be top 1/3 of your class (Junior) or top 1/2 of your class (Senior). Once accepted, 100% of your tuition, fees, books, etc are paid for by the State. You are expected to take certain generals that are considered sufficient to satisfy your high school requirements (these, however, often pair pretty well with generals that are already required for college). If somebody were to do this both years, their total cost for a 4 year degree just went down to $20,000. In addition, it is relatively uncommon (other than for the severely poor students) to not receive at least $500-$1,000 per year in scholarships or grants (due to financial status). This knocks the cost down to $18-$19k. The final kicker is assuming you are working during college (one does have to pay for rent, gas, food, etc) and file your own taxes, there are tax credits offered by the federal government for $2,500/year (assuming you spent at least $4,000 on college). As I don't expect the majority of college students to be making $35-$40k per year, lets presume they are only getting $1,750/year back with this credit ($1,000 is refundable regardless of how much you paid in taxes, remainder can only refund the federal tax you paid). This removes an additional $3.5k for the remaining 2 years of college.

You are now down to a total cost of a college education of $14.5-15.5k. Assuming you had no savings leading up to college and are unable to save any of your job money, this is the amount of debt you would have with legislation currently in place.

So then, how is the average student loan sitting at $37k if the entire education should only cost $14.5-15.5k? It is largely not taking advantage of what is already provided to us (not going to college for Junior/Senior year; not filing tax return properly; not even signing up for a single scholarship even though there are HUNDREDS available at every single school). In addition to these, students have a tendency to want to enjoy an experience for college. This experience often means living a certain lifestyle where further loans are taken out to assist with their rent/student housing, travelling abroad, buying a nice car, etc.

So what is my proposed solution? Well for one, those who chose to get insane amount of student loans unfortunately need to live with their decision to sign the papers. It was often hundreds of small decisions on their part that led to their loans being substantially higher than the person next to them. I don't believe it is at all appropriate to just up and forgive these loans for all of these people. If there is an honest argument somebody can provide as to why this is acceptable, I'll counter and say why not just do this with mortgages as well. Many people struggle to make the payments required to live in their house, but you absolutely need to live somewhere.

Putting that aside, what about going forward? What can we do to help prevent this situation from getting worse than it already is? I personally think the answer is pretty simple - provide appropriate resources to TEACH students what is available to them to assist with the cost of college. Inform students about the college during high school option (my high school actually tried hiding that this was available as they lose funding from the state...fortunately we had heard of it from somebody else). Further inform students of all of the grants and scholarships available to them. Teach students about the tax refunds that are available to them when they go to college.

Maybe some people had better experiences, but I largely had to figure all of the above out on my own. Most people I told about the tax refund had absolutely no clue what I was talking about, and many of the people who knew I was going to college during high school didn't want to give up their high school experience.

If the average student loan after graduating was $15,000 (versus the current $37,000), I don't think we would be in a "crisis" at all. Generally speaking, people should be able to pay off a loan of that size within a few years of graduating school.



Money can't buy happiness. Just video games, which make me happy.

aalzamon said:
Curious on people's views regarding the student loan "crisis". I by no means have a perfect answer, nor do I even know if it is truly a crisis. As a society, however, we have deemed it as such.

My opinion is that your entire post is ludicrous and unreasonable and you should not expect that these costs would be representative for just about anyone, but hey, thats just me.



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the-pi-guy said:
Baalzamon said:
Curious on people's views regarding the student loan "crisis". I by no means have a perfect answer, nor do I even know if it is truly a crisis. As a society, however, we have deemed it as such.

In particular, for those who view that this debt should be wiped, I severely struggle with the concept of just wiping >$1T of debt.

For some people, they absolutely had to go into debt to attend college for numerous reasons (family issues, health issues, etc). For others, they chose to go to a private school that may have cost $50,000/year. The brunt majority I would argue, however, fit into a pool that is more along the lines of going to either a "state" school or a "University of State" school. I was around these people, and more specifically, I was one of these people. I'm by no means here to brag, as I absolutely had a relatively privileged childhood, but I was able to graduate through college with absolutely no debt. Had I received no assistance from my parents (allowance that I saved 90% of as a child, a high school graduation gift, and a one time college gift), my amount of debt would have been somewhere along the lines of $5,000 - $10,000.

So what? How does this have anything to do with people graduating with $50,000....$100,000....or more in student loans (I believe average is $37k)? The path I'm going to go down is that state & federal governments often already provide ample resources to get out of college with a minimal amount in loans.

First thing to point out is that different candidates have different views on it.  

