Students Are Using Their Loan Money To Buy Cryptocurrency, Study Says (fastcompany.com)

Student loans aren't just for buying textbooks, No. 2 pencils, and apples for bribing teachers anymore. According to a recent survey, as many as one in five college kids may be using their student loans to cash in on the cryptocurrency craze. From a report: The Student Loan Report surveyed 1,000 current college students with student loan debt about whether they were asked whether they used their student loan money to invest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and found that 21.2% of them have Sallie Mae to thank for their cryptocurrency investment. Many students borrow a little more money than is necessary to pay for tuition and books, according to Student Loan Report. The leftover cash is typically used for college living expenses, but some wily students think that investing in Ethereum or Ripple may be a better investment than a bachelor's degree in comparative English literature.

Comments

Investments only go up right?

[jellomizer]

It is not like some high volatile investments crash and burn just as fast as they had skyrocketed.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not investing - they are speculating (gambling).

And they and many folks who buy stocks do not understand the relationship between risk and return.

With all these years of too cheap money, speculating fever is in all asset classes and it never ends well.

And what these kids don't seem to realize is that when they lose, they are on the hook for a student loan that they will be stuck with. The only way to get out of paying a student loan is to die.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[rickb928]

Perhaps they opened a wallet and funded it so they could buy something with Bitcoin.

That's an 'investment', yes, but not so simple as an Investment...

Re:Investments only go up right?

[blackomegax]

Most of us want to die anyway, and it's not like defaulting on it will *truly* harm you. Just a little bad credit.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the students will at least get a very important lesson for the money they spent.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[arth1]

The only way to get out of paying a student loan is to die.

This is not true. Emigrating usually works too.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[dmitrygr]

Oh, they realize it. Why do you think they are campaigning for college student loan forgiveness?

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

no that is NOT an investment.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah. These are the worst of the government loans and private sector combined. If you default:

You cannot renew your driver's license.
You cannot buy/sell a house.
You cannot get a trademan's license.
You will be laughed out of any security clearance application.
You won't be able to get a meaningful job, as -everyone- checks credit.
You won't be able to get a decent apartment.
You won't be able to get a vehicle.
The government will garnish your wages (and I'm not talking about adding some parsley... I'm talking 25% of your income... gone, for a LONG time, and with the interest rates for student loans going up to 30% for punitive rates, you will not be paying those suckers off anytime soon.)

If you want to live in a decrepit van at Slab City, fine, default on them. However, my biggest recommendation is to not get them in the first place. Go to another country that values education, like EU nations, whose government is immune to corruption, and actually values their citizens, then come back with your degree.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[nonBORG]

Investment first rule, don't invest money that you cannot afford to lose. Most time when you start investing you win some and lose some with the idea that you are learning to diversify etc. However when it is someone else's money that you don't really have too many thoughts of paying back then it is easy to take risk. When it is money that you have actually had to work for it becomes a little more difficult to gamble.

The problem with high risk investments is that even though they go up, when do you sell? If I just stay in for one more month I will make this much more money. You don't sell until too late and the instrument has reached point of maximum pessimism. That is when the big sell of happens and everyone locks in their losses. This is the emotional game of investing as opposed to the one that is actually driven by intellect.

Re: Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

not exactly; they'll go after your folks to get their money back if you die

Re:Investments only go up right?

[bluefoxlucid]

It's been a stage 3 bubble for a while. Stage 3 can go up and up for the next 30 years, or it can go to $0 and die in the next 30 minutes.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to another country that values education, like EU nations, whose government is immune to corruption, and actually values their citizens, then come back with your degree.

If you were to find such a country and were to take advantage of all it had to offer to get a degree, why would you come back here?

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Solandri]

Comment was modded funny. But several foreign students I met in college and grad school racked up thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in credit card and loan debt, then simply left the country when they graduated. They never planned to stay in the U.S. or visit again after graduating, and never intended to pay these back.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[rickb928]

*whoosh*

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even then, sometimes the debt can be passed on after death, to parents or children.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Lanthanide]

Most countries will fund tertiary education for their own citizens.

Foreigners get charged the full rate, to stop people trying to do precisely what you suggest.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Lanthanide]

'Never' is a long time. Kind of difficult if you get a job at a company and they need to send you on a business trip to the US. Or even a business trip that transits the US.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[HornWumpus]

Some countries will fund college education, for their citizens that:

Made good grades in high school.
Continue to make good progress towards a meaningful degree.

No nations fund school for all, trade school perhaps.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't exactly declare bankruptcy from student loan debt either.

This isn't going to go well

Re:Investments only go up right?

[rogoshen1]

whose government is immune to corruption, and actually values their citizens

Surely you jest.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[dcollins117]

Well, they're young and still at the stage where they think they are invincible. They mistake they make is using student loans which can't be discharged in bankruptcy. When they get older and wiser they'll use credit cards :)

Re:Investments only go up right?

[magarity]

Most countries will fund tertiary education for their own citizens.

Care to check on your definition of "most"? I think you mean "European".

Re:Investments only go up right?

[fahrbot-bot]

The only way to get out of paying a student loan is to die.

Unless your parents (or someone else) co-signed it ... After daughter’s death, parents plead for forgiveness of her $200K student-loan debt, then they're stuck with it. (Probably not surprising, but worth mentioning.)

Re: Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

No you can actually get out of student loans in other ways, it usually takes something like 20 years of on time income adjusted payments, though.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[mspohr]

Germany,
France,
Finland,
Sweden,
Norway,
Argentina,
Iceland,
Denmark,
Brazil,
Turkey,
Scotland,
Greece,
Austria,
Belgium
(Results from just a few minutes and Duck. Some of these countries have small fees but none of them require "progress".)

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how when foreigners come to US and pay for their own education they're taking advantage of our schools and taking seats away from us, but us going to other countries and get education on their dime is ok. I'm not saying it's wrong to go study on these programs, but just pointing out this double standard.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[arth1]

'Never' is a long time. Kind of difficult if you get a job at a company and they need to send you on a business trip to the US. Or even a business trip that transits the US.

Not paying your student loan isn't under the criminal code, so cops won't run to a judge to get an arrest warrant if you show up.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why you don't cosign for a loan. This is not a requirement, is it?

Re:Investments only go up right?

[arth1]

I was thinking about those emigrating, not those not immigrating.
People who emigrate sometimes find that economical obligations they have in their old country no longer are enforceable. Outstanding fines and taxes are sometimes covered by agreements between countries, but things like student loans are unlikely to be.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

The majority that matter is what we meant.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

But taking out debt without ever intending to pay it is known as fraud.

Re: Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you shit yourself again?

Re:Investments only go up right?

[HornWumpus]

Nonsense.

If you aren't making grades and progress towards your degree in Germany, you are bouncing down the stairs of the university. You obviously phrased your search in a stupid way.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[martinX]

New York, London, Paris, Munich.
Everybody talk about pop muzik.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[martinX]

They were probably expecting her to live and pay it pack. Takeaway I get from this is to have all signers on a loan to take out life insurance that you can access in the event of their death. Should be an option on the loan.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some investments crash and burn just as fast as they rise, indeed. An investment in a gender studies degree, for example, is more likely to crash and burn than most investments though.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you need a trip to the US when there's so many excellent conferencing systems now available? I personally have never gone there for work since the dot bomb. Much money saved.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

I did this back when it was cool. Technically, money from 2008. So yeah... there's that. (Yes, Bitcoin wasn't around then, but I bought it and Ethereum pretty early on.)

Also spent many thousands of dollars in "free AWS credits" doing cloud mining on spot instances. (Not worth it now, don't even try.) But... free money is free money.

Save so much it hurts, and you can be like me. :-)

Re: Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/04/tuition-fees-germany-higher-education

"...Those who drag their feet and take too many semesters to complete their courses also have to start coughing up in most of the LÃnder. ..."

You should read the article. Germany's system isn't without it's own major problems.

"...the percentage of young people who opt to go to university is smaller in Germany than in the UK, about 27% compared to 48%..."

While The Census Bureau says more than one-third of the U.S. adult population has a bachelor's degree or higher, the highest proportion ever. The percentage rose to 33.4 ...

"There are persistent concerns that Germany fails to attract the best international undergraduates in the way that Britain, Switzerland or even Austria do, and struggles to hold on to the talents it produces. It seems telling that the last two German winners of a Nobel prize were either based at American universities or working on collaborative projects with US researchers."

Re:Investments only go up right?

[arth1]

But taking out debt without ever intending to pay it is known as fraud.

People may have the best of intentions when taking out a loan. In which case they're only defaulting, which is not something that normally warrants a criminal arrest or extradition.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[legojenn]

Some things never change. I remember back in 1992, there was a dude in our dorm who bet his student loan on the new at the time sports lottery. I think that he bet on hockey games. He got called Pete Rose for a year for that dumb move.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Tangential]

As long as they retain the liability to have to pay it back (regardless of financial state or bankruptcy) then its not that big an issue.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Joce640k]

some wily students think that investing in Ethereum or Ripple may be a better investment than a bachelor's degree in comparative English literature

I don't see any conflict in that assertion.

(or why that makes them 'wily')

Re:Investments only go up right?

[arglebargle_xiv]

My feelings as well. Mind you that's mostly because almost anything is a better investment than a degree in comparative English literature.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Sweden tertiary education is free for all (residents).

You only get access to student loans and free money if you make progress though.

