The genesis of Occupy Wall Street distilled to two words: student loans
Bookworm on Oct 06 2011 at 2:23 pm | Filed under: Education
I hated UC Berkeley. Loathed it. Despised it. Couldn’t shake the dust off my feet fast enough after I graduated. But graduate I did, and pretty well too, if my Phi Beta Kappa key has anything to say about it. Knowing my feelings about UCB, my daughter asked a good question: “Why didn’t you transfer out?”
I had an equally good answer, although one that was virtually impossible for a well-to-do suburban kid, in a day and age of vast student loans, to understand: “I didn’t have the money.” My parents had no wealth; I had no wealth; my scholarships were real, but small; and — this is the important point — my student loans were minimal. The latter reflected the fact that, because I knew that my parents had no wealth, I had no wealth, and my career options as a history major were limited, I was unwilling to hunt around for a different school that would, inevitably, have been more expensive.
It never occurred to me to take on a debt load that I might not be able to repay. My college choice and student loans were calibrated to my expectations. I even chose an affordable (albeit marvelously wonderful) law school. By the time I graduated, after 7 years of higher education, I had only $15,000 in debt, which I paid off within three years.
For me, being prudent in my financial obligations was a no-brainer. I mean that. My brain never raised the possibility of taking on a larger debt load than I could reasonably handle. Instead, when I needed more money for pesky little things like tuition and textbooks, I got a job. Several jobs. Summer jobs. School year jobs. Evening jobs. Whatever. I also lived at home when I could, which wasn’t fun (although my Mom, bless her heart, did my laundry). My parents charged me rent (don’t ask), but I paid them less than I would have a third party landlord. All in the name of going to school the old-fashioned way: affordably.
Nowadays, of course, student loans are de rigueur. How do I know that? Because it seems as if every one of the loopy Occupy Wall Street dudes and dudettes interviewed complains about those students loans. (See here, for example.) Two out of thirteen of the demands on the Occupy Wall Street website focus on student loans:
Demand four: Free college education.
[snip]
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
It’s pretty clear that a core issue animating these protesters is the ridiculous debt obligations that they voluntarily assumed. It’s therefore almost funny to see the working class union types leaping on board to help out kids whose demands, if acceded to, will pile ever greater debt on the ordinary working stiffs in America.
Student loans started out as a good idea. The GI Bill got the whole thing started, by having the government create a program that provided higher education for those who would otherwise be unable to afford it. The end result was a dynamic, educated group of former military people (trained, disciplined, seasoned and responsible) who helped sweep the country to great prosperity during the 1950s and early 1960s.
What most people forget now is that the GI Bill was payment for services rendered. In that way, it differed dramatically from student loans, which are payments for . . . what? It’s questionable whether those students currently getting “educated” at America’s top propaganda institutions . . . er, colleges and universities, will contribute anything to the economy — and we know that render any services to the American people, in the cause of American freedom, in exchange for those cash handouts.
Nor are student loans analogous to any other types of loans, all of which require security, in the form of a tangible item (your house, your car, your engagement ring) or in the form of a guarantee from someone other than the federal government. Guarantees from someone other than the federal government mean that some knows the borrower really well, and is willing to gamble on the debtor’s success and integrity.
In addition to sending a message to the lender (“this person is a good risk for loan purposes”), personal guarantees also impose a moral obligation on the debtor, who might well feel constrained to pay back a loan before the bank takes Mom’s house away. By contrast, those federal government guarantees are nothing more than debt shifting. Just as the navel-gazing student feels no obligation to pay back the bank, he doesn’t feel any obligation to pay back the government, either.
Free money for entitled young people has created all sorts of problems. First, of course, it’s driven up college tuition costs. With the government writing the check, there’s no reason not to have creeping tuition inflation.
Second, the student loan program has given young people the completely unfounded and unreasonable belief that their current economic situation and future earning potential are irrelevant to their academic choices. You can just see them thinking “So what if I’m broke now and am going on to become a womyn’s study or GLBT major and future barista. Society still owes me $200,000 to enjoy a few years at Harvard.”
Third, the loans have expanded greatly the number of young people who can be indoctrinated in Marxist crap by grossly overpaid professors at America’s “finest” schools. On that subject, the Occupy Wall Street demand I referenced above is a perfect example of the product emerging from these overpriced academies of indoctrination. The demands are unicorn and fairyland stuff, made possible only by immersion in the academic world of Marxist fantasy.
