funhusker
Active member
What about eggs? Anyone got a price update?
At least we have the Gulf of America now…
Economy
- Thread starter BigRedBuster
- Start date
At least we have the Gulf of America now…
JJ Husker
Donor
He righted the most pressing egregious wrong of our time with just the stroke of his pen. The Gulf of Mexico….pffft, take that world.
JJ Husker
Donor
Niiice. While you’re swimming and on the beach of the Gulf of ‘Merica, you can have a serving of Freedom Fries under a picture Mt. frikken McKinley. It’ll be a time like has never been seen before. Make Vacation Great Again!!!
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JJ Husker
Donor
Another anecdotal example of the Trump effect on a small business. Could be just a bad couple of months but I don’t recall a month this bad ever. Probably has been 1 or 2 in the distant past.
January 2025 sales 58% lower than Jan 2024. 40ish% lower than an average month.
December 2024 sales 22% lower than Dec 2023. 15% lower than an average month.
November 2024 14% down.
All prior months of 2024 were above average.
I guess my customers (other businesses) didn’t get the memo that Trump is better for business. It’s almost like people are clutching the purse strings, waiting to see what wild bulls#!t he’ll come up with next.
January 2025 sales 58% lower than Jan 2024. 40ish% lower than an average month.
December 2024 sales 22% lower than Dec 2023. 15% lower than an average month.
November 2024 14% down.
All prior months of 2024 were above average.
I guess my customers (other businesses) didn’t get the memo that Trump is better for business. It’s almost like people are clutching the purse strings, waiting to see what wild bulls#!t he’ll come up with next.
BigRedBuster
Well-known member
Our company is 80 years old this year. A few years ago, I put together a spreadsheet on each year's income during a Republican or Democrat in office. Over the life of our company, we have earned more money during Democrats in office than Republicans.
JJ Husker
Donor
I haven’t prepared that spreadsheet but I can say with a very high level of confidence that has also been the case with my company dating back to GWB1.
Now I have a downtime project to work on (besides over analyzing my NHL Fantasy team). :lol:
funhusker
Active member
I received a raise each year of Biden's admin, I will also get a raise every year of Trump's unless total chaos erupts. But the absolutely lifechanging thing was my wife's (a nurse) and my (a teacher) college loans were forgiven. This wasn't part of the deal that was eventually held up, but we qualified for a years old (Bush I think) program that forgave certain loans for public workers like teachers and nurses. There was some hang up that we didn't have our loans "coded" correctly, something many people faced. Biden's admin agreed to retroactively give us credit for the years served so we could get our loans forgiven 6 years sooner than we would have without the change.
6 years of $600 a month is a huge change in our monthly budget. I could afford the eggs!!!!
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/22/politics/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-supreme-court/index.html
Expanding debt relief program for public-sector workers
Nearly $51 billion of student loan debt has been canceled for 715,000 borrowers through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program since Biden took office.
The PSLF program cancels outstanding federal student loan debt for public-sector workers who have made 120 qualifying monthly student loan payments, or about 10 years’ worth of payments. A variety of government and nonprofit workers – including teachers, social workers, some nurses and doctors, and government lawyers – may qualify for the program.
Student loan payments resume: What to know as repayment begins in October
The program was created by Congress in 2007 but was plagued with administrative problems before Biden took office.
In 2021, Biden put a temporary waiver in place, expanding eligibility so that some borrowers could retroactively receive credit for past payments that did not otherwise qualify for PSLF.
More than 95% of the borrowers who have been granted debt relief by the PSLF program qualified because of Biden’s temporary waiver.
The temporary benefits ended in October 2022. But the Department of Education has since conducted an executive rulemaking process to permanently change some of the qualifying restrictions of the PSLF program. The changes allow borrowers to receive credit toward PSLF on payments that are made late, in installments or in a lump sum, for example. Those changes went into effect in July.
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JJ Husker
Donor
That’s great
I’ve railed against student loan forgiveness but I don’t have a problem with it when it is targeted at specific sectors for specific areas of need. Public workers like teachers or nurses, if we want/need to encourage people into those fields of employment, fine. What I’m against is blanket forgiveness just because higher education costs too much and too many people made a bad choice to go too far into debt.