Also you need to pass high school to be able to go to university, so if you count that as "made good grades" I guess you are right.

But anyone could sign up for the latest class of "Gender Studies 101" for free, and fail year after year. (If you apply for a course with more applicants then spots you may need better grades though)

Re: Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the fuck would you mod this IQ 90 shit up?

Re: Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, it's likely a double standard because you're talking about two people with two different points of view.

Talking about a nebulous "they", it's easy to cry hypocrisy by lumping everyone together. It's also fallacious reasoning. The fallacy of composition: person A says X, a second person B says Y, both people belong to group C, therefore person A and person B both believe X and Y.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[plopez]

or STEM degrees these days.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or getting laid off from the tech sector. I'm too overqualified to be a barista, no one will hire me.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

You still have to apply for a B1 Visa when visiting the US for business reasons. Defaulting on student loans may be a hurdle towards getting the visa approved.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[arth1]

You still have to apply for a B1 Visa when visiting the US for business reasons.

Not if you emigrate to a country that allows dual citizenship, which the US also does. Then you travel to the US as a US citizen, no visum required, I should think?
If you renounce your citizenship, you may get problems obtaining a visum anyhow.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Lanthanide]

Obviously you didn't read the actual thread. We're talking about foreigners coming to the US and studying, racking up debt and leaving.

They aren't going to be US citizens, and I suspect that if they attempt to become citizens, their outstanding debt will be a big red flag.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no whoosh. You either misstated, or more likely failed at whatever sarcasm you were attempting.

Re: Investments only go up right?

[rickb928]

My point was that buying crypto currency to be used for payments might look like an 'investment', and even be indistinguishable from an investment, but really was merely a deposit. And sure enough, it was interpreted as 'investment'. Should have taken the time to more fully explain.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[arth1]

Obviously you didn't read the actual thread. We're talking about foreigners coming to the US and studying, racking up debt and leaving.

Obviously, you didn't see that I started the actual discussion about the possibility of avoiding student loans by emigrating. Go another step up than what you bothered to do.

Re:Investments only go up right?

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard a bit different meaning at this article- https://goo.gl/LQMQ99

Way to speculate

[Actually, I do RTFA]

College debt is the hardest debt to discharge in bankruptcy. If you're taking a highly speculative position at that point in your life, you're better off running up credit card debt. Either you can pay it off with interest, or you have a bankruptcy before you graduate. Neither will result in 30-year-old you screwed cause of a bad bet.

Re: Way to speculate

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull crap. Try getting rid of IRS debt.

Re: Way to speculate

[Anonymous Coward]

Youâ(TM)ll never wash the filth of a defaulted student loan. Never.

Re: Way to speculate

[SuperKendall]

Technically true, but it's not like you can get a loan from the IRS to buy BitCoin, and students don't normally owe the IRS anything.

Re: Way to speculate

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay your taxes, Tyrone.

Re: Way to speculate

[OrangeTide]

Technically true, but it's not like you can get a loan from the IRS to buy BitCoin, and students don't normally owe the IRS anything.

It's simple, instead of setting aside income that would normally go on something like a 1099-MISC, you invest it. (or gamble it). That's technically the IRS's money. It's harder to do with a W-2 because your employer normally takes your estimated taxes out for you. But I suppose you could make up a goofy estimate and borrow money from the IRS that way too.

DISCLAIMER: I do not advocate tax fraud. The IRS will probably find you and try to ruin your life.

Re:Way to speculate

[bluefoxlucid]

College is a highly-speculative position. It's part of why some of us are advocating for apprenticeship and trade school programs as well as just college access. The Democratic party has sort of built a narrative where you go to college and you're a winner, or you don't go to college and you're a loser; it doesn't work like that.

College educations require several years of time investment. Full-time college requires large amounts of attention and takes a toll on your capacity to work, which means you're either driving yourself insane or you're losing financial ground--yes, you can go to college and come out behind someone who skipped all that and tried to drive right into a career.

The rate of advancement of a minimally-educated, self-studied, experienced worker after four years is much higher than that of a new graduate with little practical experience; and there are far more basic engineer positions in technical fields (e.g. IT) than there are senior, lead, or management positions (e.g. CISO). You'll get to be a highly-valuable engineer earlier (in time) if you start out by diving into work and a little part-time study than you will if you do a solid bachelor's degree and then begin your career 4 years late; you might not have the career opportunities of a college graduate, but you'll be a well-paid engineer or senior engineer earlier the graduate who doesn't get those opportunities.

You'll also be damned far ahead in terms of money by that time.

Student loans make this even worse, of course, because you end up stacking up debt while you can't pay it off, and it collects interest while you wait. The Federal government pays that interest in subsidized deferments; otherwise you're going to mainly pay interest on your loan, making the actual cost of college tiny in comparison to the cost of the loan with which you paid for college.

The biggest risk, however, is the job market.

250,000 IT positions became available this year. Over the next 5 years, we project another 1.5 million positions. Sounds great, right?

What you see: 40% turn-over of job rate. HR working with anywhere from 3 to 15 recruiters. Each job gets posted 15 times on every online job search system. Millions upon millions of IT jobs pop up all throughout the year. A super hot market!

We have projections of IT worker demand growth. We have projections of salary growth. How many other students are running to college for IT?

Do you know if there will be an enormous glut of IT workers in 5 years? Do you know if there will be a slow-down in hiring? No.

That's the risk you take.

It's why we need to create some sort of cooperative employment programs, apprenticeships, and vocational programs. We want to do something like provide free access to two- or four-year college for everyone with less than $100,000/year of income (good luck with that: Donald Trump Jr. just has to move out of his dad's house when he turns 18, get a small apartment paid ahead by his father, and have daddy not claim him as a dependent so he can take free college; how do we write the legal language?). We also need to provide a way for them to ensure they won't come out of college begging for a McJob.

We can do that with shorter programs--apprenticeships (notable for plumbers and electricians), vocational training, etc.--and with cooperative programs in which you work while you attend college or trade school. A sponsoring organization would have a job prepared for you, and leverage you while you learn.

Think about computer programmers, network engineers, and the like. Do you need a Masters Degree in Computer Science and Information Systems to do this job? Well, no. To do the job of the senior technical lead programmer, you do; to do code clean-up, implement some basic software functionality, and otherwise handle those tasks that got most programmers into programming, you just need Googlepedia.

Here's the big secret: lots of t

Re:Way to speculate

[yithar7153]

I wish I had mod points. I want high school counselors to stop pushing college on everyone because it's not guaranteed to be a good return and for many people they don't need to go to college.

Re:Way to speculate

[Anonymous Coward]

The only downside(s) here are:
1. Non college educated IT workers (either before or after starting gainful employment) top out much faster. Promotions to other areas of the business are limited. Promotions to management (if that's their direction) are very limited.
2. Depending on the role, opportunities may be limited. For example, consulting travel to Canada from the US (and vice versa) usually requires a college degree for a visa. Please don't post "no you don't" links - I've had to go to our internal immigration department to do the paperwork.
3. A broader base does let one rise higher. The ancillary courses in finance and other general education courses provide students with a better perspective and it translates to better ability to coordinate/manage other type of folks inside organizations.

Not saying it's a bad idea - I've got a number of folks w/o college degrees on my team. However, they have some pretty significant limitations the second they stretch beyond what they know.

Re:Way to speculate

[thegarbz]

College is a highly-speculative position.

Horseshit. Minimum certifications in order to enter the job market isn't speculation. Your idea that somehow the job market will allow people without these certifications to enter is ... well that isn't speculation either, that is wishful thinking.

Re:Way to speculate

[bluefoxlucid]

I've worked for several government contractors, I was an IT Security analyst and then an IT Security Engineer for 4 years at the Social Security Administration until 2012, and I've done IT systems engineering and currently work as an IT Security Engineer at a major broadcasting corporation.

I have a passing understanding of computer networking from CISCO-centric classes taken in high school in 2002 and 2003. I transferred my high school classes to college under an academic agreement, took a few basic sciences, and got an Associate's of Applied Science. I have a CompTIA Security+ certification from 2003.

My first office job--the one that came after Best Buy--started with a confused-looking internal recruiter (not an agency) asking me a bunch of questions about how I know what all these tools are when I have no relevant educational background. I told him I have strange hobbies and no friends. They pulled in some engineers, we talked about security tech, and they hired me. I helped with penetration tests, designed security policy for major defense contractors, and wrote the final reports for security assessments.

I learned about intrusion detection systems at Social Security's National Computer Center in Woodlawn, where I helped deploy a new IDS product (Google doesn't tell me what it is, so I'm not telling you what we used), worked out the best ways to use the tools available, and trained our analysts to use customized dashboards restricted to custom searches so as to essentially summarize only the data involved in a particular incident as we turned interesting and anomalous behavior into a logical description of the incident at hand.

Right now, an auditor is training himself to be a CISO, while mentoring me in performing broad-scope ISO27000 audits of our business--the kind of thing you typically outsource to IBM, EY, PWC, Qualys, and others.

I've been through the job market without college.

More than that, though: you seem to have missed that maybe the degree you chose in 2008 will get you into an overbloated job market in 2012, while the next degree over would have gotten you into a market with a desperate labor shortage. You can still get a job:

For men, the jobs with the highest rate of overqualification in 2014 included retail salespersons, customer service reps, and food service managers. For women, they were secretaries and office support workers, customer service reps, and teacher assistants.

