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Ron Paul Wants To End the Federal Student Loan Program
On the heels of declaring his intent to axe a few departments from the federal government, Ron Paul has revealed more plans should he become President. The_THOMAS writes "Ron Paul wants to end Federal student loans stating that the Government involvement artificially inflates the cost of a college education and that once the government is out of the situation, students will be able to work their way to a college degree. What do you think?"
Subsidies inflate pricing. I agree.
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
Maybe if he had to actually work for a living at a minimum wage job, he'd stop asking those with little to no money to give up their chance to be raised up.
Subsidized student loans are "free" money that enslaves most for a lifetime, moreso today than at any time in living memory. There was a time when working part time over the summer would be enough to pay ALL college expenses, now you have to work some 35 hours a week during the semester plus full time in the summer and over breaks. This is outrageous.
In a lot of ways, they do inflate the cost of education. However, the quality is also going down. The bigger problem is that the demand is being artificially inflated at the same time. Nearly every job requires a BS or BA...even if they don't care which subject. A University should be a place of higher learning and research, not a factory for just the next step in education.
I agree that eliminating the student loan program will help. However, there need to be a lot more changes then that.
Typical ideologue nonsense. Luckily he's got about the same chance of being elected as an iceberg has of showing up at the equator.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Oh boy. What does Ron have as proof?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Free market theory is like Communism. Sounds good on paper, but when you apply it to the real world, it's a disaster.
I'm no republican, and at first I was thinking "here we go again - another GOPer trying to take money away from the little guy" - but I think he has a valid point.
People would only be willing to spend a hundred-grand on education if there was someone standing right there willing to easily loan them a hundred-grand to do so. I've always thought there was some odd market force that was allowing the cost of education rise in such a bizarre way - this is probably it.
If if were really up the the "free market" - i.e. there were no "special" loans, scholarships, or free-rides, people would be willing (and able) to spend a LOT less. Schools would have to come *WAY* down in price to get people in. It would be a very different landscape.
Because deregulating financial matters always ends well.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Not having worldwide military bases is "isolationist"?
Then I guess it is time we join the rest of the world in being "isolationist".
All of the sudden all the schools cost $60,000.
I guess the fact that higher education costs are spiraling out of control even as the jobs these degrees are supposed to help you to get have all but disappeared means nothing to you?
If you like indentured servitude so much, why don't you use your useless advanced degree to build a time machine and go back to 1720?
ron paul is to economics what creationists are to science: a deep and unshakeable blind faith in a fantastic lie
namely, that government involvement in the marketplace hurts it. ron paul and other libertarian idiots: left to its own devices, the market will naturally, i said NATURALLY, gravitate all power and wealth into the hands of a few. that this still might happen with government involved is a lesson in government being corrupted. so it is a reason to clean up government, not a reason to get government out of the way. getting government out of the way would accelerate the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, to create even more all of the abuses you worry about appearing in the marketplace. government is the only chance we have to keep the market fair and equal. left to itself, all by itself, NATURALLY, the market is abused by its largest players
why don't some of you idiots understand this? why do you persist in this complete insanity that an unregulated marketplace is somehow fair and equal and somehow it is the government screws it up? the government is the only tool we have to keep it regulated, policed, and therefore fair, where the large are prevented from using their entrenched position to cheat off the backs of the small
where does this pseudoreligious belief, in defiance of all economic history and simple logic and reason come from that an unregulated marketplace is somehow more fair?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Of course, the best solution to the shrinking middle class is to not educate the poor and lower middle class. Let them be happy with their barely literate high school education and mind-numbing menial labor jobs (which by the way are in other countries now).
Do the Republicans have any sane candidates? It makes being and independent really tough.
The education bubble
Remember, that's a trillion dollars of debt that can't even be wiped out by bankruptcy, unlike the previous bubbles of the dot-bombs and real estate.
Problem is, the rest of the world kind of sucks. America must be different. We do not suck, and thanks to being so awesome that we can't keep all the awesome on our own soil, we need to annex additional territory now and then to spread it out. What's wrong with that? If you want to live in an isolationist regime like, say, Finland, no one is stopping you. There are dozens to choose from, suit yourself!
I love Ron Paul. He's the most idealistic person I've ever known. He's basically lying to everyone though. Most of the things he says go like this:
1. Cut funding
2. ??? Allow free market to do it's thing ???
