WSJ: To change the subject from inflation, politicians like President Biden often find it useful to accuse businesses of price gouging. The alleged price gouging is usually not precisely defined. But what do you call it when an industry routinely sells assets that fail to generate enough income to service the debt used to purchase them?
Of course Mr. Biden’s illegal plan to make taxpayers cover student-loan debts will in many cases shower benefits on borrowers who don’t need help. But the biggest bailout is for the academic wokesters who get paid handsomely to supply products and services for which there is little or no market demand.
Take away the massive system of federal subsidies and there will always be students eager to pay for electrical engineering degrees from Georgia Tech—and private lenders happy to finance an education that is likely to generate earnings power for the borrower. The earnings power comes from the fact that the engineer can make stuff that people want and need.
What cannot exist without government intervention are expensive degrees in ideology and grievance and debt-fueled accumulations of nonmarketable skills. Word has been getting around for some time that many college degree programs aren’t worth the high prices. If the holders of such degrees cannot find a way to finance them even in a historically tight labor market, it means the schools charged too much.
In a normal functioning market, students would demand more value and stop buying such degrees. The schools would have to change their course offerings or cut their prices or both. The Biden bailout prevents this virtuous natural process by making taxpayers rescue the industry that is manifestly mistreating its customers. No reform will be permitted and now taxpayers will have to buy education services that are clearly not worth the cost. more here
George W. Bush, with the help of Congress, started this by eliminating borrowers’ ability to discharge via bankruptcy in his 2005 Bankruptcy Act. Thus a borrower’s credit became irrelevant. People, who wouldn’t qualify for a loan for a house, could now borrow “infinite” amounts for college. In 2010 the Kenyan federalized all student loans. Restoring the ability of a borrower to discharge a student loan via bankruptcy, making student loans based on borrowers’ credibility and getting big. gov. out would be a good start. Also make it to where if someone did discharge student loans via bankruptcy they have to have been out of college or trade school for 10 years. If an inordinate number of students from a college discharge student loans via bankruptcy make the college pay for some of the loss, or in the alternative suspend the institution from the student loan industry.
I don’t expect courses in things like Russian Literature are moneymakers, but that doesn’t mean that colleges should quit teaching them. Pure science doesn’t make the money that applied science does. Education can’t be based on a profit motive.
I recall that my alma mater, George Washington University, charged $30 per credit hour back in the late 70s. $90 for a 3 credit course.
Now it’s $1900 per credit hour or $5700 per class.
Isn’t it obvious by now that Jackass Joe is only interested in things that hurts America & Americans and anything that puts more money into his family’s pockets, no matter how dirty and sleazy it might be??? Let’s face it, what’s best for America was NEVER a consideration for this grinning imbecile!
You\’d think (well, alright, somebody hired to write for The Wallstreet Journal might not think — but for the rest) that two things happening in the same place, at very different times, wouldn\’t be conflated as the same thing. Some might think.
The ever increasing price of buying titles, is caused by fake money being stuffed at an ever faster rate into the the title vending machines. We \”get\” that.
The negative utility of those vended titles, has nothing to do with price. They were of negative utility before \”our\” en-titled rulers began choking the vending machines with other people\’s money. Now (well, then — utility was destroyed before the cost explosion) why is that? That is why it can not be \”fixed\”.
LAPTOP JOE BIDEN has engineered price-gouging of the entirety of the US. He’s too unintelligent and grossly stupid to cook it up himself though happily and greedily allowed others in his admin to attack Americans with inflation-recession and numerous other terrorist abuses. Like that obama cretin who had previously announced of himself–Laptop Joe absolutely hates America and her citizenry.
LAPTOP and Pedophile JOE BIDEN has engineered price-gouging of the entirety of the US. He’s too unintelligent and grossly stupid to cook it up himself though happily and greedily allowed others in his admin to attack Americans with inflation-recession and numerous other terrorist abuses. Like that obama cretin who had previously announced of himself–Laptop Joe absolutely hates America and her citizenry.
Biden already knows full well somewhere in his pedo mind that acancelling anyone’s debt for any reason is not within his purview and authority, which makes his “debt forgiveness’ a bold and blatant lie meant to fool Americans who hold any amount of student loans. The scheme is 3-fold in that his chicanery (again) is a subtle go-ahead to those anywhere in his admin for them to NOT repay any loans. The second is to use the false “debt foregiveness” as a trojan horse to install more taxes upon Americans; third is to bribe others to vote for him or his party members while skrewing them with a fake “debt forgiveness” scheme. NYC’s liberal LaGuardia college also used a similar scheme by enticing low-income enrollees with “refunded” tuitions, which students never received, and which LaG never planned to do.
Biden already knows full well somewhere in his simpleton pedo mind that cancelling anyone’s debt for any reason is not within his purview and authority, which makes his “debt forgiveness’ a bold and blatant lie meant to fool Americans who hold any amount of student loans. The scheme is 3-fold in that his chicanery (again) is a subtle go-ahead to those anywhere in his admin for them to NOT repay any loans. The second is to use the false “debt foregiveness” as a trojan horse to install more taxes upon Americans; third is to bribe others to vote for him or his party members while skrewing them with a fake “debt forgiveness” scheme. NYC’s liberal LaGuardia college also used a similar scheme by enticing low-income enrollees with “refunded” tuitions, which students never received, and which LaG never planned to do.