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Let Them Eat Teslas
theodp writes "If you're a bright kid who wants to prepare for the 21st century workforce (PDF) by studying engineering at Purdue, the government will help your parents pay the $100,000 or so tuition tab with a 7.9% interest loan (plus 4% fees) that's likely to be non-dischargeable in bankruptcy and paid back with after-tax money. If, on the other hand, you want to buy a tricked-out $100,000 Model S, Tesla has teamed up with the government, Wells Fargo, and U.S. Bank on what it calls a 'Revolutionary New Finance Product' that enables those who play the game right to avoid paying sales tax, get the government to pick up the first $15,000 (no down payment needed!), and also receive a 2.95% bankruptcy-dischargeable loan for the balance, the payments for which could be tax-deductible. Yep, 'Revolutionary' may be about right!"
Very good point...
With a car loan, the car is collateral. If you default, they can take back the car.
With a student loan, what are they going to do? Cut out sections of your brain?
Man geeks are drinking the Tesla Kool-Aid.
The Tesla program costs about $1,100/mo even for their cheapest model and the $15,000 only applies for people in West Virginia.
The $500/mo pricing they keep quoting is a huge fabrication based on "total cost of ownership". Even with their calculator, and assuming the lowest model, you would need to drive that sucker to it's max range 5 days a week every week for three years to actually make the ownership cost $600/mo less than a gas car.
Great, so I get a loan and don't work or part time for the first X years.
How about we just admit having an educated society is a good thing and we make a university education free to those who qualify.
Wait, you mean the summary is misleading me? I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you! Maybe the details of the Tesla deal will bring some truth:
US Bank and Wells Fargo will provide 10% down financing on approved credit, and the down payment is covered or more than covered by US Federal and state tax credits ranging from $7,500 to $15,000. New Jersey, Washington and DC also have no sales tax for electric vehicles. These advantages are not available when leasing.
So buyers don't "get the government to pick up the first $15,000 (no down payment needed!)", but rather they get a government credit that may cover the 10% down payment, assuming their purchase qualifies for the various government programs. There's no further details on what exactly the tax credits are, but my suspicion is that they're generic credits for buying an electric car or other blessed "green" technology, and probably cover 7.5% to 15% of the item's value..
After 36 months, you have the right, but not the obligation to sell your Model S to Tesla for the same residual value percentage as the iconic Mercedes S Class, one of the finest premium sedans in the world, made by Daimler (also a Tesla partner and investor).
Not only is Tesla guaranteeing that resale value, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk is personally standing behind that guarantee to give customers absolute peace of mind about the value of the asset they are purchasing.
And here's the part that's being touted as "revolutionary". The company founder is apparently personally guaranteeing the car's resale value. That's it. We're back to the idealized old days where company owners stood by their products and actually put money behind having satisfied customers. Not really "revolutionary" in my book, but I don't write headlines.
As is usual for Slashdot these days, the summary is sensationalist bullshit and most of the comments are knee-jerk anti-government reactions.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
This is why Education should be funded by The People.
I agree... to a point. I think public education should be extended two years such that anyone can get an associates or technical degree for free. That seems to be where the sweet spot is these days in terms of return on investment. A high school diploma is more or less worthless these days. At this point in time, I don't think we should be funding people's advanced degrees.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What good is universal literacy in a society where the written word is severely restricted? (Goes not only for Cuba)
The education loan is a tax. The only reason it is not called a tax is because you can't collect taxes when people leave the country, but you are still in obligation to a debt.
Let the market fund the schools
"The market" won't even train its own employees anymore and you expect them to pick up the tab for education?
At least it'll be self-correcting. The market will cry and sob to it's capitol servants that they can't find anyone smart enough to hire and the government will say "well gee we better open the floodgates so all these people in socialist countries that bothered to provide education can come in" and the ideology will be drowned out.
When institutions like U. of Texas in Austin, U. of Okla and U. of Missouri are all now being funded by the state BELOW 20% of their general budget, it is hard to consider these to be public institutions. Those are the schools I have reason to know about. I'm told the situation is the same across USA -- we are dismantling public universities. I've heard suggestion among some donors to OU that the name should change to University IN Oklahoma since the state isn't choosing to be "of" the school anymore. Too many schools are begging rich alumni for gifts. At some point, the schools will become more in the service of those alumni than of the public.