And fourth, the loans have created a self-entitled group of people who, rather than pay off their debt, feel that it’s totally appropriate for them to attack others’ financial livelihood, as they’re doing now when they try to interfere with our nation’s economic core.
Here’s something to think about when you think of those college and post-college debtors swarming America’s financial centers: Back in the 1960s, college campuses were awash with anti-War protesters. They spoke, yelled, and screamed about American imperialism, about downtrodden Vietnamese villagers, and about blood-thirsty American soldiers. These vehement, and often violent, protests ended abruptly in 1973. In a way, this was rather surprising, because American imperialism, downtrodden Vietnamese villagers, and blood-thirsty American soldiers were still topping the nightly news. What changed, though, was that the college kids no longer had skin in the game: the draft had ended.
Just as the Vietnam war protests had nothing to do with actual principles, and everything to do with a spoiled generation’s fear of the draft; so too do today’s protests in America’s financial centers have nothing to do with concerns about America’s economy, and everything to do with deadbeat kids who willingly took on an unreasonable amount of debt, and are now facing the financial consequences for their cupidity and stupidity.
Related posts:
- Why the President’s proposal regarding student loans is even worse than it first looks
- How important are the Wall Street protests? (And some attendant thoughts.)
- The crisis explained in words of one or two syllables
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26 Responses to “The genesis of Occupy Wall Street distilled to two words: student loans”
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I think you’re exactly right, Book.
Also, I would imagine that a lot of these protesting kids have never held a job, or at the most, have had college application-enhancing internships or performed feel-good non-profit work, such as awareness-raising activities for environmental issues.
The daughter of a couple of our long-time (ultra-liberal) friends has decided to follow her true love to Australia to see what life holds for her there. Good on her.
Or at least I thought so until her mom answered my question about what kind of work her daughter would be looking for once she settled with her shackup in Sydney. “Oh, something with a non-profit.”
=SIGH= Sixteen frickin’ years of education and the highest goal the girl can come up with is to seek work as a tapeworm. Even worse is her desire to infect another country with her total lack of ambition.
[...] Fighting Keyboardists « The genesis of Occupy Wall Street distilled to two words: student loans [...]
The student loan business was taken out of the hands of banks and put under the aegis of the Obama administration which, among other requirements, forbids students to go bankrupt and wipe out those loan obligations.
In addition, the “easy” money never benefited students: instead, it was absorbed by the universities, which increased tuition, boosted salaries and expanded bureaucracies far beyond inflation, while encouraging students to enroll with wild promises of how a university degree would guarantee them a high standard of living.
Yes, the students have a very legitimate gripe. They were defrauded. But, instead, these spoiled, entitled moronic tools have decided that is capitalism and banks, rather than universities and government, that must be blamed for their predicament.
BTW, according to Rush Limbaugh today, Steve Jobs cited as his reason for dropping out of the university the facts that a) he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life and b) it was costing his parents too much money. He didn’t want to waste his parents money. Oh, those were the days!
To “work as a “tapeworm”. Charles M…you rock the language!
I have to admit that the word “parasite” is becoming a staple of my political lexicon, these days.
> Yes, the students have a very legitimate gripe. They were defrauded.
Back when I was alive in 1890, I was at a carnival, in this pasture. Rides and these new-fangled lights. It was all so very exciting! And there was this salesman walking around with a basket of these little bottles of magic brown oil, he said it was extract, snake oil I think, and it would grow my hair back.
Well, heck, that sounded simply AWESOME! So I bought some snake oil from that salesman. He walked away, and I think I heard him chuckling, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” And can you believe, it didn’t work!?!?!
I have a very legitimate gripe. I was defrauded. Surely I deserve pity, for blindly buying into the lies.
I just wanted a little hope and change.
Don’t even talk to me about how spoiled modern-day college students are. Just thinking about it gets me so steamed that I nearly blow a gasket.
Like you, BW, when I was 18 I was forced to choose a college on the basis of its affordability; and like you, I went to a nearby public state university, because the tuition was cheap for in-state residents.
