I think you’re looking at this the wrong way. They’re in a death cult. They want this. They want anyone who is opposed to them to suffer as much as possible even if it means destroying their country in the process. This is what “owning the libs” is about, and it’s all they have left because their pathetic ideology can only make things worse for the working class.
I don't think most of the cultists actually want it to crash. Sure, there's a subset of accellerationists, and for sure they want to teach their enemies a lesson, but I think for the most part, they think that everyone is lying, overreacting, or it's just temporary and things will be much better afterwards. The problem is, they can't ever get out of that modality because of the sunk cost. No matter how bad things get.
I think this will be a coercive leverage to “encourage” military conscription.
Massive student loans? Sign on the line for 10 years fighting to kill citizens of other countries like Panama and Canada, and your loans will be discharged!
Specific loans like student loans could also act as triggers to deny passports and other ways of escaping the country.
The administration has a hate-boner for millennials.
Look at RFK decrying SSRIs and stimulant meds. Wanting to send people to "detox farms" to harvest "organic lettuce" (unpaid) for "years".
Aren't like a quarter of millennials on SSRIs and/or stimulant meds?
And of course we are. The world sucks. Civilization is likely to crumble in our lifetimes. And we aren't good enough for your (boomer/old-X) approval...never have been. Ya damn right we are depressed and anxious. Not to mention overworked and our focus constantly challenged. Literally can't go through 5 seconds of any form of media without some sort of shiny object dangled in front of you.
I stopped paying mine. It was homelessness or student loans. Fuck em. If they can write off billions of small business loans, they can write off my student loans. Fuck that game.
remember to get paid under the table whenever you can, so they can't garnish your wages. you might take a pay hit, but it will be a smaller bite than your loans take.
I agree with you in principle, but they won't do it and you're likely going to end up struggling. There are other payment plan options that I encourage you to research before you end up in more debt which you can't offload. It's fucked up, I know. And I'm sorry you're having to decide between a payment or shelter. Obviously shelter comes first. But there might be other options to allow you to have both.
My student loans were private, not federal, which actually worked out great when it came to discharging them.
Defaulting on them fucked my credit for a while, but then it left my credit report after 7 years. And my debt to income ratio was so fucked from them anyway that it really didn't hurt that bad, and it was okay in 7 years, whereas paying double my rent every month would only cover interest and keep going indefinitely.
These fossils still think that Millennials are kids. Bro, my kids are almost in high school, my back hurts, I feel this flesh prison decaying around me. I'm entering the part of my life where I'm traditionally supposed to be the most economically advantaged, and this bullshit is going to basically nuke my generation's ability to participate in the economy, because we were all told that we need to go to college to have a good life.
i was in high school when my parents were my age and i think that this generation's purpose has become a sacrifice to the capitalist meat grinder; same as the generation during the depression.
Last month, a federal judge blocked the Biden administration-era SAVE plan, an income-driven student loan replacement program with 8 million borrowers, claiming it lacked the authority to forgive millions of dollars in debt.
It's almost funny how when Biden was President he had no authority to do anything, however trump doesn't seem to have that issue as much. Almost funny.
Trump has support in all levels of government, and a great amount of it too. This didn’t happen just overnight in Jan of 2025. Biden had opposition who would hold him accountable for dictator stuff (as well as supporters who would hold him accountable depending on what he did) but Trump now has a larger support base to pull off his shit because control at the top is across his party.
That’s why Biden couldn’t do it but Trump can. It’s bullshit and we know it, but no one (including myself) is willing to revolt the way we should yet. We’re all worried about covering our own butts because the system we’ve grown up with is still mostly here so there is still hope that we can change it via our system. We may very well regret this later though.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
I don't know why Biden didn't just go full dictator like Trump. Dictators that do the thing I want are actually good and there's absolutely no possible repercussions.
I mean, I'd love a dictator who says "You must value trans rights as human rights, or to the Gulag with you!", while running labor camps for... CEOs who underpay their janitors.
If a democrat went dictator they would immediately have the DOJ, entire media ecosystem, and courts united against them because those that support the democratic party recognize dictators as bad.