... at Best Buy, working next to a guy who dropped out of high school and gets paid the same.

Women are actually using their degrees better--maybe. I actually came within 8 credits of an Office Administration degree, qualifying me as a secretary or office support worker. Teacher assistants also can benefit from a little education in education. Of course, I've met plenty of teachers with English or Math degrees and no Education degrees.

So I got into a high-demand job market without an appropriate degree, while people with Bachelor's degrees regularly end up at McDonalds. You want the appropriate degree to match the high-demand market when you get out of college, not the one that's in demand when you go in--which is speculation. Fail it and you might end up at McDonalds; you'll certainly end up with lower pay.

Re:Way to speculate

[Actually, I do RTFA]

e want to do something like provide free access to two- or four-year college for everyone with less than $100,000/year of income (good luck with that: Donald Trump Jr. just has to move out of his dad's house when he turns 18, get a small apartment paid ahead by his father, and have daddy not claim him as a dependent so he can take free college; how do we write the legal language?)

Why is it so important not to pay for Don Jr.? Cause that seems to make things much harder.

Re:Way to speculate

[bluefoxlucid]

The whole concept of free college if your income is below $X opens up two questions: are your parents able to afford college for you (are they super-rich millionaires?), and are you able to access that money? As a dependent on someone else's tax return, you're part of their household as far as income is concerned; if you file yourself, you're not. That seems straight-forward until you start trying to figure out how to get free college for your kids when you're a millionaire and nobody thinks you need assistance for college.

When you're dealing with poverty-line cases, there's not much wiggle room to set something up: the influx of daddy's money is already putting you near the income limits and cutting down the size of your assistance. When you decide a decently-middle-class, somewhat-okay, maybe-struggling family needs assistance, it's easier to sustain a single person on an income below those levels. When you just say all middle class but nobody upper-middle, suddenly rich folk can set their kids up to live lavishly and still get them free college.

Mostly, we don't want to tax people a whole hell of a lot (which will inevitably end up taxing the middle class, although the rich get higher taxes as well), so we want to leave the rich to fend for themselves. Imagine trying to tax the rich 80% to pay for all kinds of things, instead of taxing them 43% and paying for all kinds of things. Remember when Bernie announced his single-payer tax plan? 2.5% increase in income taxes on everyone (poor, middle-class, rich), plus 6.5% on payrolls (back-shifted into wages and forward-shifted into prices, mainly paid for by the middle-class). If the rich are paying 80%, how much are the middle-class paying?

A bigger question: if the rich are paying 80%, how do we raise taxes again when we need more revenue?

Be mindful: I've developed a tax plan wherein we have universal healthcare and shift the social security OASDI payroll taxes up to the top tax bracket as income taxes, and the top bracket is still under 45%. No two-adult household with less than $55k of income would have paid net taxes in 2016 in that model, either--in any two-week time span. I might be able to fit Bernie's college plan in there without breaking 45% at the top bracket. That $55k limit goes down over time, and the effective tax rate paid by any household also goes down year after year.

I'm a social democrat, and also kind of keep myself challenged and amused with financial wizardry.

Re:Way to speculate

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Mostly, we don't want to tax people a whole hell of a lot (which will inevitably end up taxing the middle class, although the rich get higher taxes as well), so we want to leave the rich to fend for themselves.

Seems pretty penny-wise, pound-foolish. For one, there are very few rich kids compared to poor/middle class kids. Second, I think pretty much all the various "benefits if you make less than X" introduce a lot of paperwork and errors that are solved by just taxing rich people more and giving it to everyone. There's a reason UBI is so compelling compared to welfare.

Re:Way to speculate

[bluefoxlucid]

there are very few rich kids compared to poor/middle class kids

Yes, which ends up with odd things like CEOs making $100 per employee per year and being multi-millionaires. That's why I push back against progressive ideals that start with "let's tax the rich a whole lot!": you're not going to pay for healthcare or raise wages that way.

I think pretty much all the various "benefits if you make less than X" introduce a lot of paperwork and errors that are solved by just taxing rich people more and giving it to everyone

In general, the bureaucratic and administrative overheads are in low single-digit percentages of systems that cost very little. Social Security OASDI makes up about $900 billion and Medicare makes up over $1 trillion of our spending, yet the administrative overhead there is about 1% (OASDI) and 2% (Medicare). Remaining programs are around 95%-98% efficient in terms of administrative overhead, with HUD and SNAP being in the $50Bn-$100Bn range in total program costs, and WIC around $6Bn.

That's all about $200 per American taxpayer per year or $125 per American (total population) per year.

There's a reason UBI is so compelling compared to welfare

Largely because UBI advocates don't understand the tax system, don't understand economics, and propose a system with high risk and no failure controls.

A Universal Dividend only, taxing 12.5% of all income (personal and corporate), would pay almost $7,000 per year to every adult in 2016. This is enough to lower the cost of our HUD, SNAP, and TANF programs and ensure that they reach every family in need; it's not enough to end all need for those programs. The costs only come down because many recipients are so much less-poor that they're no longer qualified, and many others who remain qualified are so much less-poor that we pay out less in total to them all.

The Dividend itself, with only the rough viability computations and no adjustment of the resulting tax rates, would lower corporate income taxes from 35% to 33.5%, and reduce the top tax bracket from 39.6% to about 36.2%. With the Dividend paying twice-monthly, every American household has an increase in take-home income across any two-week span; and Social Security's retirement and disability benefits programs are permanently-solvent under this program, as the Dividend takes some of the load (you get the same total benefit, but OASDI pays your owed total benefit less the Dividend).

Yes, that's right: there is no "taxing rich people more".

Besides immediately ensuring nobody is homeless or hungry (with the help of SNAP, WIC, HUD, and other programs whose costs fall), the Dividend increases the spending capacity of the poor and middle-class. That creates demand and thus jobs, so the poor inner cities with 13% unemployment suddenly have people going out and finding employment instead of coming home empty-handed. Recall that they're less-poor thanks to the Dividend, and receive less in welfare benefits: the Dividend keeps paying, and the welfare they lose (and risk not re-acquiring) with employment (and income) is smaller than it would otherwise be, so the Dividend increases the incentive to work as well as making more work available.

That's the bigger end of lowering costs. More job availability means less welfare need. It also means more productivity (fewer unemployed) and thus the Dividend gets bigger, causing a feedback loop (it levels off eventually). This is actually kind of dangerous, and we have to temper it by making people more-poor overall so as to reduce the number of jobs.

I can do that, too.

You reduce the number of working hours defined as "full-time", thus people can't produce as much, thus the wealth per-capita is lower, thus the number of consumer jobs available falls. We work 4 days, or 6 hour days, or whatever, and remain as wealthy as ever (or a touch more), except that the poor are able to get by.

Re:Way to speculate

[Anonymous Coward]

Got any more anecdotes?

Re: Way to speculate

[Anonymous Coward]

> However, they have some pretty significant limitations the second they stretch beyond what they know.

I find that's true of pretty much everyone, no matter how much college they've attended.

Wow

[Gilgaron]

So if you're going to do something stupid with a loan, at least make it one that can be discharged through bankruptcy...

I smell bullshit

[rsilvergun]

if you told me 1 in 5 college students knew what crypto currency was I'd be skeptical. Telling me 1 in 5 are using student loans to gamble on it is just ridiculous.

Re: I smell bullshit

[reanjr]

21% of students buying crypto used student loans. Not 21% of student loan recipients use it to buy crypto.

Re: I smell bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they surveyed student loan recipients:

"we found that 21.2 percent of current college students with student loan debt have used financial aid money to fund a cryptocurrency investment."

https://studentloans.net/financial-aid-funding-cryptocurrency-investments/

Re: I smell bullshit

[war4peace]

English is not my main language, so I might be at fault here, but this phrase makes no fucking sense to me. Especially the bold part.

"The Student Loan Report surveyed 1,000 current college students with student loan debt about whether they were asked whether they used their student loan money to invest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin"

Could someone with more knowledge break down the phrase in bits I could understand?

Re: I smell bullshit

[110010001000]

It is just a mistake. They meant "The Student Loan Report surveyed 1,000 current college students with student loan debt about whether they used their student loan money to invest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin"

It isn't necessary to proofread in order to publish in 2018.

Re: I smell bullshit

[war4peace]

Thank you!
That makes more sense, but contradicts OP's statement.
I guess I have to read TFA. Sight...

Re: I smell bullshit

[MrTester]

Your probably right, but I could see a survey looking at the discussions around granting student loans asking whether or not anyone has talked to them about using student loan money to buy crypto-currency, then someone misreading the article.

Re: I smell bullshit

[jetkust]

Source? The poll is clearly about what you said it is not about.

Re:I smell bullshit

[Oswald McWeany]

if you told me 1 in 5 college students knew what crypto currency was I'd be skeptical. Telling me 1 in 5 are using student loans to gamble on it is just ridiculous.

If you told me 1 in 5 college student made crap up on surveys... I would believe that.

I remember being that age, I remember I used to always put nonsense down on surveys, I never answered accurately. College aged students are the least reliable group to give surveys to.

Re:I smell bullshit

[pr0fessor]

They were to busy spending their student loans on binge drinking and drugs to understand the question.
 

Re: I smell bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake News and Alternative Facts aren't just for Conservatives after all.

