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College Financial-Aid Loophole: Wealthy Parents Transfer Guardianship of Their Teens to Get Aid
Amid an intense national furor over the fairness of college admissions, the Education Department is looking into a tactic that has been used in some suburbs here, in which wealthy parents transfer legal guardianship of their college-bound children to relatives or friends so the teens can claim financial aid, say people familiar with the matter.
The strategy caught the department's attention amid a spate of guardianship transfers here. It means that only the children's earnings were considered in their financial-aid applications, not the family income or savings. That has led to awards of scholarships and access to federal financial aid designed for the poor, these people said.
Several universities in Illinois say they are looking into the practice, which is legal. "Our financial-aid resources are limited and the practice of wealthy parents transferring the guardianship of their children to qualify for need-based financial aid—or so-called opportunity hoarding—takes away resources from middle- and low-income students," said Andrew Borst, director of undergraduate enrollment at the University of Illinois. "This is legal, but we question the ethics."
Also At:
https://www.propublica.org/article/university-of-illinois-financial-aid-fafsa-parents-guardianship-children-students
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/7/29/20746376/u-of-i-parents-giving-up-custody-kids-get-need-based-college-financial-aid-university-illinois
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 30 2019, @01:01PM (73 children)
And, yet, in this country of hundreds of millions, there are more than 0 high school kids who are just about done with their parents, rich or not, and want to get away from their parents' influence.
Should the children of rich parents be un-necessarily shackled to their parents' influence after they reach age 18? Denied the same opportunities offered to the "disadvantaged" who are at least free to leave their birth home and start living their life as an adult?
To me, the answer is to erase the whole "Need Based" thing from the equation. Universal Basic Education, Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Healthcare. Fire the bureaucratic gatekeepers to the aid money, focus on simple identification of the recipients to curtail "double dipping" under multiple identites. Stop the arguments about who "deserves" any of these things. Citizen? Yes: you are eligible, period, end of story.
When I was unemployed, my children became instantly eligible for free state healthcare insurance. It took a month to process the "proof of unemployment" paperwork, but once we had those cards the difference in processing at the pediatrician's office was amazing. Since the state health insurance was widely used and recognized, the billing office just glanced at the card and waved us in, instead of getting a worried look and spending 15 minutes on the phone "verifying benefits." If you add up the cost of all those 15 minutes, the complexity of the perpetual rules making, explaining, and gaming, and replace it with simple recognition: you are a person, we will do this for you because it is what we do, the number of people unemployed would be staggering - and hopefully they would be re-employed in something more productive, both in GDP and GDH.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 30 2019, @01:49PM (15 children)
In Canada it is EXACTLY like that ALL the time!
Show a card, get looked at, get whatever help is needed, leave. No bill, no hassles.
Employed, unemployed, doesn't matter.
You guys need your own Tommy Douglas....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @05:25PM (13 children)
Incorrect.
I recently had the pleasure of talking at length with a very nice woman whose job is working in the medical bureaucracy of Canada. Not the front end, splint-broken-leg end, but the back end of seeing who gets what.
You're right up to "get whatever help is needed" because what you actually get is:
whatever help is available
whenever that help becomes available
whether or not that help is the medically best decision
depending on how the budget is going
Canadian health care is quite heavily undersupplied with resources, and medical professionals are under continuing pressure to seek lower cost alternatives despite the question of whether or not they are known to be appropriate for the patient at hand.
This is why there's an active medical tourism industry, largely serving canadians, just south of the US/Canada border.
Again, go back and read the top: this is first-hand, from someone whose actual job was directly involved with the nitty-gritty of making this stuff happen.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 30 2019, @06:50PM (2 children)
Okay: in the states, if you're dirt poor what kind of help will you get?
My wife has lieukemia and right now is in the 'wait and see' state: she has gotten first class help all along.
Seems to be working so far....
And I've heard horror stories about American health care too: don't you have like one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Redundant) by pdfernhout on Tuesday July 30 2019, @07:52PM
On fasting to reduce negative aspects of chemotherapy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048045/ [nih.gov]
General on nutrition and cancer: https://www.drfuhrman.com/get-started/health-concerns/26/cancer [drfuhrman.com]
Good luck to you and your wife.
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:26PM
Here's an example I found after 1 minute of searching. [usatoday.com] Mr. Santoro in the article had to pay $700 of the $2,700 he was invoiced because he hadn’t yet hit his annual deductible but it is no wonder people who have been in accidents in the US refuse medical help.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @06:52PM (6 children)
Which tends to mean that a 90 year old is not going to get unnecessary surgery that might extend their life a few months or not so there is space for someone that is 30 that is much more likely to survive, even if the old have deep pockets. That's what it means?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but in Canada there are quotas how many elective surgeries the insurer (government) is going to pay for. Everyone else gets on a waiting list. For life saving surgeries, there is no quotas or waiting lists. Medicine, you get most effective, not necessarily what the pharma is pushing though. But I know that patients regularly get medicine for rare diseases that costs $50k or $100k/yr.
And you know, in America you generally have a waiting list for transplants too.
And yet, most of the time, this tourism is just to "feel good" rather than actually get you anywhere. If someone wants something and they are willing to pay, there is always America to sell it to you. But if you need something, you'll get that in Canada. Most of this tourism is under umbrella "I'm scared, I want fast results and I'm willing to pay"
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:55PM (5 children)
Enter the death panels. If surgery has a credible chance of extending your life a few months, it jumps the fence from unnecessary to necessary, particularly for the person receiving the surgery. And such things are notorious for being decided on dubious grounds, like who votes more often or who pays the bigger bribe. At least with insurance companies, you have someone you can sue.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @11:21PM (1 child)
Who voted this up?
