Meanwhile republicans are fighting tooth and nail to claw back student loan forbearance during pandemic and cancel any student loan forgiveness
Priorities, I guess.
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Tricky to elect younger & more competent when the older generation is so much more practiced at the schmoozing aspect, unfortunately. Not to mention better funded by special interests who trust their predictability.
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We have them, they’re called elections. I don’t like most people in Congress, but it’s not up to me to decide who the people of Kentucky or California want to represent them. I have the right to weigh in on exactly 3 members of the legislature: 1 Congressional representative and 2 US Senators.
Age limits no matter what.
Don’t worry, there’s plenty of young incompetent people in office, too!
Yeah, we seriously need to start “voting” them out. This shit has gone on for far too long.
I like those quotation marks. Let’s “vote” them out.
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Also doing everything they can to funnel more of our money to another country’s war.
Awesome.
The money is only being spent on replacing the outdated military hardware that’s being sent over to Ukraine, which would otherwise be sitting and rotting in storage and would need replacement or expensive repairs to get running again. The US loses nothing from sending weaponry to Ukraine, and has everything to gain. It prevents continued Russian aggression on other countries (and Russia has explicit plans to invade more countries), saves Ukrainian lives and drives away the invaders so civilians aren’t being murdered in their homes, and boosts the economy through the increased number of jobs created for building the newer, better replacement equipment.
To claim that the money is being wasted is naive and misinformed at best, and actively disingenuous and malicious at worst. Putin would love for the US to stop sending support so he can continue his genocide.
The money is only being spent on replacing the outdated military hardware that’s being sent over to Ukraine, which would otherwise be sitting and rotting in storage and would need replacement or expensive repairs to get running again.
Would be totally fine with that if it were being deducted from the next budget, but it’s not, so it’s added to the hundreds of billions we’re already taking on in debt while also neglecting our own people.
It prevents continued Russian aggression on other countries
Couldn’t care less. Our people don’t have health care, education that they can afford, and the minimum wage is still 7 bucks. I’d much rather see that money spent saving our people from the aggression of our predatory economic environment, as is already the case in most first-world countries.
It’s not like your country was about to provide socialized health care, affordable quality education, and a living minimum wage, and suddenly stopped those programs in order to fund the war. And you politicians most likely to stop funding the Ukraine are the least likely to vote for any of these “socialist programs”
That doesn’t make it any less problematic, nor does it make me any less right in pointing out the extent to which our people are neglected so war profiteers can fund their golden parachutes. (Sadly, with help from a lot of chickenhawks, like the folks on this thread.)
(Sadly, with help from a lot of chickenhawks, like the folks on this thread.)
Sometimes it’s not everyone else that’s wrong, it’s just you.
Sounds like your mad at the republicans, and yet parroting their talking points.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Maybe the fact that they have varied points of view actually shows that they think for themselves instead of parroting anything?
Sometimes it’s not about the money, it’s about doing the right thing.
So that’s how the economy should be fixed. Let more people get away from paying what they agreed to pay. The only reason people are so for student loan forgiveness is because it actually effects them. You agreed, you signed the paper.
No one signs anything agreeing to be sucked dry by greedy companies while they desperately scrounge for affordable housing food and a job that pays a living wage with a company that doesn’t treat its employees like cattle. People sign with the idea that going to college will increase their chances of a better life; that’s what the “American dream” promises. People bust their ass, do everything they are supposed to do, but America (and the companies that run it), break promises (if not out right lied to begin with). How is anyone supposed live up to their end of the bargain, when America doesn’t live up to their’s?
When you sign loan paperwork, this isn’t an agreement with "America’. I’m not saying that most companies don’t do everything they can to fuck people over, but you can’t not pay what you agreed to because you are upset at the world. That’s a teenager mentality.
That’s a teenager mentality.
No, it’s not. You’re just missing the point being expressed.
I get the point. It is just wrong. At the end of the day, you can’t make an agreement and years later say, “I shouldn’t have to pay this cause I’m upset at unrelated things”.
