Germany just eliminated tuition, while Americans are drowning in $1.2 trillion student loan debt. by - Democrats Ramshield 264 Comments / 264 New Written by an American MBA expat living in Germany. Germany has just joined other nations of the Continental European Union to eliminate all university tuition, as a human right. This comes in addition to the fact that all countries in the European Union as a human right have some type of medical access for all of its citizens, yet on these benchmarks the neo feudalist United States continues to lag far behind in creating a separate and unequal state mired in a wage slave economy emanating out of a history of chattel slavery of which the $1.2 trillion dollar student loan debt slavery economy has become an intricate mechanism to keep the American working class impoverished in neo feudalist America, along with the concurrent effects of medical bankruptcy, (which accounts for most bankruptcies) and underwater mortgages in which there is no bailout in sight in an economy and state where only Wall Street banksters received bailouts, because as they own almost everything in the economy they are considered to be too big to fail by the best government money could buy through the power of its K Street lobbyists. Imagine as the American federal government doesnt honestly give a big enough rats ass about you or your kids to offer you a tuition free university education(in a government for and by the 1%), but the German government does care enough about your family as a human right to give you a free university education, even if youve never been to Germany and never paid any taxes to the German government, all you got to do is come to Germany. Oh by the way, you also get access for yourself and your family members to a student health medical plan which has no deductibles, and doesnt have pre-existing conditions restrictions, and that is the difference between a government working for working class people, as opposed to the best government money can buy, who works overwhelmingly for the 1%. Did you know that Germany just stopped charging college tuition as a human right to education? Think Progress: Prospective students in the United States who can’t afford to pay for college or don’t want to rack up tens of thousands in student debt should try their luck in Germany. Higher education is now free throughout the country, even for international students. Yesterday, Lower Saxony became the last of seven German states to abolish tuition fees, which were already extremely low compared to those paid in the United States. thinkprogress.org/... Spiegel Quote:America Must Learn from Germany -- Before It Is Too Late We Need To Learn from Germany: HowToBasic the German Economy Became a Model By Thomas Schulz in New York It wasnt so long ago that many viewed Germanys economic model as outdated and the country as the sick man of Europe. These days, however, even the Americans have come to praise parts of it, though they still doubt whether they would be able -- or willing -- to adopt it wholesale. spiegel.de/... Spiegel US newsweekly Time writes that the wide range of German economic and social reforms have been farsighted and that German firms, together with those reforms, have forged the most competitive industrial sector of any advanced economy. The New York Times, meanwhile, says that: The German economy has been one of the wonders of the world over the last couple of years. spiegel.de/... As an American expat living in the European Union the fact that all workers throughout the EU are medically insured as are their families from cradle to grave as a human right and they enjoy benefits such as a child maintenance allowance, paid sick leave, paid maternity leave and paid annual leave by right of law is something that most American workers are blissfully kept ignorant of by the American owned plutocrat media, even in an election year. Because Americas top 1% wealth holders and their surrogates are getting disgustingly richer, and as such they have no desire to learn from the economic success of the European Union, and most saliently the success of the top economies in Europe of Britain, France and Germany. As such the German mainstream magazine Der Spiegel wrote a blistering article, which excoriates Americas neo feudalist ruling elites unwillingness to acknowledge and learn from the recent German economic miracle, where in Germany has risen to the third largest exporting nation in the world, which instead of having a trade deficit as is the case in America, they have a trade surplus, wherein they grow manufacturing jobs. As such as a business librarian, this diary provides a review of the aforementioned Spiegel article. Has the States become an neo feudalist oligarchy? For anyone not familiar with the English language edition of the award winning German magazine Der Spiegel, it is the equivalent of TIME magazine in the United States. The German magazine Der Spiegel is no johnny come lately in its investigative journalism of inequality and the wholesale evisceration of the American working class by the 1%. They have been publishing about this since the 2008 crash wherein as far back as 2011, they openly asked if the United States of America has become an oligarchy. Well, Mr and Mrs Progressive America please tell us, has the United States become an oligarchy, wherein the American government works overwhelmingly along with their militarized police forces to benefit the 1% instead of the 99% of working class America? Spiegle quote:THE SECOND GILDED AGE: HAS AMERICA BECOME AN OLIGARCHY? spiegel.de/... Yes weve all recently heard about Germany winning the World Cup in soccer in Brazil which is arguably the heart of the worlds soccer culture. Of course weve all heard about the fact that Germany has become the worlds second largest exporting nation (as part of the European Union) where Germany is now rated as the richest country in the European Union. The EUs population which is greater than that of the United States and whose currency the Euro rivals the power of the US dollar. Of course weve all heard about the NSA spying scandal wherein the NSA is alleged to have spied on the phones