Diverging paths: KDE Plasma Desktop vs. Unity - <AUTHOR> http://netrunner-mag.com/?p=2541

<comment><USER2> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:netrunn...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:netrunner- mag.com/%3Fp%3D2541&hl=en&strip=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> FWIW, I installed the KDE version of Linux Mint on my desktop machine the other day (Cinnamon was still a little too rough around the edges) and I've been quite pleased. The only trouble I've run into is that KDE is still rather resource-intensive, and this machine is quite old. I absolutely hated KDE 4 when it was first released, and I didn't love it when I gave it another shot about a year ago. But it may have finally converted me now!

The ability to configure things is important to me. However, what is more important is an efficient workflow that makes simple things quick and easy. I don't want a giant, full-screen, tablet-style main menu on my desktop or laptop. In fact, what I want is a Windows 95-style menu, even the "enhanced" Vista/7-style menu is too bloated and weird to use. The default menu in KDE is awful, but, and here's where configuration comes in, I can change it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like the review. I did not read the KDE part, but I read through the Unity part because I use it and am wondering if it is just me or if others are annoyed by some weirdness of Unity. It turns out the author remarked immediately the ergonomic gaps. I couldn't say it better so here the quotes:

"[..] Unity takes a very weird stance when it comes to Windows management: if there's more than a single instance [of a process/window] it will throw you into an exposé-like view with the corresponding windows (the rest fades out). [..] It's a very disorienting interface that requires to travel long distances with the cursor. Why is it disorienting? The position of the window preview you selected in the exposé-view is not entirely related with the actual position of the window, moreover, all other Windows pop back adding even more noise.[..]" - this is exactly what I experience. And using Alt-Tab is NOT better if you have several terminal windows opened!

"[..] Remember I mentioned Unity's approach to menubars being like Apple's? It only appears on hover. Isn't that a little cryptic? Moreover, it automatically makes it impossible to know if there's a menubar to begin with. Anytime a user installs a new application he/she is forced to check manually if there's a menubar. It also makes it impossible to aim for the desired menu, you got to move your mouse to the top, wait for the menubar, and then visually search for the menu you want, then move your cursor again and then click on it. Why hide it? Is not like Canonical is doing something with all that space[..] It also cuts down the name of the application. Considering there's no visual link between the menubar and the app it corresponds to (let alone the window), isn't that just the exact opposite of what makes sense?[..]" - And some applications do not follow the menu on the top and instead show the menu in the window (LibreOffice, which I rely on daily).

I do not want to complain about customizability of Unity. Most of the things I like. The standard experience just works. But the two points above are just irritating. And because I am using only the LTS of Ubuntu I hope these issues will be fixed in 1204 LTS.

<comment><USER5> When I make a new instance of a window, I don't find that I am 'thrown' into an expose-like view. The window comes up as it would in any case. If I click on the dash icon for a program which already has multiple windows, I actually find it helpful to be presented with a choice between them, which is what this does.

Use alt-` to switch between windows of the same program, without using that feature. With this minor adjustment from the Windows routine it is more pleasant.

I agree it is a little cryptic, and overly concerned with space saving, only to show menu bars on hover and otherwise to show the window title. But, I think it is not an actual problem after a few seconds seeing how it works.

On the other hand: I still have problems with dash coming up very slowly, and with windows nondeterministically moving to the wrong monitor, and with power usage on laptops. It isn't as though it's perfect. But I think the design is basically OK and Ubuntu is having more trouble on the technical end of things, with endless technical papercuts that never get addressed but always get their issues closed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The third option is managing activities. I think the set of users that make > any use of this features tends to zero

Hell yeah! _Does anyone know how to effectively use KDE's activities?_

When I tried to use it, I was expecting something that would remember opened apps and the placement of their windows, which is what my intuition said "activities" should be like, a set of programs and an arrangement of their windows that represents a particular "activity", like having a PDF of SICP opened on half of my screen, a Racket repl on the other and a browser with some specific tabs on my other display, but if KDE's activities can give me this, I haven't figured out any way in hell to get it to do this. And if it's supposed to do something else entirely, then no documentation or tutorial ever managed to explain to me what it does in a way I could understand. Don't get me wrong, I love KDE and it's the single Linux DE I can stand besides xfce, but it has a bunch of "wtf" features that I just stay away from, and they made them attract the attention of new users in a way that makes them go through hours of WTFs before finally abandoning the feature and deciding never to touch that part of KDE again.

<comment><USER7> It's strange, because your first description is exactly what it does. In each activity you can add a set of widgets and use certain applications, you can even configure the way the desktop is shown (Search and Run, Folderview) differently for each view.

I usually use two different Activities named Work and Fun. In Work I have my text editors, konsole with multiple tabs, a couple of widgets related to those apps, my work email and maybe some books for reference. In Fun I have the web browser, Ksudoku opened and widgets with jokes, rss feeds, email, weather information, etc.

It's easy to notice what I have configured: a distraction-free environment to focus on my work and a distraction-full one to relax; just two clicks between the them! Couple this with the Pommodoro technique (25 minutes, 5 minutes play) and KDE has made me a very productive and happy worker.

Hope my example helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Man, KDE has come so, so, so, so far since a year or two ago. With a bit of tweaking, with a few different Plamsa theme, Oxygen, and Oxygen color schemes, you can customize it if you like and it looks great out of the box even if you don't. Between that, Qt5, SDDM and plans shaping up for KF5, I'm really excited about the direct of KDE Plasma.

KWin has more features than Mutter and is more stable than compiz. It has several interesting features related to the application menus, Plasmoids are actually fairly nifty and useful if you're into that sort of thing. And to top it off, a default Kubuntu install uses a little less than .5GB of RAM at the plasma desktop.</comment>


Show HN: Mood – Simple and clean mood diary with photo and video - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1454627645 <comment><USER2> this reminds me of another art ios app that showed various watercolored circles that represented your mood..

what was cool about that..is that you could see a macro-pointillist view of the whole year.

Does anyone remember its name?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you looking this.

MOODA by OLIVESTONE Lab. [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mooda/id1476256748](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mooda/id1476256748)

<comment><USER2> nope.. but close.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe this one. This app has visualize mood in year.

See 7th screenshot on App Store.

Daylio Journal

[https://apps.apple.com/app/daylio- journal/id1194023242](https://apps.apple.com/app/daylio-journal/id1194023242)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GitHub Pull Requests in Visual Studio Code - <AUTHOR> https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/09/10/introducing-github-pullrequests <comment><USER2> This is a feature that might pull me away from the JetBrains tool suite.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this is incredible. Great work!</comment>


15 Moonshots in AI and Bio to work on in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@HarshSikka/15-ideas-and-moonshots-to-work-on-in-2019-a6967f739cce <comment><USER2> Here is the moonshot AI funtion I would like:

Knowledge Capture and Cataloger:

Basically an AI that acts as an intelligent Evernote/Notebook where it will ask you to explain things - you will explain it, and it will capture what you described - and you can tell it to keep links and information regarding any subject.

