Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[PassedOut]

I grew up in the same generation as Ken, but mostly in Washburn, Wisconsin, a small town on the Lake Superior shore. In kindergarten I walked 7 blocks to school, most of the time with a girl the same age who lived a few doors down. After kindergarten, though, I walked alone because Linda started Catholic school at first grade and we non-Catholic kids went to public school.

 

I was the oldest of (eventually) seven kids and so took the lead in showing my siblings around town. When I was five years old and my sister three, we walked downtown to buy ice cream cones (at 5 cents apiece) and back home. Once the county sheriff picked us up and gave us a ride home, but it wasn't a problem -- he was a friend of our family and his daughter was often our sitter.

 

Our town was located on a steep hill overlooking a bay, and we got lots of snow. Each winter the city closed two streets (they were unpaved in those days) to automobile traffic -- one street on each side of town -- and converted them for sledding. Cross traffic was allowed but we sledders had the right of way and saw-horses at the intersections reminded the drivers of that. The city put gravel at the bottom of the hill to prevent us from sliding over the main street, which was also the highway along the lake.

 

Our main family rule, in effect always, was to be home in time for evening dinner. That left lots of time for adventures of all sorts -- playing games with friends, hiking along the railroad tracks to waterfalls and rugged shore areas, ice skating in the winter (skating rinks were maintained on each side of town), going to the one movie theater in town, and sometimes visiting the Carnegie Library. I remember when I was ten, the librarian -- Mrs. Greenwood -- asked me for a suggestion on what new chess book she should get for the library as I had read the ones on the shelf.

 

Bicycling was big with us too. It was great exercise pedaling up the hill, and I used my bike on my paper route whenever the weather allowed. The summer before I was in 6th grade, I bought a power lawn mower at Sears and put an ad in the local paper offering my lawn mowing services. That turned out to generate a lot of business, with me mowing and my sister trimming and edging folks' lawns.

 

When we were done with our lawn jobs, we'd walk down to one of the city parks by the water and go swimming with the kids already there. Sometimes there were tourists from the deep south (usually the Chicago area) asking whether the water was warm enough for a comfortable swim. We'd always assure them that it was -- "it feels like soup!" -- and sometimes they'd dive right in. When they felt how cold it was, they'd try to swim after us to drown us, but they never could catch any of us before they hightailed it back to their towels.

 

It was definitely a different time...

[kenberg]

I once sledded into one f those gravel areas. Oops.

 

Anyway, does all this matter? I think maybe it does. Our childhoods affect how we look at the world. There are times that I listen to today's politics and think the speaker must not have had a childhood.

[Winstonm]

Trying to keep up with Mar-a-Lago-gate I have found that in law corrupt does not equal criminal.

[pilowsky]

Trying to keep up with Mar-a-Lago-gate I have found that in law corrupt does not equal criminal.

 

Our (recently) former Prime Minister Scott Morrison was so concerned about his cabinet that he secretly swore himself into an additional 5 (five) ministries.

Without telling the parliament (to which he is constitutionally responsible) or the public.

He was described by one commentator as being like herpes - just when you thought you'd got rid of him...

 

In any event, wrong but not illegal - apparently.

[Winstonm]

Our (recently) former Prime Minister Scott Morrison was so concerned about his cabinet that he secretly swore himself into an additional 5 (five) ministries.

Without telling the parliament (to which he is constitutionally responsible) or the public.

He was described by one commentator as being like herpes - just when you thought you'd got rid of him...

 

In any event, wrong but not illegal - apparently.

I think the French made corruption punishable once upon a time.

[pilowsky]

I think the French made corruption punishable once upon a time.

 

Well they sure punished Morrison.

[kenberg]

Our (recently) former Prime Minister Scott Morrison was so concerned about his cabinet that he secretly swore himself into an additional 5 (five) ministries.

Without telling the parliament (to which he is constitutionally responsible) or the public.

He was described by one commentator as being like herpes - just when you thought you'd got rid of him...

 

In any event, wrong but not illegal - apparently.

 

This sounds awful on general principles but otoh I don't really grasp what happened. Could you elaborate?

[hrothgar]

This sounds awful on general principles but otoh I don't really grasp what happened. Could you elaborate?