If "full dictator" is defined as ignoring established law to enact their agenda, then Biden did go full dictator multiple times. Most notable is how he circumvented established law in order to continue sending lethal aid to genocidal Israel.
And you're right, Biden going "full dictator" does have negative repercussions. Trumps's illegal actions are somewhat normalized by the illegal actions of his predecessors.
I just wish for once a president would go "full dictator" for the working class and not for the billionaires and genocidal regimes.
During Trump's first term I was convinced that he would try to increase revenue from student loans, so I converted mine to a low interest private loan.
Sadly low interest private options are no longer available for those still stuck in the federal student loan system. The administration knows that low interest private loans are no longer an option, and has a captive market to extract revenue from.
Trump has been grooming his supporters to cheer actions taken against the educated. I hope this move alienates millennial and younger college educated Republicans and finally turns them against the administration.
We already have. It's been cheaper for a while now to go abroad for undergraduate and graduate school. Source: Me. I did this for the golden visa and got tricked by stupid sexy science. I have met several like me in the last decade. It's been a long time coming.
Would if I could. My skills aren't in demand in other countries, and my health would be an issue for those with universal Healthcare. I'm stuck, and have made peace with the fact that I'll be a statistic of this administration. I'll do what I can to prevent others from suffering the same fate, but realistically, I have no avenue to save myself.
It started years ago. Chinese and European institutions were recruiting Americans almost a decade ago while I was still attending scientific meetings. Most of us could see the writing on the wall about American science. I was too close to retiring for such a jump to make sense for me then. I'm SOOOO glad I'm out of the game now. And grateful that I have a comfortable income from my pensions and SS without tapping into my savings.
Yeah, America told that coward Anne Frank to pull herself up by her bootstraps and sent the boat she took to the good ol US of A to seek asylum back to Germany.
I wonder what happened to that girl? Eh she probably got a hero's welcome, challenged Hitler in the Free Market of Ideas, and won the day. At least I think so, I'm not sure, she wrote a diary but my local GOP Senators were kind enough to ban the book for being woke; it's just not appropriate for people hiding in attics to call the people looking for them Nazis just because they happen to disagree on trivial matters like the value of a human life.
Why? What loyalty or obligation is owed to a country just because you were born to it? It's the country's job to make you want to be a citizen, not the citizen's to make the country act like it doesn't hate your guts and see you as a wallet to fleece.
^ this person isn't worth anyone's time or effort. Ignore and/or block and don't fall into the trap of trying to use logic to change the mind of someone who didn't use logic to get there.
Non-millenial here, also watching my payments skyrocket by 440%. Can't get loans with my excellent credit score because my debt to income ratio is super high. At this point it would cost me less to tank my credit, go into default, and be garnished since my credit score is meaningless anyway.
And the kicker is that in the 10 years that I have paid, my principal balance has not decreased at all.
Oh, and the real treat? Since the Federal injunction, I can't recertify my repayment information, which means I lost all progress towards loan forgiveness.
Holy shit!! I won the birth lottery be being born in Norway, and I watch Last week tonight with John Oliver weekly, read the news about what's happening around the world, to be informed, listen to Behind the Bastards, Lemmy, local news etc., so I feel pretty informed. However, 440% increase? And the other commentary who's paid for 10 years with no decrease - what in the actual fuck??????
There are SO many property owners who could not keep their house with a 5% increase on their house loan (article from COVID years), and I remember reading about people going to the news complaining that they had to cancel one of their streaming services, and others who maybe had to sell ONE of their two cabins.
450%‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽ Why have people not revolted? How can you still be complacent? I'm so sorry to hear about this happening.
And the other commentary who’s paid for 10 years with no decrease - what in the actual fuck???
Not to justify, just explain: That person likely only ever paid the bare minimum to cover interest. It's like when you have a credit card. You can make interest-only payments, or you can pay more to start clearing the actual debt.
There are SO many property owners who could not keep their house with a 5% increase on their house loan
But it's not a 5 percent increase, it's a five percentage point increase on the interest.