Basically the "Captain's Log" from star trek - but it will then add depth and information and links it finds based on what you put in there. (I just hope to god FB never attempts to provide this)

<comment><AUTHOR> WOW! I actually basically meant something similar with the point about extending learning bullet in the post, but some of the features you've outlined are killer. That would be soooo cool

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Title could be "15 Moonshots to work on in ML/AI-Bio space"

<comment><AUTHOR> Edited, thank you!</comment></comment>


Developing and running a Java EE Hello World application - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.jetbrains.net/intellij/Developing_and_running_a_Java_EE_Hello_World_application <comment><USER2> I've also done some JEE quite a long time ago and I hated every second of it. I'm not sure however if my experience is representative of the the Java community. There is no problem with the language itself nor the VM which is also working quite fine (while taking a lot of RAM). But I really have a problem with the community, everything seems over-engineered and super complicated in Java, even with simple things.

Nothing works by default, you always have to include stuff here and there, write one or two xml files before anything would work, I'm fine with configuration but I should at least work by default. Maven is a nightmare to use, it's so complicated I would generally not use it. I would just like a package manager which is only doing packages like any other language.

The main problem with the Java community in my own opinion is they are building pyramids while other languages are building stuff out of bricks, it's the opposite of the UNIX philosophy.

<comment><USER3> > they are building pyramids while other languages are building stuff out of > bricks

Pyramids are engineering feats, Java EE people are building stuff which look like works from M. C. Escher, it bends your mind when you try to understand the code :)

Also a little anecdote to the complexity of enterprise stuff: at the company I worked before, they were writing an entire persistence framework from scratch (with annotations instead of xml) so they could get away from hibernate.

<comment><USER4> Also well known as the Enterprise Software Engineer Employment Guarantee Scheme

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Except that that's not just a "Hello Word" page.

That's routing to the right page, transaction and session control, storing the text of the message in a separate class than the one that returns the response, and using a template to return the resulting HTML.

Looking at the section with the actual example code in it, you could do it in about half that, if you wanted a simple version that just returned "Hello World".

If you don't want routing, templating, separation of concerns, etc. then you wouldn't be using a framework like that, of course.

<comment><USER6> This does almost everything (and sending it to another class is pretty trivial): [http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/0.10/quickstart/](http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/0.10/quickstart/)

<comment><USER5> Yup. And by the time you've done all of that, it's not vastly smaller than the code in the original example.

(Also, your setup is spread across every class registering itself, rather than in one central XML file that tells you all of your routing.)

<comment><USER6> No, it's usually done in a separate file containing all the routing (in most Python frameworks)

And no unreadable and overcomplicated XML for configuration, thank you very much

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Taking a cheap jab at Java EE just because their "Hello World" introduction article is a bit lengthy is bad form. Judging by the insulting "kids" reference in your title, Java EE has a completely different mindset than you are used to and the target audience doesn't include you.

That doesn't mean the millions of other developers and billions of other platforms running Java are inferior.

<comment><AUTHOR> At a previous employer, we've migrated a complex J2EE (with EJB 2.0 and such) E-Banking system to use only Jetty and JDBC directly. No one in operations noticed the difference.

But the developers did. Oh they were about 5x as productive afterwards. With no missing features.

Perhaps I'm not included in the target audience. But if E-Banking can do it, what remains of the "target audience" ?

<comment><USER8> Agreed. It's also possible to use frameworks such as Spring Data/Boot, Roo or Grails to get started really quickly - a bit like the django/rails crowd. Lots of interesting things happening in Java world at the moment.

It seems like originally Java drew from the mega complex enterprise application world influenced by people building large scale C++ apps etc so were hardly aware of the complexity they were adding. Now there is a lot of influence from modern web frameworks to quickly developing and expanding an app.

Touch to maintain some of those old Java apps though from 5-10 years ago in some cases.

<comment><USER9> The problem with Grails is, like you said, it focuses on getting started quickly, rather then producing a maintainable and performant codebase. I mean, Hibernate is very complex in itself, and adding another layer (GORM) on top of it won't make things better. If I were to start a new java project, I would probably choose Dropwizard ([http://dropwizard.io/](http://dropwizard.io/)), which is more a collection of libraries then a framework.

<comment><USER10> The business model of the Grails development has always been about integrating various existing software into one branded product for "full-stack" development, such as Groovy and Spring. The Spring and Grails crowds inside Vmware seem to do everything together now (e.g. SpringOne2GX conferences) so I suspect they're now already one group, and that it's the Grails project that's taken over Spring just like they previously took over Groovy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> And yes kids, enterprise applications at large companies are exactly as hard to maintain as you may have guessed (after this article).

Old legacy codebases in Java are one of the worst things I've ever seen. (spiked with old stuff nobody maintains anymore and also nobody pays you to upgrade, such fun times)

</comment><comment><USER11> Setting up any web stack is a pain in the ass and probably just as long of a tutorial. For example, write out a tutorial which goes from base Ubuntu install to "hello world" on Rails, I bet it's just as long or longer. I suppose it depends on how much detail you want to include. There are just more "one click" install options for other stacks.

<comment><USER12> How about:

        apt-get install php5 apache
        echo "Hello World" > /var/www/index.php

The end.

<comment><USER13> And are you going to use this process for development work? I doubt that.

Plus, in your example, at the end you're stuck with PHP. I'd rather be stuck with Java EE :)

<comment><USER12> I like how you upped snark at one language with snark at another ;)

<comment><USER13> It seemed fitting :))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think the point here is to get simple web apps up and running quickly. It is to build large scale systems that are stable. So yes, there will be overhead and lots of boiler plate stuff. Even projects like Django still have this overhead.

</comment><comment><USER15> At first I thought this was a big wtf but really there isn't much to it. It is a rather good, detailed step by step documentation of how to set up a hello world example. +1

</comment><comment><USER16> This is not a simple Hello World app, it's a minimally viable end to end EE stack using one particular combination of many available technologies, intended to be deployed within an app server. And I am pretty sure OP knows it if he's deploying apps with "just Jetty and JDBC". Big deal; so what? Why the snarky post?

</comment><comment><USER17> Is the point of this saying that J2EE is bloated and that simple operations are made seemingly impossible?

Of course you wouldn't write an "hello world" in j2ee, what would be the point?