 

From what I heard, he was grifting

 

(These positions had $$$ attached to them)

[pilowsky]

Morrison appears to have a fixed belief that only he knows the difference between right and wrong.

To give a bit of insight into the way his thinking works, he's also a member of a fringe Evangelical Christian movement that is very happy and likes to clap a lot, called Hillsong founded by his 'mentor' Brian Houston.

This Church is so happy and clappy that they also found a home in the USA and other places.

 

Morrison's approach to life does little harm when insisting that one Bridge convention is important and that others are silly, but when working as a politician in the Westminster system where the Constitution is just the start and convention is vital it is very harmful.

 

In Australia the group (one or more parties) that wins the most seats in the lower house of parliament AND has the confidence of the house (meaning that they can win a simple majority vote) sends their leader to see the Governor-General (GG) who "swears him/her in" as Prime Minister.

GG's are eminent persons from outside politics who get a nice house in Canberra called "Yarralumla" - the PM gets "The Lodge" (and another place in Sydney called "Kirribilli").

The others have to rent.

 

The Prime Minister then selects a group of people, who are members of the House of Representatives or the Senate, to be the other ministers of the Crown (we're still a constitutional monarchy).

The GG then swears the other Ministers into their portfolios.

Same as taking the Oath in the USA.

 

What is a Minister I hear you ask? In the our system of government each Minister (including the PM) is "responsible" for all the decisions taken in their Department.

Each Department exists by virtue of the various Acts of Parliament that it is "responsible" for.

Here the term "responsible" means that they are not only responsible for deciding what happens from day to day (eg the Health Minister decides how much money from the amount allocated to their Department goes to aged care, or to research or to subsidising pharmaceuticals). They are directly responsible to the Parliament.

If they mislead Parliament it is a career-ending event.

 

It also means that if they stuff up by making a bad decision (or as was made clear in the report in the matter NOT making a decision when one ought to have been made) then the Parliament (the ultimate governing body) can ask them questions about it.

This is what is meant by "responsible government" - the government is responsible to the Parliament.

 

But if the PM secretly takes on a bunch (=5) portfolios and doesn't tell the Parliament then where is responsible government? AWOL.

 

In the US context its a little bit like an ex-President taking vital documents to his country club.

The vital documents are needed for the management of responsible government.

If some unelected person takes charge of an aspect of government then what you have is chaos.

 

This is what happens when you get a Morrison/Trump in Government. Their actions suggest that they don't understand what they're there for.

 

The really bizarre thing is that he seemed to gain nothing from it.

He didn't get any extra money or perks - it was just silly, unconventional and wrong.

[kenberg]

Thanks. There is no way around a simple fact: Even a good government structure can be abused by determined jerks.

[kenberg]

Student loans: Let's start with a simple question:

Suppose that Sue and Stu both had Pell Grants, both borrowed 50K, and both finished college. Suppose Sue now makes 126K a year and Stu makes 124 K a year. Does the Biden plan give 20K to Stu and nothing to Sue? Did that 2K yearly raise that Sue got cost her 18K net?

I looked at https://www.npr.org/...an-announcement and could not see the answer.

 

A perhaps more complex question:

Are we permanently changing the meaning of the word "loan"?

Pell Grants, I believe, were grants. Money was given that was not expected to be repaid. Loans were given and the usual meaning of the word is that the loans are expected to be repaid. Are we now planning to keep the loan program as it is, putting students deeply in debt and then every few years forgiving a portion of the loan?

 

A further question:

With Pell Grants we could estimate the cost since the money was given with no expectation of it being repaid. The loan program now has an unplanned, or at least initially unacknowledged, cost. There will be estimates of what this particular forgiveness will cost. Maybe half a trillion, or maybe "just" a quarter of a trillion. If we are planning on continuing in this manner, lending large sums of money and then forgiving unplanned amounts at unplanned intervals, can we make even a rough guess as to what this will cost in the future? The answer here seems pretty obvious.

 

And of course a question that will not be answered:

Who thought up (if "thought" is a remotely correct word) a plan that now requires at least a quarter of a trillion to partially and temporarily solve some of the problems arising from it?

