It seems like even when we have enormous wealth as a whole, we've decided that it's an aberration to be free of enormous obligations when starting life. I doubt it was any sort of evil machination, but it sure has been handy for already pretty-well-off people.
The person who starts life off in massive debt, or who knows they'll be homeless if they don't somehow come up with a pile of hundred-dollar-bills every month, or (as is often the case) both, is somebody who:
* doesn't write for leisure
* doesn't organize politically
* doesn't innovate except on things they get paid to research
* and (perhaps most importantly) doesn't start a competing company.
These are on average, of course. A few people will still manage to do those things (especially if they come from wealth) but on the whole such activity is reduced. God help you if you have a kid and want to, say, run for office. How do you plan to pay for childcare?
Meanwhile, they are a person who will work on the things incumbent holders of power (owners of large businesses) want them to work on, for the sake of enriching 1) those owners, 2) landlords, 3) People who bought houses decades ago.
The system of entirely manufactured housing shortages and crushing student debt is pretty handy for keeping your population doing just what you want it to do.
I think a lot of people would actually be better off starting life with nothing and living somewhere cheap rather than starting with -$50,000+ and a huge rent bill every month. After all, we have the internet. But too many people don't discover this until it's too late, and they are shackled with a lifetime of obligations.
I was lucky to graduate without student debt largely thanks to my parents. My wife was not. I have been far, far more free in my choices in life, including the choice to live somewhere cheap, than her.
I was also lucky enough to graduate with no debt in the early 90s. It has made all the difference in my financial life, and has allowed me to avoid other kinds of debt.
In my case, graduating without debt was mostly due to the low tuition of New York state (SUNY) schools in the 80s. My tuition was $675/semester, and the minimum wage at the time was $3.35. That means in roughly 10 40 hour weeks over the summer, I could save enough for the year's tuition. Combine that with a 12hr/week job working in the computer labs and sysadmin'ing, and I could pay for my share of the rent & my car.
People talk about free tuition. But maybe we just need to get back to the middle ground of affordable tuition as measured by the minimum wage. Eg, put a cap on tuition so that it can't be more than X hours of work at a state's minimum wage.
Not to mention that maybe we should get away from the idea that everyone needs to go to college. The vast majority of jobs only require college because high school is nearly worthless, so even people who _did_ learn plenty in HS have to find a way to distinguish themselves.
It's also good for laundering privilege ("we can't make my buddy's kid partner unless he went to a good school - otherwise it looks like nepotism!")
$675 per semester in 1985 is $1580 now, or $3200 for the year.
By comparison, New York state spend $21,000 per pupil in public school (new york city this was $27k). This is higher than the national average of $11,000.
The cheapest state, Utah, still spent $6500 per pupil.
Your $3200 isn't going to touch it, so who picks up the rest of the bill?
The state paid a portion of the cost in the 1980s, so the $675 was only part of the cost. I would expect the cost for education hasn’t increased over time; rather the share has been shifted more greatly to the student.
To your last point, Society is going to pay in one way or another. We can subsidize tuition and benefit from an educated population, with greater innovation and culture that results; or we can have less growth, innovation, and poverty.
In a lot of cases, professorial pay has NOT kept up at state schools. My wife is a tenured stats prof at a mid-ranked state university like the one I attended. She makes far less than she did when she worked in a research position for the Fed. gov't, and less than 1/2 as much as she could make (and has made) in private industry as a data scientist.
1) Students pay the full cost
2) The taxpayer pays the full cost
3) The cost is shared
You're arguing for the latter. The trouble is the latter goes from everything from 1 cent a semester to $full_tutition - 1cent per semester, it's an option that can appeal to everyone.
How much should the taxpayer pay? How much should the student?
Personally I like the UK system, where the student pays if they make it big (get a job for netflix earning $500k a year you repay your entire loan), but you don't repay if you get a job in the local nursing home wiping someone's arse.
It's not a popular position, with both the right wing and left wing parties arguing against it (the left wing parties saying that taxes should rise to pay for stockbrokers' tuition, the right wing parties saying that taxes should rise to pay for stockbrokers' tuition)
I think its worth goes beyond a mere interchange between the student and the education center. And I think the long-term benefits it brings to the places where it is heavily or completely provided by the state should trump the short-term benefits brought to those who speculate with it.
>I think a lot of people would actually be better off starting life with nothing and living somewhere cheap rather than starting with -$50,000+ and a huge rent bill every month. After all, we have the internet. But too many people don't discover this until it's too late, and they are shackled with a lifetime of obligations.
I mean, sure, if it's likely you are going to spend your life making very little money, then sure, avoiding debt at the outset should be paramount. But getting some education, for most people, is probably the strongest thing they can do to decrease the chances that they will spend their life making very little money. I would argue that the next biggest thing you can do is to surround yourself with people who are going the direction you want to go.