Re:I smell bullshit

[kaatochacha]

I still do that on surveys. I have an entirely fictitious persona made up that I give information on .
He's a 45 year old widowed bookbinder with 11 children, but is oddly illiterate.
If you ever encounter that in a dataset, it's me!

Re:I smell bullshit

[mark-t]

The biggest problem I have with swallowing this is that when I was student. and living off of student loans, money was *FAR* too hard to come by to take a risk like this on it... if you happened to lose money because bitcoin went down, it could mean that you don't get to keep eating or have a place to live before the school term is over.

As for using "extra" money? That's just as much bullshit... my experience with student loans is that they afford you pretty close to exactly what you'd need, and sometimes not even that, forcing you to cut financial corners well below any normal standards of comfort. The term "starving student" is not a false stereotype... I've been there, as have many others that I know.

Re:I smell bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Social support probably has improved since you went to college.

More recently, the thing to do was go to the food bank for groceries then spend the food money on beer. I wish I was kidding.

Re:I smell bullshit

[green1]

Not related to students specifically, that level of financial acumen is far too common.

I used to install TV service in people's homes. I remember going in to a subsidized housing complex at one point to do this, and while I was installing several hundred channels of HD TV, they were having a conversation about which charity should provide their next meal. I wanted to withhold the service on compassionate grounds, but I knew they'd just buy it from someone else if I did. It was just that they had completely messed up priorities.

Re:I smell bullshit

[bingoUV]

What if they are "sure" their investment will pay off nicely ?

Re:I smell bullshit

[mark-t]

It doesn't matter how "sure" you are,,, when you are that broke, you don't spend your money on stupid shit because you *will* be homeless otherwise.

Re:I smell bullshit

[bingoUV]

It doesn't matter how "sure" you are,,, when you are that broke, you don't spend your money on stupid shit because you *will* be homeless otherwise.

Being "sure" precludes consideration of "otherwise".

It is stupid to be sure, of course, but kids are sure of far stranger things.

I hope

[reanjr]

I hope these aren't the same students asking for debt forgiveness.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

no dude, those are the ones that already graduated.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope these aren't the same students asking for debt forgiveness.

There is no such thing as debt forgiveness for student loans. And the 10 year public service waiver is being ignored by student loan servicers - Thanks Betsy DeVos!

Re:I hope

[tinkerton]

I could very well believe that these are the same students asking for debt forgiveness and they'd be right. If you hear how many people have to work a large part of their lives to repay their student dept then students investing in cryptocurrency sounds a lot like a desperate gamble to get out of a deep hole.

The whole description of getting a loan "Student loans arenâ(TM)t just for buying textbooks, No. 2 pencils, and apples for bribing teachers anymore. " is ridiculous.

Re:I hope

[swb]

I think this is right. The worse the loan terms are, the more desperate the borrower will be to eliminate the debt.

But to be honest, I bet there's a non-zero percentage of people looking at this as a great source of speculation capital on something that looks no-lose.

The whole student loan situation is a total mess. The universities push up tuition and expand their bureaucratic fiefdoms, dorms become luxury condos, and idiot students self-indulge in luxury living.

Meanwhile, all this debt accrues and its insulation from ordinary bankruptcy probably has it over rated as a security, meaning its used as leverage for much more and riskier debt, just like mortgages. And we all knew how that went.

Plus, student loans are just a giant drag on the economy. The young people starting to earn adult wages are crippled by debt and spend much less on economic growth activities. Houses don't get remodeled, old cars get driven, fewer trips, less total consumer spending -- all those activities pump up the economy and have a multiplier effect. Student debt service seems like a tax.

I keep thinking a student debt crisis will happen, but it never does.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Students don't ask for debt forgiveness. Graduates do.

Re:I hope

[rogoshen1]

Your post is 100% spot on insightful; and those chickens will come home to roost at some point.

I'm not a libertarian by any stretch of the imagination; but the student loan situation is one thing they're right about.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

> Houses don't get remodeled, old cars get driven, fewer trips, less total consumer spending

*Gasp* I think you may have stumbled upon the government's master plan for bringing down global warming.

Re:I hope

[yithar7153]

I wish I had mod points so I could mod you up. But yeah the situation is a mess. A lot of tuition is wasted on bureaucracy, and people don't spend money when they don't have money to spend.

Re:I hope

[Bing Tsher E]

Houses that don't get 'remodeled' have doors and windows that leak heat like a sieve.

The NSA Worked to "Track Down" Bitcoin Users

[Anonymous Coward]

The NSA Worked to "Track Down" Bitcoin Users, Snowden Documents Reveal

Internet paranoiacs drawn to Bitcoin have long indulged fantasies of American spies subverting the booming, controversial digital currency. Increasingly popular among get-rich-quick speculators, Bitcoin started out as a high-minded project to make financial transactions public and mathematically verifiable - while also offering discretion. Governments, with a vested interest in controlling how money moves, would, some of Bitcoin's fierce advocates believed, naturally try and thwart the coming techno-libertarian financial order.

It turns out the conspiracy theorists were onto something.

Archived: https://archive.fo/z5zzo

Re: The NSA Worked to "Track Down" Bitcoin Users

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow an agency devoted to foreign intelligence and criminal activity tries to identify users of a money laundering/financial regulation circumvention tool.

Really a groundbreaking and surprising thing that they might do that.

Re: The NSA Worked to "Track Down" Bitcoin Users

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, maybe some of the techniques weren't known before Snowden, but it was pretty obvious that the NSA and other three letter government agencies job is to track what is going on in the world and figure out who is cheating the system.

it's not an investment. it's gambling.

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not an investment. it's gambling.

Re:it's not an investment. it's gambling.

[rogoshen1]

So is a bachelors degree -- and at this stage, i'm not sure which is more likely to pay off.

Re:it's not an investment. it's gambling.

[dj245]

So is a bachelors degree -- and at this stage, i'm not sure which is more likely to pay off.

It will pay off as a bachelor's degree at least. That's an entry requirement for a lot of jobs. Customs and Border Patrol agents being one of them. Starting salaries in the 60-70k range, not bad if you have an otherwise nonmarketable degree.

Re:it's not an investment. it's gambling.

[OrangeTide]

Theoretically the knowledge you acquired has some value, even if your skills aren't terribly marketable and the slip of paper that is your degree is worthless.

In 10 years those *coins are probably going to be worth around zero. You will have learned nothing from them. And the coins you have left will not even buy you a milkshake. At least your college degree can be used as a napkin.

Re:it's not an investment. it's gambling.

[Darinbob]

The degree will pay off in the long term, probably short term too. It's mandatory for a lot of jobs. For those jobs where it isn't mandatory, it will still get you more pay and more promotions.

to be fair

[liquid_schwartz]

For certain degrees it could be true that you're more likely to cash out on a lucky bet than the degree itself. [Aggrieved group] Studies type degrees probably aren't too marketable.

Re:to be fair

[bluegutang]

"Grievance Studies" is the accepted name :)

Re:to be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

[Aggrieved group] Studies type degrees probably aren't too marketable.

On the contrary, there are enough right-wing cunts on Slashdot alone to make it a growth area.

Better than investing in a college education?

[butchersong]

Realistically, crypto is likely to yield a better result than their humanities, arts, social science education. Looking at this chart... chart it appears to me there are other students making worse choices. At least the investment is unlikely to drop to zero value.

Re:Better than investing in a college education?

[nine-times]

What does that chart even show? The Y axis is just labelled "percent".

Anyway, if you're studying art in college because you're looking for a financial ROI, you're probably going to be disappointed, but I'm not sure that's why people study those things.

If the "financial value" of your education drops to zero, at least you still have the education. If the price of bitcoin drops to zero (which is far from unthinkable), you've got jack squat.

Re:Better than investing in a college education?

[thegarbz]

What does that chart even show? The Y axis is just labelled "percent".

Notice that regardless of which year you look at on the graph the total of all points added up is very close to 100?

Actually the totals are consistently around 90 so there's probably a line missing entitled "other".

Re:Better than investing in a college education?

[nine-times]

I just mean more simply, what's being measured here? Is that the percentage of people graduating from college with degrees in each field, by year? How is anyone supposed to derive any meaning from a chart where there's no context and the axes aren't labelled?

"Apples for bribing teachers" ??

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Seriously? What century is the OP from?

When I was a student, teachers and TAs could be bribed with acid - and I'm not that young...

Re:"Apples for bribing teachers" ??

[DeBaas]

Well a nice Ipad will get you quite far. Especially considering what teachers earn....

Re:"Apples for bribing teachers" ??

[HornWumpus]

What? Acid is CHEAP.

Green bud was the bribe of choice.

I'm down with OPP

[PopeRatzo]

I really would like to see these students' application essays. They don't sound like the brightest bulbs.

Also, can we please just make college free so banks can't continue to be loan sharks to young people? I mean, what the fuck. Kids are coming out of school with six-figure debt. That along with the fact that we've allowed corporations to disintegrate pensions and only a tiny percentage of people will ever have enough money to retire guarantees that there's a financial crisis coming that will make 2007-08 look like a walk in the park.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

OPP? What do the provincial cops care about how people spend their loans? And what does your being "down" with the cops have to do with anything?

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Krishnoid]

When it comes to speculative finance, they probably don't have to be as bright as they do lucky enough to get out in time.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

I really would like to see these students' application essays. They don't sound like the brightest bulbs.