of millions of Germans, to include even the private cell phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel whom Forbes magazine has rated as being the most powerful woman in the world. On the back of that litany coming out of Germany, is that Germany has recently set a world record in solar powered green energy generation, and also that Germany has just done away with all university tuition nationwide which is now taking center stage in world headlines. The question is how is a country of 83 million people with little or no natural resources continuing to lead the world and earn its way into world headlines, again and again. What can we as Americans learn from the German model, along with the other more socialized models of the great social democracies of Western Europe, because lets face it...American capitalism is failing the American working class by all international statistical modeling. If we look at the Gini co-efficient in the map below we see that the United States in terms of income inequality has fallen behind every major industrialized country in Western Europe. As a particular badge of shame we incarcerate more people per 100,000 than anyone else in the world, wherein clearly it seems America is going backwards. The question is why and who exactly is profiting from our backwardness? So all the people after graduating who cant get a job wind up moving into their parents basements, where fully a third of those homes are in underwater mortgages, so these people are living in the basement of their parents underwater houses being quietly drowned in $1.2 trillion dollars of student loan debt, as part of the corporatist student loan debt slavery economy, because clearly people who are distressed under no benefit, low wage slavery, further distressed by student loan debt cant assert themselves in the way their Western European counterparts have and this has led to the United States having a lower Gini co-efficient than essentially all of the Western European countries, as part of the European Union, as demonstrated by the map below, which has become not only an international badge of shame, but is making America an international laughing stock of inequality. The Case of Student Loan Slavery in 2014 neo-feudalist America What! What you say you didnt know that. You say you dont care because... you dont believe in socialism as a good Fox News watcher. Well, did you know that since 1985 college tuition in America is up 544%. Ah, so you dont care about that either because you dont think it affects you and therefore you candidly dont give a rats ass. Did you know that in America (as were always proud of being number one) that with 1.2 trillion dollars outstanding in student loan debt slavery, were number one in student loan debt slavery in the world, but I am going to guess you dont care about that either because you think thats not going to affect you and you only care about what affects you and not others, because youre axiomatically speaking a capitalist pig and we all know pigs proudly have no shame in a system designed to give more to those who already have more, at the expense of those who have less or fully in the case of over half of all Americans who have nothing at all, that is to say zero net assets. Doesnt this give new meaning to the old turn of phrase only in America, in a clear case where every country in Western Europe have universal medical access as a human right, and they usually spend about 9% of GNP, whereas we spend about 16% of GNP. They cover 100% of their population and we dont cover 40 million people and dont live as long as they do. So what kind of an outcome is that? Also did you know the United States is the only major industrialized country in the world that doesnt have job protected paid maternity leave by right of law? Why wont the plutocrat corporatist American media tell you that, whereas this blog just did, and who does that benefit? Does it benefit you? If not you, then who? Well, heres something that will affect you. When all of these people are in student loan debt slavery to the tune of $1.2 trillion, it starts to retard the American (GDP) 17.3 trillion dollar economy as a whole. Everything, from new car sales, to new home sales, to peoples ability to save for retirement by buying mutual funds through 401ks, etc. Yes, this also affects interest rates. So unless youre out living in a cave somewhere this is going to affect you. In fact it already has and if you werent quite so ignorant and misinformed by listening to one too many infotainment programs from Fox News, you would already know that. Then again, studies have shown Fox News watchers know less than people who dont watch any news at all which begs to ask the question, what or who are the Fox News anchors appealing to? (If a picture speaks a thousand words, what is the photo cube below telling us about the true face of diversity at Fox News? Hmm.) NEW YORK (CNNMoney) Rosemary Anderson, 57, is on the hook for $152,000 in student loans she took out 20 years ago. The divorced mother of two grown daughters represents a growing number of older Americans with student debt. The 50-and-over crowd makes up 17% of $1.2 trillion in outstanding student loan debt -- a 30% increase since 2005, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. ------------------------------------ Now lets be honest the German mainstream magazine Der Spiegel recently pointed out that Ferguson, MO has a history of slavery which I reviewed in a recent article, which thanks to the generosity of the Kos community was voted #1 on Jotters list for September 17th. I would also hasten to point out that given Americas history of chattel slavery as a continuing blight of our history, which weve never dealt with in the same way that Germany has dealt with its blight on history, which is Germany has paid reparations and is continuing to pay for reparations to this day because Germany has taken responsibility for its past actions. Therefore they are able to move on, whereas we in America to date have never confronted our history of slavery in terms of offering reparations to redress past wrongs of chattel slavery. Until we do, the