This is why the government is broke

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me"

They all came here to get a government check.
Wretched refuse and homeless indeed.
I think we are full up with them.

So....move out and make some room.

Unless you're 100% Tee-pee Indian (as opposed to Dot Indian) and living on a reservation, STFU.

I have a five step solution to your dilemma ep.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Because social welfare was abundant in the late 19th century.

FTFY

You always know when EP is hitting the bottle...we get another thread like this shitfest.

It's still early, he hasn't said anything about gays yet.

The government is broke because...

Eric Cantor can't even propose that students accrue the interest on their loans (ending federal subsidies of loans while students are in college) without being called evil, "against the poor," and a variety of other names. The media grab the idea and tell the sheeple that Cantor wants students to "pay the interest" on their loans while in college, fooling the sheeple into thinking he wants students to pay out of pocket when all he really wants is to save the government $4.3 billion a year by not paying the interest on those loans while students are in college.

Any reasonable cut like this that gets proposed is instantly pounced on, demonized, and mischaracterized in the media. It's no wonder no meaningful cuts can ever happen.

Translation:

"Give me your garbage."

Me, I just go all Evil Monkey on the [ b], [ i] and [ u].

This poem is terribly misunderstood. It's not an invitation to come here for welfare. It's about opportunity. New beginnings.

That's not really a cost saving measure at all. Most of the savings would be offset by those same students claiming interest expense as a deduction on their taxes, reducing government revenue. Additionally you may encourage less people to attend college, which would further lower government revenues over the long term by having a poorer and less educated tax base.

Because students are so concerned about running up their college debt when they go to school, right?

As for the deduction problem you brought up, how do you figure students with no income or very little will be paying the interest themselves and deducting it from their non-income on their tax forms? The answer is that they won't pay it at all...they'll let it accrue just like an unsubsidized loan.

Cause fiscally irresponsible 18 year olds are the only ones who go to school.

Boy, you've sure got everything figured out. Except you know, compound interest.

Billy goes to school and borrows $20,000 to pay for it, he goes to school for 4 years and the interest rate is 5%. In scenario A, the interest is subsidized, when he leaves he still owes $20,000 and it begins compounding interest. In scenario B his loan is unsubsidized, and he graduates with $24,310.13 in debt.

Now, hopefully you understand the next part. The amount of interest that accrues on $24,310.13 is different from $20,000. This is important, because when Billy gets a job after graduation and begins to pay his loans, the amount of interest capitalization that occurs on the loan in scenario B will be higher than the loan in scenario A. Billy will have to pay this difference, and the government will send him a form at the end of the year stating how much he paid in interest expense, which he can then claim as a deduction to his income on his taxes.

So no, it does matter if the amount is subsidized, as even if the student had no income he'd still have to pay back a larger amount later that has a higher yearly interest expense.

So, you're trying to claim that the taxes lost on $4,310.13 (assuming he pays it all in one year), or about $1500 at a very generous for your argument 35%, is a "wash" with the government not having to pay the $4,310.13 in the four years Billy went to school? It's pretty clear that the government just saved about $2800 on Billy. If Billy is in a lower tax bracket (which most recently graduated students are), the savings are much more.

Right now the government is paying the full amount of interest on all of those subsidized loans...about $4.3 billion a year. You're trying to convince me that somehow making the students themselves responsible for that interest, allowing it to accrue, and then deducting the meager amount they pay back for interest on those loans from their taxes when they graduate is somehow "a wash"?

Good luck. I don't think the math quite works out that way.

How many people pay off the entirety of their loans in one year? Now you're just being ridiculous.

The government may have lost $2800 on Billy's subsidized loan, or about 33%, but Billy only has to make a few hundred dollars more a year to not only make up for that but exceed it.

Now, you can try and argue that not offering subsidized loans wouldn't affect anyone choosing to go to college, but I think we both know how full of shit you'd be.

It was just an example. The government wouldn't lose any more if they pay their loans out over a longer period. Interest payments in a long repayment period are going to be quite insignificant.

That's going on the assumption that Billy wouldn't have made as much or more money had he not gone to college in the first place which is by no means a certainty. Are you saying that subsidizing student loans is a good way for the government to make more money from tax-paying college graduates? Because it certainly isn't shaking out that way right now. More and more people are earning less and deeper in college debt than ever before.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Potential college students mostly don't care about the repayment when they get their loans. They simply see the dollar amount and figure it's enough to cover their education. Many borrow way more than they actually need as it is. There's no reason to think that the government not paying the interest while they're in school and giving them a higher principal balance when they leave is going to make any difference at all.

There is no math in the Red Room.

In one particular case, no, but over an aggregate, yes, it is absolutely a certainty.

Having educated workers and citizens improves our economy and our republic, the government also benefits monetarily.

I'm not sure if you got the memo, but we're in a recession, wages typically fall or stagnate during reecssions. As for earning less, college graduates still make a great deal more on average than their non educated counterparts, even accounting for debt.

There's no memo, and the propaganda showing that college graduates as a whole make more than non-college graduates, while true, is misleading. It sure sounds good in those late-night infomercials for online colleges, though.

If you had a magic time machine that showed what a person who went to college would have made if they hadn't gone to college and/or vice versa, then you might have something. In the absence of said machine, all you have are statistics comparing the incomes of those who go to college and those who don't. There are many other factors influencing those numbers, however. Some of the people who don't go to college will never have a great deal of earning power. Some people who go to college wind up working in a bookstore or auto parts retailer for the rest of their lives. Other people who never go to college do very well.

College isn't job training, nor is it meant to be except for a few fields of study. Those who do well in college and graduate are the same sorts of people who would do well in the job market without college. It's always a bit of a gamble and there are undoubtedly many people who would wind up better off simply entering the job market after high school and taking advantage of the opportunities that present themselves.

Look, I'm a university music professor. I'm the last person who wants to argue against people going to college. I just don't think it's fair to demonize Eric Cantor's proposal. It's reasonable to expect students to bear the burden of their borrowing and not burden the federal government (i.e., the taxpayers) with part of it.

Correction: it's misunderstood today. Then it was not. Everyone who came to the New World knew they would have to work hard to make it big - but they knew they had a chance to work hard to make it big which they didn't have in the Old Country.

Today though, everyone, even those who are born here, think that they should get stuff handed to them on a silver platter, that they don't have to work their asses off to earn the money to make it big.

This is economics. There's nothing remotely like math involved. It's all ideology with cherry-picked data points to support whatever conclusion you're trying to draw.

Those are some admirable words, that have never quite been realised and are now being shat upon from a great height in the clamber to eliminate social spending.

Those words promise opportunity, not freebies. Maybe I should paypal you a dollar so you can buy a clue.

[YT="We're less than broke..."]J0rSXjVuJVg[/YT]

What tribe are you a member of?

Didn't the entire human race originate in ancient Africa?



The "original ownership" argument is such a pointless heap of bullshit.