Also, can we please just make college free so banks can't continue to be loan sharks to young people? I mean, what the fuck. Kids are coming out of school with six-figure debt.

Not sure that we should make public college free, like many European countries, but we should significantly decrease the cost by using public funding. This only works though, if you throw out the "everyone should go to college!" idea.
NO. THEY. SHOULDN'T. Require that for less-in-demand degrees that students score high on entrance tests. It's OK to subsidize vocational school, if the students show aptitude or hard work. For the benefit of society, it's actually good to graduate a few art history majors, but if we're going to increase public subsidies for them, they'd better be damned good students.
We need mechanics, nurses, electricians, A/C repair people, programmers (real ones, not "boot camp" idiots), and rural family physicians. We don't need more lawyers, stock brokers, bankers, and marketeers.
Restructure subsidies for post-secondary education; require entrance testing; offer incentives to people to be a family doctor in rural potatoho, etc.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should we use public funds to subsidize education? Government has screwed up higher education enough. Think about it. When you throw limitless dollars at a limited amount of goods / services, what happens? Prices rise - rapidly. That's what's happened in higher education over the past several decades. Stop backing the loans, and the price will fall. It's Econ 101. Bankers might be willing to back a high scoring student going to med school or studying to be an engineer, but not the art history major. Mom and dad will back a good student, but not a bad or lazy one. Scholarships can still be used via the private sector to help the underprivileged who show promise.

In the 60's, you could put yourself through school with a part time job. That's what we need to get back to and the way to do it is get government the heck out and return to realistic values. Besides, most education subsidies benefit middle class / upper class kids. Why should some poor sap pay for some kid in Beverly Hills to go to school? Hit kids won't be able to go to school most likely and they won't benefit.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[PopeRatzo]

Think about it. When you throw limitless dollars at a limited amount of goods / services, what happens? Prices rise - rapidly. That's what's happened in higher education over the past several decades. Stop backing the loans, and the price will fall. It's Econ 101.

Stop requiring the loans and the price will fall even further. The reason tuitions have gone up is because we have this stupid system where the government guarantees loans so the universities know there's money to be made.

Instead of lending money, just make tuition at all state schools free, as in zero cost. If someone still wants something more "special", they can go pay for a private university. Right now, the bushels of money that are going to universities aren't being spent on educating students anyway. Like health care, when you have a middleman (loans, insurance companies,etc), you just end up increasing costs and debt.

We need single-payer education from kindergarten through college degree.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

That's insane. Why should I pay for someone else to go to school? Why should they pay for me? It's not free. We pay for it.

There's no right to healthcare or education. If you want it, pay for it. If you can't, convince someone to part with their money to help you. Don't put a gun to my head and steal from me for it. For all the people that hate business, business never does that. Only the government does and only we can stop it. I hope we can have a free society again, but we need to stop this. It hurts you and me to have government pay for things.

You bring up healthcare. Let's consider Medicare. Why am I forced to participate? If I make $100,000 year and work for 40 years and pay $116,000 in to the system. With a decent rate of return, I'm far better off without it. I'm better off because I can choose where I spend my money - not some idiot in Washington. I have use of it the whole time. I wouldn't part with it unless it was worth it to me. That's far more free than what we have now.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[PopeRatzo]

That's insane. Why should I pay for someone else to go to school?

Why should I pay for the roads you use? Why should I pay for the military to protect you? Why should anyone pay more for a product than what it cost to make? Why should a dime of money go to someone's profit just for owning a share of stock and having nothing to do with the products?

All these are questions that you will be better equipped to answer when you get out of middle school.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm in middle school and you resort to insults when you can't win an argument. You didn't answer my question. You asked a bunch of silly ones. Defend WHY you should STEAL from me at the point a gun (the law) money so YOU or someone else can go to school with MY MONEY?

By your logic, if I'm hungry, I can hold you up with a gun and take your wallet. Think about it and please respond with something intelligent.

I must add that the people that keep voting you up makes me think Slashdot doesn't have people interested in intellectual discourse. I'm trying to have it, but you can't answer a simple question. They think that's good. I think I need to find more intelligent people to talk with.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

I should add that your questions about why people should earn profit or dividends is laughable. I'm the one preaching free enterprise. You're suggesting everything from womb to tomb needs government intervention. Tell me, Mr. Government knows best, name one darn program that the government runs even halfway decently? One.

I'm for business, for profit, and for people keeping what they earn. I think Mr. Name Calling seemed to get a bit confused there. You also must either be bad with math, or like wasting money if you're in favor of medicare / social security. A chimp can handle the money better than the federal government. See, the chimp can invest it. The chimp would get profits from those investments (you know, the thing you suggested I'm opposed to people getting) and have far more money for his future. The chimp also wouldn't need to rely on overpaid government employees who couldn't get a real productive job to access his money.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[PopeRatzo]

Defend WHY you should STEAL from me at the point a gun (the law) money so YOU or someone else can go to school with MY MONEY?

Taxes are not theft in a representative democracy. You know, like the one set up by the Constitution. And why are you so concerned about tax money that goes for education, but not tax money that goes for foreign military adventures or golf trips for your jackoff president? I think you got something in your eye there, hypocrite.

"20 And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?

21 They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

Taxes are theft if they take from one group to benefit another. In a FREE society, you don't do that. You either give people more value to get their money or convince them to part with it voluntarily. That's what the constitution set up. Read it sometime. It's about making a level playing field, not making sure everyone gets the same economic benefit, but that they have the freedom do so through their own efforts.

I'm concerned about foreign military pursuits that don't have a valid purpose for the US Taxpayer, of course.

Why do you refer to Donald Trump as my jackoff president? Donald Trump isn't a thing like me. I have never advocated in favor of Donald Trump, and certainly haven't here. Why do you assume again? Can you not stick to what is written? Donald Trump is anti-free trade. That alone suggests he knows nothing.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but this argument doesn't hold water in this day and age, when the Constitution has been so distorted from its original intention that the values you describe no longer function the way they were intended. An income tax was never intended by the original Constitution, nor was a central bank. The values of this top level of society have propagated down to its smallest units: We the People. So when the Government seems to function well enough borrowing on top of borrowing with no plan or realistic means to pay it back, why shouldn't the people who believe in this system, believe too that this system can work within their microcosm of economic activity? When we know all too well, that the system breaks down much faster on the micro level than at the macro level, but the results will be the same regardless. Those of the people who recognize all of the above are rightfully indignant of their forced responsibilities, to pay for things they never agreed to pay for, not the least of which being the support of a system which is fundamentally flawed and broken.

And before you sing praise to the representative democracy in an attempt to poke holes in my argument, just remember that this representative democracy let a LOT of people down when our "jackoff president" was elected, just like it did when Obama was elected (twice), and Bush before that (twice). And remember too that a lot of the things that the red team did while Bush was in office that the blue team didn't like, were not only not reversed but expanded when the blue team got their turn. And while the Jury is still out on the current red team representative, it's hard to imagine the country changing more than the pace of the march towards its inevitable outcome.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[PopeRatzo]

And while the Jury is still out on the current red team representative

And by "jury", I assume you mean, Grand Jury. Because yes, there's a grand jury out on the current red team representative.

when the Constitution has been so distorted from its original intention that the values you describe no longer function the way they were intended.

I agree. The Second Amendment, for example. It's time for a new Constitutional Convention, don't you think?

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me, Mr. Government knows best, name one darn program that the government runs even halfway decently? One.

The aqueduct.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what the constitution set up. Read it sometime. It's about making a level playing field, not making sure everyone gets the same economic benefit, but that they have the freedom do so through their own efforts.

Unless they're slaves. Because fuck those guys, right?

Yeah, what you described is definitely NOT what the constitution was written to set up.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess you can't read. We amended the constitution and abolished slavery. Freedom is what it's supposed to be about.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

No one does that. The tale that this country or that country pays for a 'free' university education is just that a fairy tale.
In most countries only the super competitive high performers are given access to that free education. Those that don't perform are shone the door.
Under the present system in the U.S. the lender (and the federal government don't care what you study. Advanced basket weaving, the latest victim cultural group, comparative social whatever. They don't care.
In other places the numbers of students in each specialty is regulated, and some fields are not open at all.
I know a PhD in physics who studied in France, right up until his thesis defense he was looking over his shoulder to see if there was another student poised to take his place. Someone who shaved him out with just a slightly better grade.
No one pays for a free ride. Those students have to work for it.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't worry about borrowing by the government. It's a hidden form of taxation known as inflation. They have a printing press. They can borrow all they want.
  Not saying it's a fair thing, because it is a backdoor tax. Much like business taxes. I don't understand why everyone is so against eliminating all taxes on business. The businessman isn't stupid. He passes it along. The customer pays in the form of higher prices. I guess it's easier to just attack evil business then admit you're raising taxes on everybody who buys things which will, of course, hurt the poor more than the rich.

Don't get me started on a central bank. The federal reserve caused the great depression all by themselves by shrinking our M1+M2 money supply by 33%. There is no other way for an economy to go when you shrink money supply. They turned a standard recession in to some pretty scary times. Of course, they would never admit that. No man would ever admit that not only is he bad at his job, he's not necessary.

I'm with you as far as the income tax though. I wish we could shrink government back to where it was - 3% of the national income or thereabouts and get rid of all these silly taxes and bureaucrats.

