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It's not what I meant. I meant that when you're 18 going to the same school as bunch of your friends and living on a nice campus sure looks more fun than going alone to another country and just trying to find your way around there. I meant that when you're 18 it's really hard to understand what paying off massive debt is like. In the end most people didn't had to support themselves at that age so they don't know how much everything costs, what are the wages and so on. I think that's why my niece is studying in US even though she had an option to get her degree for free in Europe.
Your situation sounds completely different. You understood your situation, tried to do it the smart but hard way and still ended up in a terrible position. It sounds like higher education in US is simply not worth it anymore and there's no way around it.
Thanks for sharing. I hope you will find your way out of it somehow.
I was working 2 jobs when I was 18.
I didn't start college until I found a single job that paid enough to live on. I was 24.
I've no doubt a lot of 18-19 year olds do fuck around and waste college money and time.
But I wasn't one of those.
Here is the thing. When people say. "Don't go to school if you can't afford it".
That's social mobility.
What exactly was my alternative option?
Stay working shit minimum wage jobs my whole life. Where I'm reminded every day how replaceable I am. ?
No money for healthcare.
Ending up with chronic conditions at 40 from the hard jobs. No way to afford to treat them.
My parents are young. My mom is 16 years older than me and she looks like she's pushing 80. She's got a laundry list of health problems and can't even work anymore. 56 years old. And at the end of her life.
Being poor will lower your lifespan significantly. It will age you prematurely.
Im also an atheist and believe this is the only life I get. And I better do whatever I can to make it at least 70% enjoyable.
It was unacceptable to me to stay at the bottom. Quite honestly, I'd rather not be alive than have that life.
I've seen it. I know exactly what it looks like. And I know exactly how it ends. Usually around 55-65. Dying of a preventable disease.
Never retiring. No fruits from a lifetime of hard labor.
As I said the 10 year loan forgiveness program was a way for people to get themselves out of the cycle of poverty. But now, only wealthy kids get to go to graduate school.
And not that many will. Nepo babies usually just get bachelor degrees.
It's going to take years to re build departments at universities that will start closing in the next year.
People don't realize how much they depend on higher education in our society.
Medical staff. Lawyers. Engineers. The people inventing things do so at universities.
Even in my field, the research I do helps us understand the human body better and could lead to new interventions to help people have a higher quality of life.
People seem to not realize that all these tech advancements take humans to make them. And companies rarely invest in these. Except in their own properties.
I know so many people who think universities should be defunded of grant money for research.
They literally have no idea where the things they use every day even come from.
My sister moved to US from Poland when she was 18, about 25 years ago. She worked retail, banking and other random jobs. Got her degree online only couple of years ago. She has two kids, her husband died over 10 years ago so she was she was on her own for a long time now. She's not complaining and is not planning on moving. Being Polish I know many people that moved to US with no education and did rather fine. My aunt and uncle won the green card lottery, moved to New Jersey ~30 years ago. He worked construction, she cleaned houses. They bought a big house, raised two kids. My other uncle worked construction there for 30 years until he retired and moved back to Poland. He was there illegally all this time and he was able to afford healthcare and is still alive while many of his peers in Poland died long time ago (5 uncles and aunts on both sides of my family died before 60). So... is it really as bad as you describe? How is it that immigrants with no degrees can find their way around, live comfortably, raise kids, go on holidays and so on but for Americans it's all debt and/or suffering? I honestly don't understand this.
Husband?
So a two income household.
Banking ?
Yeah that's a corp job.
"Worked construction and did house cleaning and bought a big house".
That's not something most people with those two jobs could do. Even in a dual income household.
Unless perhaps you failed to mention he owned a construction business.?
Maybe 30 years ago. Sure. Not now.
I think you are unaware of a few things that have changed.
The cost of education has went up so much in 30 years.
Even my associates degree I paid $13000 for in 2008-2012 is easily now a $25,000 degree. At a community college.
As I said. Going to the next level , a state college, will be at minimum, $30k a year. (60k for associates, $120k for bachelor's).
Also , if you have kids or disabled, you are eligible for "free" money for college.
I did not qualify for any free money.
30 years ago , heck even 20 years ago, you could buy a house with only 8 or 9k down. And the house payments would be ~700 a month.
That's not how it is anymore.
Those same Homes are half a million now.
And the down payments needed are 30-50k.
This is why boomers are very much out of touch with the reality of American life now.
It's not how it was in the 80s, or 90s.
College is so expensive that when you graduate you owe so much, that the interest will rise faster than you can pay it off. Meaning you will just keep owing more money.
Also as far as credentials. Every place that isn't base like minimum wage jobs , requires a degree of some kind. With the exception of hard manual labor jobs. Like working in factories and warehouses. Hard labor. Hard on your body. And usually men work those jobs because of the physical demands being high. Destroying their bodies by 40.
And also. I never could afford health insurance at any job I ever had until I got a job working for the health insurance company.
There is no way anyone on minimum wage could possibly afford health insurance premiums.