There are no Canadian Death Panels. The physician will estimate whether or not the procedure is likely to improve the patient's condition. If they're 90, they may well have a worse post-surgery prognosis than if they are untreated. Do you know what post-general anaesthetic haze can be like for a 90 year old? Sometimes they never come out, and trading a cyst removal for permanent zombie fugue is a bad trade.
Source: live with a doctor, and I work for a provider.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:27PM
How do you know that? You're assuming things. The physician doesn't get to decide this all on their own with no repercussions. Else self-interest would take over and, for example, bribery would be widespread.
I loosely follow Machiavelli on this matter. There's only one party in this whole mess guaranteed to have the interests of the patient at stake. That's the patient. Everyone else has an angle. That includes the above physician and the death panels that would be set up to attempt to insure the physician makes the decision above as you say.
Not what we were speaking of earlier. If they're 30, they may well have a worst post-surgery prognosis as well. In the real world, we can't remove ethical dilemmas by only considering cases where the dilemma doesn't exist. In the original post, there was a better post-surgery prognosis, it just was considerably less upside than the prognosis for the 30 year old. Then the poster bragged that their health care system would make the right choice and go for the 30 year old.
Do you know what a red herring is? I doubt anyone here thinks that medical procedures are without risk or that even if we consider equivalent medical risk, the 90 year old statistically will live as long afterward as the 30 year old.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @01:00AM (2 children)
What would be an example?
(Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Wednesday July 31 2019, @01:59AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:00PM
People could still pay for the operation themselves, and even discounting your bullshit uninformed ranting the US health insurance industry already does this. Except the for-profit insurance is even WORSE than the judgment from a panel of doctors.
You're wrong on every level.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @11:17PM
Funny. I work in health care and have lots of friends and family who do, too.
Your post shows that you don't understand modern medicine, and although many of the things you say are not outright false, your conclusions are wrong.
> whatever help is available
You say this like it's a bad thing.
Just like in the USA if the night shift doc is napping and the nurse gets there first, or if the cardiac specialist is at the other end of the hospital when a patient comes in, the patient gets the help that's available, not the in theory best specialist that would have to be flown in from Toronto.
> whenever that help becomes available
Do you want it before it's available?
> whether or not that help is the medically best decision
Here, you lie. Patients have autonomy and can reject any treatment so long as they're of sound mind. And the kernel of truth here - that medically not-best decisions sometimes get made - is inherent in any imperfect knowledge scenario. No diagnostician has perfect results, and no physician has read every single paper, and mistakes are human.
> depending on how the budget is going
Uuuuuuuh. No? Public health programmes which are mostly outreach, this might apply, but not patient care. This is just bullshit.
> Canadian health care is quite heavily undersupplied with resources
Uuuuuh. No? I've been to other countries too and Canadian healthcare is just about top of the line. Another poster talked about the "billing office" in USA clinics. By not having those, alone, we save a huge amount of overhead (I've seen estimates varying from 10 to 25% of overhead - billing and followup-accounting and debt-chasing are *expensive*).
> This is why there's an active medical tourism industry, largely serving canadians, just south of the US/Canada border.
Uuuuuuuuuh. No? The medical tourism industry for Canadians is overwhelmingly for cosmetic surgery, since we don't cover it and there's fewer practitioners here. Occasionally for other stuff like fertility. Where do you get this bullshit from? Canadians never, EVER cross the border for medical care if there's local services. Why would we? Our local quality of care is superior and we would have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to go to the USA.
Who voted you up? Your post is so incredibly bullshit-heavy that you could get into the fertilizer business...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:51PM
For all the dipshits who couldn't figure out the fine print, or imagine that people cross the border for elective surgeries and so on, let me spell out one of the major problems:
MRI machines are expensive. As are many other radiological tools. For this reason one of the primary reasons for ex-canada medical tourism is going down so that they can get maybe-a-cancer (or similar problems) diagnosed faster, rather than waiting in line for ages to get their diagnosis once it has progressed from stage 1, thereby wrecking prognoses and raising intrusiveness.
Bellingham, being one example of a city just south of a major canadian city (Vancouver) has radiologists with canadian doctors on speed dial because they collaborate all the time.
A lot of the ideologues won't read this and won't believe it anyway, but in a particular shout-out to the idiot who wrote about infant mortality, if you actually study economics and demography you'll realise that while everyone likes to bag on the USA's child mortality rate, actual comparison between countries isn't that simple, and the USA (for stupid political reasons) regards many things as children that in other countries would be regarded as stillbirths or late term miscarriages, thereby crippling comparison of statistics. If you held other countries to the exact same medical reporting standards, it'd look very different.
Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I forgot where I am. Please return to your ideologically-driven hatefest. And remember to retweet links to The Donald. He loves that.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Nobuddy on Thursday August 01 2019, @03:15PM
Lies make the Baby Jesus cry.
This bullshit gets debunked over and over and over. Yes, non-life threatening illnesses get to wait. They get to wait in the US as well, and wait even longer than Canada you mutant doorknob.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @11:02PM
Papers, please?
Sorry, I'm onboard with cleaning up our hopelessly inept and corrupt medical/insurance industry. But, showing a card? "Papers, please - you must show me your papers before we can consider treating you."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Shire on Tuesday July 30 2019, @02:37PM (44 children)
This isn't about kids who got out of high school and left their families. You don't need guardianship transfers for that. This about families that transferred guardianship for the sole purpose of deceiving the college tuition system for monetary gain. And that's fraud.
