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[Aqizzar]

It's not the government's job to babysit ignorant individuals. It is the individual's sole responsibility to be aware that these banks are profit-seeking entities, and treat them as such. Know what you're getting into before you rack up $50,000 in credit card debt. If you step in front of a train, you're gonna get hit.

I could refute all your other worn-out righteousness, but I'll focus on this one.  A professor of mine wanted to take out a mortgage to buy a house.  He claims he got through half of the agreement before his brain imploded.  He's a doctor of comparative economics.  You can't just say, "we'll it's stupid peoples fault for being stupid and not reading what they're agreeing to."  In 1975 the average credit card contract was a page and a half long, today it's 32.  Have you ever read a credit card contract?  Or a mortgage agreement?  Whole teams of lawyers are paid to make them as hard to read as possible, so that people can't know what they're signing up for.

[Croquantes]

The government, however, does not work this way. If the government takes over a market (as is happening with student loans) there are no competitors. The government provides the only source of the product, and if it SUCKS, too bad. You're stuck with it, like it or not. Contrary to popular belief, the government does NOT have some holy, righteous desire to do the best for everyone. The government is run by profit-seeking humans, not stainless angels.

I don't know. Again, I'm Canadian and I have a lot of experience dealing with "government monopolies". I'm covered by Universal health care, and this is widely considered to be a better alternative than private health care insurance. Vehicle insurance in my province is also universal, provided by the "crown corporation" ICBC. This doesn't mean that all the insurance brokers are government agents; we have private insurance agents. Everyone just gets the same insurance from different brokers.

My province also has a monopoly on the purchase, import, and distribution of alcohol. If you want to buy alcohol, you have to visit a government liquor store. This means that if you want to buy liquor at 3am, you simply can't. As a result, public drunkenness is not much of an issue except for in the entertainment district when the bars close.

My point is that there are many services provided by "government monopolies" (we call them crown corporations), and instead of causing craziness they work just as well (sometimes better) than private business. Many Canadians vehemently oppose the privatisation of some of these corporations.

Government can, and does, conduct business well (at least in Canada). What matters most is regulation. In a highly unregulated market, both private and public business will of course cut corners and try to pad their pockets. Regulation has a positive effect on market quality, and a highly regulated market (like our banking sector, which has not received .01c in bailout money) will run better than the most free market.

And again. My government provides student loans here, and the sky hasn't fallen yet.

[Ampersand]

It is in their best interests to provide a product that customers like.

Furthermore, I think the primary reasoning behind this is that Banks in America deliberately target students with overpriced loans that they will spend their entire lives paying off, and with credit cards with unspeakable strings attached in an obvious attempt to exploit the naivety of young adults who have not had to deal with financial institutions on any appreciable level before.

What do you expect? These banks are firms are out to make money, not altruists who want to make sure that Joe Schmoe gets to go to college.

I find these two sentences jarringly mutually exclusive. First, you claim it's in their best interests to provide good services, than admit that they're only out to make money and can't be trusted to provide a good service.

Anyway, I think there's a book you ought to read.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Pe4k5qMEFCEC&dq=the+jungle&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=qgyr5Dnj4g&sig=zLNaIULBjKIERPBIsuQBL4x2_wg&hl=en&ei=3NO1SpifMczY8AaFjujPDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[sneakey pete]

I just find that funny.  Looking at the debt...

Look at it this way. you can't afford to not help people get an education.
Or, well, i guess you could all just become rednecks. Yehaa!
(yes, I know that, a: the majority of americans are not rednecks, and morso, b: getting tertiary c education or not has nothing to to with being a redneck at all)

Seriously though, from what i've heard, its a real bitch to be a higher education student in the US, with moutains of debt etc., which is turning people off. That is not the case here. Yes, you pay for it, however you get a government loan that is only charged interest at the base inflation rate. you pay it back when you earn more than a certain amount of income in a year, and it comes off as part of your tax.

Edit: you have government run bottleshops? that's awesome.

[Muz]

This is a good thing. If it lowers interest rates. USA has ridiculous student loan rates. Hell, in some countries, the government pays you to study. I hope this goes in the path of 'more affordable education' rather than 'making money off poor students'. But I'm sure they can't give more affordable education, that would be... communism!

