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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRepresentative Virginia (Crazy like a) Foxx (R-NC) has no sympathy for people with student loans
FOXX: I went through school, I worked my way through, it took me seven years, I never borrowed a dime of money. He borrowed a little bit because we both were totally on our own when we went to college, totally. [...] I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because theres no reason for that. . I remind folks all the time that the Declaration of Independence says life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You dont have it dumped in your lap.
Despite Foxxs implication, these loans are not taken out frivolously. They are taken out because of the soaring cost of college. In other words, because the price of college is so high and House Republicans are working overtime to cut Pell grants for one million low-income students the amount of loans required to pay for it is also high. Indeed, student loan debt topped one trillion dollars last year, orders of magnitude larger than in the decades prior.
Still, Foxxs distaste for large loans does not appear to extend to the mortgage sector. In Foxxs 2010 financial disclosure statement, she owned two individual mortgage notes worth up to $250,000 each, from which she earned as much as $20,000 in payments.
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/04/13/464154/foxx-tolerance-student-loans/
What Foxx also fails to realize is that while college tuition has far outpaced inflation, minimum wage has failed to keep pace with inflation. Students are squeezed from both ends, but the problem is that "We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that," according to Foxx.
Demoiselle
(6,787 posts)What a perfectly dreadful woman.
Only Baroque language can capture her essence.
"Vile" works too.
coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)shredded her character better than anyone in the current age. And Shakespeare (Renaissance)? Don't even get me started.
DefenseLawyer
(11,101 posts)Initech
(100,100 posts)backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Looks like a grandmother, but crazier than a shithouse rat!
rurallib
(62,444 posts)and sell a few shares of stock?
Canuckistanian
(42,290 posts)And how much was that college subsidized by the government back then?
Moreover, what kind of jobs did she have? And if they were minimum wage, did it compare to the pitiful amount the minimum wage is today?
XanaDUer
(12,939 posts)Zalatix
(8,994 posts)None of your reasoning is going to reach a mind like that.
She is what President Obama called a Social Darwinist. Social Darwinists don't care if it's harder now for college students to make it through - they care about letting the economy thin the herd.
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)Seeing double myself for over a decade. Uncorrectable and something I live with every day. Oh! And I am not to blame for it nor does it effect my ability to reason or think.
(closest thing to a cross eyed smily)
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)not trying to insult people with that condition. Believe me I have my own problems. Having eye trouble doesn't have anything to do with intelligence for sure. I sorry I wasn't trying to offend you. That was the only way I could remember if that was her.
longship
(40,416 posts)Cheers!
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)Skittles
(153,184 posts)like most conservatives / teabaggers, she JUST DOESN'T GET IT
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)She believes in letting the economy cull the herd. She wants this situation to keep going.
PA Democrat
(13,225 posts)- voting against aid for Hurricane Katrina victims
- voting against the school lunch program
- calling Matthew Shepard's murder a "hoax"
- suggesting that unemployment benefits made people lazy
- calling for ZERO federal funding for education
- calling for an across-the-board 5% cut to the entire federal budget, including Social Security and Medicare
I'm sure there are more. So much craziness, so little time to list it all.
Initech
(100,100 posts)sarcasmo
(23,968 posts)pansypoo53219
(20,993 posts)would need to be paid for hell, we should be paying for medical school for any. AND ENGINEERS. FUCK SPORTS. we need to do better to grow. FERTILIZE!!!
SDjack
(1,448 posts)Never take a student loan. If that stretches your education to 7-8 years, that's much better than paying 15-20% of your salary to a banker for 20-30 years. Once the bankers get their hooks into you, you can't escape. (Well, maybe you could emigrate to sub-Saharan Africa and shake them off.) Know that lots of grifters and flam-flamers concentrate at college campuses, just to get a piece of you. The worst are the religious nuts, esp. the Scientologists. Regardless of your religion or lack of, never break stride as you walk away from them. Just say that you are a "hardshell Baptist" and you are not going to risk going to Hell to talk to them. If you stop to talk to a Scientologist, you risk taking that guy's place on the street and sleeping in a damp basement on a hard mattress on the floor. Happened to one of the smartest guys I know. Just keep walking. Never tell nuts that you are an atheist or a science student. If you do, you may become their special project for conversion. You are under no obligation to be truthful with the religious mentally ill. They eat away at your time for studying, and that risks having to repeat courses, which requires more money. Watch out for the recently graduated jock stars, who become salesmen of crap you don't need. They aren't quite good enough to go pro, and all they want is hang around campus and date the younger people. At first, it's flattering that such "important" people want your business. They become more intense as you approach graduation. If you need insurance, learn how to buy what you need from real professionals. Never buy a car from one of these guys based on a corporate letter-of-intent to employ you upon graduating. Keep focused on getting your college education and not becoming a slave. Maybe I should repeat: Don't take a student loan. It's a bad as the Indenture contracts that the poor had to accept in the 1700s.