Regarding the rest of your socialist rant:
Who exactly is going to pay for this utopia of yours? this universal base income? this universal health care? this universal education? Someone has to pay for the doctors, the teachers, and the flat out cash handouts. Oh right - the government just prints money willy nilly - no need to actually account for the costs, just hand out the cash and everything will be just fine. And that universal income? Who needs to work now, the nanny state will take care of all your needs. Btw, Finland actually tried this and it failed. They scrapped the Universal Income trial last year. The cost was too high and it was unsurprisingly found that "A guaranteed government income takes away the incentive to work, and work is more than just an economic factor. It's a vital part of what makes a society work. It teaches responsibility, self-reliance, industriousness."
You cannot have a free society where the government takes care of its citizens as if they were all children. A thriving society is one where citizens take full responsibility for their own lives. Life is hard, it's meant to be hard, if everything is taken care of for you then you have no motivation to improve yourself. Huge chunks of the population just become dead weight that the rest have to carry on their backs.
The reason the US is the most prosperous and powerful nation on earth right now is not because everyone here gets handouts - it's because there is equal OPPORTUNITY for everyone. If you want to improve your lot in life you CAN. There are no promises, you are not a child, if you want to better yourself then everything you need is out there for you. You can also choose to languish in poverty if you want. But no society can survive if it removes all incentives to work and grow, and that's exactly what a socialist nanny state attempts to do.
And for every nanny state full of citizens who have decided to be "children", there is a corrupt upper echelon who act as your "parents". You have no power, they do. You no longer control your life, they do. These places are available to you right now - North Korea and Venezuela are good examples of what that sort of life is like. I encourage you to go check them out.
Be glad there are processes in place to help those at the very bottom try to get back on their feet. Such systems are not universally possible. When you were unemployed the rest of us carried you until you got back on your feet. This benefits everyone. But it's just not possible to carry EVERYONE all the time.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @03:10PM
Lol, universal healthcare is treating citize s lime children? Get real chode.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday July 30 2019, @04:23PM (8 children)
I'm not saying I disagree with all of your points. There is incentive in working for success, etc. I'm NOT in favor a move to socialism in most areas (though the only reasonable -- and civilized and moral -- solution to healthcare in my opinion is to move further in that direction). However...
That I need to call BS on. If there's anything the recent college admissions scandals have taught us, it's that rich people play by different rules in the U.S. They can afford better educations, get into better schools (bribing or cheating their way in if necessary), make better social networks with other rich folks, and generally end up much further ahead in life than the average person.
I say all of this as someone born to blue-collar parents where no one on my family ever attended college before, and I managed to go to some elite schools. Yes, I was lucky enough that my intelligence got me through and allowed me to succeed. I also was lucky enough along the way to have a few friends and mentors who pushed me in the right directions. When I was a sophomore in high school, I started receiving lots of fliers from top colleges interested in recruiting me after my high performance on the PSAT. I hadn't even heard of many of them (seriously -- I was that ignorant), and it was only a friend who had (because he came from higher class parents who went to college and were engineers) that even made me look beyond my local area and think of applying to top schools.
When I was a know-it-all high school kid, I used to say stuff exactly what you do: "Everybody has equal opportunity! if they aren't doing well, let them pull themselves up by their bootstraps! Anyone can do it!" When a teacher once challenged me about the necessity of welfare, I reacted coldly -- "Too bad. No handouts." But as I've grown up and matured and seen the world, I've realize how damn lucky I was to have parents who tried their best to find some opportunities for me, and then friends and acquaintances and mentors who were lucky enough to cross my path -- otherwise I'd never had the path I took.
Instead, I'd be like most kids who don't have a chance at my path of schools and careers, not because they necessarily aren't smart, but because they don't have the resources around them and don't have the luck to be influenced by people who can expand their horizons. Meanwhile, rich kids with mediocre talent at best are funneled into these top schools and have a leg up in their careers. I know them all well. I went to school with them. I've taught them. I know very well all the opportunities they had that I could never have dreamed of as a child.
So, anyone who says "we have equal OPPORTUNITY" is full of crap. Sure, we don't have some sort of horrific caste system like India has historically dealt with, nor do we have aristocratic classes that make social mobility impossible. Social mobility does happen, but let's not pretend that it's easy or common in the U.S. to significantly move out of your class, compared to what would happen if everyone truly began with a "blank slate" and we had true "equal OPPORTUNITY."
(Score: 2, Troll) by The Shire on Tuesday July 30 2019, @05:06PM (5 children)
Totally not BS for a number of reasons. One is simply that Ivy League universities don't actually offer a better education than any other top university that you can get into and in fact they can be far worse. Ultimately it's what you do with your education that matters in terms of opportunity. It's pointless to obsess over the 1 in 5000 kid who managed to cheat the system, your competition is with the other 4,999. You can succeed simply by going to a trade school. You can excel by going to a community college. It's entirely about your level of drive and talent.
Don't confuse "Equal Opportunity" with "Equal Outcome". The first is always out there waiting for you, the second doesn't exist and never should. Opportunity is about improving your lot in life for yourself and your kids. It's not about having everything the next guy has.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @05:29PM (3 children)
One day you'll learn.