3. Problem solved
He doesn't mention two crucial things. One is that step 2. may take a very long time. The other is that for 2 to happen effectively, we have to equalize any unfair and corruption-driven advantages that others have gained in a crooked system over two hundred years. Once highly paid yuppies get busted for illegally claiming "expenses" as tax free money and corporations get busted for gambling with pension funds at the same rate that people get busted for stealing a piece of bread or robbing a grocery store, then we'll have a truly fair environment for the free market to do its thing. In the meantime, Ron Paul is selling pipe dreams. Awesome pipe dreams, but ultimately dreams without good plans to back them up.
Cthulhu will flay you for your inability to even remotely accurately spell his name.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Anytime a government subsidizes a product or service - the price will increase to match the subsidy. Period. The producers know how much the subsidy is(A), and how much a consumer can spend(B). They will always add a+b in the end because the elasticity of price can be known to support that level.
There isn't even an unknown pricing curve here - the University already knows your finances when you apply for financial aid. They can simply and easily price an education to target the population of students they want.
How many (fiscally) bankrupt universities have you seen lately? I only know of Huron University in South Dakota in 2005.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_universities_and_colleges_in_the_United_States
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Support for Ron Paul by the young and sometimes geeky has intrigued me for some time. Is it a result of reading Ayn Rand? Is it because his ideas seem so much more sensible than so many others? Is it because he does not appear beholden to any lobbyists? Is it primarily because he wants to end drug Prohibition? Possibly all of the above.
But it's also confused me because a number of the things Ron Paul wants to do away with are things that help the young find their first footholds -- things like student loans (or even grants). When I read this headline, I thought for just a second that perhaps Dr. Paul wants to throw open the universities for all, call a full education a civil right that you get to take advantage of based on merit. But I dismissed that thought before I saw the rest of the post, and I was right to do so. My response: his analysis may have some truth in it but it's so simple as to be suspect, in my view. On balance, like much of what Ron Paul says, it's too simple to be right.
Whoever thinks Ron Paul is cool, whatever lobby groups he is not beholden to, make no mistake: the über-rich and powerful wish his ideas well because their adoption would entrench and deepen the growing class divisions in America and put an end to the American dream as anything but that: a wistful dream of what expectations used to be.
Something is rotten in the way the US is going these days. For instance, in my lifetime, before 2008, I had never heard a leading politician in the US say of their president from the opposing party that they wanted him to fail. Whether you agree with Mr. Obama or not, that attitude on the part of any member of your government is pernicious. I'll stop there because the list of things going wrong is so long (most of them decades in the making) as to make this too-long post ridiculously so.
But Ron Paul is not the answer to those problems: his ideas (and incidentally those of the Tea Party) are only going to help the rich get richer and inherit the meek (and the not so meek). Do yourselves a favour, folks, and elect leaders that remember what they learned in Kindergarten (without forgetting all the things they learned since) and value their neighbours over hard lines -- internal neighbours, of course! I wouldn't advocate that you would elect the people I, your Canadian neighbour, want you to elect. I'm just confident that if, overall, you voted in line with your interests (and that may take a lot of thinking to figure out who's going to serve those best) and do well, then you won't become neighbours that we have to fear from across that longest unarmed border in the world.
be good to each other, folks...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
Chill, dude. The market isn't so bad as that.
What you guys don't realize is that there are no activities that aren't regulated today. Everything any company does is subject to regulations at all levels of government.
When you say "activity X should be regulated" what you really mean is that "current regulations for activity X aren't working".
The way to introduce accountability is to push the loans onto the commercial space, where people are in it to make money, and for one person to make money another loses. Another who can't just jack up taxes and doesn't live on politics.
The universities only win if they get money. The banks only win if the students pay. And the students only win if they can afford the loan. Currently, the banks can't lose; thus, the banks and the universities both win if the student takes loans, and the student is naive and easily manipulated.
In reality, when it becomes impossible for students to afford college, and too damn risky to give them loans, the universities will collapse. Don't want to collapse? Lower your prices.
It has to hurt if it's to heal.
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We could return to the land of milk and honey that was the Gilded Age. Geez, I can hardly wait to return to horrific labor conditions, tainted food, and rampant criminality! Who could possibly be opposed? (I mean, except for child laborers, people who eat, etc).
tl;dr: Government intervening in society is a good thing.