All that stuff makes it easier later to write more complex stuff, so I really don't see the point of this submission.

<comment><AUTHOR> > All that stuff makes it easier later to write more complex stuff

I sincerely doubt that. I've seen E-Banking systems run on Jetty with JDBC directly. No fancy JSRs were needed.

Btw: J2EE was indeed even more bloated than JavaEE. I don't think that anyone would defend J2EE nowadays, not even the folks behind JavaEE

<comment><USER18> Truth be told, the code quality of electronic banking is often rather questionable. Probably they developed a prototype without any bells and whistles (and without proper guards against code injection, without support for distributed operation) and then were forced to use it as the base of the real product.

<comment><USER19> One another reason for loads of standardization in JEE is with performance and scalability guarantees which are not provided by developers but by application container vendors.

Writing an E-Banking application on JDBC is certainly possible , but do we write code to make performance guarantees,for transactional isolation,maintainability or do we only write code for the business we need to attend, this is the question that leads to JPA [or JEE] .

JEE stack does involve a steeper learning curve but is a different one indeed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I laughed at the end. Reads like a badly written TV script, with so much buildup, tension and all kinds of weird characters in the beginning and middle of the show, then at the end comes a huge anticlimactic duh. "Hello Word!".

</comment><comment><USER19> i don't think the point of the article is to introduce JEE , its rather in the very first line :

>>"This tutorial is intended to help you get started with developing applications for Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) in IntelliJ IDEA. "

They intend to show all JEE bells and whistles in one tutorial so that , people can look at this and know what they need to do to work on IntelliJ developing JEE application.

Not starting out on JEE itself.Which to be honest might require more of a different learning curve ,

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't do web apps with java, so I honestly don't know if it's the proper way to do it, a satire, or if there is a more straightforward way.

Especially, I don't see why one has to write both the class HelloWorldServlet and HelloWorldBean; couldn't one just inherit from one class or implement one interface?

<comment><USER22> You could just have the servlet write "Hello World" directly.

The Bean is not really useful in the example -- it's mean as a stand in, to know how to write one for your business logic needs, e.g user or product bean etc. (Btw, beans are just lightweight classes used mostly as structs, with getters and setters).

<comment><USER23> _> >You could just have the servlet write "Hello World" directly._

It's been years since I've had to write a Java webapp, but from what I remember using the servlet code to directly write the webpage output was considered bad. That was the job of the jsp file. e.g., "views" in bottlepy and Rails: [http://guides.rubyonrails.org/layouts_and_rendering.html](http://guides.rubyonrails.org/layouts_and_rendering.html)

<comment><USER22> Yes, it was considered bad style because of separation of concerns etc, but nothing necessitated JSP, you could just use servlets and any of tons of template libraries.

And for a hello world, a servlet would do just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Java main feature: fast on JVM, not on the dev. I've worked for 5 months to make a 4 pages - 3 grid & upload form using GWT, Spring, SOAP.. seriously?? It's a different stack but still it's overkill. You know what is the best part? our app is not even scaled. Why are we bothering then? Do we crunch tons of data to justify the need of a JVM? No. Is speed really a concern? It seems not.. I didn't even hear we are doing caching. It's only transform database beans to DTO and modify for display. Java is not a technical requirement here. It's just a lazy business standardisation solution.

To me It's like, the enterprise wants a flyswatter to kill a fly but you end up with a bazooka factory and the fly dies of age. But the bazooka factory is very efficient on the CPU. That's the important part you know..

</comment><comment><USER25> And now kids let's build something little more complicated. App with distributed transactions in cluster (each step on different node).

Full JEE stack is terrible if you would like to write sad CRUD applications. But if you need something more than simple access to DB it is very good solution.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think the usual way would be to use JSF and CDI beans instead of using EJBs and Servlets though. The only thing that is quite annoying is creating the web.xml from scratch for the first time. The shown approach is rather bad for simple (and modern) Hello World.

</comment><comment><USER27> The main problem with JavaEE is hardly the development part. It's the maintenance and support part. When relatively inexperienced programmers write complex applications (because it makes this easy) and then something goes "wrong" in this pyramid of abstractions and layers and layers of libraries / frameworks interacting with one another and the application servers. That is when it gets interesting. Yeah there are great production performance monitoring tools like Dynatrace but it's not a silver bullet.

</comment><comment><USER28> Ahh Enterprise. Protip for anyone applying for an enterprise job: just copy- paste [https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...](https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpriseEdition) when they do the mandatory fizzbuzz test in the job interview. And then complain in the github issue tracker if you didn't get the job.

<comment> zero-g There definitely should be some IoC container.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Apples and oranges. Its not _supposed_ to be a small app, it's a skeleton being built to support something much heavier.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm a complete foreigner to web development and JVM. I've been dabbling in setting up Clojure projects a bit at home. It took a one command line call approximately (lein something-something) to get the more or less equivalent web stack up and running (to my understanding). After reading this, I suddenly understand how awesome that was.

</comment><comment><USER31> Next time, kids, we'll do the same without support from our fancy IDE! O wait, no. Let's _not_ do that.

</comment><comment><USER32> Lackey: "Boss! Boss! Our system is a hopelessly complicated, over-engineered monstrosity! The "Hello World" tutorial is 20 pages! Our business is doomed!"

Boss: "Calm down Jenkins. Just write 'Enterprise' in front of everything, the suits will love it!"

<comment><USER6> Heh it works for IBM

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's way easier to run a Hello World web app with Netbeans!! In fact, a new web app project by default creates a project with default settings/xml with index web page saying "Hello world" \- it can't get any simpler than that! give it a try :-)

</comment><comment><USER34> I used to _joke_ that "hello world" in Java was twenty files and two security holes.

</comment><comment><USER35> This looks like a deliberately anti-java post or something taken completely out of context.

</comment><comment><USER36> Ha! What a load of crap! I can't see this "Java" catching on...

</comment><comment><USER37> Alternatively, here's Adam Bien's (JSON) version of Hello World with JEE:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zESNqWcY0pY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zESNqWcY0pY)

</comment><comment><USER38> I think as much as anything this shows how using GUIs for complex things can just have the effect of making them exponentially more complex.

</comment><comment><USER39> 2/3rds of the page before you start writing code. -_- And people wonder why it's going extinct...

</comment><comment><USER40> I flew an 747 last week to go to the store round the corner, didn't make sense either

</comment><comment><USER41> Not sure whether to laugh or cry.</comment>


Wikipedia is now a client-side app - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page <comment><USER2> Does that mean mediawiki runs entirely from the client now?</comment>


Helium – A floating browser window for OS X - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JadenGeller/Helium <comment><USER2> This is unlikely to reach the front page (because of the time at which it was posted), but this is very cool. Perhaps you should resubmit at a more active time?