AK's comment did a big *whoosh* over your head because you're still in the younger mindset he described himself growing out of.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 31 2019, @01:10AM (2 children)
While I applaud your and AK's attempts to grow up, uninformed cynicism isn't any better. What rich people can do is not much different from what average people can do. Sure, it's a better start, but only if the person takes advantage of it. What gets missed is two things. First, a better start is only worth so much. Notice how the advantage is always phrased in potentiality. One can have an advantage. But there are also disadvantages to these things, such as missing out on valuable life experiences. Meanwhile ambition, talent, and experience (what is often termed "luck") can take you much further than the luck of being born to rich parents.
Second, I don't want to sound like sour grapes, but a lot of these wealth-related advantages (especially of the kind derived from cheating) aren't desirable to us. For example, maintaining your list of elite, rich friends is great for some things, but I haven't heard a lot of people around here who value that or would want to take up the considerable effort to maintain such connections. And of course, what do you really know, if you cheated to get into a school beyond your intellectual means? Much was said of mentors who would expand one's horizons. Being born rich doesn't give you any better access to that.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:53AM
Being born rich is such a terrible burden. We should make sure that doesn't happen to anyone ever again.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday August 02 2019, @07:25PM
Thank you for a clear and well-thought-out reply.
Let me just disagree on a few points:
While that is true, many average or poorer people don't even know what is possible. Or, because they have never known anyone who has succeeded in ways outside their community, they can't even imagine the possibilities, let alone have a clue about how to do it. It's true that with the growth of the internet today, it's easier to find information than when I was younger, but even then, you need to know what to search FOR.
That may be true, but that's not at all the point. Elite, rich friends get you other opportunities even if you don't want to be rich or "elite." You have more choices because of them. Someone who goes to an Ivy or other top school and mingles with the rich folk isn't just building up a list of buddies to play polo or squash with. (Aside: I don't play either.) It's people who know other people who know someone who can offer you a job or recommend you to your potential future boss or whatever.
Not to mention the sheer power of a resume with early opportunities on it. I've talked to admissions officers at Ivies (I've worked at them), and I know that if you went to one of the top private schools in the U.S. (where tuition prior to college can be upwards of $50k/year), chances are your applications will be "set aside" and given more review. I've taught at a couple of those elite private high schools, and I see the opportunities for kids have that very few public schools -- even the really good ones -- can match. And once your history of elite schools gets you into an elite college, you walk out into the workforce and hand someone your resume, and it says X Top-20 school or whatever. Again, your resume gets a second look. Maybe 5 or 10 years out from your degree, it doesn't matter as much, but it gets your foot in the door and gets you several more rungs up the ladder at the start. If you ever want to pursue a career change and need to convince someone to look at your resume again when you don't really have the expected qualifications, it doesn't help to have those colleges either (as I myself can attest to).
Lots of opportunities and doors open to such folk. Yes, you need to take advantage of them, but it's a lot easier to do so than to work your way up from nothing.
The heck it doesn't. My high school guidance counselor was a joke. The high school guidance counselors at the private schools I've worked with are fountains of resources on how to get a better edge in getting into elite schools. And most of my public school teachers were good folk who cared about their job as educators, but I rarely received the kind of attention I have seen fawned on kids who attend elite private schools. I've taught in a public high school in a reasonably poor community (lower middle class, I suppose). I've seen the difference of the kinds of teachers first-hand. I see the resources such teachers have to offer. I see the amount of time they can devote to kids -- when I taught in such a school I had to teach ~150 students per year. In an elite private school, the number is often ~50 or less at the high school level. You can devote a lot more energy and attention to individual students... in essence, you can mentor them.
And then you move on to college. You don't think a letter of recommendation from a top scientist in your field from a top research university will receive more attention than a random prof at a community college? You have better chances at getting a good position in the workforce or going on to grad school or professional school if you want. And it's easier to stay among those top schools for masters or doctorates if you're already at one.
I admittedly don't know much about your background, but I've seen my life change when I made a leap to the world of the "elite." And since then I've gone back and forth several times between those worlds in some ways in the kinds of positions I've had. So I've seen the poor student struggling to barely stay afloat as he works his way through a state school, while a rich kid coasts through an Ivy.
Again, I'm not saying social mobility is impossible or that people can't make use of resources to get ahead. And I'm not cynical about this either -- I'm realistic about the fact that rich people DO have more opportunities, more ways to find out about more opportunities, more ways to take advantage of those opportunities, etc. That's simply reality. It doesn't mean you can't be poor and pull yourself up by your bootstraps -- but it will usually take more than determination to do so. A lot of luck and a lot of people offering you opportunities you likely wouldn't find yourself helps.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 30 2019, @07:22PM
Yet a rich kid gets to make connections and do unpaid internships while the poor kid has to work two jobs just to STAY in school. Forget the 'old boys club's connections which are USUALLY the BEST way of getting ahead.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @07:00PM (1 child)
Agreed. An apple does not fall far from a tree.
For better or for worse, your opportunity is a combination of
1. what your parents set up for you (psychologically, financially, and/or intellectually)
2. what you expect of yourself
And #2 is often just based on #1. People often talk about about opportunities or "what they deserve", but your life generally just goes along the lines of what you expect it to be. Most of us are slaves of our circumstance and fool ourselves to think we have free will.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:16PM
1. I hated my parents and refused to take money from them. They make me wanna puke.
2. Coming up I heard so many times that I was a fucking moron who needed to clean the floor that I believed it. The only clue I had was encountering dumbfucks with success and comparing their past to my own.
I'm now more ok than ever to pay a lot more in taxes if it means that someone can tell their boss to shove it cause they're going to college.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @05:33PM (1 child)
You're a cake eating mother fucker if you had any real struggles and think it's important for others to eat the same shit sandwiches.