I think the social and personal development sides of a metropolis are also pretty great. If I want to, (and I do) I can spend all day around people who are smarter than I am. I mean, substitute in your own figure of merit; no matter what you value, if you are in a dense area, chances are, you can find a group of people you can surround yourself with who have a lot of it.
This isn't just because of the migration of people who are financially able into the cities... this is also because there are more people of any type that are within your reach; there's a much larger and more diverse pool of people from which to pick your friends. If you are the average of the three people you spend the most time with? you want to be in a dense area where you can choose three really amazing people.
My own impresison, as someone who makes a good living without a degree, is that where you live actually matters a lot more if you don't have a degree; the difference in sysadmin jobs between silicon valley and less dense places is absolutely huge; much greater than the difference, say, in doctor jobs or even software engineer jobs.
That's very true - and something I adore about cities. I actually think if humanity is to survive with anything like current population levels we need as many people as possible in cities, given their efficiency and low per-capita carbon emissions. Also, they're fun.
But they're too damned expensive, and that's a manufactured situation. We intentionally decided that home prices rising faster than inflation is a good thing, and now we get the occasional lip service to "let's make housing more affordable" but _nobody_ has the guts to say "let's make housing CHEAP. Because basic shelter free of indentured servitude is good for humanity". Instead you get "well this building will have 100 market-rate units and 10 affordable ones so we get the odd token normie to assuage the guilt of everyone else living there. But you still get to vote against any meaningful increase in housing supply that addresses the core problem of 1000 people trying to fit in 100 homes."
So, if you make a lot of money, the city is great. If you don't make a lot of money, the city _would_ be great if you could actually afford to live there.
>So, if you make a lot of money, the city is great. If you don't make a lot of money, the city _would_ be great if you could actually afford to live there.
I do think that there is a chicken and egg problem here, and it's part of why we think it's so important to keep poor people in their houses as the place gentrifies; A poor person growing up in a rich city has massively more economic mobility than they'd have growing up in a small town.
Of course, you are right that it's hard to be poor in a big city; but if you can snag a rent controlled room, or your aunt's couch or whatever, it can be a good leg up.
There are efforts to build more. search for Scott Weiner if you are in California, and 'yimby' is another keyword.
My personal opinion is that if you want to get approval to build an office building, part of that approval would be talking someone into building a similar number of housing units nearby. I mean, not that they should be owned by the same entity; most of us don't want our housing directly contingent on our employment, but you need to build offices and housing in sync, otherwise you get crazy traffic problems.
I don't disagree with you, that is why people make those choices. But from a larger perspective it doesn't make any sense. Essentially everyone is in agreement that there are in theory more access and less barriers than ever. With that in mind it is completely ridiculous to spend twenty or thirty years working for security. With more opportunities you need more access to security, not less, so people can pursue those opportunities.
If you mean financial security, I think most Americans think you will work harder without financial security. It's just not a thing that most americans (at least once you factor in our privileging of rural votes) want our government to facilitate.
I mean, I personally think education is a great investment opportunity for the government; it's like those schools that give you an education and then take a bit of your income for a while, right? it seems like good free education would more than pay for itself.
But most people (or, at least most voting power) seem to disagree with me.
> If you mean financial security, I think most Americans think you will work harder without financial security.
I have no idea what people are thinking, if they are at all. Work primarily matters when there are no opportunities. Zuckerberg isn't the hardest worker of his generation. He found one of the best opportunities.
Somewhat ironically my lack of debt made it possible for us to move to Europe from the US, though I do have to make sure I earn a decent living (very good by European standards, so-so by US standards) to pay off the wife's aforementioned debt (we agreed to this ahead of time).
And I can only speak from my own experience, but people here do seem to do more of the things I noted. With a month off a year and, frankly, knowing you won't die in a gutter if you lose your job, you can spend more time on music, writing, whatever. But that's pure anecdata.
We do to a larger extent, but we also increasingly have similar social problems as the US. Economic freedom doesn't directly lead to good things. It is essentially economic freedom -> good social conditions -> good things. You can move to a more rural are in Europe and won't have to worry as much about money (especially if you are working remotely), but the social conditions will likely be worse, maybe even a lot. And you'll still pay the same taxes.
Young people still have to pay a huge percentage out of their monthly wage on rent or mortgage. I remember reading that in Norway you can contract a 90+-year mortgage, that's basically putting you and your kids and grand-kids into servitude.
You are probably thinking of Sweden. I have heard it is actually more now, like 200 years (the article says 140 years). Maybe even excluding the mortgage of the co-op. People are essentially renting from the banks, without any means to default. Apparently they have capped it at 105 years now for new mortgages. (People were actually a bit upset).
