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More Millennials Would Give Up Voting Than Texting (nypost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Post:
As the staggering national student loan debt tally sits at an all-time high of $1.33 trillion, according to the Department of Education, many millennials say they would go to extreme lengths to wipe their slate clean. According to a new survey from Credible, a personal finance website, 50 percent of all respondents (ages 18-34) said they would give up their right to vote during the next two presidential elections in order to never have to make another loan payment again.
Yet only 44% said they'd be willing to give up Uber and Lyft -- and only 13% said they'd be willing to give up texting.
Yet only 44% said they'd be willing to give up Uber and Lyft -- and only 13% said they'd be willing to give up texting.
Depends on whether this is an individual action, or a large scale "buyout" such as the poll "demonstrates". An individual can do this and as long as their peers don't, the impact will be negligible if it matters whatsoever. However, if the results match the poll, or otherwise happen on a large scale, then it could seriously impact the election results, or have consequences beyond the elections. A move to restrict texting following such a fiasco would be surprising, even from the more responsible members of the country. Would such be necessary to protect our nation from ineptitude? Would it protect our nation from ineptitude?
it's hard to think that way about voting. Our last election was Giant Douche vs a Turd Sandwich both of which were rammed down our throats.
Thing is, you need to get people to show up to primaries, but it's hard enough to get them to mid terms. Voter suppression doesn't help matter either. I don't know about the rest of you folks but I waited 3 hours in line to vote for Bernie in my primary. That wasn't an accident. Nor was it because of overwhelming turnout.
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I'm surprised that it's only 50%. Given that voter turnout in the average presidential election is only about 50-60% without extra incentives not to vote, it's hard to imagine that you couldn't come up with another 10% who would skip voting in exchange for a big pile of cash.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
what about 2-3 years in jail/prison to wipe them away. (don't tell them that room + board + doctors are free in there)
I think this says more about the kabuki-show of voting in the US than it does about young people. Too many people 18-34 have figured out that voting has little or nothing to do with who ends up in power. You can vote for "outsiders" and "change agents" and you still end up with some guy from Goldman Sachs making decisions about your life while he flies his trophy wife to Fort Knox to perform some satanic sexual ritual over the gold during a total eclipse.
Seriously, a show of hands: in an age of gerrymandered, electoral colleged, voter suppressed, primary rigged, black box voting machine, foreign government influenced elections, where the guy who loses the vote gets to rule, who wouldn't give up their right to this meaningless exercise in exchange for the forgiveness of $100,000.00 in debt?
You are welcome on my lawn.
They're unable to come to a logical conclusion.
No shit, they got themselves saddled with crippling debt to begin with. I'll grant you, it's hardly fair to prey upon these kids, but they are adults technically. I wouldn't dream of depriving them of the consequences of their actions.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
What's the point of voting when the electoral college makes your vote irrelevant?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
smart millennials...they dont want to vote against trump because he will win again so, gosh, keep the texting, another no brainer.
I knew Trump would win, too many radio stations, church congregations, and family members of mine, all voting for Trump. What I have trouble imagining is Trump being a two term president. We're not even one year into his presidency and several people are already ready to jump ship from the Trump bandwagon. I'm not sure we can last four years, so I doubt he will be re-elected. The only reason Trump would be re-elected is if there seemed to be some "stragglers" in Washington who would be expected to quit their jobs if Trump was re-elected. That whole "drain the swamp, whatever the cost" thing.
My vote has never meant anything in presidential elections anyway, and never will. It only has half the theoretical electoral college weight of a voter in other states to begin with, and it's a single party state with a winner take all electoral vote system so there's never any doubt about the outcome. So I'll gladly give up that farce for $10, as long as I can continue voting on everything else.
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And most people who are unsympathetic towards this likely got their education at a time when it was actually possible to do so without crippling debt, then entered a job market that provided them with more opportunities.
It still is entirely possible to do this, but you can't go to an expensive school and run up $20,000+ in loans each year, while spending 5 years to get a degree that doesn't improve your job prospects. There's no point in someone getting a history degree if all they're capable of doing with their life is working in retail as opposed to someone who's going to go on to law school to get a J.D. after getting their B.S.
In the case of someone who is not going to benefit from going to college, their financial situation is going to be completely different if they spend five years working and building up capital and gaining job skills than if they spend five years running up student loan debts and getting a degree that only allows them to fill the same job they could have taken five years prior.
Have you asked the Cherokee what they think of that?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> likely got their education at a time when it was actually possible to do so without crippling debt
You mean like right now, for example? My tuition at a state school is $6,000 / year. The tax credit is $1,500 / year, so net cost $4,500 / year. Some of my classes had as the final exam the Cisco and Microsoft certification exams. Getting those certs helped increase my income even before I finished school, so I'll finish school with more money in the bank than I started with - essentially a negative amount of student debt.
I majored in Information Technology - Security, so I'll have a six figure income right about the time I graduate.
A person CAN choose to get a worthless degree from an expensive school, or they get can a valuable degree from an affordable school.
Of course. Don't you support universal basic income?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
If the Democrats put up another deeply-flawed and wholly unlikeable candidate again, I can see Trump winning a second term. This election was the Democrats' to lose, and they lost it with great aplomb. I've noticed one huge difference between Donald Trump and popular Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I think most people will agree that Trump is an ass, but unlike the Democrats (and a lot of Republicans for that matter, like John McCain), he doesn't regularly insult the voters. He will personally attack individuals, often in ways that are really tacky and immature, but I've never heard him say anything negative about the American people, not even subsets of Americans, like liberals. This is something the Democrats have clearly failed to learn, and a significant reason, I think, why people like Trump despite his flaws.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
If the Democrats put up another deeply-flawed and wholly unlikeable candidate again ...