Go on tell us your toughest life stories like the time you mowed lawns and went to college. I'll tell you how thick the frosting is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:13PM
The cake eating mother fucker won't tell us how hard his life is.
Like there is some sort of secret he is hiding.
Like he knows people simply won't understand that even though mommy and daddy gave him cash... it was still so hardy wardie.
BEING RICH IS HARD U DO NOT UNDERSTAND!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Tuesday July 30 2019, @05:43PM (17 children)
Who exactly is going to pay for this utopia of yours?
The financial markets and their mafia of crony capitalists. Time for them to pay their taxes. They have many times more than enough to pay for everything. The "trickle down" from their rain canopy is insufficient.
North Korea and Venezuela, not that they aren't corrupt like all authoritarian regimes, are under economic attack by pirates who want to steal their resources.
The reason the US is the most prosperous and powerful nation on earth right now is not because everyone here gets handouts - it's because there is equal OPPORTUNITY for everyone.
Very funny!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @05:59PM (16 children)
Seriously, I hope we move past the brain washing soon. Every kid raised in the US is subject to some pretty serious brainwashing, some of us were more lucky than others at being exposed to more truthful sources. I remember being a teen and arguing with a wiser older person saying "no way it can be that corrupt, no way they could pull off such a thing, someone would speak up! The truth would come out!"
Ah the naivete of youth, not realizing just how many people will normalize doing bad things.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:40PM (13 children)
Yeas, the brainwashing is usually called propaganda, but that has become a loaded word, so we just call it PR now and there is a massive hugely profitable industry based on it.
There is a lot of money for your movie [zerohedge.com] from the US military, provided you tell the right story of course.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:03AM (12 children)
Brainwashing has been practiced since forever, the scary part of modern life is how good the puppetmasters have become: focusing their efforts on specific groups for maximum desired effect, delivering messages to those particular masses, and tailoring the messages to elicit the desired responses.
I don't think that particular Djinni is going back in the bottle, ever, but we can start stepping up the penalties and enforcement for spreading outright lies, and even half-truths, with particular enforcement focus on falsehoods aimed at manipulation of political elections.
We might also start holding our public officials to a higher standard of truth in their official speeches and press releases. I wouldn't mind at all if governors, congress critters and even the president got booted from office for standing up and deliberately delivering falsehoods to the masses.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:41AM (11 children)
I wouldn't mind at all if governors, congress critters and even the president got booted from office for standing up and deliberately delivering falsehoods to the masses.
You do that on election day. If there are difficulties during the term, a recall or impeachment process may be available.
What you don't do is tell people what they can and cannot say. It is upon the audience/voter to verify the facts.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 31 2019, @12:01PM (10 children)
As a mass group, maybe. Individuals are ill equipped to research / verify anything. When sly animal news agencies deliver a 24-7 barrage of misinformation and colored commentary to back it up, and "the other side" responds in-kind with more distortions of the truth... are we, as individual voters, expected to travel to the arctic to verify that the polar bears are drowning, to the remote corners of the great barrier reef to see the corals bleaching, to the war zones to evaluate what kind of atrocities are being perpetrated by whom?
As a public official, there should be some level of accountability for public statements. When a speech writer puts together a persuasive presser delivered in an official venue as an official statement, that text should be available online with references in perpetuity, just like their voting records.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday July 31 2019, @01:43PM (9 children)
Individuals are ill equipped to research / verify anything.
You're making excuses. You can pick up a phone, write letters, talk to your neighbors, there's a million ways.
As a public official, there should be some level of accountability for public statements.
Your interest and your vote are all that's needed. If you vote for, and worse, reelect liars, liars are what you will get. You won't ever get accountability without voting for accountable people.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:19PM (8 children)
Ain't nobody got time, nor connections, nor the critical thinking skills for that - the employment and education system guarantees it.
You're making excuses for the propaganda machine's legitimacy. It never was, and never will be legitimate, but maybe with modern tech it can at least be exposed through transparency and held to a higher level of accountability.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:33PM (7 children)
Well then, let's put an end to majority rule if people can't handle it.
You still have to vote for people that will change the rules to your liking.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:00PM (6 children)
You could take the Olympic swimming medalists from the last 3 games, toss them in the middle of the English channel in a winter storm and ask them to choose a shore to swim to, and they'd have no more chance of getting the outcome they desire than the voters do when mass broadcast of misinformation is not only legal, but made indistinguishable from referenced information from sources whose bias is at least known.
Yes, we have to vote in people who will do what we want, vote out those who do what we don't want, but when the information presented about the choices is more distortion and outright lies than truth, and the average voter has no tools to distinguish the two - that should be the priority, right up there with dismantling of Citizens United: another propaganda machine that skews election decisions toward money instead of people.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:20PM (5 children)
Sorry, you're wagging the dog. And you still failed to address the problem. You don't regulate speech. I will always fight against that. Citizens United was the correct decision, and the ACLU agrees. And your "swimmer" analogy stinks. Our situation is more like people in a yacht arguing about the decor while the thing is headed towards an iceberg.
that should be the priority
Still needs your vote, doesn't it?
The propaganda isn't the problem, the followers are. Deal with the desire, not the object.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 31 2019, @06:53PM (4 children)
No, you don't regulate speech. You do regulate dangerous falsehoods. If I put up a news agency that is presenting the Russian perspective on the world, I label it "RT" and anybody with two functioning neurons eventually clues in that R stands for Russia, the outlet plays by Russian rules whatever they may be. Same for Al-Jazeera, if you're looking for the middle eastern perspective on things.