ProudToBeBlueInRhody
(16,399 posts)....but I think you miss the point. The student loan system has become predatory and there needs to be reform. Some people have no choice but to take a loan of they want to go to college. Foxx takes the usual right-wing tact of if you can't afford it, you don't deserve to go.
PA Democrat
(13,225 posts)Then consider how the minimum wage has fared (red data points are adjusted for inflation):
When I went to college many years ago, students could get good manufacturing jobs to help pay their way through college. Now it's tough to find much of anything above minimum wage without a degree.
SDjack
(1,448 posts)And, these loans are more onerous than those offered in my time of need ('60s). The students who get those loans are adults who have signed contracts that have no escape clauses. Bankruptcy will not erase these loans. More than ever, getting a college education is a business decision if you get student loans. Then, you must get a high-money earning degree, one that gets you into the front door of a big money-making company. V. Foxx (Republican) is telling us in blunt language how the GOP feels about student loans. If you get in over your head, there will be no relief. My two daughters knew that I paid my own way, so they showed me that they could also. Both began in 1990. One took 3 years, and the other took 8 years. They accumulated no debt. Now, their degrees are paying them and no bankers. I know everyone can't do it. But, it begins with the resolve NOT to get student loans.
PA Democrat
(13,225 posts)Look at what tuition has done since 1990. At the same time, the maximum Pell Grant award has lagged far behind tuition increases.
http://trends.collegeboard.org/student_aid/report_findings/indicator/Pell_Grants
It's good advice to avoid student loans, but sadly it is not a practicality for many young people today.
Edited to add link to Pell Grant data
GoCubsGo
(32,086 posts)No, just plain crazy. To say she's "crazy like a fox", suggests she is smart and cunning. She is neither. She's dumb as a bag of rocks.
jp11
(2,104 posts)unless you are doing something like going to school to be a doctor there isn't a 'need' to have that much (80k+) student debt. If you do it is because you chose a school WAY outside of your means, went for a masters/phd or expect to make lots of money when you get out. Sadly too many people don't 'do the math' on their tuition or understand what the real world value of their education will be.
People can get an education that leads to a career from cheaper schools, by taking classes at a county college then transferring to a 4 year school in their 2nd/3rd year. County college could be 2-3k a year, state college 5-10k a year, if you went straight to state that's still 'only' 25-40k of debt, make use of county college and you might be closer to 15k. Today there are numerous schools offering courses online that can bring your costs down as well in the situations where county college might not offer enough courses to meet your requirements through your first 2 years. This is one 'good' aspect where colleges are competing for online enrollment sometimes offering instate prices to out of state students that never step foot on their campus.
Going to a state school you won't get to benefit from some snooty alumni giving preference to other alumni cause they think it validates their own choices and makes them feel like they know the quality of your soul cause you both went to the same expensive school. Will it stop you from having a career or getting into the field you want to get into, not at all, but you can't chum it up with other people from the 'big name' schools dropping that name oh so tastefully, if that is what you want feel free to go way into debt for it.
I realize lots of people want to go to big name schools, even better if they have an awesome sports team , but it isn't required to pay so much money for an education which is the point of college/vocational school so you can have a career. Would I have liked to go to one of my 'dream' schools of course I would but I didn't have the money and wasn't willing to take on that kind of debt when I had other options.
To the point tuition at many schools is 'too high' but not all and you don't need to go to the really expensive schools just like you don't need to go out and buy the most expensive car you can find just to get around.
lovuian
(19,362 posts)She is about the poor staying poor
and the rich getting richer
The beautiful thing about an education is that no buddy can take that away from you
A car they can repossess and a house they can repossess
but an education they can't
the Brain drain is coming on a massive scale
if America doesn't have jobs for our educated children
then they will find countries with their arms wide open for them
they move and become citizens there and ....never pay their bills
Republicans see this problem
I know one who is living in South Africa and never plans coming back
It is called an escape clause that the rich didn't expect and they now see their mistake