[pilowsky]

I think there's a difference between the situation when Ken loans me $10 and then sends his 'friend' round to collect it if its overdue.

When the government does it, it's a tax not a loan.

 

Government is meant to provide services that support the collective good and improve everyone's lives.

That's pretty much it's only function.

In most first world countries roads, hospitals, and even education are considered to be essential services.

 

Taxing individuals for a core function of government makes no sense at all.

 

 

 

 

[Gilithin]

Who thought up (if "thought" is a remotely correct word) a plan that now requires at least a quarter of a trillion to partially and temporarily solve some of the problems arising from it?

The answer to that is really very simple Ken. Student loan schemes were thought up by people who understand that young adults vote less than pensioners and older workers. So stealing money from students and dishing it out to other sections of society is a nett vote-winner. Thus student grants were turned into mild tax cuts and handouts for pensioners in the UK, and to large tax cuts on the middle and upper classes in the States. You might feel happy about this - your generation benefitted greatly, perhaps one reason why so many world leaders have come from that generation.. The generation after yours though became a massive loser in the macro-politics game of government spending. The following generations probably will too, although the effect is slightly less and can perhaps be rectified somewhat still. But a simple rule is that countries putting their resources into the old rather than the youth are generally going to be in decline. America seems to be the very best example of that right now.

[kenberg]

I think the student loan program was/is ill-conceived. I had not thought of it as a way for me to steal money from the young or from anyone. If that is what it is, then I guess it's a bad deal all around.

[Winstonm]

Student loans really went into high gear with the advent of pay-for colleges like Trump University and myriad others that charged 5 times more than a comparable public institution for the same training.

[pilowsky]

... the advent of pay-for colleges like Trump University and myriad others that charged 5 times more than a comparable public institution for the same training.

If public institutions really provide comparable training to Trump University then the USA is in much worse shape than anyone could have imagined.

[y66]

Jonathan Crosby/Reuters

 

Jay Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman, gets a half-hour slot (10 a.m. Eastern) this morning to deliver his annual address at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. On the agenda: an update on the economic outlook, the inflation picture and the path ahead for interest rates.

 

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?productCode=DK&te=1&nl=dealbook&emc=edit_dk_20220826&uri=nyt://newsletter/5824445f-0c65-5638-bc6f-4e12d1a4493a

[kenberg]

Student loans really went into high gear with the advent of pay-for colleges like Trump University and myriad others that charged 5 times more than a comparable public institution for the same training.

 

I have known students who got the short end of the stick through such schools. No doubt the loan program was intended to help, but the help was often making it too easy for students to make bad choices. The ingredients are an eighteen-year-old who is not yet sure of their interests, a school run by people whose primary interest is profit, ad a loan program that will subsidize whatever they wish to do. The wasted money is bad enough but the wasted time is far worse. I regard the years seventeen to twenty-one as extremely important. Younger than seventeen society says you belong in school and most people do it. Older than twenty-one society expects you to take care of yourself. In between, a person is too old to be told what to do but still young enough that it is in the best interests of everyone that we give reasonable help with reasonable plans. This is tough. "We will tell him what to do" won't work, and "We will support whatever he chooses" might not go so well either.

 

Overall, I made the right choices in my own education but some luck was on my side. Skip over the fact that when I was thirteen or so I would listen to the Indy 500 on the radio and plan to drive race cars for a living. I like math and was good at it and a teacher explained that I should become an engineer. In my sophomore year of high school, we were given an interesting assignment. We were to select a career and then make an appointment to interview someone working at such a job. So I arranged for an interview with a guy, just random, I had never met him before, who worked as an electrical engineer. His job, as he described it to me, sounded incredibly boring. Not all engineers are fascinated by mathematics (that's an understatement) and I was not at all interested in the aspects of his job that he presented. Nonetheless, I figured it would be a place to start. Why not major in mathematics you might ask? I had no idea that you could. The mother of one of my friends had been to college but my father had never been to high school and that was more typical of the adults that I knew. I figured I might get my military responsibilities out of the way after high school and my mother advised that I join the Navy. She explained that ships don't go down all that often and anyway you get fed better than you do in the Army. That was typical. It was good advice, but not helpful in choosing a college major. It all worked out, but there was some luck involved.