Re:I'm down with OPP

[PopeRatzo]

No one does that. The tale that this country or that country pays for a 'free' university education is just that a fairy tale.

https://www.independent.co.uk/...

https://www.investopedia.com/a...

http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/1...

Smart

[110010001000]

Why fight it? If Facebook can be one of the most valuable companies in the world, why can't some imaginary currency? It doesn't pay to fight the flow.

Of course

[cascadingstylesheet]

Of course. The only thing saner than phony currency, or even saner than phony currency created by a south american drug lord's brother (see earlier /. story), is phony currency bought with student loans.

Only a luddite technophobe could oppose this stuff. No pyramid scheme bubbles here, no siree!

Re:Of course

[110010001000]

Even better would be phony currency generated by free/unmetered dorm electricity!

And...

[Anonymous Coward]

And these are the little fucking cunts that go around saying "reeee, we demand the government forgive all of our student loans!".

Go fuck yourself you little retards.

What banks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Link.
Banks don't own the loans, the federal government owns 90%+ of loans these days. It was part of Obamacare and the interest in the loans is a large part of how they passed Obamacare like they did.

Not being able to discharge student loans happened when the government began backing the loans. It wasn't the banks demanding this, it was the Federal government.

Re:What banks?

[PopeRatzo]

Banks don't own the loans, the federal government owns 90%+ of loans these days.

The federal government doesn't profit on student loans. Banks do.

https://www.rollingstone.com/p...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/p...

Re:What banks?

[AlanBDee]

Link.
Banks don't own the loans, the federal government owns 90%+ of loans these days. It was part of Obamacare and the interest in the loans is a large part of how they passed Obamacare like they did.

Not being able to discharge student loans happened when the government began backing the loans. It wasn't the banks demanding this, it was the Federal government.

Further, it's a bunch of private universities who really target kids with crazy sales tactics like; "You've won a scholarship. We will cover $35,000 or your $55,000 tuition costs per term. " Meanwhile, the local state university is about $5,000/term. Banks have almost not blame in this mess.

Re:What banks?

[tlhIngan]

Banks have almost not blame in this mess.

Banks in general are risk-averse, and student loans are pulling at all the red flags that any lender would use to signal a risky loan.

Things like:
* No credit history (they're coming out of high school and few probably got a credit card to build up a credit history)
* A big loan (6 figure sum!)
* No assets to speak of (teens, again)
* No assets to speak of even after purchase (i.e., you're not buying an asset with the loan)
* No steady employment
* Delayed payback

Knowing all that, would you loan someone $100,000+? Even a mortgage means the bank has something to secure the loan.

It's why the government has to tilt things so it isn't so risky on banks - such as non-dischargable, guarantees on repayment, etc.

Banks aren't stupid. Student loans are structured the way they are because no financial institution is stupid enough to make such loans unassisted.

Re: What banks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm. According to the CBO the United States make 1.6 billion in profits off of student loans in 2016 (lowering the interest rate on student loans so that the United States government would no longer make a profit was part of Clinton's platform even). Only 7.5% off all student debt is held by private loans. That other 92.5% is held by the federal loans.

Re:What banks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure they'll loan people huge sums of money. Especially if they're not white. Because one way or another they want to bring back Debtors Prisons -- essentially institutionalized, legalized slavery. Get someone on the hook for a big student loan, or a sub-prime mortgage, or even too many traffic tickets, with ballooning penalties for not paying them on time coupled with seizure of drivers license and vehicle registration, and you de-facto OWN someone until they pay what they owe. Now pay them pennies an hour for prison labor, and you've got almost-free labor for their lifetime -- and since they're scumbag debtors, freeloaders on society, nobody cares about them, they're getting what they deserve. This is what White Supremacists, Dominionists, and Fascists want: it's their 'final solution' to the minorities 'problem'. Then they can sit on their fat white asses, collecting their Universal Basic Income, get high on opiods all day long, and not worry about anything.

Re:What banks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Banks could easily require additional insurance for schools and/or degree programs that have a high default rate. Just like they do for risky mortgages.

Re: What banks?

[PopeRatzo]

Uhm. According to the CBO the United States make 1.6 billion in profits off of student loans in 2016

Nope.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/p...

Re: What banks?

[Anonymous Coward]

He gave CBO number for 1 year, past. You gave link for 10 years, future. Not same.

Your link also calls you a liar saying banks don't own student loans.

Re:What banks?

[bws111]

The insurance against risky mortgages is the house. You don't pay, they get the house. Student loans are unsecured. You did know that, didn't you?

Re: What banks?

[PopeRatzo]

Your link also calls you a liar saying banks don't own student loans.

Nope. Look closer.

Re:What banks?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're repeating a common sentiment, but it's not particularly accurate.

FFELP loans were guaranteed by the federal government, so banks took zero risk. And the replacement -- direct loans -- now don't involve private banks at all. So the risks you identify above are limited to private student loans, and even then your list is inaccurate -- many private student loans do require immediate repayment and do require a credit history or cosigner, etc.

Also note that the prevalence of credit cards in the same borrower population suggest that banks are reasonably comfortable with the risks you describe, even without special laws to make the debt non-dischargeable.

/ If we need special laws about financing education perhaps we should just do that directly instead of via banks

Re:What banks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, god, I bet you're one of those people who thinks unlimited immigration has no negative effects.

Re:What banks?

[thegarbz]

Knowing all that, would you loan someone $100,000+? Even a mortgage means the bank has something to secure the loan.

Simple answer is you wouldn't and why would you need to? What kind of a person can't start their life out of university without a $100000 loan? Hell I did it with $5k and a $600 car to my name. Talk of loans and mortgages weren't even considered until a few years after I started working.

Re:What banks?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are unsecured to an extent- they are very hard to discharge through bankruptcy and a lot of them have cosigners which they will also go after in the event of a default

Re:What banks?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean something like a credit default swap? I'm sure that will work out well.

Better investment than college

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially if they're majoring in *any* of the "let's invent new gender identities" majors.

How does that even work?

[guruevi]

I'm used to working with grants and government loans. Typically, you at the end don't actually see the money, you get to distribute money from the fund provided and have to give a pretty good accounting.

Stuff like meals and lodging are scrutinized and only permitted to a certain extent, so how do students get this 'free money' to "live off" in school so they can spend it on frivolous stuff? Back in my day, we used to have this thing called "a job" and you worked at it vacations, weekends and nights to get food. It's a 30 year loan at like 4-5%, that's almost as good a a mortgage.

Re:How does that even work?

[Anonymous Coward]

I graduated from a college 10 years ago. Federal government and CA gave me grants that directly paid for tuition and gave me a little more than $1500 per quarter for buying books, gas, etc.
Yes, they actually put money in my bank account and I could spend it as I wanted.

Re:How does that even work?

[tomhath]

The article is nonsense. You can't buy crypocurrency with a student loan. You buy things with money. Saying this money was student loan and the money you spent on spring break was from Daddy is absurd. It's all one pool of available funds, trying to compartment it into this money and that money will get you into trouble every time.

Re:How does that even work?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that he doesn't understand the way loans work, but you could have just said "you don't understand how loans work" rather than the bizarre insult screed you did.

Re:How does that even work?

[gravewax]

FYI, my brother makes a very healthy living off chopping wood. Fortunately most millennials are too lazy or too self entitled to realise hard work actually can pay quite well.

Re:How does that even work?

[physicsphairy]

If you
1) Had no job
2) Received thousands of dollars in student loans
3) Spent thousands of dollars on cryptocurrency.

Then, yes, you bought cryptocurrency using your student loans. Or are you saying if the loans hadn't been approved the students would have dropped out of college but continued to pay for the cryptocurrency? Whether or not it's provable to a degree of legal certainly, it's pretty obvious that the function of the loan was to enable the purchase of the currency.

Re:How does that even work?

[Anonymous Coward]

I graduated from a college 10 years ago. Federal government and CA gave me grants that directly paid for tuition and gave me a little more than $1500 per quarter for buying books, gas, etc.
Yes, they actually put money in my bank account and I could spend it as I wanted.

That's how it worked for me as well: every semester I was qualified for a certain amount, they directly paid tuition and if there was a surplus then what was left went into my bank account for other expenses.

And for the old man who has no concept of how wages have not kept up with inflation (and how tuition has vastly exceeded it): for most of us if we could make enough money without a degree to afford full tuition without the grants and loans then we wouldn't be bothering to get that degree in the first place.

Re:How does that even work?

[guruevi]

Nope, I'm a millenial per definition. I just never had to deal with living off debt, I only spent what I had.

Re:How does that even work?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a classmate who graduated the same time as me. Same major. He graduated with $50k of debt and I graduated with $5k, the only difference between us was that he bought 2 sports cars with tuition loan money and I had to ride a bike

Re:How does that even work?

[vix86]

Pay out on the remainder. If after you apply it to tuition and board you have money left, usually the remainder gets dispersed to you in the form of a check. I had a friend where this happened. He was going to a smaller college and had a student loan. After the tuition was paid for that semester, he had a few hundred bucks left over that the school bursar dispensed to him as a check.

Re:How does that even work?

[guruevi]

That seems like a recipe for disaster. You can get a "school" to sign you up, cancel your classes and you can pocket a multi-thousand dollar unsecured loan? Especially with government funds, you should have to account for every dime spent and pay back unauthorized spending.