But my situation would be considered absolutely incomprehensible by modern standards and morals:
First of all, my parents and family did not help me with one red cent; zilch. I was entirely on my own. Partly this is because they were broke, but also partly because they were selfish bad people who refused to outlay any money for me for any reason. (Like you, my mother charged me rent; but unlike you, she starting charging me rent when I was 15 years old. Needless to say, I couldn’t pay, but she kept totaling it up anyway, and threatening to kick me out, and when I graduated from high school she presented me with an unpaid back rent bill of over $12,000. I still haven’t paid it, and incredibly she still hasn’t forgiven me.)
Second of all, I refused on principle to even apply for financial aid or scholarships. I know this sounds inconceivable to most people, but even back then I felt there was great shame and self-degradation associated with taking a handout. I felt revulsion at even the thought of it. I didn’t know then that this core belief was at odds with the lefty ideology I foolishly had absorbed from my parents and milieu; it wasn’t until after 9/11 that I realized this unrepentant rugged individualist streak of mine was not an out-of-character fluke but actually a basis of my political philosophy, and contributed greatly to my transformation into the “extremist” I am today.
Third of all, when I was near the end of my freshman year, my nogoodnik criminal father showed up on my doorstep (I had moved out of home by then) in absolute desperation, begging for $7,000 to pay for bail money and legal fees to keep himself out of jail as a result of some idiotic crime caper. I said I didn’t have $7,000, but he informed me I could get something called an “emergency family loan” in that exact amount from the school — he had researched it ahead of time! They had these loans available to students with serious family emergencies — having to pay for a parent’s funeral, stuff like that. I caved in and went to apply for the loan, which they gave me without asking too many questions, and which I then gave to my father. He insisted that it be in cash, so I stood there and counted out a huge stack of $50 bills into his trembling hands. To this day I don’t know if he was lying, or if he really needed it — all I know is, he took the money and disappeared again for another five years. Needless to say, he never paid me back.
Anyway, after that, I was “tapped out” at the school, and not even eligible for a regular student loan, even if I had wanted to get one. To make matters worse, the interest rate on the emergency loan was astronomically high, something they don’t warn you about when you get it.
So now I was in debt, had no support, no aid, no scholarships, no nothing, and I was living on my own, with interest payment, rent, tuition, and all the rest, plus a full-time college schedule.
So what did I do?
You guessed it — just like you did, I WORKED. I took any job I could find, from the menial to the intellectual. I admit that I even did double-time: while sitting at the library checkout desk for one job, I was simultaneously editing theses for graduate students, and so on. I got a job cleaning up at a movie theater so I could also keep all the change and cash I found on the floor and wedged in the seats. Anything and everything to keep my college career going. I didn’t sleep much, and yes my grades did suffer because I simply had no time to ever study or do homework. I completed the previous night’s assignments for each class during the five minutes while everyone was settling into their seats. It was just ridiculous. But somehow, I made it through, and graduated with a completely useless liberal arts degree that I’ve never had any use for, even once.
Why mention all this? Because now when I find myself at U.C. Berkeley or Stanford or UCLA or any of these schools (which I do from time to time for various reasons), all I see are a bunch of spoiled kids who have everything handed to them on a silver platter. And they have the nerve to complain! None of them ever seem to have a job, they all have credit cards and debit cards from their parents that pay for everything, they’re loaded down with expensive electronics and the latest fashions, and it’s party party party or protest protest protest all the time, while a lax grading system gives them a 4.1 GPA for doing practically no learning. I have to clench my teeth just to endure being around them. (I must exempt the Asian students from this diatribe; the ones who are in the hard sciences, math and engineering — that is to say, most of them — do study day and night, and earn their grades. Hate to get all racial, but it’s the truth; the white students are just a bunch of self-aggrandized lazy entitled whiners by comparison.)
And those students who rack up debt by going to overpriced schools or by not working while in college — they get NO sympathy from me. None. I am sorry, I am just a hard-ass about this.
What ever happened to the concept of “the starving student”? The process of going through college prepared me for adult life — NOT because of what I learned in class, but because of the struggle to survive financially. I learned what working was and I learned what it meant to be independent and make it in the real world. That’s the lesson you’e SUPPOSED to learn in college. But instead, modern kids only learn to expect everything to be paid for by daddy or Uncle Sam, and to whine whine whine when their little magic carpet ride comes to an end.
