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New York already has a usury law banning rates above 16 percent. However, it's not always enforced. Many people who are victims of usury may not even know about the law.
Also talking about college, a lot of college programs are a complete scam. The best college arena is math, science, enginnering, law, medicine, etc... That is subjects that actually teach you a skill which you can use immediately in the work force.
The worst degree subjects are the arts. I know some people who spent a fortune to go to prestigous art schools like Pratt. It turns out they really did not learn much at all from the experience, now have huge loan debts, and are not very marketable. They were even telling me something about how Pratt has a claim on all of the work you do while being a student there.
My wife is a painter and none of the best painting schools for her are accredited. So she has to choose between spending less and actually learning useful skills at a good school, or spending a fortune and wasting several years of her life to get a stupid piece of paper at an "accredited" university.
A lot of kids get into the social sciences because they don't know what they want to do. They end up working as a bartender or in retail just like the high school grads who never went to college. Except they are worse off because they just spend a pile of money on tuition and debt.
I think this proves my point. Someone with 30 years of experience with an AS degree will be better than a new person with a BS degree in the same job role every single time. Hard earned experience always trumps academics and theory. Academics who look down on practitioners are some of my least favorite kinds of people on the planet.
You know, this anecdotal, as in cherry picked evidence. Our politicians, whether Republican or Democrats have social sciences and/or humanities backgrounds for their undergraduate degrees. Most after getting their first degrees go on to law school. These people run the country and people with similar educational backgrounds run other countries.
A lot of people on Wall Street have degrees in economics.
In film and television (there are many multimillionaires there) these people tend to have arts and social sciences degrees.
Many of our basic office workers making 30k-200k have social sciences and humanities degrees too. One could also work in the public sector and get a job making 30k-100k with social science or humanity degree. There's also working in academia.
It seems like working class people here are very ignorant of how huge sections of the economy work and who is working in them.
It like people like to bathe in ignorance and misinformation and like to willingly stay ignorant and stupid out of some sort of bizarre pride.
If you have a business and people on the payroll, the last thing they want to hear is I can't pay you this week, so they swipe the visa. I get that, but borrowing from Peter to pay Paul every week is kind of a dumb way to run the world.
A lot of geniuses out here.
Not a dumb way to work. You borrow the money and pay your current obligations knowing that you have the future income coming in to pay those debts off. If for some reason your business cannot pay its debts of, the banks and other debtors will liquidate your business in court and sell off your assets.
A lot of kids get into the social sciences because they don't know what they want to do. They end up working as a bartender or in retail just like the high school grads who never went to college. Except they are worse off because they just spend a pile of money on tuition and debt.
Just maybe the person who got the job as a bartender did something wrong?
Working class people advise people to get degrees and have good careers, but it can take a lot more than a degree to get a decent job or any job.
First of all, connections are important. Some people are already born into wealthy families. If you aren't born into a wealthy family then you will have to make connections and solid connections to many people in order to advance. Other types of work like internships and apprentices (yes, they exist in the US) can be very important to launching one's career.
I'm not saying every person with a social science degree ends up at walmart. There are plenty of jobs available for these degrees but in many cases someone with an social science degree really doesn't have any practical skillset to make himself stand out other than he was able to complete a college degree (not a hard thing to do really..). When I was in college there were so many kids doing these kinds of degrees because either they didn't know what else to do or because it was easy. Someone with enough drive, determination, talent, and networking can make his way in this world regardless of which degree he has.
I understand employers like to use college degrees as an easy way to filter job applications but do all of these jobs really require skills or knowledge gained from a 4 year social science degree program? If everyone is required to go to college to be employable and pay for it out of pocket, then the demand shoots up and tuition becomes very expensive. The result is young people who aren't from wealthy families all entering the work force saddled with debt.
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Originally Posted by NyWriterdude
You know, this anecdotal, as in cherry picked evidence. Our politicians, whether Republican or Democrats have social sciences and/or humanities backgrounds for their undergraduate degrees. Most after getting their first degrees go on to law school. These people run the country and people with similar educational backgrounds run other countries.
Politicians and other high level people often come from distinguished backgrounds with high level connections from their families and networking experiences in ivy league schools. I'm not sure it really matters what degree you got from your undergrad if you live in this world.
Not only that but famous movie producers, actors, and musician become that way because they had a natural born talent for it. You can either sing or you can't, a 4 year degree in music is not going to give you the talent to sing, something like that is something you are born with as a natural talent.
I agree partly with whoever said that too many people consider themselves middle class. At one point, 50-100 years ago, office work paid well and those people (re: men) were considered middle class. The dude at the bank? Middle class. Everyone else, doing physical labor, was working class, and made much less money.
Then came unions, and many working class people made more money than white collar workers. And trained people doing physical jobs, like plumbers? Much more $$$ than standard office guys.
