Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread!
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In The Netherlands, for years students could get a loan against 0% interest to pay for college. Almost every student used this loan, accumulating thousands or even tens of thousands of euro’s of debt. You have a 30+ years period in which you can pay it back, against 0 interest.
Now, the government has introduced an interest % on top of the debt. It’s for new students but also for everyone that has ever used the loan. So, you get fucked into oblivion.
It’s like they want a revolution or something.
They’re retroactively adding interest to loans already taken out???
Yes they are. It’s completely insane. It currently is around 1-2% which is not massive over a 30 year period, but then again we started at 0%. Who knows what the future will bring.
They trialled that scheme in England, handing out loans with the interest set at inflation. Not 0%, but the idea was that students would only pay back the same as the borrowed, adjusted for inflation. But sometime in the early 2010s, the rules were changed; and while interest rates neared zero, the interest on student loans went to 6%.
EDIT: It was after 2010; not the early 00s.
with the interest set at inflation
This is particularly evil. I know you’re talking about it being a thing of the past, but for anyone who is ever offered this kind of scheme now or in the future, I can say from personal experience: avoid it like the plague. Please, please, PLEASE, do not get a loan with interests set at inflation. Do the math, it’s designed to be unpayable. You could end up paying several times your original loan and still not be done with interests. It’s pure evil.
You’re right, of course.
This was introduced by Tony Blair’s government. There was talk of introducing a ‘graduate tax’, which was widely reviled. Blair, Brown, and Labour got away with doing the same thing through these loans. They’re not supposed to be paid back. They’re just a way of getting graduates to pay another % of their income for 35 years.
It’s known that most people will never pay back the full loan + the interest. But this is hidden with rhetoric about graduates earning a higher average salary. The narrative is starting to become undone, though, as the cost has gone up from £1k to £3k to £9k+ per year, and as the reality of the job market has proven that the real link was always between parental income / wealth and their child’s future earnings. It’s a coincidence that the children of wealthier parents are also more likely to go to university.
Then they sold the loans to private capital, who put the interest up retroactively.
The problem is that these loans are now given out and taken at above rate of inflation interest, and people still take them, knowing that most people will never pay off the loans.
There’s an equation somewhere online. Maybe on the moneysavingexpert website, that tells people whether to overpay on their student loan. IIRC, it’s only worth overpaying if the person earns between £40k and £45k. Above that, and the person will pay it off quickly, anyway. Below that, and the debt will be forgiven long before the loan will be paid off. But these figures only made sense when interest equalled the inflation rate. No idea what the advice to new students is.
But the government and universities are brewing trouble by creating so many highly-educated people and then abandoning them to a life of debt (not quite so vulture-like as in the US, though – students only pay back if they are earning above a certain amount (the amount changes depending on what year the loan was first taken)). And it will be the same decision-makers who wonder why Corbyn got so much support from young people with degrees.
to my lack of surprise I saw that my former professor of constitutional law at the college is a simp for Bolsonaro, the good thing is, he wasn’t a good teacher.
imagine actually respecting his opinion
I don’t know why it is, but it does seem like a lot of people who go into constitutional law are complete intellectual nonentities. Not all, of course. But it is a trend.
Ever just wish your brain didn’t feel like it was vibrating?
Constantly. It never stops. Right now, I am hearing my neighbor’s window-mounted AC unit, an airplane, an idiot speeding on a motorcycle, another airplane, someone using a microwave downstairs, an idiot speeding in a fast (loud) car on the freeway, various cars driving on the streets around my house as well as a freeway 3 minutes away, a police car siren, and a multitude of crickets. This is on a quiet day at 8:30 PM.
My brain is incapable of filtering any of my senses, so I sense everything that is physically possible for me to sense all the time. I usually resort to closing my door and window, closing the curtains on my windows, turning off my lights, and just being in a dark, isolated cave, but my mom doesn’t like that lifestyle very much, so she comes in and opens the window and door, which is not fun and immediately demolishes all my productivity.
Anyone else feel like they are wholly incapable of setting goals and executing tasks like a normal person
Most people sucks at setting goals and executing tasks, you aren’t abnormal, though you may struggle with executive dysfunction, that’s a thing many people deal with.
Do you want advice?