For US based news sources, giving information on US issues that US voters should be exercising judgement over, we should be transparent in where the information is coming from. A story on the topic of global warming should be clear in whether or not it was sponsored by Greenpeace, Conoco Philips or the Kansas State University school of meteorology. When a "news story" on Facebook about race riots in Baltimore is sponsored by the Cambridge Analytica Alamo project for the re-election of Donald Trump, that should also be easily discovered by the viewer of the story at the time of viewing, not exposed in a documentary 3 years later.
When "free speech" is yelling FIRE in a crowded theater leading to loss of life, that gets curtailed.
When "free speech" is fake news, tailored to push specific demographics' buttons and stampede them into a particular political choice which ultimately is hurting themselves, I'm not saying it should be stopped, I am saying it should be clearly identified for what it is and who is backing its distribution.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday July 31 2019, @07:50PM (3 children)
Sorry, you don't regulate speech. That is absolute. You teach people to think for themselves instead of following the herd instead.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 31 2019, @11:13PM (2 children)
Transparency of sources is not regulation, it's enabling people to think for themselves instead of stampeding around in the dark killing themselves when someone scares them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday July 31 2019, @11:20PM (1 child)
Even transparency isn't the issue. The problem is people choosing to stampede around in the dark killing themselves when someone scares them. I do not care how fake the news is. The choice to act violently, regardless of motivation, is entirely personal.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 31 2019, @11:48PM
Say what you want, that's your right.
What I think _could_ work, but likely will not happen, is that responsible reporting could start providing transparency of sources, transparency of funding, and a reasonable breakdown of the motivation of the producers of the content. If "official" sources of information provided this background with regularity, "fake news" would just be naked out there like cat videos on Reddit. Idiots will still respond to the naked imagery, but without some authenticity behind it, only the biggest idiots will be triggered in to self damaging actions by it.
The "source documenters" can debate back and forth about who is coloring what how, like Wikipedia more or less, if they care to, but just being able to have that expectation of occasionally easy to find backing documentation for stories that you care about deeply should enable many people to make better decisions.
When "free speech" was enshrined in the constitution Silence Dogood, Harry Meanwell, Alice Addertongue, Richard Saunders, and Timothy Turnstone were the epitome of slight of hand reporting - publishing pamphlets to make people think without tying their content to a particular preconceived positions. Most "speech" came from mouths that the listeners could physically see and hear, and judge at least the "face value" of its authenticity. More and more, "deep fake" video imagery is going to be used to change opinions, and if the standard of reporting continues to include little to no veracity of the sources - it's going to make it virtually impossible for the majority of people to make good decisions because of the difficulty in sorting the garbage input from the truth.
It will, however, give disproportionate control to those with the resources at their disposal to generate targeted messaging, whether using completely fake stories or just selective targeted messaging from the billions of stories available each day. Basically, those with the money can rule if they chose to, as it always has been. We have the opportunity to at least raise the cost through education and expectation, or we can continue to accept the typical output of PS103, Grover Cleveland High School, and your local community colleges and the terrific decisions they make based on Fox News and NPR - because those are the level of tools provided to the average voter, and they are woefully inadequate to make informed decisions from the "news" that's available to them today.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 31 2019, @12:42AM (1 child)
Careful what you wish for, the next step may be brain bleaching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday July 31 2019, @04:54AM
Nah, next step is to hang them out to dry.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 30 2019, @07:31PM
No, it's about people getting up in other people's business, determining who gets what based on "need" and let's give the full rectal exam to determine need before releasing a penny.
Let's start with a sound bite: Bernie's "insane socialist proposal" to forgive all student loan debt. It's cheaper than Trump's tax cuts for the rich were, it's far cheaper than the un-necessary Gulf War II was - the numbers don't lie, these are choices that our leaders are making for us, choices that "we the people" would make differently, if our system wasn't warped by the concentration money and power in the hands of a few.
BTW, on principle, I do not agree with Bernie's idea, you accepted debt, that's yours to repay. I do, however, fully endorse the numbers behind the proposal which are: tax cuts for the rich are not insignificant, and there's more than one way to inject "wealth" into the economy.
Historically "ground up" investments produce significantly more economic growth than "trickle down", per dollar invested.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:50PM (1 child)
Healthcare and college education for all is going to turn us into North Korea and Venezuela? Yeah, sure dude. Make sure you get your Alex Jones approved tinfoil hat tightly secured.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:06AM
So, the first places that come to mind when you say healthcare and college education for all is the European Union - they've been doing that for decades, long before unification, and I haven't seen the rise of a new Stalin or Mao yet.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 30 2019, @11:06PM (5 children)
I agree, mostly. But, what is our welfare state, if not another socialist program? We already hand out thousands to undeserving parasites. What's the big deal if we stop calling it welfare, and call it universal income? We end up with the same results - undeserving parasites contribute nothing to society, except more mouths to feed.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 31 2019, @12:52AM (1 child)
welfare states currently are and look for examples which work even today.
Yeah, right. A case of Nirvana fallacy - "best as the enemy of the good" and "always go for gold, even if bronze would have been more appropriate".
Look, mate, if you have an inefficiency (e.g. paying parasites) that is way smaller than the overhead to avoid them all together, isn't irrational to go with the "principled solution"?
The same kind of thinking led to "war on drugs" even if many other examples of "harm reductions" show better outcome at lower cost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:25AM
That depends on what the desired "outcome" was. War on Drugs has been very profitable for some.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:38AM (2 children)
That Greyhound uses socialist roads. Go build your own roads.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:25PM (1 child)
No, our highways are capitalistic. Greyhound, and all other commercial traffic pay huge sums of money to the states to keep their highways in usable condition. No socialism involved. Not every community good project is socialist.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:10PM
Wait it's not socialist when corporations pay taxes? Hmm interesting idea.
