Comment by James_K
8 days ago
Most people consider anything they don't like to be a waste of public funds. After all, they pay for the government through taxes, so it should serve only their needs. People in America do not view the government as a source for public good, but merely a piggy bank from which they should be able to extract funds. Just look at the student loan forgiveness crowd. I'm perfectly happy paying my dues, but a lot of people have decided that they want the government to give them a load of free money instead of using it for something productive.
Many countries don't have this boat anchor named "student loan" at all, so maybe the lesson here is that indenturing your people who actually want to study shouldn't be a must?
It's not a must.
Whether you're right or not is beside the argument he/she made, which I think is pretty strong: that many Americans think anything government does that doesn't directly benefit them is a waste. Personally I find this to be somewhat more true among folks who identify as conservatives but I also hear plenty of self-identified moderates and liberals complaining about the expenditure of tax dollars when it comes to the military and foreign influence or tax policy as it pertains to corporations and high earners.
Why not? Student loans are a good protection against brain drain. If you offer free university, there's a likelihood that people will take you up on it then move out of the country, thus wasting the money invested in educating that person. A student loan guarantees a good return on investment for people you educate. Admittedly, America solves this problem by charging income tax for citizens living abroad, but a loan is better in my view since you can't rescind it like you could a citizenship. I actually think the concept of student loans should be extended down to primary education. I also think it would be good to institute a similar system for medical debt.
> medical debt
As far as I'm concerned, "medical debt" is effectively extortion.
If I have some sort of major medical issue, such as cancer, it's absolutely fucked that my choices are to either die or to rack up an extreme amount of medical debt that I might not ever recover from. In either case, my life is ruined.
1 reply →
The protection against that brain drain is to have a country worth staying in.
25 replies →
This reminds me of one of the propaganda points used in Soviet times to justify denying permission to emigrate to Soviet Jews in 1970-80s. Since they got free education courtesy of the state, they were supposed to stay and "work it off".
Running away without paying the loan is a way better solution.
Y'all have the delulu American exceptionalism brain. People will leave if they don't like living here. A loan eill not stop them.
2 replies →