Today, there are plenty of tradespeople still making $$$, and a few unionized factory workers doing better than average. But "middle class" as it used to refer to teachers and office workers doesn't mean much today. It's a label of social class, not necessarily a label of income level. Pretty much everyone who went to college refers to themselves as "middle class," whether a doctor or a barista.
In terms of income, "middle class" refers to just that--the middle. According to the census, median household income is just over $51K: http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr12-02.pdf As a rule-of-thumb, $50K-$250K is considered middle class (with $150K-$250K considered upper middle class).
So back to the bank worker. Today, that person wearing nice career casuals is making only around $25K a year. But because of the class system, this person will likely refer to him-/herself as middle class, so as not to be lumped together with a janitor or hotel maid also earning $25K a year.
There is a group of people technically termed "middle class" based on income. But people below this income level refer to themselves as "middle class" as a method of distinguishing themselves from people who clean toilets for the same money.
You know, this anecdotal, as in cherry picked evidence. Our politicians, whether Republican or Democrats have social sciences and/or humanities backgrounds for their undergraduate degrees. Most after getting their first degrees go on to law school. These people run the country and people with similar educational backgrounds run other countries.
A lot of people on Wall Street have degrees in economics.
In film and television (there are many multimillionaires there) these people tend to have arts and social sciences degrees.
Many of our basic office workers making 30k-200k have social sciences and humanities degrees too. One could also work in the public sector and get a job making 30k-100k with social science or humanity degree. There's also working in academia.
It seems like working class people here are very ignorant of how huge sections of the economy work and who is working in them.
It like people like to bathe in ignorance and misinformation and like to willingly stay ignorant and stupid out of some sort of bizarre pride.
It's not bizarre pride its a reality that if we continue to rack up student loan debt in excess of 1.2 trillion dollars we're headed for another economic crisis. Debt is not something to glamorize, just because you can easily get loans for college doesn't mean it's something that should just be considered acceptable or as a norm.
First of all all this debt is keeping young grads from purchasing homes, starting families, buying their first new car. Alot of grads move back in with their parents, they are failing to launch because they are being placed into a situation that is keeping them from being able to all because all they really wanted was a decent life for themselves so they went and financed a degree. The day they graduated the real world came along and gave them a kick in the pants.
You seem to look down on the working class people but those same blue-collar working guys who fight fires or risk their lives protecting the innocent are the same people who died on 9/11 trying to save white-collar yuppie elitists like yourself.
Also as far as working in academia goes more and more colleges are using adjunct professors because they are cheaper then a full time actual professor. If colleges actually cared about education instead of profit, they would used full time dedicated faculty and be more involved with their students. How much value do you think you're getting for your money in higher education when you're in a lecture hall with 150 other kids?
How much do you think college is still about quality education when you have football coaches at the collegiate level making 3.1 million a year? Why do tuitions keep rising while new grads continue to struggle to find work but yet as these tuitions rise we see campuses become like little towns with Starbucks, Rock Climbing Walls, cafes. When I was on campus at Duke they had a dining hall combined with a convience store, an actual restaurant, a retail store, and a few other things I can't even remember. Does any of that sound like learning to you? Do you really think colleges are still non-profit?
And one last thing I do come from a blue-collar military family. My family also owned an electrical company, we had 5 houses in Putnam County New York, a condominium in Flagler Beach Florida, and as kids we never went without food, shelter, or clothing. I was grateful to be apart of that family, hardworking blue-collar guys who were more then capable of taking care of their family.
Regarding the liberal arts/skilled trade argument...my two cents.
I agree that liberal arts majors often go on to law school or any number of careers. I also agree that skilled trades are a good, safe bet for a job.
Having earned an M.A. and worked in education, my experience has been that (a) mediocre talents are encouraged to pursue things like fine arts and (b) regardless of talent, these students are discouraged from learning or doing anything unrelated to their talent.
For example, Jim likes to write stories or draw pictures, but he's not particularly good. He wants to major in English or fine arts, his choice. No one ever tells him his stories are awful, pictures are bad, etc., so as to not hurt his feelings. Worse, no one says, "Maybe learn Excel or master English grammar as part of Plan B." Instead, they say, "Follow your dreams. Don't let anyone stop you." So Jim graduates and no one wants to buy or even peruse his work. He has no job skills/Plan B. He ends up working at Starbucks with $30K+ in student loan debt.
My advice--go ahead and major in what you love. But train for what people will pay you to do. A barista with a fine arts degree can barely afford to create art as a hobby, due to lack of time and money for art supplies. But a fine arts major who also studied accounting can afford to paint away every weekend.
A lot of people would be a lot happier if they realized that doing what you love does not equate to being paid to do what you love.
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