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah its a web view in a window with a dialog to enter a url.

This is the project everyone makes when they discover the web view control.....</comment>


Tesla Falls After Missing Analyst's Estimate for Sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-11-05/tesla-posts-third-quarterly-profit-on-model-s-sedan-sales-boost

<comment><USER2> Perhaps the analyst was wrong...

All this smells like the powers that be have had enough of this new fangled technology. Time to shut it down.

<comment><USER3> Nobody's shutting anything down. It's just a price adjustment reflecting new information which has lowered expectations.</comment></comment>


Twitter's new 'Safety Council' makes a mockery of free speech - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/02/twitters-new-safety-council-makes-a-mockery-of-free-speech/ <comment><USER2> Twitter is not bound by free speech. They can create whatever rules and restrictions they desire for their platform.

They are also not a government entity and not arresting people for violating their restrictions.

Ultimately this is not a free speech issue, other than the disastrous misunderstanding of what free speech means and what it does not.

That being said, they have to be careful from a PR standpoint if they're going to make pro-free-speech statements but enact restrictions counter to what they proclaim. However, there's no evidence that simple "disagreements" or "alternate viewpoints" are going to get censored, most of the horrendous stuff seen on Twitter does not fall under those labels whatsoever.</comment>


In 'Steve Jobs,' Tolerating Tech's Unpleasant Visionaries - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/technology/in-steve-jobs-tolerating-techs-unpleasant-visionaries.html <comment><AUTHOR> Thought this was the most interesting part of the review:

<< When Mr. Jobs harangues his staff, when he puts the company ahead of his supposed friends, when he shows little regard for his family in the service of building what's next, he implicitly holds an ace card with the audience who knows how things eventually turned out. Sure, he may have been terrible to be around, but in the end, wasn't he right about the importance of that dent in the universe? And if he hadn't been as obnoxious about his aims, would the dent have been as large? >></comment>


U.S. Student Debt in 'Serious Delinquency' Tops $166B - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/u-s-student-debt-in-serious-delinquency-tops-166-billion <comment><USER2> From a European perspective I can only shake my head at this.

It doesn't seem like a good idea at all to indebt a significant part of the young population (which I presume creates a lot of avoidable stress) while the rich gain in wealth and power year after year. But I guess longer-term thinking has been thrown overboard in economic decision/policy making anyway, because that would make the numbers not grow fast enough.

Recently I'm under the impression that American society has been tearing itself apart more than is healthy, damaging social cohesion to a great deal. Good luck building an advanced society on distrust and inequality though...

<comment><USER3> Don't mean to sound defensive (I'm not American), and I mostly agree with you.

But, from a non-European perspective, Europe doesn't seem to be doing well? It seems the EU is slowly disintegrating, and the monetary union isn't working. Also the political landscape seems to be in turmoil as well.

<comment><USER4> Also non-American and non-European here. My impression is that the EU is getting itself into a huge mess mainly due to abused good intentions taking in immigrants and as a byproduct of the GFC and Middle East's proxy American x Russian war.

While the Americans seem to not be operating as a democracy for a while and are instead a Corporocracy. It became fairly obvious after the GFC. The three "super powers" in the world are not democracies.

<comment><USER5> First of all, a lot of those arriving and asking for asylum are sent back because they don't qualify.

Moving on, we Europeans are making a decent profit from selling weapons to the Middle East and African countries. We might as well take on those refugees driven out by the violence our weapons cause.

Europe's history, even the years since WWII, is full of migrations: Post-war displacement affected more than 10 million people, refugees from East to West Germany, Brits fleeing the rain for sunny France and Spain (they are a few hundred thousands), Hungary 1956 dispersed 200,000 hungarians of which 70,000 crossed this little bridge [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%BCcke_von_Andau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%BCcke_von_Andau) and the last decade saw a massive flow of young people from southern Europe to the north which causes long-lasting problems for the southern countries. The list goes and and will go on. Some EU countries have 10% or more of EU- nationals in their population which in my eyes will become a hot topic in terms of higher level elections as right now you are only allowed to participate in local elections if you are not a native.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Education is important. Access to education is important. But our current system of giving out student loans with no regard to if the student will ever have a realistic ability to repay borders on predatory.

If we can't do anything to solve that portion of the problem, we should at least restrict the mandatory fees that are tacked on for non instructional purposes. No student should have to pay for decades to prop up with school's sports ambitions. For every Alabama that makes a profit off of sports, there are dozens of Georgia States that impose ridiculous mandatory fees on students to balance the budget of the athletics department.

Athletics are easy to pick on because they're the most visible but most schools have a whole list of these non instructional fees that students must pay, in most cases, go into debt to pay or be denied access to education.

After removing the mandatory fees, also limit how much of the tuition can be used for non instructional purposes. Every institution has overhead that must exist to keep things operational but there must be a limit to how much or we're once again either denying access to education or condemning students to an overwhelming debt burden.

Instruction of course isn't the only mission of most universities. Research is important. Extension is important. There are many worthwhile activities universities engage in that should continue but not at the expense of access to instruction.

edit: spacing

<comment><USER7> People have been fine with Medicade/Medicare spelling out costs for services and such they should be willing to accept the same in higher education to obtain a Federally backed loan.

Schools will trip over themselves to offer degree programs to meet Federal Assistance requirements. Each degree, each course credit leading to that degree, should all be subject to review on a periodic basis to insure that the needs of the country as a whole are being supported. Colleges which fall outside the loan guarantees will obviously find methods to insure students can attend, by steering endowment funds and sponsorships.

<comment><USER8> > each course credit ... should all be subject to review on a periodic basis > ... needs of the country

This sounds horrifying. You want every change of a course to go via some central bureaucracy for approval? This bureaucracy will be staffed by ideologically neutral disinterested angels, regardless of which party is in power?

I think there's a much more free-market solution here. Cap student loan payments at 15% of taxable income, written off after 20 years. Then they can never be a crushing burden, and lenders will become very picky about who (and for what course, and where) they make loans to.

And 17-year-olds will be presented with highly relevant individualised information about the likely outcomes of different options. And it'll also create some jobs for the coming glut of machine-learning people, to make these predictions...

<comment><USER9> The predictable outcome will be a glut of professionals with high-prospect degrees which will actually drive wages down in those fields, while useful- but-low-prospect careers - nursing, the arts, teaching - will continue to be underfunded and underpaid.

There's already more than enough "ideologically neutral disinterested" distortion of social value created by so-called free markets everywhere else in the economy. If free markets were going to solve university education they'd have done it by now - just as they've been promising to for decades now.