(Score: 1, Troll) by c0lo on Wednesday July 31 2019, @12:39AM (3 children)
Don't be an idiot.
Other countries manage to do all that without printing money, Germany is the first that springs in my mind, but there a many others [wikipedia.org].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:16AM (2 children)
But, Germany has some occasional sense of fiscal responsibility, a net positive trade imbalance, and they make actual stuff that other countries actually want.
Anytime since WWII the US has gotten anywhere close to a balanced budget the "tax cuts for the rich" come crawling out of the closet to ensure that we stay in deep debt so we "cannot afford" more social programs - social programs which often pay back their costs more than 100% in reduced expenses down the road...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:37AM (1 child)
True.
Just don't blame Germany (and many other countries) for showing that a better welfare state can actually work for the society even it it is suboptimal for the plutocracy's interests, and in contradiction to the plutocracy's propaganda (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 31 2019, @11:53AM
Germany's plutocrats are pussies, anyone with real power got out after WWII.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 05 2019, @02:27PM
I'm betting their UBI covered not just needs but a basic level of wants to
if it only covered needs the incentive to work would remain (for everyone not wanting to live like a monk)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @03:10PM
Same thing if you just pay cash. Cutting out the middle man saves tons of time and money.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @04:32PM
But then how will you tether people to intolerable jobs with no pay?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday July 30 2019, @04:40PM (5 children)
I completely agree with this, BUT is college really "basic education"? We already should have much more freely available "basic education" than the average person should need. Of my four grandparents, only one graduated from high school. Both of my grandfathers had only a primary school education -- getting to 4th and 6th grade, I think. This was common in the U.S. a few generations ago. They could both read and write fluently. (I have letters from both of them that they sent home during WWII to their families that prove they had better writing skills than many college students whose papers I've graded.) They could both do basic math skills that were necessary to get them through life.
Now we effectively require students to attend high school, with only a few exceptions. The vast majority of Americans now get at least twice the amount of education my grandparents had, which should be plenty of years to teach them basic life skills.
Don't get me wrong: I do think higher education is a great thing, when it's actually EDUCATION. What we have developed in the U.S. is a giant mess of tertiary SCHOOLING that basically leeches money off of young people and desperate families hoping that their kids can "get ahead." I don't really feel like getting into the history of the American college system and how we ended up in this mess -- I say this as someone who taught in higher ed for quite a few years, by the way.
Anyhow, I would estimate that roughly 90% of people who attend college don't need it for their careers. They'd be better served by doing some sort of internship/trade school hybrid plan maybe where they took a few academic classes relevant to any theory they might need (and probably at least 50% of people who attend college these don't even need ANY of these academic "theory" classes for their desired careers), while learning with real on-the-job experience.
Instead, employers in the U.S. have now started using an undergraduate degree as proof that a young person is simply responsible and dedicated enough to make it through some tasks. They rarely draw on a lot of the "skills" taught only theoretically in college -- instead, spending the first year or two just training the person on the job. It used to be that a high school diploma was proof of someone who had perseverance and skills that could be important in a career -- that was true when my one grandmother graduated high school. Now, most college students don't have those.
My point is: I'm all in favor of having a system that gives a basic education to everyone, and perhaps some sort of post-secondary system that actually allows people to acquire skills necessary for careers. But "college" as it now exists for everyone? That seems a ridiculously stupid thing to me -- delaying adulthood for four years when most young people could be actually bettering themselves. For those who really need a lot of theoretical training -- scientists, engineers, etc. -- a more traditional college curriculum may still make sense (and the U.S. may want to pay for and encourage smart young students to pursue such tracks too, as we need smart people to do that kind of stuff).
Anyhow, the system is so messed up that I don't really know how we can begin to move out of it. But just funneling more money and more students into the broken higher ed system seems to be a recipe for disaster, even if it seems to be a "quick fix" to the fact that a bachelor's degree (and sometimes even a master's) has now become the "high school diploma"-level default credential for no good reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @05:46PM (4 children)
Ummm, "bettering" themselves is exactly what college is about. You're playing into the "only STEM is useful" trope. While we overly focus on a college degree as some necessary item for life success there is a lot of validity to it. Life isn't just about learning some economically useful skill.
Your attitude is condescending and ignorant.
"But just funneling more money and more students into the broken higher ed system seems to be a recipe for disaster"
^ that right there, opinionated ignorance backed by nothing more than the "millenials suck" type of attitude. The university system was working very well until the 2000s when tuition started jumping up every year by MASSIVE amounts which happened to coincide with new push for government backed student loans.
This destructive devaluation of anything not STEM is unhealthy for society. There is more to life than being a cog in the economic machine, and as you pointed out most jobs make little use of higher ed skills. Maybe we should just go full 1984 and assign people to their greek letter group.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:19PM (1 child)
Maybe that is what is was when a degree was either a BA or a BS, but now it is about collecting dollars while convincing teens to pigeonhole themselves in a specialty when they are far too young to really understand what they like and want to do. We end up with ridiculous majors like human resources or hospitality, where graduates learn no skills other than how to fuck up an established business. In the past, people "bettered" themselves in college by escaping the narrow little wedge of society they came from and learning that the whole world was not like what they grew up with, and more importantly, that diversity in the world is a good thing. Intense specialization can wait until grad school, when students are more mature and have an idea what they like to do and where they want to go.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:42PM
The nice part about college degrees is the almost always have general eduction requirements, and even then the degrees you mention are more in line with "real world skills". It is no more "intense specialization" than any other. People need to choose something to study, and plenty switch majors.