... even more stupid people going to college to get degrees in things they have no talent for. I see them all the time, developers with 'degrees' who can only code if you put a spec in front of them, they are incapable of creative thought and have no real-world experience to pull from.
.. I'm not saying that some truly great people have not come out of college and done great things. I know some people far smarter than me that have degrees and will always make more than me. And no matter how much college I had, I would never have been them. They had the talent already.
.. go to college.
I went for a job interview last week, and the hiring VP said their biggest problem is finding developers who know how to program instead of just knowing how to code. Programmers who actually understand things like operations and systems. Programmers who are capable of seeing the big picture and coding at the systems level instead of at the method level.
These days that type of programmer is hard to find, because the days of becoming a computer programmer by starting as an operator or trainee are over. No one will hire anyone without a degree now. And no developer with a degree is willing to start as an operator, they all want $100k/year to pay off their debts. And of course, no one will hire a programmer with a degree as an operator because they are overqualified.
Yet some of the brightest programmers I know don't have degrees. They started at the bottom and worked up. They attended classes here and there, either at school or online, to learn what they needed to learn. They bought books and learned new tech.
But back when I started, companies were willing to hire someone simply because they were smart, creative, and had a great curiosity about how things work. People with good work ethics that worked smarter, not necessarily harder, than their peers.
And we do none of it now because we have been lied to that programming requires a degree. Bullshit. Programming is one of the easiest things in the world to do. I've seen 10 year old kids write code without ever having been to a class. Simply because their brain works a certain way. I've seen programmers learn new styles of programming over a weekend simply be reading a book. Their biggest stumbling block wasn't not going to college, they understood how to do things. But they didn't know the fancy words for everything. They just programmed and got the job done without worrying about technical mumbo-jumbo that really doesn't mean jack squat. Like how 'initialization' was change to 'instantiation'.
If all we want is code monkeys who need a complete spec before writing anything, go ahead. Keep sending them to school. Continue to let the government subsidize people who really have no business writing code because their brain just doesn't have the spatial aptitude that is required for programming. Because they thought it was just a great way to make a buck. Continuing only hiring people based on a piece of paper that only says they know how to pass tests.
Now
It wasn't college that made them successful, it was themselves. College was just a tool they chose to use because it served a purpose. They already had the ability, college was a different way of getting the information.
Starting at the bottom is not a bad way to learn. Sure, it sucks at first. But in 3 or 4 years, you get 3 or 4 years of experience and little or no college debt. Many companies will help with tuition. Granted, it cuts out a lot of companies that will only hire if you have a degree. And it can take a lot of time to find someplace that will do it. But someone that has been writing code at home or part-time for friends and family, and knows how to write a resume, should be able to find something if they truly have talent and interview well. If you don't interview well
But really, do you want to work for a company that is so procedure oriented that they won't look beyond the resume to what a pe
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I just bought a Tesla. I paid sales tax (a lot). I got a 1.9% loan from BofA that wasn't subsidized by anybody. My accountant would laugh if I suggested that this would be deductible. The federal grant is $7500, there may be a little more from Illinois. From what I understand, what is "revolutionary" is Tesla and Elon Musk personally guaranteeing the resale value of the Tesla as part of their new financing plan. The taxpayer isn't on the hook for that - Elon Musk is. Frankly, if I wasn't planning on keeping the car for 8 years with it's "everything but tires" warranty option, I'd jump on this new deal if I could. As for the subsidy, I suppose that's a matter of opinion. Any reasonable person has to agree that we cannot burn gasoline in our cars forever. But there is a chicken and egg problem. A completely free market will likely fail to protect the environment for our children. Alternative fuel cars are prohibitively expensive and always will be without the economy of scale. The government's role is to to serve the long term public good and the tax break's intent is to resolve the chicken/egg problem.
Greed is the root of all evil.
We've seen two forms of totalitarian regimes in modern times: Communism, and Fascism. Socialist ideals were central to both. It seems every totalitarian regime since maybe Napoleon has used Socialist ideas to sell itself. "Give up some freedom for a nice check in the mail" seems to sell really well.
That doesn't mean Socialism must necessarily end in totalitarianism, of course, but it does mean one should be quite skeptical of "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.