Elizabeth Warren has a $50k cap for forgiveness, and only eligible for people making less than $100k.  

Baalzamon said:

The particular school I went to is approximately $10,000 per year for tuition, fees, and books. This would indicate a 4 year degree should run a total of $40,000. My particular state actually lets you go to college during your Junior & Senior year of high school if you so choose. The only criteria...you have to be top 1/3 of your class (Junior) or top 1/2 of your class (Senior). Once accepted, 100% of your tuition, fees, books, etc are paid for by the State. You are expected to take certain generals that are considered sufficient to satisfy your high school requirements (these, however, often pair pretty well with generals that are already required for college). If somebody were to do this both years, their total cost for a 4 year degree just went down to $20,000. In addition, it is relatively uncommon (other than for the severely poor students) to not receive at least $500-$1,000 per year in scholarships or grants (due to financial status). This knocks the cost down to $18-$19k. The final kicker is assuming you are working during college (one does have to pay for rent, gas, food, etc) and file your own taxes, there are tax credits offered by the federal government for $2,500/year (assuming you spent at least $4,000 on college). As I don't expect the majority of college students to be making $35-$40k per year, lets presume they are only getting $1,750/year back with this credit ($1,000 is refundable regardless of how much you paid in taxes, remainder can only refund the federal tax you paid). This removes an additional $3.5k for the remaining 2 years of college.

You are now down to a total cost of a college education of $14.5-15.5k. Assuming you had no savings leading up to college and are unable to save any of your job money, this is the amount of debt you would have with legislation currently in place.

A couple of things here:

-According to your criteria, only 1/3rd of a class could even do any of that.  That doesn't even consider that it might not even be possible to do that.  

For example, you're assuming that it's possible to take classes that match up for both.  My high school had special classes that were required for seniors, that were not something that would show up in a college curriculum. 

Beyond that you're assuming that every class could match up.  That's not likely to happen.  

Baalzamon said:

So then, how is the average student loan sitting at $37k if the entire education should only cost $14.5-15.5k? It is largely not taking advantage of what is already provided to us (not going to college for Junior/Senior year; not filing tax return properly; not even signing up for a single scholarship even though there are HUNDREDS available at every single school). In addition to these, students have a tendency to want to enjoy an experience for college. This experience often means living a certain lifestyle where further loans are taken out to assist with their rent/student housing, travelling abroad, buying a nice car, etc.

Even your last paragraph said your particular school would only allow the top 1/3rd to be able to take advantage of that.  

Even if someone was able to pull off your entire dream scenario, the vast majority of students are literally locked out of it.  Realistically even at the college you were mentioning, around $40,000 is what to expect.  

Baalzamon said:

So what is my proposed solution? Well for one, those who chose to get insane amount of student loans unfortunately need to live with their decision to sign the papers. It was often hundreds of small decisions on their part that led to their loans being substantially higher than the person next to them. I don't believe it is at all appropriate to just up and forgive these loans for all of these people. If there is an honest argument somebody can provide as to why this is acceptable, I'll counter and say why not just do this with mortgages as well. Many people struggle to make the payments required to live in their house, but you absolutely need to live somewhere.

Putting that aside, what about going forward? What can we do to help prevent this situation from getting worse than it already is? I personally think the answer is pretty simple - provide appropriate resources to TEACH students what is available to them to assist with the cost of college. Inform students about the college during high school option (my high school actually tried hiding that this was available as they lose funding from the state...fortunately we had heard of it from somebody else). Further inform students of all of the grants and scholarships available to them. Teach students about the tax refunds that are available to them when they go to college.

>So what is my proposed solution? 

The issue is that you're focusing on punishment, instead of trying to figure out what would improve people's lives and the development of the country. 

The difference between housing and education is that the US has developed a public education system, which has costs getting wildly out of hand.

>Putting that aside, what about going forward?

I agree that more should be done to educate people on their choices to make education cheaper, but none of that's a fix.  

The 1/3 (Junior) and 1/2 (Senior) was a limitation that really didn't impact the majority of people who ultimately attended college anyways. Those who didn't qualify for this frequently weren't able to perform well enough to stay in college to begin with (which is an ENTIRELY different issue with our society). And the program lined up quite well so that both college liberal arts requirements and high school requirements were fully met. So I'm not quite certain how the vast majority are locked out of this?

I also miscalculated my tax refund info before. As college begins in Fall and ends in Spring, even attending 2 years will result in 3 tax credits, not 2. This will further reduce the costs by $1,750.

