Calling 2020 for Entropy

[Dangerman]

In 30 years nobody will want to admit the unearned privilege of attending and graduating college.

[D.A. Ridgely]

There being no debtors prisons, it's still quite possible for many people to go their entire lives blowing off their student loans and the only adverse consequences are bad credit.

Although there is that Supreme Court ruling that SS payments can be garnished to pay student loan debts. That will be quite the epic battle in 30 years.

Good point. As of now, however, I'm taking the Republican position: I'll be dead by then, so I don't care.

[Jennifer]

IIRC, the "no bankruptcy for student loans" law was founded on a lie -- supposedly, there were buttloads of people taking on high debts and then immediately declaring bankruptcy before starting six-figure-salary jobs, except there weren't.

Still, one of my high school teachers openly bragged to us that she dodged her loans and as much as advised us that paying it back was for chumps (made it sound like their record keeping/enforcement was disorganized and lax).

Not knowing anything more than what you've said here, I'd suggest THAT specific problem was either "the teacher committed some type of fraud (hiding assets, etc.), or the bankruptcy judge in question wasn't doing his damn job." Because my understanding of bankruptcy law -- and of course, I say this as someone who is not a lawyer and fortunately has no personal experience with bankruptcy -- is that you can NOT simply declare bankruptcy anytime you want. because "Meh, I don't feel like paying back those loans" -- it's got to be approved by a judge AFTER it's been determined "It's not that you don't WANT to pay your loans; it's that, based on your current and reasonable-projected-future earnings and assets, you probably CAN'T pay off those loans."

Even if bankruptcy were an option for student loans, and had been when I finished school, I doubt I could've gone bankrupt with an honest judge, because IIRC my max debt was only slightly more than one year's pretax salary, at the time, and as a single person, no dependents, no chronic health issues or any "extra" expenses over a typical American of my age and salary, that debt was not high enough to warrant bankruptcy.

Building further on this: I do have a vague recollection of reading a long-ago article in SPY Magazine: this was when Gary Coleman was declaring bankruptcy, and had to auction off his possessions as part of the proceedings, and the gist of the article was "I am now the proud owner of Gary Coleman's spatula." Based on that, and other mentions of characters going bankrupt in various books and TV shows, I gather than to go bankrupt in America, it is a rather "invasive" process -- in that they go through ALL your stuff and decide what things you can keep and what you must sell for the best price you can get, presumably (at least for Coleman) even going so far as to say "Hmm, well, we'll let you keep SOME cookware since you'll still need to eat ... but I see you have three spatulas! Keep one; sell the other two." Or whatever. (Alternate possibility: perhaps for ordinary bankruptcy-seekers, used cookware and the like isn't valuable enough to be listed under "assets"; perhaps Coleman was trying to "cash in" on his celebrity by selling otherwise-worthless things which had collector or novelty value solely because "Gary Coleman used to own this.")

If I personally were to try declaring bankruptcy right now -- assuming of course I had a giant debt and little to no savings, but otherwise the exact same possessions -- I don't know if they'd go so far as to say "You can only keep SOME of your unusually large collection of clothes -- like, choose X pairs of pants, Y shirts and one winter coat, and sell the rest," but I'm fairly certain they'd expect me to sell things like, any gold or silver jewelry, bullion or coins I might have; various antique toys or tchotchkes which have at least SOME collectible value, enough to be worth selling rather than dumping in a Goodwill donation bin; perhaps a LOT of my huge collection of books (at least some of which are bound to have a bit of collectors' value, especially the really old ones); my miniscule stock portfolio would of course be taken in its entirety, though I'd almost surely be allowed to keep my computer since it's considered a necessity in today's society, especially for job-holders or -seekers ... and that's all BEFORE I spend at least seven years with absolute-shit credit and all the unpleasantness that entails.

In other words: going bankrupt really sucks, at least when everyone involved is honest and aboveboard, so IMO the idea that allowing truly over-their-head debtors this option is, like, "too good" for those irresponsible whatevers strikes me as a tad harsh.

[Mo]

Oh yeah, that’s why Joe Biden never broke single digits in his prior White House runs.

[Warren]

It's going to be Four More Years.
Short of a major recession setting in within the next year, there's no Democrat that Trump can't trump.
Buckle your seat-belts, it's going to be a lullzy election cycle.

[Eric the .5b]

Oh yeah, that’s why Joe Biden never broke single digits in his prior White House runs.

Ignoring the whole argument of what Russia actually did, um....2016 was on their watch.

Christ, I'm rooting for Warren at this point.

[Aresen]

Biden - frat boy to alzheimer's without passing through maturity.

[dbcooper]

A follow up to the great David French success:

Bill Kristol Wants Joe Walsh To Primary President Trump

[dhex]

Hahaha what the fuck outlet is that?

[Warren]

A follow up to the great David French success:

Bill Kristol Wants Joe Walsh To Primary President Trump

Meh, why not. Life's been good to him so far. Whether in the city, or out in the meadows, or on the Rocky Mountain way, he takes it one day at a time all night long. He's just an ordinary average guy. He's just lucky that way.

[JD]

Bernie Sanders says China has "made more progress in addressing extreme poverty than any country in the history of civilization". Really? Are Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, and Korea - hell, even Botswana - not a thing on his planet? A hundred years ago or less, they were all very poor; to look at them today, you could almost forget that. If China looks impressive now, it's because they spent about 50 years making basically no progress.

