This comic is based on pretty childish thinking. Repaying student loans isn’t a cure. It’s making everyone else pay the price (either through inflation, through rising education costs, or through direct tax later).
Second, cancer isn’t a choice–student loans are.
More accurately would be: I’m going to be so upset if I have to suffer even a little again to help everyone else make up for their bad decisions.
Imagine being this brainwashed. You know where higher education is free? Pretty much the entire civilized world. Guess whether 'murican taxes compare favorably or unfavorably against that?
“Free” is such a ridiculous statement. No, higher education isn’t free anywhere. It’s funded by the people, but it’s ridiculously expensive. Maybe not as expensive as certain American universities, but still a decent chunk more than any student will make doing odd jobs while studying.
The point of not charging people for education is that those people will end up making lore money, so they will contribute more tax in the future, allowing more people to get even better education down the line. It’s a price people in many countries are willing to pay because it benefits the country as a whole.
But don’t be mistaken. You still pay your college fees. They come back at you in the form of decades of tax rates. American income tax is low compared to many countries with education of equivalent quality, and Americans don’t even have things like VAT/sales tax in many places.
I’ll gladly fund higher education through taxes for the rest of my life, but this notion that something is free because the government is paying for it needs to die. That money doesn’t come into existence out of nowhere. Even if the government would print money to pay for this stuff, the inflation that would produce would have a very similar effect to what handling this stuff through taxes would do.
This is also why I disagree with the current loan repayment schemes proposed and enacted by the current American government. The loans aren’t the main problem, the scammy tuition fees are. Making the government responsible for the loans will solve the immediate cash flow problem of current students, but will only exacerbate the problem if the forgiveness program isn’t accompanied by a legally mandated maximum tuition fee that’s one or two orders of magnitude lower than what they currently are.
Perhaps there’s something to be said for distributing the cost of the scam to everyone, as the problem is a result of decades of public policy, but it’s unfair to the people who made the responsible choice of picking a smaller, cheaper, slightly inferior college so they wouldn’t be stuck with unpayable debt.
It should also be noted that in many places where education is typically free, private education is still a thing. People with wealth pay almost American amounts of tuition for prestigious education out of reach of the common person, because the state not being willing to pay their ridiculous fees doesn’t mean that there is no private education. If America was to follow the European model, nothing would change for the people seeking out Ivy League colleges, you would mostly see the benefits in free community colleges.
You’d also still see a massive gap between the rich and the poor, as free tuition doesn’t imply free food or shelter, either; in many countries there’s a modest fee the government will pay out, but unless you want to live under a bridge subsisting of ramen noodles, you’ll still need a small loan or a side job to get by. Rich kids with rich parents will have more time to study, get better grades, and have more opportunities.
This comic is based on pretty childish thinking. Repaying student loans isn’t a cure. It’s making everyone else pay the price (either through inflation, through rising education costs, or through direct tax later).
Second, cancer isn’t a choice–student loans are.
More accurately would be: I’m going to be so upset if I have to suffer even a little again to help everyone else make up for their bad decisions.
Imagine being this brainwashed. You know where higher education is free? Pretty much the entire civilized world. Guess whether 'murican taxes compare favorably or unfavorably against that?
“Free” is such a ridiculous statement. No, higher education isn’t free anywhere. It’s funded by the people, but it’s ridiculously expensive. Maybe not as expensive as certain American universities, but still a decent chunk more than any student will make doing odd jobs while studying.
The point of not charging people for education is that those people will end up making lore money, so they will contribute more tax in the future, allowing more people to get even better education down the line. It’s a price people in many countries are willing to pay because it benefits the country as a whole.
But don’t be mistaken. You still pay your college fees. They come back at you in the form of decades of tax rates. American income tax is low compared to many countries with education of equivalent quality, and Americans don’t even have things like VAT/sales tax in many places.
I’ll gladly fund higher education through taxes for the rest of my life, but this notion that something is free because the government is paying for it needs to die. That money doesn’t come into existence out of nowhere. Even if the government would print money to pay for this stuff, the inflation that would produce would have a very similar effect to what handling this stuff through taxes would do.
This is also why I disagree with the current loan repayment schemes proposed and enacted by the current American government. The loans aren’t the main problem, the scammy tuition fees are. Making the government responsible for the loans will solve the immediate cash flow problem of current students, but will only exacerbate the problem if the forgiveness program isn’t accompanied by a legally mandated maximum tuition fee that’s one or two orders of magnitude lower than what they currently are.
Perhaps there’s something to be said for distributing the cost of the scam to everyone, as the problem is a result of decades of public policy, but it’s unfair to the people who made the responsible choice of picking a smaller, cheaper, slightly inferior college so they wouldn’t be stuck with unpayable debt.
It should also be noted that in many places where education is typically free, private education is still a thing. People with wealth pay almost American amounts of tuition for prestigious education out of reach of the common person, because the state not being willing to pay their ridiculous fees doesn’t mean that there is no private education. If America was to follow the European model, nothing would change for the people seeking out Ivy League colleges, you would mostly see the benefits in free community colleges.
You’d also still see a massive gap between the rich and the poor, as free tuition doesn’t imply free food or shelter, either; in many countries there’s a modest fee the government will pay out, but unless you want to live under a bridge subsisting of ramen noodles, you’ll still need a small loan or a side job to get by. Rich kids with rich parents will have more time to study, get better grades, and have more opportunities.