I just can't get behind whatever rationale is going on to NOT support socialized education. Invest in your country's future, support universal healthcare and education.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:31AM
The focus on STEM has also shoveled a lot more waffling bullshit merchants into "real" STEM areas. There's an absolute glut of scientific studies with 23+ authors squirting out of every corner of every scientific field right now. It's a disaster for science!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:08PM
Ah we have another man who has been enlightened by his non STEM education. I suppose it taught you how to think or something like that.
Plenty of people are going into non-stem degrees. Bamboozled by arguments like the one you've just made. So they can take on a life altering amount of debt with no change in income. Yeah they don't need to do that.
Non-stem degrees are in no danger of dying and while they're subjects worth studying they've become refuge for people who shouldn't be in college in the first place so it looks bad on the people who actually want to be there. I blame type-anal helicopter parenting and an emphasis on holding a high GPA.
Oh I'm getting C's sometimes? Well mother certainly won't be able to gloat to her friends about that. After the flute lessons, ballet, tennis, prep school, etc.... mother will only accept A's and will forgive B's in all her grace; but a C? No; I think I should switch to marketing. Employers like 4.0s right? That's what my parents and counselors say... they're fat old people I'm sure they know how the world works.
And now their kid is working at someone's shady nonprofit. Making $16/hr to solicit donations for the next decade so their 100k student loan will be forgiven. I hear now people are doing it and even getting rejected. Ouch!
TL;DR, Plenty of people are not going into STEM so this argument is dumb. Especially from people who constantly brag they were taught how to think
https://www.economicmodeling.com/2017/09/01/stem-majors-accelerating-every-state-just-humanities-degrees-declining/ [economicmodeling.com]
Sounds awful but a quick glance at the chart shows that humanities are barely declining.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @06:02PM (3 children)
The US has a population of (roughly, depending on how you feel about immigrants, blahblah) 350 million people.
The calculation of the poverty line is a little involved, but the marginal additional household burden per person can be ballparked at $5K/year, so we can take that as a point of departure. Just enough of a UBI to get you there (it would actually be more, because people living alone have higher expenses, but let's pretend ...) would put you at about $1.8 trillion. If you take annual per-person expenditure on personal goods and services, it's more like double that (or actually more).
This does not include health care as a rule (for a variety of reasons, including that most people in poverty in the USA qualify for a variety of systems at the state and federal levels that cover this need on a financial level) so we'd need to expand it for the healthcare function. Turns out the personal health care expenditure of the US is around $11K/person annually, but let's assume that by magic that halves because of wishful thinking when done federally (best of luck on that, guys!) so we add about another $1.8 trillion to the Free Stuff budget. Looking sharp at $3.6 trillion annually so far, let's check education ...
Right now primary and secondary education are already (mostly) rolled into the system, but you want it to cover tertiary education as well, so that's a cheapie at roughly another half a trillion nationally. Actually, it's more, but we'll assume that the magical savings fairy manages to escape the bureaucracy toad again, so ...
$4.1 trillion annually for free stuff.
Sorry, "Universal Basic" stuff.
OK, how do we do that?
We could raise taxes. Unfortunately, we can't raise taxes on the rich to raise that amount, because even if we lined them all up and machinegunned them from the geriatric with the golden walker to the infant with a golden pacifier, then confiscated every last penny, it wouldn't be enough. So we'd have to have much more broad-based taxes. You see, the annual household income across the whole population is less than $10 trillion, so you'd need to take and redistribute almost half of that to make this possible. Despite all the flapping about the evil 0.000001% hogging all the candy, the reality on the ground is that the median household income is in the neighbourhood of $50K/year, which means that a lot of the running tally of money in the country goes to very middle-class looking people. You'd need to tax them until the pips squeak, quite frankly. Good luck with that.
The other option would be just printing money. Now, I hate learning from history as much as anyone, but I have a feeling that Germany and Zimbabwe would both crack a beer and lean against a wall to watch while we did that. Wouldn't you?
Anyhow, I await your illustration of where the money comes from for Universal Basic Everything (do we also get Universal Basic Sex to satisfy the incel crowd? Inquiring minds want to know ...) and I'm sure lots of other people do too.
Don't disappoint us, now!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:56AM
Socialist revolution and expropriation of the capitalist class.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @05:10AM (1 child)
Did you know:
That UK, Canada, and Australia have better health outcomes than the USA while spending less than half as much? That most of your $11K per person per year is simply profit for the insurance companies?
That if you eliminated all of the paper-pushing involved in current welfare programs and simply equally distributed the money amongst all citizens, then the amount each would get would be similar to UBI proposals?
That an unconditional UBI and UHC (Universal Health Care) would be a safety net that lets people try new things and start new small businesses and that the result would be a massive economic boom?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:59PM
Did know, yes. Also know that a lot of that is masked by variations in the system, and different statistical standards. (For example, a judge not-so-long-ago in Canada determined that private health care can be legal, but Canada so successfully annihilated its private health care system that it may as well not exist, but the UK does have a well-established private care system and Australia isn't identical either). This is why the post in question referred to plausible savings from federal mandates (and ignored the entrenched opposition any such diktats would get). The math on UHC/UBI/Free Stuff doesn't change because of your posting. Now read the original again, with attention to detail.