 

As it happens, I had lunch yesterday with a grandson who is starting his last year of college at the University of Maryland. My wife and my daughter were also there but I will focus on the grandson. He asked about the financial issues of my college education, how much was tuition back then and other such matters. I explained that tuition at the University of Minnesota in 1956 was $72 a quarter and so $216 a year. I had a job delivering furniture for $1.25 an hour so yearly tuition came to around 173 hours of work. You can't do that today.

 

So yes, we have real problems today. Solving these problems is important for the young and for everyone. Pell Grants sound like a good idea although I don't know the details. The student loan program appears to have been a disaster.

[Winstonm]

I have known students who got the short end of the stick through such schools. No doubt the loan program was intended to help, but the help was often making it too easy for students to make bad choices. The ingredients are an eighteen-year-old who is not yet sure of their interests, a school run by people whose primary interest is profit, ad a loan program that will subsidize whatever they wish to do. The wasted money is bad enough but the wasted time is far worse. I regard the years seventeen to twenty-one as extremely important. Younger than seventeen society says you belong in school and most people do it. Older than twenty-one society expects you to take care of yourself. In between, a person is too old to be told what to do but still young enough that it is in the best interests of everyone that we give reasonable help with reasonable plans. This is tough. "We will tell him what to do" won't work, and "We will support whatever he chooses" might not go so well either.

 

Overall, I made the right choices in my own education but some luck was on my side. Skip over the fact that when I was thirteen or so I would listen to the Indy 500 on the radio and plan to drive race cars for a living. I like math and was good at it and a teacher explained that I should become an engineer. In my sophomore year of high school, we were given an interesting assignment. We were to select a career and then make an appointment to interview someone working at such a job. So I arranged for an interview with a guy, just random, I had never met him before, who worked as an electrical engineer. His job, as he described it to me, sounded incredibly boring. Not all engineers are fascinated by mathematics (that's an understatement) and I was not at all interested in the aspects of his job that he presented. Nonetheless, I figured it would be a place to start. Why not major in mathematics you might ask? I had no idea that you could. The mother of one of my friends had been to college but my father had never been to high school and that was more typical of the adults that I knew. I figured I might get my military responsibilities out of the way after high school and my mother advised that I join the Navy. She explained that ships don't go down all that often and anyway you get fed better than you do in the Army. That was typical. It was good advice, but not helpful in choosing a college major. It all worked out, but there was some luck involved.

 

As it happens, I had lunch yesterday with a grandson who is starting his last year of college at the University of Maryland. My wife and my daughter were also there but I will focus on the grandson. He asked about the financial issues of my college education, how much was tuition back then and other such matters. I explained that tuition at the University of Minnesota in 1956 was $72 a quarter and so $216 a year. I had a job delivering furniture for $1.25 an hour so yearly tuition came to around 173 hours of work. You can't do that today.

 

So yes, we have real problems today. Solving these problems is important for the young and for everyone. Pell Grants sound like a good idea although I don't know the details. The student loan program appears to have been a disaster.

 

I think I mischaracterized the for-profit schools that I believe helped create the inflated costs of education. My own story is an example. When i was 52 I had to start again from scratch to find work and discovered not many places wanted 52 year olds. The want ads were all in medical so I went that way and got into an LPN program at a local Vo-tech, an 11-month program that cost $1600. An alternative was a for-profit college but their 1-year LPN program cost $10,000. The only way anyone could do that was with student loans. The for-profit colleges were not alternative choices but sausage-grinding grift for bodies they could lasso with student loans.

 

Whoever in government approved paying those places was either an idiot or in on the grift.

 

PS: the for-profit school had a lower pass rate for the NCLEX (licensing exam) than my vo -tech. Those that did not pass were still on the hook for their loans.

[hrothgar]

The student loan program appears to have been a disaster.

 

Few observations here:

 

The reason that the student loan program is a disaster is a combination of two factors

 

1. Federal and State governments decided to gut support for state university system.

 

The main reason why the cost of college has exploded over the past few decades is that the a whole bunch of government subsidies very removed and costs sky rockets.