In the UK there's such a thing as an "interest-only mortgage" where you don't pay down the principal at all! Which of course means lower monthly payments.
The theory is, if your mortgage interest rate was X% but some other investment like the stock market had much higher returns, a sophisticated investor might want to take the money they would have spent on repaying the principal and instead put it into that better-performing investment, then after 20 years pay off the mortgage principal with said investment.
Post-financial-crisis rules were put in place that mean banks actually have to ensure you're _making_ that higher-performing investment.
From my observations in the past two years living in Europe as a Canadian, it almost feels like a hopelessness due to the lack of social mobility here that causes those things.
Huh, Europe is pretty big - where are you? I moved from the US to Europe (Ireland) and I'd say social mobility _seems_ higher here. There's still a definite class structure, and access to good schools remains an issue, but if nothing else the low-paid are paid more here and the high-paid are paid less. And we're one of the most unequal countries in the EU!
I think what you mean to say is that, "In some European countries, student debt after a masters degree...."
From what I understand, you can get out without debt here (norway). No tuition, low fees for books and things. Government stipend doens't need repaid, but you can take out a loan above that (common). Then move up north and work for some time. 10 years, I think? And I'm awfully sure that some countries won't have as much debt in that time simply because living expenses are lower and some folks are able to live with family while going to school for the 5-6 years it takes to get a masters.
It hardly matters on the distinction, though. It isn't like tuition in the US covers living expenses. Even if you are able to live in student housing, you don't get housing all year in many places - you might need to move yourself and your stuff out for anywhere between 2 weeks and 2 months. Whatever your loans for living costs are, at least they aren't higher due to tuition.
I'm sure it varies a lot between countries. When I did my masters in Ireland in 2011, the total fee was €5,000. Back then, there was a local government grant that covered the fee plus some living costs. Those grants are harder to get today though.
Probably depends on the country. In Germany, the student debt is zero in most cases, except if you received student support (Bafög). Even with Bafög, it's not a lot of debt.
Rural America doesn't have "enormous wealth". (To be fair, it doesn't have a "housing shortage" problem, either!)
> I think a lot of people would actually be better off starting life with nothing and living somewhere cheap
The question is how to do this while working in your preferred sector. It's not just the tech industry that seems tied to the sort of agglomeration economies you only get in big urbanized areas; large parts of the service sector are like this, too.
Pretty tortured analysis given that very little innovation and competition comes from countries like Norway that have large entitlement programs to avoid debt.
I'm not sure that the data supports your assertion that Norway produces no innovation or competition. The country is really really small though, so in absolute numbers they won't be very noticeable.
The Nobel prize is awarded for academic, cultural, or scientific advances. If at any point the decision is influenced by your nationality, birth place, eye color, or anything other than the intellectual achievements mentioned earlier than it is not fair and square. If all other things equal you get the prize for coming from a certain country it is not fair.
The implication was clearly that the particular "home" advantage made the difference and without it the person wouldn't have won. And the comment sounded like "I'm not saying it was unfair but it was unfair".
P.S. In sports you usually play both home and away to even out that unfair advantage. Big one time matches might even be held on neutral ground for the same reason.
Let's not play on semantics here. It's common sense not to suggest something is fair but then imply someone's nationality made the difference. I'm not saying I know nationality doesn't make a difference when awarding a Nobel prize. Just that if it does, then it wasn't fair.
We tend to measure it by how much money it earns. I think we could get away from that.
I'm interested in new methods for thatching homes, for instance. Maybe I'll find a weave that helps oaten straw last twice as long. It would never produce a meaningful economic benefit, but it would still be an innovation that enriches humanity,
The person who starts life off in massive debt, or who knows they'll be homeless if they don't somehow come up with a pile of hundred-dollar-bills every month, or (as is often the case) both, is somebody who:
* doesn't write for leisure
* doesn't organize politically
* doesn't innovate except on things they get paid to research
* and (perhaps most importantly) doesn't start a competing company.
These are on average, of course. A few people will still manage to do those things (especially if they come from wealth) but on the whole such activity is reduced. God help you if you have a kid and want to, say, run for office. How do you plan to pay for childcare?
Meanwhile, they are a person who will work on the things incumbent holders of power (owners of large businesses) want them to work on, for the sake of enriching 1) those owners, 2) landlords, 3) People who bought houses decades ago.
The system of entirely manufactured housing shortages and crushing student debt is pretty handy for keeping your population doing just what you want it to do.
I think a lot of people would actually be better off starting life with nothing and living somewhere cheap rather than starting with -$50,000+ and a huge rent bill every month. After all, we have the internet. But too many people don't discover this until it's too late, and they are shackled with a lifetime of obligations.
I was lucky to graduate without student debt largely thanks to my parents. My wife was not. I have been far, far more free in my choices in life, including the choice to live somewhere cheap, than her.