Contrary to popular belief, the government does NOT have some holy, righteous desire to do the best for everyone. The government is run by profit-seeking humans, not stainless angels.

Wait, what? The whole purpose of having an elected government is to "do the best for everyone". That's the reason that the government controls traffic. That's the reason that the government (is supposed to) control energy and water. That's why they pay for parks - because nobody else would pay for decorating cities. That's why they pay for police, health care, education the country's security, and fire protection.

Certainly elected officials have their own beliefs and motives and will exploit their power for it every once in a while, but the whole point is that they're supposed to help as many people as possible. Isn't that what Democracy is about? Governments are supposed to be the good guys who make sure everything is fair for everyone. Which really makes me wonder what the American government is thinking.

[Cheeetar]

I think the point he's trying to make is that most of the people in power will abuse it for their own gain, contrary to what most people elect them for and believe they will do.

[Muz]

Well, you could hardly get any personal gain from student loans anyway. Best you could do for yourself is cut down or cut out interest on loans so that the kids of senators could get into college much cheaper. Which would really be a good thing for everyone. (except the international students, who still have to pay higher prices)

[Leafsnail]

Oh noes, we can't have senator's children getting loans at reasonable rates!  That would be madness!  Or maybe it wouldn't actually be too much of a problem...

In Britain, you can get a scholarship if you really can't afford to pay for a degree, and you can get an Educational Maintanence Allowance if you need it too.  Also degrees here cost about 1/3rd of what they do in America (to British citizens, anyway.  Those who come here for degrees have to pay full price) too.  You may say "You should get a full time job to pay for your degree!!" but your final mark will almost certainly suffer as a result, as will the amount of education you get out of the degree.  The whole point of a course at university is to prepare you for later careers, and you're going to be better prepared if you don't have to spend most of your time doing a job and desperately trying to pay bills.

Personally, I think means tested subsidies are often not a good idea.  Why?  Means testing tends to cost more money than it saves.  In some cases, it's better to just give the subsidy to everyone and claw it back from those who don't need it with slightly higher taxes for them (this is basically the system for Child Benefits in this country).

[Osmosis Jones]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Australia

Seriously, government run student loans work wonders for us.

[Ampersand]

It's just that here in America people have gotten wrapped up in calling things Communism and Socialism, and have forgotten that it is possible that Corporatism may not be the best thing in the world either.

What I find most curious is that the most ardent pro-capitalist types in this country who despise communism and socialism and fascism and so on have a distrust in government, when it is the textbooks that this government approves of that teach America's children that such systems of economy are bad and that Capitalism is good.

[Aqizzar]

You talk about those views and attitudes like there's some thread of logic running through them.  To hate any concept that completely, be it Communism or Capitalism or anything else in the world, requires that you never fully think through what you believe.  Of course the Guvmint can simultaneously be secretly spreading the disease of Socialism to schoolkids' minds while it burns any textbook that doesn't say Capitalism always has and always will save the world.  All big scary objects looming over the horizon are evil, and if they're all big, scary, and evil, then of course they must be in league with each other.  Just don't dwell on how or why.

[Leafsnail]

On being told that Obama is spreading socialism to school children, I've been watching and rewatching his speech for the part where he advocates letting the workers own the means of production.  I haven't found it, can someone help?

[Croquantes]

Have you tried playing the speech backwards?

[Ampersand]

Playing it backwards only reveals praises to Armok, nothing about workers owning the means to production.

[Lord Dakoth]

Governments are supposed to be the good guys who make sure everything is fair for everyone.

"Fair" is a very subjective concept. Thus, I must respectfully disagree.

The original purpose of the American government was to protect citizens' rights that exist in the Constitution. The government can't be "fair," simply because the word means different things to different people.

However, I do believe that a good government should be impartial. This is where I believe the American government's flaw is: that it is biased towards certain ethnicities, income brackets, and religious groups.

In short, the government should be the "good guys." I'm sure that there are some politicians who genuinely want the best for America. However, I believe that the government is corrupt, as a whole, and therefore not "good guys."