Okay yea you’re right, I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. I only learned what executive dysfunction is relatively recently, it’s definitely something I struggle a lot with I think.
Honestly yea I could use some advice
He will never give advice😂😂😂
I want advice
Made the mistake of commenting under the 100th daily anti-communist post in historymemes. Some bootlickers replied but the icing on the cake was this polish dude commenting how loooooong everything took under communism and that the current system was therefore better. His account posted solely hentai porn.
Well, looking at the news, it’s starting to look like the boys and girls in Kremlin have decided to prove we’re European after all by accelerating towards fascism.
I’ve been out of the loop this week, what happened?
Off the top of my head:
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Maksut Shadaev, minister of digital development, has proposed a program to help war journalists
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Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of parliament, has proposed a broadening of the “gay propaganda” law
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Regions and various other orgs compete with one another in claiming rich compensation for “participants” of the SMO. Not just money (although that too), but also privileges in getting children in schools, as an example
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My personal favourite: a new law has been proposed that will remove “being a police member” from the list of aggravating circumstances as far as sentence for committing a crime goes.
Good.
Bad to very bad.
Neutral, I’d say.
Horrible. Police should always be held to a higher standard ffs. Do they want unaccountable pig gangs like in the USA?
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When I was a lib years ago I saw ukraine as a fascist state, like a lot of libs(at least in my country) at the time, its crazy how MSM can make people do 180 on opinions so fucking fast.
pull out Lenin’s Imperialism for a re-read
3 sentences in he’s already dunking on Kautsky
Idk why this is so funny, but it had me wheezing
I have a feeling that a modern day Lenin or Stalin would leave someone like Chen Weihua in the dust with their Twitter banter and dunking.
To the amusement of many and the shock of some I send a company wide email to our 300+ employees asking them to join a protest tomorrow lmao. It actually helped.
How would you reply to Lenin in this situation? I created him (with character.ai) and I’m now losing against him
I would say that AI Lenin™’s last reply makes some sense, but Real Lenin™ would also realize that this was a temporary evil required to get access to foreign technology and to prevent imperialists from destroying the country, and that the current leadership is heavily reigning in the economic power of capitalists. In summary, AI Lenin™ is too dogmatic and not lifelike, 2/10
The “bargain” as its called, is that Chinese workers in the special export zones accept limited exploitation, in exchange for technology and expertise, which can then be used by their own state-run companies. That strategy has worked, whereas nearly all other global south countries are stuck in the “low-wage trap”, China has escaped it by using that technology and science learned within these SEZs to benefit the people.
Even real Lenin did recognize this, and AI Lenin is wrong here:
Get down to business, all of you! You will have capitalists beside you, including foreign capitalists, concessionaires and leaseholders. They will squeeze profits out of you amounting to hundreds per cent; they will enrich themselves, operating alongside of you. Let them. Meanwhile you will learn from them the business of running the economy, and only when you do that will you be able to build up a communist republic. Since we must necessarily learn quickly, any slackness in this respect is a serious crime. And we must undergo this training, this severe, stern and sometimes even cruel training, because we have no other way out.
You must remember that our Soviet land is impoverished after many years of trial and suffering, and has no socialist France or socialist England as neighbours which could help us with their highly developed technology and their highly developed industry. Bear that in mind! We must remember that at present all their highly developed technology and their highly developed industry belong to the capitalists, who are fighting us.
We must remember that we must either strain every nerve in everyday effort, or we shall inevitably go under.
- Lenin, The new economic policy
Also this one is very worth reading:
and has no socialist France or socialist England as neighbours which could help us with their highly developed technology and their highly developed industry
Man, imagine if the 1918-1919 revolution in Germany had succeeded in installing a Marxist government. We’d be living in a whole different world.
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anti-materialist Lenin isn’t real he can’t hurt you
Lenin, famous for basing his opinions on feelings rather than anhthing scientific
The US has spent the past 100 years trying to destroy socialism across the entire globe yet could never destroy the tiny socialist country less than 100 miles from their coastline it’s so funny
Viva Cuba Viva Fidel 🇨🇺
Li Jingjing is so cool man
name a bigger banger https://youtu.be/JQJpDM34uEU
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why does super hot gotta be so scary, it told me not to play anymore and now I’m scared someone is gonna come get me waaaa