Did you miss what this post is about? and how they borrowed $500 million.
There also not paying pensions to people who dedicated their lives to work for them.
Or, we seize the assets of the rich, redistribute it to the poor, implement a wealth and inheritance tax, universal healthcare, free college education and universal basic income. As someone who doesn’t have student loans, fuck the paper and fuck this greed-driven system. Why does the richest nation on the planet still have poverty and homelessness and shit medical systems where people literally vomit shit because they can’t afford treatment?
Or, we seize the assets of the rich,
Do you mean that in a fix the tax code sort away, or literally walking up to their front door with pitchforks and torches and breaking their front door down?
If we don’t try the former, the latter becomes inevitable with time. Witness the multitude of civilizational collapses and revolutions and peasant rebellions that have occurred throughout history all over the world. Personally, I’d rather head off such an event and do it peacefully, but that will only be an option for so long.
Yes give people money for not doing anything. Thats fair. There is places with universal Healthcare, ask them how that works. Well doesn’t work more like. Free college will have big ramafications. What good will a degree be if everyone has one. Then everyone will have to get a university degree and cry about loan forgiveness for that.
Ask Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands. People like you are what’s wrong with the world. I bet you’re one of those people who thinks poor people only exist because they’re lazy and need to pull themselves up by their fucking bootstraps.
Weird that people from all these great places come to America for real Healthcare. That’s weird. There is many reasons why people are broke. Some of them are self inflicted, some aren’t.
They come to America for very specialized health care, and only that.
And you know why?
They won’t be bankrupted for an injury or illness in their own countries, and not a god damn one of them is going to sign up for American health care once they look at the medical bills we get for routine shit.
So strange that while the Healthcare is free that it takes months on a waiting list to get basic surgery. That most of it can’t be done there. Almost like the hospitals don’t have the time or money to treat everyone. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
@UmbrellAssassin @wanderingmagus
Nope. But do go on about things you know little about.
Glass houses blah blah blah.
You and I both know that the odds are stacked, between the haves, and have nots. And for the halves to tell the have nots to suck it up and just pull up on their bootstraps doesn’t always work.
The first group of people (aka haves) getting into power forceify their power base so that only they and their friends benefit from it.
Democracy is supposed to prevent that, but it’s only as good at preventing that as it is the people you elect to office.
I wasn’t born with a silver spoon up my ass. I worked my ass off and used any resources that I could find. It took time and hard work. I didn’t sit around waiting for a handout and being upset at the world for not getting it.
That’s boomer talk there. Always worried about everyone else rather than themselves. "you shouldn’t have a good life because I worked my ass of for 6 hours a day in a factory job that afforded me a nice a house and two car payments with money to spare on steak everyday. The same job now that you’d need a roommate to live in a one bedroom apartment and ride a bike to work while eating shit food. Get over yourself.
That’s boomer talk there. Always worried about everyone else rather than themselves.
Please don’t be Ageist. It’s not an age thing, it’s how you were raised thing.
Some of us “Boomers” (I’m actually first gen Gen-X but keep getting called a Boomer) actually do care about others, especially the generations coming up behind us, and want to strive for a win-win scenario for everyone.
It becomes an age thing when someone is talking shit about a younger generation not wanting to work or anything like that because as I said, back in their day a shit factory job was enough income to afford a house and two cars.
The “how you were raised” is a bunch of shit too. It’s who you decided to become.
It becomes an age thing when someone is talking shit about a younger generation not wanting to work or anything like that because as I said, back in their day a shit factory job was enough income to afford a house and two cars.
But that’s not automatic based just on the biological timestamp of the people expressing the opinions. And not everyone in that classification agrees with each other.
Yes, different generations have different living conditions, but don’t say they’re wrong just because they are a Boomer (which is usually used to signal that they are automatically out of touch and should be ignored), you say its based on the times/society they lived in instead which formed their opinion, and not their physical age.