mentality which allows for the low wage slave economy as an outgrowth of the history of chattel slavery of how America treats its poor and working class will never change. Lets face it, student loan debt enslavement is an important part of the American wage slave economy in neo-feudalist America, because when you have young people and some older workers stuck hopelessly in permanent student loan debt you have a compliant wage slave work force because they really need that job. Therefore politically theyre going to be too afraid and demoralized and too atomized to push for the kind of reforms that we see in the countries of the European Union in general, (Germany in particular where theres no university tuition as education is believed to be a human right). As a persons future shouldnt depend on the family that they were by luck born into, being able to afford to pay for their education without causing that person to fall into permanent student loan debt slavery. This is the sad truth about whats happened in America in terms of its neo-feudalist student loan debt slavery market, now valued at 1.2 trillion dollars as part of the overall wage slave economy of ever lower wages and little or no benefits in pushed to the wall America, where you have people literally working themselves to death, as was recently the case with 32 year old Maria Fernandes. Maria worked 3 jobs and fell asleep in a parking lot with her car running in-between jobs and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The only people who are really talking about this issue seriously are people like Noam Chomsky and Andrea Tosi founder of the Swiss based RePeace group, who seriously talk about to what extent our elected politicians have betrayed the American working class dream in favor of the 1% of the richest Americans. These types of tragedies in the American wage slave economy are the types of tragedies that are the mark of a pariah state built on slavery in a history of chattel slavery turned contemporary wage slave state, where we put people on a trend mill to nowhere, because no matter how hard they run for the carrot they can never reach it and never get ahead, further exacerbated by their student loan enslavement as well. That means for most Americans today they can never afford to retire either because this is the ugly truth, when the burden in terms of the assumption of risk moved from companies that we work for, who provided a retirement and a gold watch at the end of your working life, to secure our retirement, to the individual IRA or 401k plan, the individual worker took on the assumption of risk, that we MBAs refer to it as, became staggering and indeed untenable. What that means is Corporate America just got a whole lot richer than working class America in cost shifting of your retirement burden which just got YOU a whole lot poorer. So in Germany where they have a secure state pension system funded by the tax payer, workers are protected from being ripped off by Wall Street in the way that American workers arent protected as in evidence by the 2008 Wall Street crash. Afterwards the Federal Government bailed out the Wall Street banksters! Well how about bailing out working class Americans by ending tuition in America today for everyone, as a human right. How about bailing out Main Street America from its 1.2 trillion dollar burden of student loan debt, because of all this crap about lowering interest rates doesnt stop student loan debt slavery, which is untenable and has become so onerous that it has now threatened the growth of the entire economy. In other words the 1.2 trillion dollar student loan debt has become too large not to fail. But as the federal government works for the 1% of the richest Americans and not the 99% of working Americans, there is therefore no $1.2 trillion student loan bailout in the offering for working class America from the best government that money can buy. Nor is there any offering to end tuition in America anywhere on the horizon. Zbylut, an accountant-turned-attorney in Glendale, Calif. Hes been chipping away at nearly $160,000 in student debt since graduating in 2005 from law school at Loyola University in Chicago. Now 48, the tax attorney estimates he could have $150,000 to $200,000 in a 401(k) had the money hes paid toward loans gone there. Im sitting here in traffic. Ive got a Mercedes behind me and an Audi in front of me and Im thinking, What did they do that I didnt do? Zbylut said by cellphone from his Chevrolet. Hes been turned down twice for the type of mortgage he needs to buy a home big enough for himself, the fiancee he would have married already if not for his debts and her 10-year-old son. I have more education and more degrees than my father, as does she than her parents, and yet our parents are better off than we are. Whats wrong with this picture? he said. bigstory.ap.org/... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What is wrong with this picture is he and his family have been betrayed by the best Government money can buy. You may ask is it that simple? The short answer is yes! The working class social compact has been broken in neo feudalist America. Now you might think with all of its accomplishments that Germany would be the happiest place on earth, it would seem that the people of Denmark under the Scandinavian system have that title instead. What do you think? Are they right? Oh yes, they also have no university tuition there either. Maybe its time that we eliminated tuition in America as well as a human right. What do you think? Please give us your comments below. Also German non university blue collar vocational apprenticeship programs are second to none in the world, where apprenticeships are virtually speaking free of charge. In fact apprentices are paid modest salaries while training. Now that Unions in America have been eviscerated there are very few apprenticeship training programs in the U.S. dailykos/story/2014/10/03/1334013/-Germany-just-eliminated-tuition-while-Americans-are-drowning-in-1-2-trillion-student-loan-debt#
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 07:15:12 +0000
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