Is the following post by DJ, Te or Ti? Please offer explanations why or why not? Please dissect away.

Quote Originally Posted by discojoe View Post
UGH. God dammit, Rick.



There will not be a permanent decline in economic activity. There is plenty of scientific research being done on alternatives to fossil fuels, and the economic incentive for profit will pretty much guarantee that one of them becomes popular and causes the economics cogs to start turning again.



Any time you take out a loan, you are taking on a risk. Before taking out a student loan, you should do research to determine how lucrative your chosen degree is and what the jobs market is like for people with that degree. A philosophy major, for example, has little business taking on such debt unless he values possessing the degree more than the freedom of not having to pay back the loan while working a crappy job. It all amounts to opportunity cost.



Of course it will. The problem right now is that the various Western governments are making the recovery take longer by fucking with the economic fundamentals of their respective economies. This is common sense. However, free market capitalism, though it can be slowed, has proven time and time again that it is robust enough to prosper in spite of substantial detrimental mitigating factors, like tariffs and government oversight.



How many of these people will contribute to the inevitable economic recovery that will take place in the next five to ten years? You need to look at the big picture and determine if there is a net benefit to society in having these people educated despite the costs incurred.



Monetary return on investment? If there truly weren't any monetary return, then of course it would generally be foolish to take on such debt. However, most college degrees do result in costs being recovered and then some.



Most of them do, but it's actually pretty easy to pay back $30,000 when you're making $40-50,000 a year out of college. It may take some years, but it's very doable.



You're missing the point. The reason people go to college is to earn a degree, not because they are somehow stuck on the false notion that classroom learning is the only way to become educated.

College is about money for most people, but I agree that many subjects can be learned quite easily on one's own if you're willing to put forth the effort. I know that you speak like ten languages, I can fluently read Spanish from 100% self-study, and am also in calculus despite never taking a math class that went above basic algebra. However, you and I are also quite a bit smarter than the average person, so I am hesitant to hold other people up to these standards.