I also think this is similar to how our immigration system should work. The government can study demographics and employment sector needs and set immigration limits based on what our country needs to fill and target those people for entry. It could be dynamic and constantly changing/updating. Of course there could be a little room made for refugees, political dissidents, oppressed folks etc. but it should be mainly driven by what the immigrants can bring to our country rather than what we have to offer them.
commando
New member
PasstheDamnBallGuy
Active member
That’s great
I’ve railed against student loan forgiveness but I don’t have a problem with it when it is targeted at specific sectors for specific areas of need. Public workers like teachers or nurses, if we want/need to encourage people into those fields of employment, fine. What I’m against is blanket forgiveness just because higher education costs too much and too many people made a bad choice to go too far into debt.
I mean it's pretty crazy to assume that 18 year olds should know what they are signing up for when we do almost nothing to teach them financial literacy. They also have very limited guidance on what the actual career prospects are within a given degree path and even what day to day workflow would be in their desired career. You can say we should push kids into those fields and I definitely agree in general more kids should be guided better including a much larger push for community college and trade schools, but hypothetically saying that doesn't make the kids who already were tricked into an overwhelming debt should be punished for 20 years or more. As someone who paid off all my loans and my wife's I have no issue with trying to address a major issue like this with a bandaid for now in forgiveness and then more long term plans to address this in the future but I doubt either say actually cares about the latter.
I will say as far as I've seen this forgiveness also didn't even address the more predatory lenders that gave our loans because they were not federal loans.
JJ Husker
Donor
Tricked?
Anybody that doesn’t understand what signing loan papers for thousands of dollars actually means, shouldn’t be going to college. If you want to blame that on their primary education failing them fine, fix that problem. But don’t punish the vast numbers who determined they couldn’t afford college, so they didn’t go, by taking their tax dollars and giving it to the financially irresponsible.
We and our kids paid back every dollar we borrowed for college. $0 forgiven. I used up a lot of home equity to achieve it. We and our kids knew exactly what we were signing up for and did what we expected and said we’d do with those signatures. I’m talking within the last 5 years. I’ll die on this hill.
Fix the cost of higher education.
Fix the system that turns out people that don’t understand what a loan is.
Fix the idea that an overpriced degree is mandatory.
Don’t transfer my money to the irresponsible.
And in fairness I will add. We would have accepted any forgiveness offered and were actually hoping to get in on it. Doesn’t make it right or good policy.
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Archy1221
Well-known member
Most of This is just silly.
For one thing, if 18 yards are not bright enough to understand that a loan needs paid back, why on an earth do you think they are smart enough to make life altering gender decisions? If you disagree, then tell me what age can an adult get approved for a federal loan of any type?
I do agree with you that personal finance should be a required class as a junior or senior and loans should be a chapter to study. I also believe that prior to taking out loans, a student needs to have 2 jobs in mind for after graduation and the average wage for a 25 yr old in that job should be on the paperwork along with the monthly payment of the accumulated loans for the student to initial. This stuff really isn’t complicated.
When I took my loans out, they were based on a 10 year repayment term so I’m not sure why everyone else is “stuck” in 20 year debt obligations. If it now is a thing, then said borrower needs to have in their paperwork to initial that they aren’t out of debt until age 42 so it’s crystal clear.
Im in favor of federal government paying if 1/2 of someone’s federal loans if they enter certain jobs in need, and spend a certain amount of years in that job and jobs are spelled out when loan forgiveness program is created (up to a maximum dollar amount). It would be crazy in my view to forgive $100,000 in student debt because someone stupidly decided to get teaching degree from Harvard instead of their local state university. So there needs to be caps.
JJ Husker
Donor
funhusker
Active member
I knew what I was getting into, I was almost 30 years old when I took my first teaching job. I intentionally applied for my first job because it qualified for this program (it was not a great school or location). My wife also worked at the hospital and unit she did to qualify for this program (again, not a job nurses usually sign up for). We were a little bit pissed when we found out our loan company didn't put the correct attachment on our files to make them eligible for this program, as were hundreds of thousands other people. There were lawsuits about dishonest lending and we would have been waiting much longer for a ruling if Biden hadn't just done the right thing that we all signed up for.
This is the type of crap that needs to be addressed. Banks and lenders don't make money by making it easy to pay money back...
This is the type of crap that needs to be addressed. Banks and lenders don't make money by making it easy to pay money back...