HunterBidensLapDogDumb Trump supporters shoot America in the foot
HWK_290Who would have thought that people so vehemently against a functioning government would ultimately give the world the impression that America does not have a functioning government
And this is true. Feels like USA politics are an even bigger joke than Italian’s
Hey! I resemble that comment!
PaulDevonUKAs an outsider, there are soo many other indicators. All linked to R politics.
Important to remember, in many cases it was a goal, not a side effect. When someone lived out their life and they’re kinda miserable and unfulfilled, they might justifiably hate our world, in a sense. There’s really only one way to take revenge on it, and that’s to perpetuate and worsen the shittiness so that nobody can hope to escape it.
Misery loves company, or so the saying goes.
Says a lot about the people that absolutely don’t want for student debt to be cleared in the USA because they had to clear it themself.
snooggumsThe worst part is that the student debt they paid off was a small portion of the debt that people cannot afford to pay off now because the same people defunded universities.
When I was a young kid a summer job at minimum wage could pay for a year of state college. By the time I attended a summer job paid for a semester. Now a summer job at the minimum wage will barely pay for books, since the minimum wage has stagnated and tuition goes up year after year.
hoodatninjaThere’s some truth here but rocketing university costs are a little more complex than that.
More complex, sure, but that is the primary reason.
I’m not sure I agree. It’s had a huge impact on community colleges and a lot of state schools, but the issues really are varied and impact different schools/states in different ways and to different degrees.
Make no mistake, the democrats are better for schools than republicans. But we can’t just blame every single thing on republicans or we sound like them calling everyone they disagree a commie in the 2010’s again.
You should cite some of the other reasons rather than just saying they exist. For example administrative staffing costs have risen dramatically over the last few decades. The upper management of universities now make CEO like wages. Universities are competing on amenities more than they are academics. Nice housing and recreational complexes are the norm while full time professors are all being replaced by adjuncts who aren’t paid a living wage. The economics are broken.
I did cite multiple pieces in my follow up comment because both of us were speaking in generalities.
While correct, the real problem came when they made banks unable to refuse college loans. Suddenly, colleges could set whatever price they wanted, and the banks had to agree. That skyrocketed costs and directly led to the current situation.
Of course, it really started even further back than that when we allowed education to be privately funded rather than a public good.
Semi-Hemi-DemigodThe fact that people don't understand that more free education means a better life for everybody is really frustrating
We don't bat an eye at having tax-funded libraries (well the GOP is starting to...) because we have internalized as a society that they're a good thing. I have never understood why we can't do the same with schools.
If Republicans didn't spend the majority of their energy on destroying anything publicly funded I would stop blaming them first for destroying everything publicly funded.
You don't need to stop blaming them because they deserve it. But I am saying this explanation is overly reductionist. If you completely removed the GOP from the equation and restored or even increased funding, universities would still have a huge widespread cost issue.
Deflecting from the biggest part of the issue is why so little progress is made in solving complex issues.
I honestly am not interested in this discussion if you are going to alternate between generalizations and sound bites man. If you think it's the single biggest driver then you need to provide sources. I feel I have demonstrated that I clearly get the GOP's role in this issue - it is substantial. Yet you seem to just blow through everything I write in a way that indicates you aren't really engaging with me at all or, frankly, reading what I'm writing.
I was down to have a discussion but this has become exhausting and repetitive, so again, have a wonderful day. Truly. I am not mad or being sarcastic with you. This just isn't productive anymore and I'd like to move on. I made my points and you can do with them what you will.
They'd have a lot harder time justifying massive administrative pay to a funding subcommittee than they do justifying it to a bunch of trustees who are also rich assholes and know they can charge as much as they want for tuition because everyone just gets loans.
They'd have a lot harder time justifying massive administrative pay to a funding subcommittee than they do justifying it to a bunch of trustees
You say that yet take a look at our military budget bloat that is in large part due to congress wanting the jobs in their districts/states and other borderline corrupt influences.
The Department of Education is audited regularly. The DoD isn't.
The same org that is under attack by republicans, mind you. A
I don't think it's particularly complex.
They captured state houses and gutted state budgets for direct funding to universities. Simultaneously, democrats tried to make up the difference at the national level by pushing for and getting pell grants, which are dedicated grant funds. This means there's a dedicated amount of federal funds on the table every year, which mitigates against the market forces that would otherwise push tuition prices back down.
Students are then encouraged to take personal loans to cover the manufactured shortfall. Students can't discharge this in bankruptcy, which encourages bad lending practices.
Almost all of this is very normal cause and effect with plenty of analogous historical examples, so even if we the idiot people don't get it, you can be pretty sure that our highly educated and wealthy elected officials knew exactly what would happen.