Cry me a river.
Zombie, that was truly inspiring. I’m proud to know people like you!
[...] -As more information comes out, the protesters are about loan forgiveness, especially student loans. In other words they want to be deadbeats, and want the working people to support them. On the other [...]
[...] of the BEST articles I have read that explains this insanity is here. He explains why part of the demands of the Wall Street protesters is for canceled debt of student [...]
These students are the children of those who took additional mortgages to install granite counter tops and jacuzzi tubs in the master bath of their Mcmansions.
They have been *trained* to live as far above their means as possible.
Zombie, great post!
I’ve posted here before about the girl across the street who went to Stanford, and how even her earth cookie mother would roll her eyes when she reported that after spending $200,000 on her dear daughter’s college “education,” the kid announced that she had her eyes set on working for. . . drum roll. . . a non-profit.
Well, she did go to work for a non-rpfit, but decided after a few weeks to quit. As a stop-gap, she took a job with a fast-paced startup in Berkeley, working in sales—an area that four years of absorbing liberal arts propaganda had not prepared her for.
I ran into her the other day. She was happy and energetic. She loves her job at a =ptui= capitalist, profit-making enterprise, surrounded by smart, energetic, hustling co-workers, and being mentored in salesmanship by the CEO, a young man who has already started and sold two other companies.
Will it occur to her what is happening? Probably not. I expect she’ll reap the rewards of hard work while dissing the system that gave her the opportunity. But I’m a pragmatist: the kid can talk any swill she pleases; it’s her walk I’m focused on.
[...] The genesis of Occupy Wall Street distilled to two words: student loans Bookworm Room It’s pretty clear that a core issue animating these protesters is the ridiculous debt obligations that they voluntarily assumed. It’s therefore almost funny to see the working class union types leaping on board to help out kids whose demands, if acceded to, will pile ever greater debt on the ordinary working stiffs in America. [...]
“Nowadays, of course, student loans are de rigueur.”
I think that this is less a function of a sense of entitlement and more of an economic necessity. Like any market artificially influenced by government intervention (education, health care), the price of higher education bears no resemblance to actual costs and isn’t subject to normal market forces. The first time I went to school, I worked full-time and graduated with zero debt. This was due in part by qualifying for academic scholarships and to my company’s generous tuition reimbursement policy (e.g. 100% for an A, 75% for a B, 50% for a C). The second time I went to school, working full-time and making relatively the same money, I couldn’t afford both education and living expenses. I had to get loans to afford school at a public university paying in-state tuition. Tuition hikes were such that over the course of a few short years the balance of my checks after expenses was half that initially. ‘Affordable education’ policies, are, in fact, making higher education unaffordable.
I got out of UC Santa Cruz in ’81 with only $2,200 in Loan debt and my “scholarship” amounted to a Work-Study program that found me a job at…SAGA Foods – I was a pot-washer. I used $700 of the loan to buy a used car so I could finally get around – riding a bicycle everywhere was a royal pain. Sheesh – but God damn I was also SO glad to get the hell out of there — even if an Anthropology degree meant I would wander the world as a day-laborer, a landscaper, a stripper (photographic ad-art assembly), a scenery painter, a theater designer (money?? ha!), an Admin at a Bigger Privater University-er, and finally a graphic artist, an unemployed graphic designer, and a UI designer, and finally unemployed-unemployed again… But I own a home outright in Silicon Valley and have a lovely wife.
We have similar problems with government employees’ pensions. These pension plans are *extremely* generous, far more so than those private company pensions still in existence. Why so generous?
In fact, given that government jobs are far more stable than private jobs – one reason to go for a government job has always been its stability – the pension plans ought to be less lucrative. Or if not the pension plans, then the salaries. As I’m sure you know, public employee salaries and related compensations ALSO became more lucrative on the mean than private employee salaries.
So, you have salaries and compensations, stability, and pensions, all better for government employees than for private employees. And government employees are paid for by the taxes of private employees; the converse is not true. How does this not spell financial disaster eventually, as surely as does Social Security, Medicare, Medicard overruns? Isn’t it inevitable?
On top of that, private employee pensions are not guaranteed. Investments can crater and money can disappear. Pensions can be lost. For private employees, too bad. But for public employees, they’re GUARANTEED their pensions. If investments crater, then they soak the taxpayers for the difference.