I recall working at Pizza Hut 2006 before I got my corp job. $6 an hour.
After taxes I made about 700 a month.
Insurance premium was $250. For a young healthy 20 year old.
It's way more than that now. ~$500-700 per month.
And anyway. Doesn't matter. Couldn't afford deductable or copays. So pointless to have.
Yeah, it all makes sense. I guess things really went downhill recently. My uncle and aunt didn't own any business. They simply got a normal, fixed rate mortgage and bought 2 floor house. They lived at one floor and rented the other. That was 25-30 years ago but we're talking two immigrants with no education. It's crazy how much worse things are now.
Still, my uncle lived there until 5 years ago when he retired. Worked construction, didn't die at 40, had enough money to go to doctors, rent apartment and send money back home. I visited him twice for summer and worked with him (illegally, don't tell anyone). It wasn't hard work. I was a skinny teenager back then and was able to handle it. Lots of nailing and cutting but not that much carrying heavy things. I mean I wouldn't trade places with him but again, we're talking about immigrant with no education beyond primary school, not speaking English and staying in the country illegally. So yeah, I still can't really wrap my head around just how much worse things have to be now. Or maybe immigrants are just build different? They look for different opportunities, have different support networks, expect different things...
people like you aren't supposed to exist. you are supposed to die after a lifetime of barely getting by.
that is what the rich want. they dont' want you to be 'mobile'. they offends their world order wherein there are the only deserving ones.
Your comments in this thread indicate that it's what you want as well.
how far gone are you that you think anyone who isn't in perfect agreement with your politics is the enemy?
I think that people whose reaction to debt being dischargeable by bankruptcy is republican talking points are republicans.
and republicans are always wrong and bad right? and democrats are what... always good and right?
you realize economics doesn't care about your political affiliation?
debts don't magically go away. someone has to pay the piper. you are just saying you'd rather pay it off via your taxes and increased interest rates, than have the debt holders pay it off. you are simple shifting the burden from the individual debt holder to everyone else. I'm glad you are willing to pay off other people's debts for them, but many people don't agree with that mentality and that doesn't make them bad people or republicans.
I'm a socialist democrat myself. but i still believe in personal responsibility and incentives. debt dischargement doesn't create positive incentives. a huge chunk of people who get their debt discharged will go right back and pile it up again. and most with massive debt loads... would have never had them in the first place had they bad better financial choices, like paying back their debt ASAP rather than letting it grow for years.
But society personally and directly benefits from people who are scholars and scientists.
If it wasn't for people like me, willing to do the work and take on the debt, many of the best qualities of our lives would cease to exist.
Do people like me , deserve to be burdened by insane debt the rest of our lives for trying to improve our country.
Many other thriving nations realize that investing in their own citizens pays dividends.
Higher education is free or heavily subsidized by their governments.
But Americans would rather punish anyone trying to rise out of poverty by educating themselves.
The American individuality mindset is , : "I shouldn't have to pay any of my taxes to help others , even though helping them also helps me".
Socialist would be in support of free education.
What society? Much of society does not benefit from any of that, and most of the part of society that does is the rich part. Hence why many people are totally on board with defunding educational institutions to which they would never have any access anyway.
I support free education, but my country doesn't. I prefer the Canada/European model of education, but the USA doesn't agree. We have a fundamentally different education system from start to finish and their model tracks students from an early age in a way the USA system does not. in Europe I would have never even been allowed to apply to university... in american I was able to go to an ivy league school on a 80% scholarship from a lower income community.
USA has a fundamentally different culture around education, which is more more deeply rooted than just the economics and politics of it all. Spend most of my life being harassed and maligned for being pro-learning and pro-scholarship. Hell here on lemmy having any scholarly neutrality towards the issues and topics being discussed gets you harassed and threatened, because it's politics uber alles and and facts in and inconvenient truths that scholarship shows us get in the way of true belief.
Anyway, i have been through the american edu system. I did pretty well, and I paid back my debts. I didn't regard it as horrible, undue, or terrible. I simple lived lean and prioritized it an got it done. Alas many people I have met don't do this, and carry around their debt actively refusing to pay it back or piling it up. I've had girlfriends who told me it was my 'duty' to pay off their debt too, because you know, sexism and all that.
My taxes already help people. But I'm not really sure someone getting 150K of debt relief so they can teach elementary school for 40K a year is really a burden I should be paying. There are plenty of pathways to teaching that don't require that massive amount of debt to be taken on. It's not about punishment man, it's about us collectively paying for other people's stupid and selfish decisions.
Europe also has a totally different attitude towards medical care. One of the biggest issues with the USA system is that.. we are so actively unhealthy. Americans choose unhealth and then blame society for their poor habits. Should we tax people based on how overweight they are? because that would actaully be a far and equitable way of distributing medical costs.
I'm a socialist who understands that socialism isn't some free magical cure all to problems. It's just a shifting of the burden and without providing the correct incentive structure it doesn't really benefit anyone and punishes everyone.