Re:How does that even work?

[imidan]

Not really. The money goes directly to the school to pay your tuition. If you withdraw or cancel all your classes, they don't give you the money. The money that the student gets is residual aid, or what's left over after paying for tuition, room/board, fees, and whatever. This is usually a fairly small portion of the loan, and a lot of students use the residual to pay for books and other expenses. Also, if you withdraw having already been given the residual aid, you are billed and expected to pay it back pretty much immediately. If you take the residual and stay in school but just never go, you'll flunk out and lose your financial aid eligibility, get kicked out of school, and lose your loan deferment, meaning you'll have to start making payments on your loans within 6 months.

Unless when you say "school" you mean those scare quotes to indicate that it isn't a real school. And, yeah, there are sometimes schools you can sign up for, get financial aid, and they'll just give you most of the money (taking a cut for themselves) without any actual education happening. But that's financial aid fraud, and they prosecute that.

Re:How does that even work?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are fully missing the point; either the students believe their situation so dire or so impossible they think playing the lottery with their tuition is a good idea, or the education they are receiving is so poor and the students are so mis-educated they think playing what is obviously a pump and dump scam with their tuition is a better bet.

Never assume "kids are stupid"; you have to view the world in their eyes and put yourself in their shoes first, and most importantly, when they are making bad decisions, calling them stupid just makes you feel superior, it doesn't actually help them. Give the kids some guidance FFS.

Also, the ability to work a full time menial labor job that pays for 3 hots and a cot plus tuition hasn't existed since the late 80's. If you go deep into debt or get a scholarship, maybe you can do it. I suggest you take the time to do some research on how much $10-12 an hour buys.

Re:How does that even work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stuff like meals and lodging are scrutinized and only permitted to a certain extent, so how do students get this 'free money' to "live off" in school so they can spend it on frivolous stuff?

All of your expenses are posted to your school account. Scholarships and loans are applied towards them. Anything leftover gets refunded to a checking account. In theory for books, meals, etc. but at that point can be spent on anything. Paid for our wedding this way.

Re:How does that even work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Student loans are paid to students. They are given money, typically in the form of a direct deposit of cash to a checking account. Out of the money they are expected to pay the university. It does not go to the university as say federal grant money might be. So it is absolutely possible for them to spend it any way they want.
My daughter works in finance at an American university and inevitably every semester there are a few kids who fail to pay for their dorm housing, because they spent their student loan money on something else.

I love the bullshit here

[Anonymous Coward]

as many as one in five college kids may be using their student loans to cash in on the cryptocurrency craze

So that's anywhere from zero to 1 in 5 real specific range--assholes.

Double the loans!!

[Anonymous Coward]

A student's life is expensive: yearly iPhone X update, latest MacBook Pro, pot, lattes, Bitcoins, etc. Not to mention some school fees.

Interestingly, the more the government steps in to guarantee or pay off student loans, the more the school fees go up to match.

Anyway, crashing bitcoin value might be the best education these students get from the liberal schools!

STEM degrees are the only ones worth debt

[Anonymous Coward]

> investing in Ethereum or Ripple may be a better investment than a bachelor's degree in comparative English literature

News flash - for that particular degree, it is a better investment, and not because cryptocurrencies are good investments (they aren't).

Here's a fun game to play: when you read a news article that talks about Jane* (not her real name) struggling to pay rent, buy food, and make payments on her student loans, look for what degree the subject of the article earned. In the last one I read, she was making $18/hr as a photographer's assistant after she graduated with a degree in women's studies from a private college, and had over $200K in debt that she had no idea how she would ever pay off. The simple solution - don't go to an expensive private school, get a degree in a worthless subject, and then live in a high-cost-of-living area - was completely beyond her ability to grasp. Which is probably why she got a degree in women's studies in the first place.

Re:STEM degrees are the only ones worth debt

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it funny that the assumption is always that people either only study STEM or "Gender Studies", as if there's nothing else taught by universities. Hell, just from my own experiences, I've had a decent career in IT despite studying business administration in college while my friend who studied CompSci has barely been able to hold a job and another friend who studied film makes more than I do shooting commercials. By most metrics, Friend 1 should be living in the Bay Area making 6 figures in his sleep while Friend 2 should be pleading with the government to forgive his loans while also slipping him some extra from the NEA.

Point is, it comes down more to the individual student than the degree. A smart individual will know how to leverage any kind of degree into a lucrative career, a dumb one will assume that a slip of paper is all they need.

They're crazy

[DontBeAMoran]

People who buy Bitcoins are completely crazy if you ask me.

They should be buying Dogecoins instead! Its exchange rate of 1 Dogecoin = 1 Dogecoin has always been true since day one!

Re:They're crazy

[kaatochacha]

thanks for that, I've got like 34K dogecoins myself. He's so cute~!

Either Way They Win

[Tupper]

If it goes up, they'll be rich!

If it goes down, they'll get a financial education!

Actual article

[FeelGood314]

https://studentloans.net/finan...

Re: Cryptoscam!

[Anonymous Coward]

Youâ(TM)ll never make me admit Iâ(TM)m a stupid looser greedy idiot for buying into this scam.

College costs have spiraled out of control

[rsilvergun]

meanwhile wages have been in decline. You're summer job at even twice minimum wage assuming 50 hours/week @ 15/hr for 4 months (total vacation time, assuming you manage to work spring break and holidays + 2 +1/2 months summer) is $12k/yr. We'll pretend you don't pay taxes on that. Congrats, you just barely covered your tuition. Also, hope you kept your GPA up, because anything
So no, you're not going to work your way through college. Not unless you're one of those freaks who doesn't need sleep or does math while sleeping. That means there are lots and lots of new loans out there for you to live off of (or try to) while desperately trying to claw back the American Dream. Hence the reason you've got stuff like this happening.

The thing that pisses me off is that all of this was predicted by my college's newspaper back in the 90s when the federal funding started to be cut by that asshat Clinton & his right wing congress. Now I've got a kid in college and I spend every dime I get on school for her and we're still gonna end up $50k in debt for a 4 year degree.

Re:College costs have spiraled out of control

[guruevi]

What I meant is that my education was paid for by grants and other government money, but I never spent any of the money in those accounts for food. Back when I was working as a student, I earned maybe $5/h, that wasn't enough for a lavish lifestyle but it was and would still be enough today for what I needed - even today, you can find housing for $100-200/month (that's 4-5 days of work) and food at $5-10/day, if you don't work in the food industry.

Re:College costs have spiraled out of control

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the funding that's the cause in the first place. The feds are funding it directly and via backing student loans. Little Johnny goes to school to learn to weave baskets and gets saddled with debt for life. If the government didn't back it, nobody would loan him anything. Mom and dad wouldn't back it for that degree. Johnny would get a real job until he wanted a real education.

You throw limitless funds at a limited resource, of course prices rise. The smarter thing to do is to make each person pay for what they use. You say they won't be able to afford it? You're probably right. Schools will have too many empty seats and shrinking endowments. They'll have to get wise and compete. They'll get more efficient and smarter. That's the key. Limitless money only encourages waste.

Besides, the primary beneficiary of an education is the student - not society. Yes, we do benefit to a limited extent, but not enough to justify this spending. Not near as much as the individual.

Re:College costs have spiraled out of control

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it your choice to put said kid in college?

No way this can end badly....

[Anonymous Coward]

Kids today....

Spotted the trans theory majors!

[Applehu Akbar]

Obviously the students "investing" in imaginary currency are not econ majors. Whatever their concentrations, they will soon be broke, out of school, no job prospects, and hoping that the STEM students will create the tech that will one day fund their Universal Basic Income.

Investing with student loans is smart.

[aussersterne]

I don't know about cryptocurrency, though.

What I do know is that I felt very proud to not take the full cost of attendance out as loans when I was doing my degree. I thought (and the "adults" told me) that I was very smart to minimize my borrowing.

I know two separate people who took out the full cost of attendance loan (max they could get) every semester they were in school, and used that money as down payments on their first rental buildings. Years later, they both now have small real estate empires, the loans are paid off, and one retired in his '30s, all started by student loans. Both leveraged their student loan debt into investments that paid off.

Meanwhile, I was under the debt thumb for years and years and am still working for a salary 50+ hours a week. Someone was smart, and it wasn't me (despite what the older generation applauded me for).

On the other hand, I'm not sure that cryptocurrency is quite the same deal. Seems like it would be smarter to invest and rent-seek as the people that I know did.

Re:Investing with student loans is smart.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not confuse success with a good plan. There are plenty of people who lost their shirts in real estate in 2009 due to being over-leveraged.

Someone probably won the lottery with a ticket they bought as a student. This does not mean that it is a rational plan to take max student loans and buy lottery tickets.

In hindsight, residential real estate has performed phenomenally well in some markets over the last half-dozen years. Check what the returns look like in Detroit, Akron, Miami, or the average small city in the central US.

  It usually isn't excessively hard to get a real estate loan in the US. If you can't get traditional funding and need to resort to 'creative financing' or hard money loans, you should probably assess the level of risk you are taking.

Re:Investing with student loans is smart.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know two separate people who took out the full cost of attendance loan (max they could get) every semester they were in school, and used that money as down payments on their first rental buildings. Years later, they both now have small real estate empires, the loans are paid off, and one retired in his '30s, all started by student loans. Both leveraged their student loan debt into investments that paid off.