While I'm perfectly content discussing the matter with you, I rather lose this willingness when my 2 comments I've received pretty clearly say this is a "dream scenario" (EVERY single person I know in my college program qualified for this exact same stuff), as well as one comment further above indicating my numbers are ridiculous (while failing to post ANY sort of justification as to what makes these numbers ridiculous when they are very real, and very available to the population attending college).

Relative to you saying I'm suggesting a punishment, what about making somebody pay for something they signed up for is a punishment? When you bring a tv up to the checkout desk and they make you pay, is it a punishment? What about when you buy a car that you agree to pay for over say 5 years. Is that a punishment when you ultimately have to make payments for this, and society doesn't provide help? While it certainly sucks ass (I have to make loan payments and absolutely don't love it), I'm paying for what I received. People occasionally make mistakes in life, and it is perfectly reasonable to have to deal with the consequences of these mistakes. I absolutely don't believe relieving all of the student loans will drastically improve our society. People have a tendency to spend approximately 100% of the money they bring in (generally in the 1-2 weeks after they get it). I'd argue what is much more likely to happen is people will no longer have student loan payments, and thus will just buy bigger houses, newer cars, and newer gadgets with this newfound money. Will this technically bump our economy? It certainly will. Will people be better off? Unlikely. They will continue to live paycheck to paycheck, but simply have a different loan they have to service instead.

One thing I can say with absolute certainty, is I have never in my life met somebody who had an unsustainable amount of student loan debt that didn't have the choice not to have that amount be unsustainable. Whether it was a poor career choice, going on an expensive spring break trip every year, buying a new car while in college, the list goes on and on, there were many choices these people made that ultimately resulted in these student loans being a problem. Many people would probably even be surprised to discover they could make substantially more with a 2 year degree (a good friend of mine happens to make wellllllll in excess of myself and is well over $100k/year only about 5-6 years out of school). At my last job, the majority of our field employees earned substantially more than I did as an accountant, and they were pipefitters (requires a short night school program).

Once again, none of this fixes the current "issue". I can keep saying they just need to live with their mistakes. But what does this mean? It means maybe they need to work a second job for a couple of years and pay their debt down a little. Maybe they need to go "donate" plasma to earn some extra cash. Maybe they need to stop buying a new smart phone every year, going to the bars every weekend, a concert every month etc until their loans are more reasonable.

Just like the rest of decisions adults make, they need to live with them, and do what it takes to solve it. This won't solve 100% of the issues (no solution seems to in today's society as there are just too many one off scenarios), but it absolutely would fix the majority of the debt problem.



Money can't buy happiness. Just video games, which make me happy.

I received effectively the exact answer I expected to receive here though, and it's quite clearly one (like many) scenarios where neither side is going to change their opinion.

One side (generally the "right") wants these people to be held accountable for their actions and deal with their student loans on their own.

The other side (generally the "left") want to have the federal government assist with this colossal societal screwup.

While neither side is arguably "good" with money, it always irks the living hell out of me when the very people saying they desperately need help from the government are going out to eat, buying new cars, using new cell phones, etc as if every one of these things is absolutely a God given entitlement and the assistance is needed so these things can continue to happen.



Money can't buy happiness. Just video games, which make me happy.

Baalzamon said:
I received effectively the exact answer I expected to receive here though, and it's quite clearly one (like many) scenarios where neither side is going to change their opinion.

One side (generally the "right") wants these people to be held accountable for their actions and deal with their student loans on their own.

The other side (generally the "left") want to have the federal government assist with this colossal societal screwup.

While neither side is arguably "good" with money, it always irks the living hell out of me when the very people saying they desperately need help from the government are going out to eat, buying new cars, using new cell phones, etc as if every one of these things is absolutely a God given entitlement and the assistance is needed so these things can continue to happen.

More like, they want to make the students accountable for the excessive greed of their schools, which they fully support. After all, uneducated people tend to vote for the republicans...

The problem however is in my opinion more that the left (as you call them) concentrate too much on the students and not enough on structural changes in those colleges and their ballooning administrations (which, like I explained in a previous post, rose by over 1000% over the last 25 years for no good reasons).



Unpopular opinion: Every American should invest in the education of the young future through higher taxes so it can get cheaper to learn and give more people the opportunity to do so.



You guys hear about KKKlantifa assaulting a gay Asian American journalist (Andy Ngo I think his name is?) and giving him a hemorrhage, during pride month, for daring to report on their Anarcho-Fascist practices today? Honestly, you can't make this shit up..

I'd be a little concerned about them if they weren't all scrawny little vegans. XD

Last edited by DarthMetalliCube - on 30 June 2019

 

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