I'll take a loan calculator with typical Estonian values for an apartment, not a detached house, bought before the Ukraine war with the standard margin + euribor interest scheme.
250k @ 15% down, 30 years, 1.7% base interest + 6 months euribor. Euribor was 0, so we input that into the calculator. Monthly payment is 754 euros. About the same as rent for a decent 3 bedroom apartment, so not a bad deal, right? At least you get to keep it at the end of the 30 years, plus Euribor has been 0% for like a decade, it's never going to go up. Well, now Putin attacked Ukraine and it triggers raised interests because they've already been too low and inflation has been too high. Over the course of the next ~2 years, Euribor goes up to 4%. Now your interest has gone from 1.7% to 5.7% annually, with the euribor part being updated every 6 months. And the payment? 754 euros monthly to 1233 euros monthly. If you're making 2500 euros neto, 754 euros for a mortgage isn't a bad deal, but 1233 euros as the prices on absolutely everything is going up 2-3x? Suddenly it's a lot less affordable, at least if you have a family and such. For a single person it would still be doable.
Same. Born in Belgium and I had to pay less than 1000 € for a full academic year at the University. The quality of education is good. I got a decent job, correctly paid. I did not had any debt when I started my career. What more did you get in the USA ?
I would be depressed as hell to be in the shoes of that guy who claimed above that he paid only the interests of his student debt, after ten years of reimbursement.
It's messed up how low my federal student loan interest rates were. I was paying my loans off in the early 2000s and I swear my interest was only like 2%!
I hate to say this but fucking good. Throwing random people in Gitmo wasn't enough to piss the people off to do anything, because the only thing that would be enough is when they fuck with everyone's money.
I hate the "fuck you I got mine" attitude so fucking much.
I seriously doubt this will be enough. A whole lot of qons were very grrrr, mad when Biden talked about loan forgiveness for the same reasons, really ("fuck you I got mine") and many qons never went to school.
The average person just needs to fall under a certain level of comfortability for all hell to break loose.
Unlike Hitler, this guy cant 'fix' the economy by going to war because any war big enough to bolster our already over bloated military budget would immediately end in MAD.
This isn't a reason to act like its all gonna be okay, but I'd like to think we have a better shot than 1930's Germany...
This seems..... misleading, in a weird way. Even some of the comments are confusing, though I may be just clueless as I'm not American (I'm Canadian, so don't know any people directly impacted by this to question in person).
There are comments here saying it's really tough because low interest private loans are less available. People noting huge increases in their monthly payments (by percent, but often not noting the actual dollar value from what I can see?).
The article notes that the average student loan debt is around $38k. Even with a terrible interest rate of like 12%, which is what my local Credit Union offers for personal loans, that's a monthly payment of $500 for ~10 years. The guy in the article is an outlier it seems, in that he has a 6.3% interest rate and payments around $5000 -- so while the average person is out 38k, this guys in the hole by like $400k+?? The reason it costs them as much as a mortgage payment, is cause they spent as much as a house getting his education. I doubt education costs 'skyrocketed' partway through his education, so he would've seen that bill coming. And for the price of that education, I'm guessing he could run the numbers with more accuracy ahead of time, and make an informed/educated decision on whether to take out those loans.
Sure, but you're framing that in a way to be as positive as possible about it. How about, "the 18 year old that wanted to defend criminals and get them out of violent crime offenses for huge profits", and went into debt to pursue what they thought was going to be a hugely profitable career? Do you really think regular people, who go into debt just ~40k based on what the article states, should also be comp'ing that other case with perks/debt forgiveness? The article is specifically using an outlier case, who went into debt for a profession that's respectable, to skew opinions...
Student debt is an issue in the states, I don't disagree on that as far as I understand it at least. It's just that a lot of the articles around the subject seem very heavily skewed by political bias, which is annoying. And me being annoyed by that, and wanting more neutral discussion, I don't think of as bootlicking.
The difference is our student loans are not predatory, and our schools are not as expensive, tho we can't discharge our loans through bankruptcy either. I've had 3 loans and even paying minimum they were paid off in a decade or 2, repayments are higher in the states and from what I understand the minimum payments there are interest only.