Can you name any prominent likable Democrats without deep flaws?
And most people who are unsympathetic towards this likely got their education at a time when it was actually possible to do so without crippling debt
It is still possible. Go to a cheap community college for the first two years while living at home. Then transfer to a four year college for the final two years and either work part time, get a TEACH grant, or a military scholarship.
Warning: May require work, commitment, and sacrifice.
Yup. More over, a lot of students never did a simple cost vs benefits analysis. I know doctors leaving school who have to live with their parents because they can't afford their loans, and probably never will be able to. Some even signed on for those debt forgiveness programs, where they go work with the under privileged for 10 years to get their debt wiped out, earning pennies while they're at it. They spent 8+ years getting their degrees, then are spending another 10+ years earning nothing much, so by the time they're 36 they haven't even gotten a real financial start on their life.
It's insanity. I don't blame the non-bankruptcy part of the equation, but rather the "guaranteed" loan part. If the government is guaranteeing funds flowing directly to colleges with no consequences, of course colleges are going to keep spending more and more and more. Why wouldn't they? Meanwhile, it's the dumbass kids whose lives are ground to dust in the process.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Sounds like a lot of other Slashdot readers already get this, but the votes that matter most are for the people geographically closest to where you live.
The people we voted in as our city council members and mayor have already made more decisions that impact my life than anything Trump has done.
The President in America is only slightly less of a figurehead than than Queen of England, and that's been by design since the nation was founded. If you visit the Old Courthouse in Annapolis, MD - you can see the original letter General George Washington wrote when he declined the offer to become the first King of the USA, right after the Revolutionary War. He felt that control of the nation shouldn't be in the hands of just one individual like that, and just wanted to go back to farming his land. He wound up our first President, instead, by a unanimous vote.
When you really look back at the claimed "big accomplishments" of past Presidents, much of it had more to do with advisors and other staff members putting the ideas forward and convincing the President to get behind them. Ronald Reagan's "trickle down economics" was a great example. He didn't come up with that idea himself. He wasn't even a Finance guy ... just a former Hollywood actor. In other cases, we don't really know if a President really had a plan themselves or not -- but we do know that many changes they make just get watered down or reversed within a decade's time. (President Clinton was famous for his "welfare to work" policy, where he mandated time limits on how long welfare could be collected. In the years that followed, the states slowly dismantled that with exceptions to rules and changes - so today, none of that has any effect on how the system works.) Obama's presidency made a lot of claims about improving our economic and employment conditions - yet historically, we know the economy is cyclical. If you have a boom, you have a bust that follows it, and vise-versa. Become a president when the economy is poor and just hang in there, and you'll eventually be able to take credit for the inevitable turn-around.
I don't want to discount Presidential voting as irrelevant ... but choosing wisely in the Primaries is where you really get more control over who wins. By the time you're at the general election, you've literally got over a dozen contenders who didn't make it -- quite often for the wrong reasons. (Candidates with well known names often get automatic advantages over people nobody has heard of. And candidates pouring more money into trying to win the election can make some of the others look bad for just long enough to bump them out of the running. Reality might be that those "also rans" were actually more qualified candidates all along.)
I can't name a prominent likeable anything without deep flaws. Apart from Edinburgh Castle.
On second thoughts, it's draughty as hell and it's in Scotland. Original motion stands.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
At least half of the 16 or so primary opponents of Trump could have beaten Hillary. Although Trump has a large and very enthusiastic base, he has a personality almost as odious as Hillary has. The many people who voted against Trump (as distinguished from those who voted for Hillary) or who stayed home, because of his personality, could easily have voted for one of the following: Cruz, Carson, Kasich, Rubio, Fiorina, Gilmore, Santorum, Perry, Jindal, Pataki.
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One characteristic of rights is that they still exist in the absence of other people. Your right to free speech cannot be violated if there is nobody to violate it.
In contrast, free medical care requires other people to provide it, therefor it is not a right.
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It isn't propaganda, friend, it's reality. There is a pseudo-religious faction out there with some insane ideas. Go look up 'Dominionism', but don't get mad at me if you have nightmares and digestive issues after reading about it. I'll admit that the likelihood of those particular extremists getting their way is small, but there are in fact people in our country right now who really would like to disenfranchise whole swaths of people, not just strip women of their rights as citizens and human beings. It's important that people exercise their rights and privileges as citizens of this country, otherwise there are people out there who would like to pick and choose who has rights of any kind.
Trump doesn't insult broad swaths of Americans? He called New Hampshire a drug infested den. To the president of Mexico for fuck's sake.
Trump is a sociopathic asshole who's only nice when it benefits HIM. He's been like this for at least the past 5 decades, and nothing will ever change that.
~X~
In contrast, free medical care requires other people to provide it, therefor it is not a right.
Because everyone is a gunsmith.
Your point? The 2nd Amendment says that you have the right to own and carry a gun, not that anyone owes you a gun. There is no tax-funded subsidy to ensure that everyone has access to a weapon regardless of ability to pay. If you want one it's up to you to acquire it at your own expense. Medical care is no different. You have the right to accept medical care, when care is available, and others have the right to provide care to you if they choose—but no one owes you medical care any more than they owe you a gun.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat