Why can't the "Left" appeal to the Extreme Left in the way the "Right" courts the Extreme Right?

[Hygro]

I'm playing around with the FAFSA website, estimating an 18 y/o freshman in a married family of 4. I think it's by semester but everyone is entitled no matter how rich $5,500 in loans and $~1,900 in work study. But grants start at $6,800 at zero family income, to $3,200 by 60k, to $1,100 by 70k and $0 by $80k.

Median household income is about $80,000.

I checked Harvard's aid package calculator. Right now tuition + housing is $80k. At $80k income, your cost is $5,000. At $200,000, family is expected to pay half, and full by $300,000.

In general the richer parents I've known sent their kids to state school because they didn't want debt. I don't know their incomes but.. anyone making a doctor's salary on down is definitely not part of the American aristocracy now matter how life changing half a million sounds. Trust fund kids use their trust fund and go to private schools, debt free.

 

[Farm Boy]

Sounds!

 

[Hygro]

Yes sounds. It is life changing too, but when you have more than that in student loan debt, and you’ve just put in 4 years of school followed by 9 years of residency/fellowship for that surgery position, you aren’t accumulating wealth for a time and when you do, it’ll be in time for a fancy retirement. To be where you make that, raise kids there and send them to school, no aid, permit them private college like their poorer friends get to thanks to huge endowments, then yes they’re living quite comfortably and they retire real nice but they’re not running the game at all unless they double up. Not many of them have that stamina.

No means of production etc

 

[Farm Boy]

That's more than the entire budget to raise my son from birth to adulthood. It better be life changing.

Or is this clever meta on the thread's topic?

 

[Hygro]

It's obviously life changing. That's why people grind to it. That's why we in CFC complain about the impediments to grinding to it. It's a different class of wealth. But their power is to maintain their vacations, nice cars, big house lifestyle when they retire in their late 60s.

There are those a magnitude or more beyond them, whose individual decisions affects groups of people.

 

[Farm Boy]

There are more little nobles than dukes and kings, yes.

There's a whole theory that the mega powerful have the principle duty of keeping the minor powerful from shucking and devouring basically everybody. It's not entirely without merit.

Couple that with:

Spoiler :

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

... and many of our monsters start to have an appeal which they should not.

 

[Sommerswerd]

No, they don't. Like, the idea that Bezos' kids are taking on debt to go to school is literally insane.

Well... there's a catch to that. The kids don't have the money, their parents do, so if the parents don't agree to foot the bill, then they are SOL, and they may actually need to go get loans. As Shaq has famously stated... "I tell my kids... You're not rich, I'm rich", and Warren Buffet has famously disinherited his kids and pledged all his wealth to charity.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Well... there's a catch to that. The kids don't have the money, their parents do, so if the parents don't agree to foot the bill, then they are SOL, and they may actually need to go get loans. As Shaq has famously stated... "I tell my kids... You're not rich, I'm rich", and Warren Buffet has famously disinherited his kids and pledged all his wealth to charity.

That's true, but I do wonder how Shaq's kids are treated in life just because they're Shaq's kids.

"It's amazing how much free [stuff] you get when you're rich."
- Chris Rock

"So he's poor now?"
"He's not poor, he's broke. There's a difference."
- Yolanda & Debbie in GLOW

 

[Sommerswerd]

That's true, but I do wonder how Shaq's kids are treated in life just because they're Shaq's kids.

"It's amazing how much free [stuff] you get when you're rich."
- Chris Rock

"So he's poor now?"
"He's not poor, he's broke. There's a difference."
- Yolanda & Debbie in GLOW

Yeah, I'm guessing that for people like Buffett, imbedded in their refusal to completely fund their kids' lives is the notion that their kids should be able to capitalize on all the connections that they have due to being the child of someone rich/famous/powerful.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

Private Schools are more about the future social connections than the quality of education, especially in the UK.

 

[Gorbles]

Private Schools are more about the future social connections than the quality of education, especially in the UK.

I see this opinion a lot but in my experience isn't super true. Anecdotal of course, but the main advantage is for the university you get into (which then absolutely brokers connection-building if it's Oxbridge or similar). And then there's a lot of stuff around exam boards, subject choices and simply the sheer amount of resources that public schools don't even come close to (as well as other fun things like registering yourself as a non-profit and / or charity and other tax-related funsies).

 

[EgonSpengler]

Yeah, I'm guessing that for people like Buffett, imbedded in their refusal to completely fund their kids' lives is the notion that their kids should be able to capitalize on all the connections that they have due to being the child of someone rich/famous/powerful.

Indeed. I'm also reminded of the Hollywood actresses convicted in the "college admissions scam." I presume we know about those two because they were the two who were caught so red-handed, they were unable even to sweep it under the rug with more bribes.

Private Schools are more about the future social connections than the quality of education, especially in the UK.

Yes, same here. A few years ago, I heard a round-table discussion on the radio about higher ed here, and a woman who'd worked at both Harvard U and the local campus of the state school. She said the quality of education at the state school wasn't really any less than at Harvard, but the guidance the students received at Harvard was leagues ahead.

 

[Gorbles]

Ah, US schools. Yeah, I was talking about the UK.

 

[Farm Boy]

Money talks, merit walks.

Hard sell to convince it's different this time.