 

2. The government was forced to extend student loans for a whole bunch of fraudulent predatory private universities. (Think Kaplan, DeVry, and anyone else advertising on basic cable)

 

The combination of these two factors meant that a whole bunch of folks took out a significant amount of debate without getting anything in return.

 

Half a degree at the State School can add a lot of debt without much value.

A degree from DeVry is even worse...

 

The purpose of the Student Loan forgiveness is NOT to try and make college more affordable.

 

This is an attempt to provide direct relief to a bunch of folks who made a really bad mistake.

[kenberg]

Few observations here:

 

The reason that the student loan program is a disaster is a combination of two factors

 

1. Federal and State governments decided to gut support for state university system.

 

The main reason why the cost of college has exploded over the past few decades is that the a whole bunch of government subsidies very removed and costs sky rockets.

 

2. The government was forced to extend student loans for a whole bunch of fraudulent predatory private universities. (Think Kaplan, DeVry, and anyone else advertising on basic cable)

 

The combination of these two factors meant that a whole bunch of folks took out a significant amount of debate without getting anything in return.

 

Half a degree at the State School can add a lot of debt without much value.

A degree from DeVry is even worse...

 

The purpose of the Student Loan forgiveness is NOT to try and make college more affordable.

 

This is an attempt to provide direct relief to a bunch of folks who made a really bad mistake.

 

 

Let's first take a somewhat cynical but pretty realistic look at how this will play with voters. A guy is two years out of college making only 100K a year and has a 30K student loan debt. Jeez we really have to help this guy out. Let's give him 10K.

 

OK, that's not the guy you are talking about, I get that.

 

But a good part of my criticism is that the student loan program has not been well thought out. Yes, I think the idea was to help people and yes I imagine it did help people. But it also helped a lot of profiteers and punished a lot of people who, through youth or whatever the reason, were ill-prepared to see ahead to just how bad this could all go.

 

 

I, and I think most people, have known high school seniors who had no clear plan for the future and who were pretty unsavvy about money. I once talked to a young person who thought "grant" and "loan was simply two ways of saying the same thing. He expressed shock when I told him that lenders expected loans to be repaid. I don't think that he was putting me on. Often they know very little of what various jobs entail, how to prepare for such a job, and what it pays.

 

When I bought my first house, a townhouse of modest size, I of course took out a mortgage. I did not have the required 20% so there was a temporary add-on monthly fee until I reached 20%. The bank discussed the loan at length with me. They wanted to be as sure as possible that my plan was realistic. And, for this loan, they could at least take the house and sell it to get a decent portion of their money back if I defaulted. It is this realism that the bank displayed toward my mortgage that seems to have been largely lacking in student loans. It seems to be continuing. The Biden plan will cost a quarter trillion, Or maybe half a trillion. Or more. Or less. And yes, it would be inflationary but hey, there will be repayments of remaining loans next year so let's call it even.

 

How about: The program was poorly designed and poorly executed. A program that was supposed to give loans that, like other loans, were to be paid back now requires some truly large amount of money to partially relieve the stress. It's time for some realism.

[Winstonm]

I don’t see how relief from the burden of student loans can be inflationary.

[Gilithin]

I don’t see how relief from the burden of student loans can be inflationary.

Basic monetary theory says that if you give young adults making a comfortable living (say $100k to $125k) additional disposable income, there will be a mild inflationary effect.

[kenberg]

I don't see how relief from the burden of student loans can be inflationary.

 

If we reduce a 100K debt to 90K there might not be much change in behavior except to reduce monthly payments a bit. If you reduce a 10K debt to 0 it is reasonable to think that person might then go out and spend some money. Maybe buy a celebratory dinner and leave it at that, maybe buy a new car. bought a townhouse just a bit after my loan was paid off. The timing was not a coincidence. And somewhere in-between for others. How much of an effect does all this come to? I was very cautious in running up debt and very restrained in spending until I had paid off that debt, but that was me. So just how much of an effect I can't say but I imagine some effect. It seems unlikely that you can cancel a quarter trillion or so of debt without some side effects.

[y66]

The Student Loan Giveaway is Much Bigger Than You Think