The “how you were raised” is a bunch of shit too. It’s who you decided to become.
And you decide who you want to become based on the society you live in at the point of time you’re growing up and living in it, as its society which forces the rules to live by.
As time goes by and newer generations show up over the decades, they revise the rules of society and then yes at that point you’re supposed to change with them (but only if you agree with them; free will is a bitch), but you also have a hard coded base of beliefs already and rules that you’ve lived your life by that you’ve learned from earlier days.
You can’t hand wave that away no matter how much you want to. People do get set in their ways based on the society time frame they grew up in, and not their biological timestamp. If you want to change their minds you have to understand that fact and work with it.
I’m not saying overall you’re wrong, older generations are supposed to update their belief systems to match the times they’re living in now. But to ignore the fact that humans don’t like change won’t solve any problems.
I’m not a boomer and it isn’t a boomer mentality to think people should work for the things they want. If you really think that 6 hours is a long shift, just wait until you actually get a job. It is hard if you get an easy job. That’s a choice. So is getting a low yield degrees. Those are choices. If you choose the easy way now, don’t complain about the outcome later.
Hi, US Navy submariner here with an “actual job” that can last 16+ hours a day regardless of rank when underway. I think it’s bullshit civilians are forced to work 5 day weeks and 9 to 5 jobs in the 21st century when automation is literally right there and other first world countries already have free Healthcare and college. I am certainly not complaining about Tricare that I receive as a servicemember, or the job security, or the government provided housing I could ask for at any time if I needed it, or the tuition assistance I can use to go to college. I think all citizens should get these same privileges.
Was it Scotland that did free college and what happened? People got bullshit degrees and complained that they didn’t get them anywhere. Countries with free Healthcare not being able to take care of people in a timely manner forcing them to spend huge amounts of money going to other countries. While still getting taxes for Healthcare. Free doesn’t mean free. Governments don’t make money. They take money from their people and use that.
I see people who work 50-70 hours a week, and even with all that overtime they cannot afford their medical expenses, or they’re being forced out of their rental due to the landlord selling the property and now they have to cope with a move to a more expensive place that no longer fits their budget, they also have $60k in student debt on a degree that didn’t get them the job they have (despite being told by “experts” that you get a bachelors/masters or you’re useless, all to enter a saturated field that wasn’t saturated 2-4 years ago), and they can’t afford a reliable vehicle.
It must be nice to have that silver spoon you were gifted with, but there are many more who work hard but still have fallen off the edge of our system with no safety net. This isn’t about working for things you want, this is about people having the means to take care of their needs.
Quite frankly your view is narrow and outdated, hence the people that think you’re a boomer. If it’s so easy, then by all means tell us what the hundreds of millions of people should be doing without the canard advice of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, because that is a chickenshit weak argument by privileged fuckheads who have no clue.
You can’t blame a landlord for doing what’s best for them. They can’t take the hit for people just cause it is hard for them. What experts are you talking about? If people didn’t research before hand, they are the only ones to blame. Yes the automotive market sucks, yes the housing market sucks. That doesn’t mean crying about it and waiting for a handout will fix anything. I didn’t have any spoons. When was going to college I realized I couldn’t afford it and the degree I wanted wasn’t going to work for me, got a job, worked my ass off hopping from job to job trying to find something. When my car broke down, I didn’t get the car I want, I got a car that works and can get me places. Slowly moved up while finishing up a degree that can actually do something, found a stable job and now going back for a bs in something that might not be what I wanted to do with my life, but something that can help me lead the life I want. I’ve been trying to buy a house for years and instead of jumping into the first opportunity that looks good, I’m waiting and researching to make sure I don’t put myself in a worse position. You are your safety net. You shouldn’t expect someone else to pick up after you when you make mistakes unless you are a child. People like you confuse want and need. You want a nice fancy car, but you don’t need it. You want a huge house, but then you are setting yourself up for failure. I’ve know people that didn’t have the best start to their lives and made the best of it and found resources that could help. The people around them that just sat around complaining without doing anything about it are still doing just that. All you can do is call my argument names and complain that you should have shit handed to you. What’s your argument? What’s your way to fix things that doesn’t include bitching on the internet?