If this were all too confusing or complex to know the outcome, then at least some of the time we'd see benefit randomly go to the individual. But it doesn't, ever.
That last paragraph is a mess. Nice.
Sure was. Was using swipe typing in bright sunlight. Fixed a few of the glaring typos. Thanks!
I don't think it's particularly complex.
I'm trying to be polite here so I apologize if this seems overly blunt. I think calling it "not particularly complex" is pretty striking. We are talking about a network of around 7000 schools (a little over 1000 CC's and over 5000 4-year universities, not including trade schools) consisting of public, private, and religious institutions across 50 states with their own sets of laws. There is nothing simple about it.
We are both speaking in generalities so I'm going to link a few secondary sources as well as a primary source on this.
1
2 - a Forbes piece discussing the above
3 - Solid piece by
4 - A nice short piece from NPR about a decade ago which gives us some context about the post-war period's massive influence on how colleges developed and expanded
I could keep just dumping links but I think those 3 are a good start. Reduced state funding absolutely contributes to the problem in a large way. There's no attempt here to downplay that, and that reduced funding is largely done by Republicans, as they tend to do with any education funding. But to say that is far and away the biggest driver is to over-simplify the issue and to ignore decades of other trends, such as rising operating costs, ballooning investments to be more attractive without a sustainable plan for maintaining facilities/programs (HUGE issue at private universities in particular), the huge push by the federal government to get people into schools no matter what predatory loans they got 17 and 18 year old's to sign (everyone should have access and the federal government should help but we let wolves in with the sheep with the way we structured it), and so many other factors contribute to this issue.
You know what would help with rising costs and increased enrollment?
Not eliminating funding.
I have a feeling you aren't really reading what I'm writing anymore or at least are just skimming over it and then making your points, so I'm just going to call it a day here. I put a lot of thought and effort into what I wrote and I was hoping you would as well given we are having a discussion. But based on this and your other comment, it's just degenerating into sarcastic quips that are becoming increasingly less relevant to the discussion.
Have a good one man.
Let me clarify. It is complicated - there are a lot of moving parts, as you say. But again, that is 100% design choice.
Complexity means that there's some level of uncertainty. I don't believe that there's any uncertainty with how we have structured education. It works consistently to force individuals to shoulder the burden, while providing benefit to the people who need it least. If you implement these policies, you'll get the same outcome every time.
Sure I generally agree with this
I would be surprised if the people most aggressively against student loan forgiveness had any personal difficulty with student loans themselves at all. The politicians beating the drum were likely wealthy enough for tuition to be an afterthought, and their constituents do not value education enough to have needed the loans in the first place.
If you’re in the second camp you’re probably also bitter that these educated liberal elite, that think their so fancy and embarrass you with their big city talk, want now to get their education, which they lord over you, FOR FREE! You’re probably angry that these young people with their hip culture you don’t understand or have time for, because you’re waking up predawn to drive 45 minutes to your manual labor job which is wrecking your body, “don’t have to work like you do.” In short, you’re probably not very big picture oriented, your self esteem is probably pretty fragile, and you’re probably not the strongest abstract thinker. You’re likely angry to the point of antisocial, and relish any opportunity to leverage your will.
It's hard to disentangle this issue from the recent decision to end affirmative action as well. Both have the same undercurrent of "Why does someone else get something I didn't get?" with the framing that they lost something or that something unfair occurred to them as a result. Whether they were ever in a position to benefit from these things is immaterial, they just have an issue seeing someone else get it.
If those people are over a certain age, they "cleared" it themselves with GI benefits and/or they worked during the summer to pay for tuition.
Hurt people hurt people. Also, dumb people hurt people.
Be fair OP. America became a laughing stock the moment Trump was elected.
DeceptichumMate, we’ve been laughing at you for decades.
At least Trump only really hurt America, unlike the third world countries everyone one of your presidents bombs and murders.
Laughing at me for decades? Or my country. I’m not even American.
I mean, to be absolutely fair, that doesn’t mean the world doesn’t laugh at you. Maybe you’re Belgian
True, it could be worse. I could be German.
Most of us don’t like Trump, most of us don’t like the bombings in other countries, most of us didn’t want to be in Vietnam, most of us isn’t didn’t want us to be in Iraq.
I don’t look at every person in the UK and assume you all love the Monarchy and love the current and past two morons you have had running the place. I mean fuck Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, and Boris Johnson and Brexit? Shit isn’t lookin great over that way either but I don’t assume it’s because every single citizen of the UK wanted it that way. Quit looking at America like one big collective individual and take a moment to realize that the fuckin system here is rigged to shit from years of political fuckery. We are stuck with a two party system and the past two presidents who did the most damage to our foreign relations and our political system didn’t even win the fucking popular vote.
Oh and if I incorrectly assumed you nationality just fill in the appropriate bullshit that is probably happening in your current country.