What a monstrous game. When the American People eventually wake up to this, they will be outraged. The outrage at these silly Occupy Protests will be like a gentle spring breeze compared to what’s coming.
The money that goes into universities are funneled towards maintaining the professor class of academics and Leftists. They use this money to generate rallies, without having to find a funding source. You are their funding source. Like a monopoly, they can dictate prices that cannot be argued or contested because they and the government control the resource of education. You’re not allowed to call yourself educated without their accreditation.
This money eventually turns up as social engineering projects targeting both minorities as well as easily deluded college students. This eventually provides more raw recruits for the Leftist cult.
This student loan stuff really makes me angry. The reason college costs are increasing is because the schools can induce the students to take out nearly unlimited loans to pay for the costs. In return, the schools jack up the amenities to the point that actual study is near impossible.
But if we must, then let’s look for change. How about student loans are dischargeable after 15 yrs but the diploma is rescinded as a result. We can’t take back the “education” they would still be able to trade on their knowledge but not on the credential. To be fair, a person should be able to settle their loan debt and have their credential restored.
And let’s impose some financial discipline on the student loan market. You can borrow more for a STEM degree but a lot less for a Humanities or English degree you could get for a $1.50 in late fees at the public library.
Let’s encourage the creation of spartan, colleges devoted to education and intellectual curiosity by having few distractions other than a rural setting. They could have accelerated programs since the entire focus would be on expanding the mind through classroom instruction and manual training that molds problem solving, critical thinking and realistic evaluation to the purely mental exercises of most schooling these days.
Oh, it must be just “another” coincidence….
Owners of Zuccotti Park Recently Received $135 Million in Tax Money for Wind Farm
http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2011/10/hmmm-owners-of-zuccotti-park-recently.html
SADIE has: Owners of Zuccotti Park Recently Received $135 Million in Tax Money for Wind Farm
Subsidies! Free money for the well-connected! The government keeps on picking winners and losers, which is known as a command economy, not a free market. In this way Obama keeps on a moving us in EXACTLY the wrong direction.
I’m reading a fascinating book right now: Depression, War, and Cold War. Learning a lot about the period 1929-1950. The main point I’m learning is that there is only a little to compare between our situation now and our situation then. What utterly fascinates me is that when FDR switched the USA to a command economy in mid-1940, to turn us into the “arsenal of democracy” without yet committing troops, he also simultaneously switched from a rigidly ideological and profoundly hostile to business administration, to an administration that was profoundly, deeply, and completely pro-business. (Likely too pro-business even!) But it led to conditions during the command war economy that were reasonably good – better at least than the Great Stagnation of the New Deal, following the Depression. If FDR had lived past the end of the war, he possibly would not have learned his lesson, put the New-Dealer “long-haired boys” from the ivory tower back in charge, and put us right back into the depression. But he died; Truman continued his pro-business policies after the war, with some moderation, and the Great Miracle of the economic recovery following the war commenced.
It was all about being pro-business, and removing business uncertainty caused by raving hostility towards business within the Administration. In 1940 the rabid New-Dealers got shunted aside; by mid 1942 they had mostly fled, were purged, or were way off to the side pushing papers and mumbling to themselves. The New Deal had been killed and was completely over.
Contrast that with Obama, who remains rabidly and deeply anti-business, and maintains a climate of extreme business uncertainty and hostility. Due to this, and the results of this hostility, there will be no miracle in 2011 nor in 2012. He is ideologically committed to this path, and he therefore is doomed.
What’s extremely tragic about Obama is that his stimulus plans *should* have resulted in a temporary, fake bubble of prosperity, or if not apparent “prosperity”, at least an alleviation of the pain. But he chose to put the money into the economy in ways so very unwise – so stupid and ideological – that he gained little to no benefit at all from the infusion.
Solyndra is of course the perfect example of how to waste the money. A complete waste – unless it is true that it was just a money-laundering scheme, and that missing 500 million bucks has been recycled back into other hands that are now much richer for the transfer of wealth from taxpayers to them. Green energy boondoggle, or money laundering scheme – either way, all the rest of us are poorer off. That’s par for the course for this misbegotten, rotten Administration.
NYC Letter: Evolving Views On The Left — Nancy Pelosi Redux…
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