@UmbrellAssassin @wanderingmagus
So better to have millions with no healthcare at all, dying at a far younger age than need be?
You know nothing young padawan.
There is options for people of they can’t afford Healthcare. That’s like complaining that you don’t have a 401k when you are the only person to blame. If we are throwing out star wars quotes, “There is no ignorance, there is knowledge”. People choose to be ignorant about their options because it is easier to complain and wait for something to fall into their laps.
You’re either a shit troll or a bot. Go back to reddit.
Look, not every opinion that you don’t agree with is a troll. >go back to reddit. Says the person that joined 3 weeks ago. Nice. How about you go back if all you want is a echo chamber. Reddit was perfect for that. The prefect place to pretend your the smartest person because you could report and ban everyone that didn’t agree with your narrow minded viewpoint.
In July 2020 [during the pandemic], the Treasury Department announced it was giving a $700 million loan to the trucking company, helping it to stay afloat. But the loan immediately raised questions, in part because the firm was struggling financially and was being sued by the Justice Department over claims that it had defrauded the federal government for a seven-year period.
Seems like defrauding the government should make one ineligible for government money.
As of the end of March, Yellow’s outstanding debt was $1.5 billion, including about $730 million that is owed to the federal government. Yellow has paid approximately $66 million in interest on the loan, but it has repaid just $230 of the principal owed on the loan, which comes due next year.
Must be nice, can I get that on my student loans?
“We recommend that all Yellow employees who have personal belongings and tools at the terminals should take them home today,” wrote John A. Murphy, a co-chair of the Teamsters freight industry negotiating committee.
Yeah, that seems like a good idea.
Seems like defrauding the government should make one ineligible for government money.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/us/politics/yrc-coronavirus-relief-funds.html
The relationship between Apollo and the White House runs deep. In 2017, Josh Harris, a founder of Apollo, advised the Trump administration on infrastructure policy and discussed a possible White House job with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. That same year, Apollo lent $184 million to Mr. Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies, to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper.
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Yellow has paid approximately $66 million in interest on the loan, but it has repaid just $230 of the principal owed on the loan, which comes due next year.
Which is exactly what students deal with every day. But it’s ok to give millions of dollars to criminals, just not to students who are trying to improve themselves and the economy. If a college student cheated on their federal taxes for seven years, would they get a government bailout?
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There is a large difference between a 700 Million dollar loan and a 40 Billion dollar forgiveness. I’m not saying the student loan forgiveness is bad but there is a big difference in the dollar amounts between these two things.
$757 billion has been forgiven in PPP loans. That $700 million figure is just from Yellow alone.
Forgiving student loans is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the bailouts the wealthy get.
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If you’re talking about the 2018 auto bailout, that ended up making the government money because they managed to emerge out from it and the government charged a little interest.
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Why does a car company make the US government money but not people with degrees?
They both do, and the people with degrees make even more money by paying interest on their crushing debt!
The 2008 TARP that bailed out GM and Chrysler may have had widespread support but it wasn’t universal. In my opinion it shouldn’t have been done either and was probably only necessary because of the original Chrysler bailout back in the day. Without that “The Big Three” would have been subject to market forces and turned into “The Big Two”, the healthier market may have kept GM from being in the position to need a bailout.
The other point of note is that GM did repay their loan so at least in that instance it worked out. I have no idea why anyone in the Federal Government thought that Yellow would be able to successfully repay this one.
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I had to look that up because honestly I had forgotten about it. It’s not that I “like” to, I just did.
The argument that GM should have been required to make up the difference seems reasonable to me, of course I think the bailout was unreasonable in the first place sooooo…
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Criminals giving criminals money, then socializing the criminals’ losses, then gifting the criminals a golden parachute. There is the ruling class and everyone else. Most of the country is distracted by UFOs and drag queen brunches to care about the real problems.