<comment><USER10> > If free markets were going to solve university education they'd have done it > by now - just as they've been promising to for decades now.

The market in university education is not free, though. There are significant distortions induced by the various loan and scholarship policies enforced at both the federal and state level.

Has "the free market" been promising to solve university education? Is such a thing even an entity capable of making a promise? As far as I can tell, it's totally uninterested in doing so. Most reputable educational institutions are not for profit. The for profit ones seem almost entirely taken with the problem of bilking students and taxpayers by providing shoddy goods at outrageous prices and exploiting the student loan regime and ignorant customers. The university education system and the free market are, as far as I can tell, basically uninvolved with one another.

FWIW, I don't think the free market would solve university education either, for entirely foreseeable reasons. In a completely free market, universities and lenders would bet on the affluent, and the poor would be left out in the cold to an even greater extent than they currently are. But on the other hand, it's hard to blame the free market for the current state of affairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is so much waste in universities: bloated admin/it staff , libraries filled with journals/magazines that no one reads, tenure system that doesn't allow you to downsize departments that have no students. Tuition can be reduced, however there is no incentive to do it since students can easily get loans.

<comment><USER12> Right. It's become a government backed bubble. Somehow we need to pop it softly. I'm sympathetic to all the current student debt holders and providing relief to them but if we do that without putting and end to these guaranteed loans we're just perpetuating (and making worse) the problem.

Doing something like making community college and trade school level degrees free and leaving everything else to private loans sorta makes sense. (Arguably 80% of university graduates really didn't need their degree for their job.)

<comment><USER13> There is a rather simple way of stopping the ever growing tuition bubble, one that is employed in the Netherland, but I feel like it won't be popular in the US: Cap the tuition a college is allowed to charge and restrict them from charging additional fees.

<comment><USER14> Actually, the simplest way to put downward pressure on tuition in the US is to allow the loans to be dischargeable in bankruptcy.

<comment><USER15> Won't people then plan to go bankrupt? Although perhaps that will allow a better equilibrium.

<comment><USER16> No, being bankrupt is definitely not an enjoyable state to be in, even is your debts are discharged, though.

What is _does_ mean, however, is that no sane entity will then continue giving out loans for someone to go $75k in debt to go to cooking school.

<comment><USER17> You mean _culinary science_ !

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Let it burn down. No one should pay back their student loan debt. Seriously, just stop. This is a scheme in which they've fucked over a large portion of the population with the skyrocketing prices of education. Further, this education is the regularly accepted means of increasing your production. Society says you have to do this, and then continuously increases the price, without reason.

The gist of this is; some shithead, many years ago decided to increase his bottom lines by fucking with future generations and our ability to output... when they started this whole fucking problem, and you know what? Let it burn to the ground.

You know who's not gonna lose a bunch of money? The people in student debt, we already fucking have.

<comment><USER19> >No one should pay back their student loan debt. Seriously, just stop.

Sorry. But you took a debt, you pay it back. Integrity isn't outdated.

I agree that the idea and industry behind "13th grade" is dumb. Obviously not every kid should be encouraged to take on debt to go to college. But "stop paying your debts" is a bad message imo.

<comment><USER20> Let's take the morality out of it. It's been injected in there for the benefit of the lenders.

They charge an interest rate to cover their risk. Right now, with the fact that debt holders cannot default, they are getting an unfair deal. Defaulting on the debt and refusing to pay effectively triggers the risk that they were charging interest on.

Like strikers refusing to work until better working conditions are provided, so too are debtors withholding payment doing something noble.

<comment><USER21> Just because loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy doesn't mean they are risk free. Some people die before repaying their debts, some people leave the country or otherwise become impossible to track down. In these cases, the bank eats the cost of the loan and has to make it up on other loans. risk is limited not eliminated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you add up the total cost of all education institutions in the US, multiply by 4 years, then build a payment structure based on that number, there is simply not enough income left over in the corhort of new grads (first 10 years out of school) to pay the debt service.

The problem has nothing to do with liberal art majors, or irresponsible borrowing.

The problem is entirely driven by an excessive cost structure of both public and private institutions.

People like the founder of Lambda School understand the problem and will be the solution.

<comment><USER23> Lambda School isn't exactly cheap. 17% of 2 years salary (edit) is capped at $30k. I paid less than that in tuition for 4 years of in-state tuition at a top 10 public school.

<comment><USER24> Read there ISA, there is a cap, it's at 30k. You only pay if you make a salary greater than 50k a year. It's also six months full time, intensive, and targeted. They feel it's their duty to help you find a job, and have found a job (>50k) for 100% of their first cohort. Find me a college with similar numbers.

[ISA FAQ]([https://lambdaschool.com/faq/](https://lambdaschool.com/faq/))

<comment><USER23> I believe Lambda School is effective, though something about being alone at home in front of my computer for 12-15 hours/day for 6 months straight, even with remote office hours and chatting with other students, makes me think I'd feel extremely lonely.

<comment><USER24> It's an 8 hour day with a lunch break. 11am-8pm ET, If you want people, you can always go to the local coffeeshop, library etc.

I agree colleges killer feature for a young person is networking, friendship, and dating. You just have to find alternative places to get it.

<comment><USER25> 8 hours of lectures? Then more time on computer for homework/project work?

<comment><USER24> It's an hour of reading/ a small code exercise, two hours of lecture, lunch, a small project and a brief meeting in a smaller group.

It's equivalent to a 40 hour work week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Auto loans are looking interesting, too.

* $1.27T of outstanding debt.

* Subprime share of that fell to 22% but because so many loans are being created, total number of subprime borrowers (SBPs) is now at all-time highs.

* 8% of SBPs are seriously delinquent. Cycle low was 6% in 2012. Peaked at 10% in 2010.

* Increasing share of prime loans is offsetting the deteriorating SBP picture.

* "Although rising overall delinquency rates remain below 2010 peak levels, there were over 7 million Americans with auto loans that were 90 or more days delinquent at the end of 2018. That is more than a million more troubled borrowers than there had been at the end of 2010 when the overall delinquency rates were at their worst since auto loans are now more prevalent. The substantial and growing number of distressed borrowers suggests that not all Americans have benefitted from the strong labor market and warrants continued monitoring and analysis of this sector."

[https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/02/just-r...](https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/02/just- released-auto-loans-in-high-gear.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> As someone who graduated from a top tier school, I'm constantly befuddled by society's expectation/belief that college degrees are useful.

I learned absolutely nothing during my 4 years of undergrad that is practically useful to my current vocation, and I can say the same is true for 90% of my peers.

For some areas of study, college IS worth the cost. For example, hard sciences. But, for the vast majority, it's not (think: business and administration, art, history, economics, etc.)

I would guess that in 90% of cases, graduates would be more valuable to companies and potential employers if they spend those 4 years and $300K (tuition + lost wages) learning/practicing their specific trade/industry.

So, when are we as a society going to realize that 90% of us are wasting 20% of our most productive years on useless learning? This really seems like a travesty to me.

<comment><USER28> I think the disconnect is that a university degree is NOT vocational training, and it never has been.

What happened is that for a long time, only a certain class of people got to go to a university, and that class of people were the same ones that got the best jobs. In fact, many companies used a university degree as a filtering mechanism to select that class of person.

Other classes saw this, and assumed that if they also got this degree, it would open up that other class. It worked for a bit, but soon there were simply too many people getting the degrees for it to work anymore as a way to select a limited group. It is no longer the gateway into a higher class lifestyle.

At the same time, though, I think it is a bit dismissive to call the education useless. I learned a ton studying philosophy at a university, even if it doesn't directly apply that often to my work. It helped me understand the world, its history, and how we think. I am very glad I did it.

However, it was not training me for a job. Not everything we do is for job training.

<comment><USER27> I totally agree that college is a useful path to building critical thinking skills and becoming a well-rounded individual, but I don't think that's why most people enroll.

Instead, I think if you surveyed people, the most prevalent reason for enrolling in college is the belief that it's a wise investment in their financial future. My belief is that this is just not true for 90% of potential graduates. And, wasting 4 years and $300K is a huge mistake when taken in the context of this college debt crisis.

I don't know what the short-term solution is, but I think the long-term solution is for companies to stop requiring college degrees and move towards evaluating the skills that actually correlate with job output. As a business owner, I've certainly done this, and I hope we can move in this direction quickly as a society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's going to be a bunch of comments about waste in universities, how people are irresponsible, trade schools, government alone guarantees that make it a crisis, no ability to discharge debt, etc.

The two big things that typically don't get brought up in these discussions is that government funding for college is way down and medical costs. All these state schools, which are pretty much the backbone of higher education in america are chronically underfunded. The last 40 years in america we have been borrowing against our future and higher education funding is just one aspect.

The second aspect is that higher education is fairly labor intensive, a large part of the labor cost is health care. When a pharmaceutical company acquires the rights to a rare drug and jacks up the cost 1000% that cost ultimately is passed on to students.

</comment><comment><USER30> College students in the previous century had a remedy. It was removed in 2005.

Forbes: "In 2005, Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which exempted federal and private students loans from discharge."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_and_Consumer_Protection_Act)

IIRC correctly, the number and size of student loans grew greatly after this Act. College students who received advice which encouraged them to take on huge debt loads - on speculation - were essentially thrown into the water to see if they could learn to swim.

</comment><comment><USER31> No creditor would give a loan to someone who doesn't have a chance of paying it back. There are kids going to school for music therapy that are taking $100K in debt. It's time to end government subsidized loans, at least in the current form. The private market does a great job of evaluating risk, the only thing that needs to be done is ensure there is ample competition so it self- regulates.

<comment><USER32> In principle I agree, but in practice, it seems like private lenders are empirically doing a bad job evaluating risk. Rates for private loans are so high they can only be explained by a high default rate, even among "low-risk" demographics. These rates are very high even for students that we'd view as a low credit risk (e.g. studying CS and not music therapy). I think this shows the private market is doing a poor job evaluating risk.

That said, it's probably still a good thing long-term to end government subsidized loans. But that doesn't mean the private market is healthy. I'm not an expert on this area, and I don't know why there aren't "smart" lenders that do a better job arbitraging this. It could be possible that it's inherently difficult to predict whether someone will default or not.

As other people have pointed out, the real problem is the incentive structure for colleges and the increase in administrative staff (and thus tuition) who are enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else.

<comment><USER33> > In principle I agree, but in practice, it seems like private lenders are > empirically doing a bad job evaluating risk. Rates for private loans are so > high they can only be explained by a high default rate, even among "low- > risk" demographics. These rates are very high even for students that we'd > view as a low credit risk (e.g. studying CS and not music therapy). I think > this shows the private market is doing a poor job evaluating risk.

Or that they know the risk, but also know people have to borrow so see a chance to profit more from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't regret going to a public college at all. College is more than just a job factory. You make some of your strongest friendships, connections, potentially future partner in school. You learn a lot about yourself.

Private edu costs are out of control, but if we can figure out how to cut costs then I don't think the institution of college/higher ed should go away.

You have the rest of your life to work...as a working adult I don't particularly wish I had skipped college and taken a 6-month online class instead so I could start working earlier.

<comment><USER34> I think this is the strongest argument against student debt relief. I would certainly _not_ pay for someone else to do this:

 _" You make some of your strongest friendships, connections, potentially future partner in school. You learn a lot about yourself."_

<comment><USER25> I agree that taking out $200k+ for an undergrad degree is crazy. But what I paid at a public edu was completely reasonable and worth it in my opinion.

<comment><USER35> My daughter will be going to a small private school in a year; the total cost of tuition is around $7K. She'll be living at home since the school is within driving distance, and working summers to help pay for tuition and expenses. $30K for a BA is fine. Paying outrageous amounts to party on a student loan is what's nuts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if the increase in serious delinquency is being disproportionately driven by loans to for-profit institutions.

This article addresses the issue directly:

"Student debt a harsh math lesson for US graduates as wages lag" \- [https://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2018/03/student_deb...](https://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2018/03/student_debt_a_harsh_math_less.html)

For instance:

> _Compared to their peers at other colleges, students attending for-profit > institutions -- mostly those classified as inclusive, part-time or two-year > -- are falling behind in their debt repayments. Twenty-two percent at for- > profit schools were behind on their academic loan payments compared with six > percent of students at public institutions, according to a survey by the > Federal Reserve._

</comment><comment><USER37> So, one of my side hobbies is saving the world, and my conclusion is that any fiat frb system requires regular debt jubilees (Hammurabi did it first), and part of why our system is so fucked is because people ignore this fact. Any conversation about usurious debt without talking about jubilees is missing the bigger picture.

</comment><comment><USER38> The entire credit system for education ends up combining government spending and market forces in the worst ways possible. The Federal Reserve Bank of NY drew some conclusions a few years ago to this extent.[0]

The Federal government provides an enormous amount of free/"free" credit, the schools get cash and the students take on the risk. Coupled with the role of academic institutions as gatekeepers of a shot at a better future, and we get the system we have. Hyperbolically, t only outcomes schools are incentivized to care about are applications (lower acceptance rates raise prestige) and attendance (money is transferred to the school only while the student is attending).

[0] [https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...](https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr733.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER39> This is why keep pushing my daughter towards a trade school.

(Once you become immune to eye-rolling life gets easier.)

There's a lot of companies with unfilled skilled blue collar jobs. And despite self-driving trucks, semi drivers can make some serious money.

And HVAC projected job growth is 14% over the next 10 years. Thank you Global Warming!

<comment><USER40> Should you really be actively _pushing_ your child in any direction? Would the best course of action not just be to make sure that trade schools are a completely viable choice, should she not be interested in an academic subject?

<comment><USER41> Basically everybody actively pushes their child in some direction. Assuming you have some wisdom to offer, that's basically what parenting is about. If the OP truly believes trade schools are a better choice, then I don't see why he shouldn't push them.

Besides in the circles I grew in this attitude would have brought some balance to things considering I was surrounded by people pushing deeply academic subjects beyond all else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Honest question: what are the best two or three studies showing where all the extra money has gone over the last few decades?

If millions of people are losing, some set of people must be winning (by an amount roughly inversely proportional to their size). I understand economics is complex, feedback loops, etc., but with so much money flowing it must accumulate somewhere. And I'm sure people have studied it on a deeper than anecdotal level

<comment><USER6> There are many winners, probably some we'll never know. Real estate developers near universities are big winners. The living standard of the average student are much higher than they were in the days of shared bedrooms and a single large shared bathroom per floor. Apartments marketed to students are pretty upscale these days. For some students, their college years will be the peak as far as living standards go. There is a whole economic ecosystem that thrives off of student dollars that were nowhere as plentiful before easy federal student loans expanded.

The financial markets no doubt have some pretty big winners though the way all of that works is a bit convoluted and difficult to pin down individual winners. If there is no tsunami of default, the government itself (and hopefully taxpayers by extension) likely will come out a winner.

The money flowing through campuses flow out in many ways beyond student spending. New construction, salaries for professors and administrators, textbook companies, journal middlemen, and many others are all thriving off of the diversion of so much money into these institutions. In general it's good for the economy around the schools but a million little drags on the economy wherever the students live after graduation as their potential spending dollars are diverted to loan payments instead of the local economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Loans should be based on the earning potential of the degree.

</comment><comment><USER44> The trend in American high schools is to push everyone to go to a college; regardless of what each student's interests are, how useful a college education would be in attaining the jobs that the major is applicable towards, the student's academic aptitude, etc.

My high school was thankfully somewhat resistant to this trend in that there was a very large vocational program that was somewhat popular amongst my graduating class.

I don't mean to offend people when I say this, but there are certain majors that very, VERY few people (if any) should actually pick as a matter of practicality (likelihood of getting a livable-wage job related to the major vs. getting saddled with debt for a degree that you won't use during your lifetime).

</comment><comment><USER45> Law regarding repayment and non payment of student loan should be seriously relaxed. Increase risk factor will reduce the amount of float in the market, and supply and demand ultimately force institution to better manage and reduce the cost and price.

</comment><comment><USER46> The system lacks check and balance to rein in the runaway college cost. Graduated students with crushing debt should start suing the schools to get back some of the money. The schools clearly jack up the overall tuition to push up the debt.

</comment><comment><USER47> The problem is that for _many_ of jobs that 'require' a degree is they're not necessary at _ALL_! A good high school education is good enough for the vast majority of the jobs outside of STEM. Now we have diploma inflation because it makes them 'more productive'.

In an ideal world you world put them in a short boot camp to make sure they up to snuff for the job but atlas you have the gatekeeping going on with universities. I personally can't wait for the education bubble to pop.

</comment><comment><USER48> If we run this number up hopefully they bail everyone out.

<comment><USER49> As someone who just paid his student loans off after 7 years out of college, I hope this turns out to be the case. I am fortunate. A confluence of factors outside the control of many borrowers keeps them saddled with debt for the foreseeable future. They deserve relief.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> No coincidence that industries with misaligned incentives create massive debt bubbles. Education, health care, real estate.

</comment><comment><USER51> Student debt is unsecured debt hedging against future earnings of the debtor. If you look at it through purely financial return then the degree earnings potential absolutely has to be means tested to reduce risk of default. The only way to make this happen is to have the federal government get out of the student loan business.

</comment><comment><USER52> The graph of percentage of people in serious delinquency over the past 20 years doesn't seem to support the doom and gloom throughout the article. In fact it looks like there might even be a bit of a percentage-wise decline, even though the absolute total is increasing linearly.

</comment><comment><USER53> Only things in our economy with no skin in the game get more expensive

medical and student loans cannot be bankrupted houses are mostly gov't supported and when they crash the gov't bails them out.

If you don't want high prices, tell the gov't to stop inflating the prices.

</comment><comment><USER54> I would be interested to see this data scaled with the average price of attending college. That cost has 'surged' in recent years as well, most because colleges are so much better at teaching now!

</comment><comment><USER55> Stuff like this is one of the reasons I like the idea of a basic income...because you could easily just divert the BI to pay for long term services in a situation like this.

Can't pay student loans, your BI gets automatically directed to paying it off with no interest until the balance is clear.

Need to pay for school in the first place? Direct the monthly BI to the university to cover tuition/housing/meal plan (or a significant portion of it).

Commit a violent crime that will put you in jail, let your BI go to the prison to cover your stay.

Have a baby? The baby gets a basic income that can pay for daycare, baby supplies.

<comment><USER56> This makes 0 sense because that's not how UBI works. You can't just give free money to everyone and expect things to magically fix themselves. Where are you even getting all this money under modern constraints to just give to every single person? But that's beside the point because even with UBI, you'd still have to sacrifice QoL to pay back the loans for your education because of the inefficiencies that exist in our current system. The end result would you be slaving away at work with high taxes that go off to pay off your loans and whatever percentage goes to UBI.

<comment><USER55> The core idea is that every citizen is getting a monthly stipend of some basic amount. If that were to happen, it stands to reason that policy oriented side effects would kick in over time to work alongside such a stipend.

First among those, actually securing student loans against the BI.

I've never seen BI as being anything that would be desirable to live on though. Closer to survival level income in the area of $700 / month. You'd partially pay for it by reducing all other types of government service payouts (welfare, social security, disability, unemployment) by that amount. You'd likely see homeless shelters, rehab clinics, etc open that were designed to operate on a per person budget equaling the BI.

At the same time, you can potentially eliminate minimum wage discussions since it would immediately supplement those workers.

I think it's doable at a low level as long as you partially address the costs with dents in the budgets of many of the other existing services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> The solution is straightforward. End the government sponsored loan program. This will cause tuitions to drop down to what the market can justify.