[Mo]

I don't get the critique of Sanders on this. He's not wrong. China has made massive jumps in eliminating extreme poverty in the last 3 decades on a scale that's unmatched anywhere. It's not just the level of the improvement, it's also about how many people came out of extreme poverty. Granted a lot of this is due to the reversal of some terrible policies, but there's nothing wrong with noting it. Heck, I could see Reason making the same statement just based on a different argument.

[JD]

The issue is that it's kind of a sin of omission. Yes, many people have been lifted out of poverty in China. Many people have been lifted out of poverty in many places, and singling out China for praise is telling about Sanders.

[JasonL]

China has done that by being less awful in terms of economic controls that Bernie wants to ramp up. So, the thing is if Bernie is making some kind of argument about I want to do things that work like liberalizing markets and trade, fine. But ... he's not wanting to do that. He's wanting to do the other thing.

Same story India.

[Mo]

I mean part of it has been hyper-focused industrial policy, which is what the populist right and left want to do. Well managed state industrial policies* are very effective at turning poor countries into middle class countries, but less so at making them wealthy.

* Which is a lot of what ROK and the Southeast Asian countries did as well.

[JasonL]

Well yes, but the big industrial policy for China and India has been allowing international investment flowing to labor at efficient cost/productivity. Also, leaving HK alone for the most part. So, the story is at a minimum complicated until someone wants to attribute some Bernie type policy for the growth. Like if you want to say he wants to help poverty level people in the US by a tariff regime that increases reliance on domestic demand, that's not something that would hold up to scrutiny. My point is really just that by invoking China generally is he suggesting something we should be looking to do? If so, most of those things are inapplicable / destructive. If not, why is he making this point?

[Mo]

Well yes, but the big industrial policy for China and India has been allowing international investment flowing to labor at efficient cost/productivity. Also, leaving HK alone for the most part. So, the story is at a minimum complicated until someone wants to attribute some Bernie type policy for the growth. Like if you want to say he wants to help poverty level people in the US by a tariff regime that increases reliance on domestic demand, that's not something that would hold up to scrutiny. My point is really just that by invoking China generally is he suggesting something we should be looking to do? If so, most of those things are inapplicable / destructive. If not, why is he making this point?

Except Bernie isn't saying any of those things, people are dunking on Bernie for the praise because he's Bernie, but the stuff he said in the context he said it would not be of note if they came out the mouth of someone like Jon Huntsman. And I say this as someone who you would be hard pressed to find much positive to say about Bernie. He's saying this in the context of the trade war and talk that China is an existential threat to the US.

[Warren]

For all the people lifted out of poverty in China, there are, I don't know hundreds of millions, scattered around it's rural interior that have been deliberately kept impoverished.

[Aresen]

For all the people lifted out of poverty in China, there are, I don't know hundreds of millions, scattered around it's rural interior that have been deliberately kept impoverished.

IIRC, the rise of the Chinese middle class is confined to the coastal areas. The rural areas are still very poor.

[D.A. Ridgely]

For all the people lifted out of poverty in China, there are, I don't know hundreds of millions, scattered around it's rural interior that have been deliberately kept impoverished.

IIRC, the rise of the Chinese middle class is confined to the coastal areas. The rural areas are still very poor.

So, just like the U.S.?

[Warren]

For all the people lifted out of poverty in China, there are, I don't know hundreds of millions, scattered around it's rural interior that have been deliberately kept impoverished.

IIRC, the rise of the Chinese middle class is confined to the coastal areas. The rural areas are still very poor.

So, just like the U.S.?

Way WAY worse.

[Jadagul]

Well yes, but the big industrial policy for China and India has been allowing international investment flowing to labor at efficient cost/productivity. Also, leaving HK alone for the most part. So, the story is at a minimum complicated until someone wants to attribute some Bernie type policy for the growth. Like if you want to say he wants to help poverty level people in the US by a tariff regime that increases reliance on domestic demand, that's not something that would hold up to scrutiny. My point is really just that by invoking China generally is he suggesting something we should be looking to do? If so, most of those things are inapplicable / destructive. If not, why is he making this point?

Except Bernie isn't saying any of those things, people are dunking on Bernie for the praise because he's Bernie, but the stuff he said in the context he said it would not be of note if they came out the mouth of someone like Jon Huntsman. And I say this as someone who you would be hard pressed to find much positive to say about Bernie. He's saying this in the context of the trade war and talk that China is an existential threat to the US.

This seems to genuinely be the most sensible thing Bernie has said in months. Why are we dunking on him for this?

It's like the thing where everyone got together to trash NdT for observing how rare death by mass shooting was. That's the only thing I've ever heard him say where he was both right and important. So of course everyone jumps on him for that.

[Hugh Akston]

Are the reNeducation camps incidental or integral to the poverty thing?

[JasonL]

I don't want to dunk, but I kinda want to do an ugly layup or something. The fact of extreme poverty reduction in India and China is one of the most important facts in the world, and the mechanisms by which it happened are things that almost every current politician wants to stop. Bernie's entire career has been apologetics for practices and policies that would make those people still starving.

If he said this as some form of "see this is the result we'd get from my policies", I'd want to go between the legs windmill on him while he cringed in the restricted area.

If he said this in the context of China isn't the worst enemy in the world, I kinda worry they might be but I at least get the sentiment of not wanting to declare new axes of evil and such.

[Mo]

I’m pretty sure if Bernie praised Singapore and said we should emulate them, people would notice that Singapore is basically socialism run by really good technocrats.