If any of those loans were public then that's fraud and they ought to be prosecuted. That credit was extended with the understanding that it would be spent on education at an accredited institution, not to purchase rental property. Martin Shkreli, you know "pharma bro", made the same argument in his securities fraud case. He argued that because none of his investors lost money in the end, it was alright for him to use the money in the custodial account for purposes not agreed to by his investors. The court found that fraud is still fraud, even if nobody lost money or, as you claim in this case, the loans were repaid.

Someone was smart, and it wasn't me (despite what the older generation applauded me for).

Smart or lucky. It's hard to tell sometimes. People who become rich like to believe that their wealth is due to their superior intelligence, better decisions and elite skill but more often than not luck plays an outsize role. Of course, admitting that is a blow to the ego so most wealthy people avoid the subject for that and other reasons.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that cryptocurrency is quite the same deal. Seems like it would be smarter to invest and rent-seek as the people that I know did.

How would the taxpayers feel when these students don't graduate because they lost all of their student loans gambling on cryptocurrency and then couldn't pay the tuition or the loan? Can you imagine the backlash when something like that went viral? There would be people calling for their heads on pikes and I'd be tempted to agree with them.

Re:Investing with student loans is smart.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its about risks, they took it and with knowledge, applied it and benefited. Doing this is not for everyone.

Im not sure why you are taking so long with your student loans, but know that many others probably failed and are eben worse off than yourself. Work hard save hard, you will overcome.

My parents paid for my education with a bit of scholarship, about $1000 a month but saved hard my first 3 years of starting salary ($2000-3000 a month) and placed down 25k after 3 years for a condo. Its appreciated some 80k 5 years since. Im still working for salary, but that condos appreciation rivals my savings from salary now.
Hope you get yours soon!

The Bull Flag

[wfrazee2004]

I really have to question the way the data is presented here. It makes it seem as if a significant segment of the student population is using student loans to fund crypto investments. There is almost no evidence that this is the case in the broader currency / holdings markets.

At minimum its irresponsible presentation of the data.

I did this

[Anonymous Coward]

I put $50 of my student loan disbursement as speculation on Ethereum about 4 years ago. I completely forgot about it and assumed I had just lost the cash until last year...

The fun part of gambling is that you win sometimes!

Buying it?

[Deadstick]

Considering the level of supervision in some school IT departments I've seen, they might be mining it.

Why not?

[some old guy]

They're pretty much screwed anyway, with hopeless debt, a dead-end job if they can find one, and a society that is unraveling before their very eyes.

Really, what have they got to lose?

Unless they're going into law, medicine, or high finance, how much bleaker can their future be?

Bad timing

[kaptink]

"1,000 current college students that have student loan debt were surveyed on the single question discussed in this article. Pollfish conducted this survey on behalf of The Student Loan Report. The survey began on March 16, 2018 and finished collecting results on March 20, 2018. "

Probably the worst time to trade at the moment. If you are going to do it, do it on an up-trend :)

Same.

[Anonymous Coward]

Was told to make safe investments, go to college, etc.

I had all the stupid crazy ideas that have made people billions, but I assumed our government was actually functional and punitive to upstart corporations abusing the system. IE I would have been sued into oblivion within a few years of starting any of these businesses. The only one that turned out true for was MegaUpload and similiar torrenting/music sharing sites. Most of the ever more egregious businesses have instead had runaway success abusing people's privacy, finances, etc for financial gain.

Boy how many billions wrong I was.

The Sun Rises in the East

[Anonymous Coward]

College students using money from their student loans in stupid ways is not news. Some of them buy lottery tickets and even, gasp, beer with it too.

2008

[elistan]

Huh. I wonder how many students used their student loans to invest in Miami condos and Arizona houses in 2008...

Both are positional goods.

[o_ferguson]

College degrees and Bitcoin are both Positional Goods from an economic standpoint, so either of them is a poor thing to gamble on with debt financing.

I'm buying houses

[Chewbacon]

These dumb fucks will never have the credit to buy one, but even if they do they'll default on their first mortgage. Then they'll have to rent from me me meeeeee.

Philosophy

[sdinfoserv]

sure, a 6 figure loan for a philosophy degree with 20K of it used for cryptocurrency - might as well burn crypocurrency along with the sheepskin......

lDIOT 4 year degrees

[p51d007]

Most of them go into debt, 5-6 figures, come out with a degree that doesn't pay enough to: pay it back, rent/mortgage/food/utilities/transportation, THEN blame everyone else that it's "not fair" and want the debt forgiven.

Ummm...

[Petersko]

"...but some wily students think that investing in Ethereum or Ripple may be a better investment than a bachelor's degree in comparative English literature."

I wish to see your venn diagram.

well, to be fair...

[Anonymous Coward]

if you are the sort who either had "highschool guidance counselor" as your dream career, or you were so poorly qualified that the only job available to you at the local high school was "guidance counselor" you probably should not be expected to give wise counsel to kids about how much debt they should incur, and what sort of higher education or career training they should pursue.

Dr Jordan Peterson has better advice for highschool/college kids who plan to live in the real world than any highschool counselor is likely to provide.

Re:well, to be fair...

[Anonymous Coward]

So by the same token, someone whose dream career was "high school teacher" is likewise unfit to actually teach kids important life skills because they should be applying their knowledge to a higher pay bracket?

Also, you seem to have a weird idea that guidance counselors are entirely in control of their advice. More often than not, they take the advice they give from the upper administration, who all fear the wrath of the PTA being brought down upon them for recommending that C-student Sammy might be more successful at trade school rather than college.

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was about say "as long as it's not subsidized," but no, investors of all stripes abuse financial incentives. Others invest borrowed money all the time, including money borrowed from taxpayers. So what if students do it.

probably also

[Anonymous Coward]

the ones taking the Tide Pod challenge [sigh]

This abuse of student loans is what you get when you remove market forces from something and put it into the hands of government. Total recklessness and unaccountability for the plans, unlimited risk, and horrid inescapable long-term damage.

Not quite

[rsilvergun]

student loans are structured the way they are because banks lobbied for it. This way they could get huge interest payments with zero risk while defunding colleges (and reaping the tax benefits from doing so).

You were close, but your explanation wasn't nearly cynical enough. Like a mean spirited Ocam's razor.

please hit your children

[bingoUV]

Yup. Americans need to hit their children. Hard. Then youth does not engender the invincibility syndrome.

This is unrelated to other assorted stupidities of youth.

$30k Millionaires

[Anonymous Coward]

The big problem I have with it is that while I was a poor student, there were kids who took the loans and bought TVs, phones, clothes, etc. with the money and had money left over for a car and spring break trips. Now, which guy would a girl want to hang out with. Yes, I was able to pay off my student loans in 2 years after I started my job, but I didn't have nearly the experience or number of friends that the guys who spent their 20s paying back the loans had.

Difference

[DrYak]

If you aren't making grades and progress towards your degree in Germany, you are bouncing down the stairs of the university.

There's a difference between :

"If you are among the 1% elite of outstanding results, you might get a change to get some help to pay for your tuition with four "zeroes" after the significand.
(Or you could try the sport. If you make our team win the local skull smashing pet sport...)"
(Or at least that's how the US sounds to us).

and :

"Try not to fail too many exam to the point of getting kicked out of the university(1), and as long as you keep paying your *semester* tuition which is just a tiny sum(2), smaller than you *monthly* booze budget, you can stay at the uni.
If you're really low on cash, even that small sum can be helped.
If you're working *at* the university (TA, admin work, etc.) tuition is nearly lifted".

Yes being a total doof will get you kicked out of Germany's (and other European countries' ) university.
But there's a big difference with the privatized education they have on the other side of the atlantic pond.

---
(1): In Switzerland: Needing to repeat a year more than 3 times in a row, needing more than 2 years sabatical, taking more than 5 years to finish your *master's* thesis etc.
These are not actually "ground for expulsion", only criteria that the uni administration will talk to you to see if it does really make sense for you to keep at the uni.
(2): personal experience in Switzerland and Germany. And France isn't much more expensive than that.

Unwise

[elgatozorbas]

Rule number one of investing: only invest money you don't need. Borrowing money to invest is a complete contradiction. In the case of student loans that may not be such a problem (not living in the US I have no idea how well protected you are).

Rule number two of investing: only invest in what you understand. Debatable in this case.

Rule number three of investing (as opposed to speculation): do value investing. No investment whatsoever could be further away from value investing than crypto currency. I am a sufficiently old fart to know that what went up yesterday and the day before may go down tomorrow, especially if it has no intrinsic value.

This seems like problems in the making...

Investment? Hah.

[biggaijin]

This is sort of like putting a second mortgage on your house and taking the cash to the dog track. It's likely that you will be living a healthy outdoor lifestyle soon.

That doesn't mean what you think it Means

[dcw3]

"but some wily students "

Gambling doesn't make you wily.

cryptocurrency

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard a bit different meaning at this article - https://goo.gl/LQMQ99

One-Fifth of Students Bought Cryptocurrency With F

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. I guess it’s slightly different from this https://goo.gl/aqL2Kf

Cryptocurrency with financial loans

[Anonymous Coward]

One-Fifth of Students Bought Cryptocurrency With Financial Loans, Study Reports
https://cryptocomes.com/one-fifth-of-students-bought-cryptocurrency-with-financial-loans-study-reports