To someone from Europe like me, the US very much feels like a dystopian hellhole whenever I read stories like these. How can a government hate its people so much?
To somebody trapped in the U.S., it feels like a dystopian hellhole from in here as well.
I was just feeling this yesterday, picking through the damaged can/box section of our super market, walking down the street and seeing how alienated and alone we are and how normalized that is, being sent two hours of paperwork that is the exact same questions I spent two hours on the phone answering in spring as I try to access our public safety nets.
The feeling in the U.S. of A. is like living on a well polished turd that no one wants to admit still smells like a turd. At least, not in public.
I guess I'm glad I have dual citizenship but jfc, my parents brought us here because it was supposed to be better lol.
It is a viscous loop where the ppl are told to hate their gov so they elect Republicans who want to dismantle it. The Republicans do and then gov sucks so ppl hate it more.
Rinse and repeat.
And this isn't even a theoretical or metaphoric description.
We have candidates now already laying out plans for massive workforce reduction in the already overworked, short staffed federal government, which will make them even less productive, which will prompt these people to point out that lowered productivity as evidence for why they should take even more resources away.
They're literally pushing to eliminate jobs, not create jobs, and to bring unemployment to veterans (who are a big demographic in the federal workforce).
The same people who set up public education to be measured on standardized testing, in which your students falling short on their test scores means your funding gets cut, not increased.
Most people here are brain dead idiots that don't know that a politician's job is to create policy. They think it's a team sport and if you cheer louder for your guy, they'll punch the other guy in the nuts. This is why we don't have nice things like attractive cities, public transportation that actually works, or actual culture.
Like all corrupt governments in the world, they care about making money and not paying taxes. They don't care about other people.
Only shitty if you don't have money. If your are in the top half it's fantastic.
Dear God this is saddening to read. What just system saddles people with a debt they have no choice but to take on in order to hopefully get a decent enough education to repay the loan, but then fails to account for situations where the borrower's income is not sufficient to be able to afford more than the minimum payments? All the while applying compounding interest on the principal to make sure it'll never be repaid?
And to make it truly evil, makes it so that they can garnish both your wages and pension in case of a default?
Seriously, student loans and medical debt should both be interest free and prorated to the person's income in terms of minimum payments. It's ridiculous to force people into a life of debt slavery just for the shot at a decent education or the right to be healthy.
It's ridiculous to force people into a life of debt slavery just for the shot at a decent education or the right to be healthy.
You have been banned from c/Conservative.
I take that as a badge of honour.
Please don't tell me that exists.
In my opinion health care should be free. But I am just European
College should be free too. An educated populace improves the economy, as does a healthy one.
At least medical debt can be discharged through bankruptcy. You can't even escape from student loans by going bankrupt.
Which is probably the most ridiculous thing ever. Bankruptcy should treat all debtors equally, and we should treat personal bankruptcy similar to corporate bankruptcy. Instead of creating classes of debt that survive a bankruptcy by default, how about we just include them all into the debt restructuring process? Figure out what the person can and can't pay and make a plan based on that? It just feels exploitative to make some debts exempt from having to do that.
My theory: not only your points, but also, it's Because it will one day affect inheritance... when a parent dies and has this debt, their assets will cover it, the medical debt and credit debt... with school loans on top of the pay back, the inheritance amount will be way lower, keeping the cycle of people staying poor and desperate.. to keep low income people, low income...
parents from the 70-90s who bought houses also had school debt and when they die, and leave the house, their assets will first go to their medical debt, school loans, and other debts they had. Why? To keep the cycle of low income people which no chance of owning a home, desperate, poor and in a perpetual cycle.
Man, that's even more depressing. I will never understand why (mostly conservative) governments try to keep people down like this. I thought the human experiment was about lifting people up out of poverty and misery, not invent arbitrary systems that keep them there. What does society stand to gain from creating effectively a class of outcasts at the bottom of the social ladder?
Cheap labor to further enrich the upper class.
If they are merely surviving then they wont have the resources to fight it.
But at some point the upper class depends on more than just cheap labor. You need educated people to innovate, you need a well-paid middle class to support a consumption economy. If everyone is uneducated and destitute the whole house of cards upon which the upper class is able to exist will collapse.
I just don't understand how the concept of "a rising tide lifts all boats" is so lost on some policy makers.
The issue is youre trying to address this with care and empathy and logic.
Youll never understand if you dont think like a sociopath, people can be replaced, it's about having more, future be damned we need to maximize the now, and if people die then they die.
Not from the USA... what's the interest rate on student loans? I mean, if you can afford a mortgage and to put money aside (article is about seniors, so not people purchasing a home now), how come you're unable to reimburse your debt?
What makes you think they own a home? A ton of seniors live in rent controlled places and still barely get by.
The interest rate on my federal direct student loans is 6.8% on half of them (undergrad) and ~9% on the other half (graduate), iirc.
God damn fuck that's ridiculous
Wait till you see how much we spend on healthcare.
Oh I know, per capita more than double the next first world nation and that doesn't count private insurance.
It's outrageous. My employer pays around $1,200 per month for my insurance. I pay another $400 per month. Then I pay for all medical services until I've spent $6,000 - on service - monthly premium payments don't count. Then insurance covers 80% of medical expenses after that. Unless we're talking about my kids. I have to spend $16,000 out of pocket before insurance starts to pay for their stuff.
afford a mortgage and to put money aside
Most of these people don't own homes. That would be weird.
I have one question for americans, where does the college money go?
Is it to improve the colleges? Do college professors are paid extra well? To the college owners?
There's a lot of really over paid administrators and they spend money on a lot of avnifg bullshit. Basically because the government stopped funding colleges directly and offers loans, the colleges just spend money to our compete each other and become "prestigious". They're all "non-profit" so they spend the money somehow and just increase their budgets constantly. If there's any extra they build a new football stadium...
Without anyone to be accountable to, they just increase tuition, which people pay because there's always loans. Then they always find something to spend the money on. Theres administrators making millions.
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