That loan saved the pensions of those people working at Yellow, if you maybe want to take that into account while you’re fitting people for black hats.
If the pensions were at risk due to the company’s bankruptcy, something has gone very wrong. Generally, pension funds are protected under ERISA.
Generally, pension funds are protected under ERISA.
There’s a whole lot of Coal Miners who would argue that point.
Were they not covered because of a technicality (for example being a contractor versus an employee), or did ERISA just fail to make them whole as they should have?
Jeez, since when does asking a honest question deserve a downvote?
I still don’t understand why a person’s pension is in any way related to their place of employment.
You and me both, I much prefer the 401K model.
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401ks are still related to the person’s place of employment, so they don’t actually solve that problem. I’d rather see us ditch them in favor of higher contribution limits to IRAs.
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Defined-contribution retirement plans (401ks and IRAs) in general are not an adequate replacement for defined-benefit ones (pensions and Social Security) because, frankly, people are too stupid on average to plan properly for their future. And even if you think stupid people deserve what they get, it’s still a problem that affects you because of the collective burden massive numbers of indigent elderly would put on society.
401ks never should’ve been created, and the replacement for private employer pensions should’ve been an expansion of Social Security.
(I say all this as someone with much larger than average retirement savings who’s aiming for FIRE, by the way. This is a critique of the system from someone who has benefited from it, not sour grapes from a stereotypical poor millennial.)
Related, yes, but if I leave my job I don’t lose my 401K. I like my employer matching funds in it.
who’s aiming for FIRE,
Don’t understand, could you elaborate? FIRE?
“Financial Independence; Retire Early.” See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement
TL;DR: I keep my household expenses very low (roughly $30k/year) and save a very high percentage of my income so that I can retire very early. The pandemic changed my plans a bit, but I’m expecting to be done by age 45. (By the way, to address a common criticism of the idea: "retire"means doing whatever I want without being beholden to working for a wage, not necessarily vegging out in front of the TV and stagnating as certain workaholics assume. The important distinction is that I could choose to work if I wanted, but wouldn’t need to.)
I might agree with you if I had the option of opting out of Social Security. It’s an absolute disaster and it’ll never be fixed. You can say it should be, but if we’re debating impractical solutions we may as well just include “everyone lives forever and always has everything they ever need”.
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401ks are a time bomb waiting to go off. If / when there’s another severe stock market crash (and make no mistake one is coming) tens of millions of retirees are suddenly going to be penniless.
If a crash of that magnitude happens it’s not like social security would fare any better. At that point you’re talking about full scale economic disaster that affects the entire world.
If a crash of that magnitude happens
It doesn’t require a full scale Great Depression style meltdown, the ‘downturn’ of 2008 caused significant difficult for many, it simply requires a sharp enough retraction of Investment Capital. That retraction is already in progress as the retirement rate for Boomers escalates and more of them begin selling their stocks and bonds; either directly or through their retirement instruments like 401ks and Pensions.
I’m not a doomer but I am fairly convinced that 401ks are a timebomb.
401Ks are just investment accounts. They have exactly as much risk as you expose yourself to. Balance your portfolio, use index funds intelligently, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and you’ll be fine.
The US fucked this up during WWII when it froze wages to prevent businesses from swiping the limited number of available employees from each other. So instead of wages employers started offering benefits instead, two of the commonly offered benefits were Pensions and Medical Insurance.
As a nation we really should fix these problems but doing so would be hella expensive and perhaps even impossible as we’re hitting the same demographic off-ramp that France and so many other Western Nations are already on.
That’d be a one off. Most emergency loans went to the executive branch
Even if it did, it’s not like the government has lifted a finger to help any other workers or students recently, and actively works to make their lives harder instead.
The railroad protest worked out great haha 😁
Pensions are often the first thing that gets raided by corporate assholes.
Seems like the fucking government shouldn’t be bailing out corporations with our tax money to begin with.