Sincerely,
One of the majority of Americans that don’t like what is happening in this country either
P.S. Go eat a bag of rancid donkey dicks ya ignorant fuck.
What, come on, everyone knows that having four prime ministers in two years is the sign of a stable government.
The monarchy in charge would probably result in a better political situation to be honest.
Did their government change? Did the military take over? No, the timing party just decided to elect a new front man to distract the population while the Tories resort and pillage society
Most of you vote for this every fucking time.
Stop acting like you’re not responsible for the state of your own country. Ducking pathetic.
No we fuckin don’t. You are ignorant as to how things work here. Go read then formulate an educated opinion or just shut up.
Oh fuck off mate, accept a bit of responsibility in your pathetic life.
No one else on this planet is responsible for America except Americans.
You allow this system to flourish and support it year after year. Just because a small percentage of your population can’t vote doesn’t mean shit when you were founded without the right to vote.
Yupp me and the other Americans were like “Lets push SCOTUS to rule on Citizens United in a way that allows unchecked amounts of money in politics and also lets create a system that lets candidate that loses the popular vote become president anyway!” we all worked really hard at it… or we watched and let it happen without protesting or trying to change it at all…
…or that is completely wrong and you could go read both those articles I linked and realize that “the majority of us” literally did not vote for this shit and or voted against it.
You and the other Americans instead were like “let’s do nothing and complain”.
Tell me, who do you think is responsible for America if not Americans?
Ok genius since you are so well versed on the topic… tell me the solution? You know the solution to the problem you didn’t even know because you started off saying the MAJORITY of us voted for this shit? I mean it will come to a head once the system breaks down but what exactly should we do now?
I mean you are the one moving the bar and now you are claiming that I am saying Americans are not responsible at all for the system we have. I am saying the majority of us didn’t vote for it, the majority of us are trapped in it and the majority of us have no simple solution to fixing it but you must have a stellar solution in your keen political mind so lets have it! What should us Americans do to fix the problems (which you are completely ignorant of) within out government?
The British.
Why is everyone downvoting this guy? He’s right.
Who tf else is going to fix us? There are a ton reasons why it’s extra challenging to effectively come together like the French do against their government, but it’s still up to us to change shit.
No, we actually don’t. You’re entirely wrong.
Yes you actually do.
Default_DefectHillary won the popular vote by QUITE a bit.
And I’d be laughing at you if she was your president as well.
What a disgrace they’ve all been.
asapmost of us didn’t want to be in Vietnam, most of us isn’t didn’t want us to be in Iraq.
Poor @[email protected] is getting massively downvoted, but these particular claims are easily disproven.
It doesn’t matter that public support shifted later - of course people feel bad about doing something bad after the fact. But at the time, most Americans did want you to be in Vietnam and most Americans did want you to be in Iraq.
We don’t make the decision to go to war the government does that without our input. The public supported for the war in Iraq after the government decided to go to war then spread propaganda saying that Iraq was related to 9/11. Those are graphs of how effective propaganda was on those polled after the government made a decision to go to war… we don’t vote on that shit.
It doesn’t matter that public support shifted later - of course people feel bad about doing something bad after the fact.
That is the propaganda losing the battle. People found out that the person (supposedly) responsible for 9/11 was in Afghanistan and had nothing to do with Iraq.
Vietnam was the same but it took longer for the general public to find out the truth. The government decides to go to war and spreads propaganda everywhere about why we needed to go to Vietnam. Propaganda weakens as real information about the war spreads then people no longer support the war.
Americans are not just inherently warmongering people I don’t think any citizens of any country are…unless their government has a super effective propaganda machine constantly brain fucking them into being that way (see Russia).
I’m sure that the people in your social circle do disagree with those wars and do disagree with some of the more recent things which have happened, but you need to understand that sometimes the majority does sadly support some very bad things
My social circles? I live in the Midwest there are people in my neighborhood with flags up that say “Fuck Biden Don’t blame me I Voted for Trump” in their front yards here. I have seen the worst of Americans and they are not the majority even here. There are some dumb fuck gravy seals that cosplay as soldiers and act like war is a solution to anything and everything but most of the people here who support Trump and have that “America first” mindset are just well meaning morons that fell prey to propaganda.
I am well aware that propaganda works champ the idea that there are brief periods of support for such things somehow cancels that the majority of the time the majority of everyone doesn’t support such things is moronic.
First:
most of us didn’t want us to be in Iraq.
Then:
The public supported for the war in Iraq
I mean you do hear yourself, right?
Nice cherry pickin champ. You are a moron.
There should not be any period where the majority of Americans thought invading Iraq was a good idea. This part is what the problem is.
I notice you didn’t actually respond to my point, and then you got angry and started calling names.