</comment><comment><USER58> And earlier this week there was a report - from the NY Fed? - that the number of 90+ day delinquent car loans is also up.

</comment><comment><USER59> i predict we're going to have to bail these people out. once a critical mass of americans do something idiotic, it becomes politically expedient to bail them out and blame the companies for greed. this is a direct response of the government providing unlimited loans to anyone

<comment><USER60> We will bail them out when enough voters vote for candidates who support zeroing out this debt, and write it off as a policy mistake.

We've wasted trillions on unproductive military initiatives in the Middle East, this would be relatively minor in comparison. The economic productivity realized by these debtors able to be full economic participants instead of having student loan drag for a lifetime outweighs the moral hazard.

<comment><USER61> I can see two distinct groups of people who would take issue with this, not that they'll necessarily have their way:

\- people who were realistic about their finances and did not take on debt to "drag for a lifetime" in the first place. Why should the "rich" and/or reckless kids who lived in overpriced dorms with unnecessary amenities get bailed out when "I was smart and didn't screw myself from the start"?

\- people who were able to afford a university education out the gate and were not burdened by any or much debt in the first place (and their parents!). Why should the "poor" and/or reckless kids who reached for something they couldn't & shouldn't have been able to afford get bailed out when "I worked hard to provide for myself / my family from the start"?

<comment><USER62> As a member of the first group, I agree with you. I really don't like the idea of subsidizing what I consider other people's bad decisions. I was able to make financially reasonable decisions, which often involved sacrifice, and chose to focus on a viable career. I don't want to spend my hard earned money supporting people who didn't do that.

I did not come from money and came from a pretty awful environment so I know this is a possible outcome for most people.

<comment><USER63> Also a member of the first group and I disagree with the conclusion. I'd be very happy to see all current student debt forgiven and subsidies to university programs improved. Good on you, though, for getting through an education without debt. That's a real accomplishment. There are for sure a good number of people who get an education for a viable career and wind up with loans that spiral out of control, especially in a country with spotty healthcare or perhaps because they exited school during the Great Recession and got stuck in intern-hell. Point being, there's a good number of folks with student loan debt they can't easily manage who made all the right decisions but got a bad break somewhere. Also, this doesn't even consider people who do civically valuable work but having extremely low earning potential.

Are there some people who took out great quantities of loans with no concern for their future? Absolutely. Should such people be hounded by this lack of foresight at the age of 19 into their old age? I'd argue no. Even if you can't find sympathy for the indebted, I'd also argue that very few societies in history have managed to stay cohesive with a large, indebted underclass, let alone prosperous and achieving their potential.

<comment><USER62> Actually, I don't have a degree. That's sort of my point. It's very possible to just enter the labor market and make money if you work hard and smart. I'm a developer but I know plenty of people I grew up with who went on to be: military people, plumbers, cops...

> _there 's a good number of folks with student loan debt they can't easily > manage who made all the right decisions but got a bad break somewhere._

I don't think it's ever the right decision to take out a massive amount of debt. Even to study something you love. You can't fight against the real world economics of that decision. I saw the option to get what I considered to be a lifetime's worth of debt and looked for alternatives. Lots of people who come from lower class backgrounds do the same.

I think it's going to be very hard to get those people on board with paying off other people's student debt.

<comment><USER61> What makes the student debt such a crappy situation is the fact that we're dealing with young people and families who may not necessarily have all the information to do an educated cost/benefit analysis. Students are pressured from very early on to plan to go to college. Teachers, guidance counselors, administrators, and often parents all fall into the narrative of "yes, college is a good decision and will pay for itself". It is completely taboo to tell a student that there are other options because that can be construed as telling the student they have less potential than others.

<comment><USER59> right but if someone like that came to you and asked for 200k in loans you'd laugh in their face. But now instead the govt decided to back student loans and these people got them like candy

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> No student loan should be issued without the university being equally liable to pay it back.

</comment><comment><USER65> But I thought the more a degree costs the more it magically increases lifetime earnings?

<comment><USER66> It does: if degrees cost more, fewer people can access them, so the market has fewer people with that expertise, so they can make more money.

<comment><USER67> You missed the key step that the people who access these programs are already wealthy, and wealth breads wealth like rabbits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> What are the ways this can cause a recession?

</comment><comment><USER69> Just fucking cancel all the debt already :)

</comment><comment><USER70> This is the real national emergency.

</comment><comment><USER71> This will be highly unpopular but it seems to me like a solution is to start doing some amount of payroll withholding for those with student loan debt similar to the way social security/Medicare is handled. It doesn't have to be a huge amount, but enough to ensure repayment. Government forces us to "save for retirement" via social security, yet being debt-free is a far greater advantage in retirement than the retirement income supplement of social security. If people had no debt, they'd be better positioned to cover their own retirement. Paying off $100k student loan debt "now" is far more valuable to a person than social security later. Essentially what I would propose is this: your social security withholdings go towards student loans while you have student loans, once the loans are repaid, social security contributions resume. But, it's a house of cards because those with excessive unpaid student loans are most likely the ones financially irresponsible enough to require social security for their retirement. There is also the other issue that your social security payments you make today are paying current benefits rather than your own benefits later. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, so in practice my idea wouldn't work as it might collapse the social security scheme; but adding federal student loan payments to payroll withholdings would potentially solve the problem. Also stricter caps on student loans sounds like good policy. There is no good reason anyone should have $100k+ in undergraduate student loans. Taking out loans to get an expensive degree from a school like NYU ought to not be allowed. Loans should be a means to assist someone in getting education — not as a means for someone to get the most expensive education possible. Practically bottomless student loans has absolutely contributed to the extraordinary inflation in higher education: college costs have risen faster than even healthcare costs, no small part of which can be blamed upon the availability of loans.

<comment><USER72> I rather like the idea of making student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy (not retroactively obviously). Why should borrowers alone face the consequences of their bad decisions? Aren't lenders equally complicit?

I understand that educational loans are essentially unsecured loans. So fine, let them be treated like personal loans and let lenders evaluate their risk accordingly. It'll quickly put an end to letting an 18-year old go into $100k in debt for a liberal arts degree.

<comment><USER73> The government backs the loans and this ends up being a massive subsidy for academia. If loans were priced accordingly, far fewer loans would be issued and there would be fewer students in college, and fewer colleges and universities.

<comment><USER72> Colleges and universities might start charging something more reasonable once they see that their students can't take out such large loans. Why exactly does it cost tens of thousands of dollars to deliver a liberal arts education anyway?

Otherwise, community colleges prepare students to transfer into year 3 of a 4-year college, at a fraction of the cost. This is a viable option for students who can't afford the full 4-year experience.</comment></comment></comment></comment>