If a business is too big to fail but is failing anyways, nationalize it.
If a business is too big to fail, the FTC wasn’t doing its job (i.e., enforcing antitrust law) to begin with.
They haven’t been doing their job for decades now. It must actually be kinda awesome working there. Your entire job is just to LOOK busy but never actually do anything. Man, I could read a ton of books, do some hobby coding, plan some really need landscaping projects, OOOOO man I could do so much! Maybe I should apply for a job there. Here would be my interview:
What are your qualifications for this job? Absolutely none. I will be terrible at this job. You’re hired!
This has changed with the current admiration, Biden has brought in a trust busting menace- Lina Khan author of Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox. Progress is being made.
I hope she can do something with the rumored amazon breakup. I was disappointed in the Microsoft Activision approval though … so who knows.
Oh man I wish more people thought like that! Too Big to Fail = Too Big to Exist.
If a business is failing it should be allowed to fail, full stop. Economics is Darwinian.
It was obvious from the start they were liers. Couldn’t even tell us the correct name of the color - should have been orange trucking.
Yeah something is fishy when your logo is a Stroop test.
If someone gave me 700mil, I’d probably retire too.
But the important thing is the executives got paid, right?!
That’s right. People are missing the fact that Yellow was sucked dry by the do-nothing non-working parasite shareholders like 5 years ago. They begged the union for a “temporary” salary cut of 15% across the board AND a 75% cut in pension funding. It was made permanent by the company unilaterally while the suits further enriched the people with still too firmly attached heads. They also never restored health insurance funding which was another “temporary” concession.
The rich need to learn to be mortally afraid of the workers again.
They are too busy being outraged by the threat of the day.
You need to remember the more important priorities, like whatever random politician said something really, really mean today.
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No, because this sets an extremely bad precedent. The simpler answer is just not give bailouts like this. A properly functioning anti-trust department wouldn’t let these private companies get so big they are deemed “too vital to fail” … but here we are.
Hello there friend, have you ever heard of JP Morgan Chase? Legend has it, the government would go bankrupt first.
They had a 30% stake here - would a 51% stake be any different?
Stupid company couldn’t even get the color of their logo correct. That shit was orange.
This has bothered me for years.
They’re based in Kansas, what do you expect?
Good point. I’ve seen the Wizard of Oz and I forgot Kansas was still in black and white. They probably have no idea what color that actually is.
If companies are deemed to big to fail then they need to be nationalized.
Nationalizing a company opens a whole new can of worms.
Do you just let them operate at a loss? How can the others in the industry compete with a company that the taxpayers subsidize to operate at a loss?
IMO, The terms of a to “big to fail” bailout should be a slow liquidation or a Ma Bell style breakup.
Agree in principle but there was little left to nationalize with yellow.
Their fleet was composed of mostly leases. It had been gutted and infected with MBA types doing dirty MBA tricks for years now.
I know several different people who work in companies that deal with shipping, Yellow has always been awful to deal with with a much higher rate of shipping damage.
I had been using Yellow and it was always a terrible company to work with.
Our experience is quite the opposite. Damage with YRC was few and far between compared to others like Estes or XPO
Probably depends on the region, this was all in south-west Michigan
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Here’s a link to CBS News that isn’t paywalled.
Yellow has been a horribly managed mess for at least 25 years. I was involved in LTL logistics back then and we avoided those dunderheads like the plague. It’s a shame that they’re taking $500 MIllion of taxpayer money with them since they can’t repay their loan but that company should have died years ago.
Gotta be a special kind of incompetent to crumble in a booming economic period.
Gotta be a special kind of incompetent to crumble in a booming economic period.
Yellow has been horribly mismanaged for at least two decades. They should have died long ago and in any environment but one that’s literally awash with money looking for investment opportunities they would have. For structural reasons IC is drying up so we’re going to see a lot more badly run and unprofitable companies going belly up. This is a trend that’s already started and its just going to pick up speed from here.
