Comment by covidthrow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by covidthrow | Hacker News Reader

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> So over 50% of college-educated adults still have student loan debt.

How much? What's the percentile breakdown? How does it impact their monthly income? What's their economic potential without the degree? Are you suggesting it's higher if most just hadn't gotten a degree? How many choose economically unviable degrees? Who made them do that?

You're simplifying a complex issue—and inferring a problem—without demonstrating the problem. The fact that 50% of college educated adults have student loan debt tells me absolutely nothing of substance.

I don't understand how you can make a judgement in any regard without that information.

> 0.35% of adults file for medical bankruptcy alone every year.

There's no such thing as "medical bankruptcy", so I assume you mean "bankruptcy caused by medical bills". For how many of these people is the medical bill the sole cause? A major cause? One of many causes?

Again, without identifying this in a more granular way, you're asserting some undefined "problem" which means there's no equitable mechanism to rectify that problem.

> Maternal leave is by law unpaid, and few companies offer paid leave and paternal leave is virtually unheard of outside of extremely progressive companies.

Here again stating a condition, but not identifying the problem. To what end? What's the cost to the family? To the mother? To the child? The social cost?

I can't help but feel you're just regurgitating political talking points which, frankly, aren't designed to solve problems. They're designed to emotionally hook with a voter base and ultimately get the person elected, or the newspaper sold, or whatever self-serving reason someone in power would actively choose to be so vague as to not even concretely identify a problem. It's just the notion of a problem.

I'm not saying there's no problems. I'm just saying you spent a lot of words trying to counter the parent post, but didn't say much at all. I'd like to learn more about this, but I can't find much online, and unfortunately your post wasn't very helpful.

Do you know more than you said and you're just holding it close to your chest for the sake of brevity?

> How much? What's the percentile breakdown? How does it impact their monthly income? What's their economic potential without the degree? Are you suggesting it's higher if most just hadn't gotten a degree? How many choose economically unviable degrees? Who made them do that?

With all due respect, this all falls under rationalization of "well this is just the way things are".

Literally 100% of your statement would apply if were in an alternate reality where children took out student loans for children in K-12. "How does it impact their monthly income? What's their economic potential without kindergarten?"

It's garbage, and much of the rest of the developed world has figured out how to provide higher education to their population for a fraction of the cost that we do—or even free—in the same way we figured out how to provide K-12 to every child without inflicting thirty years of debt on them.

> There's no such thing as "medical bankruptcy", so I assume you mean "bankruptcy caused by medical bills". For how many of these people is the medical bill the sole cause? A major cause? One of many causes?

I assume you're picking nits over semantics because there's no disagreeing with the fact that over one million Americans file for bankruptcy due to unpaid medical bills every year.

You know well the argument that was being made, but you decided to ignore the wider point to quibble pointlessly over semantics. Why?

> With all due respect, this all falls under rationalization of "well this is just the way things are".

I'm not suggesting "this is just the way things are." I'm saying that you haven't even identified "the way things are", and yet you're using vague insinuations to demonstrate judgement.

I do not suggest that one must be 100% precise or granular to do so. That would be a rationalization for "this is just the way things are". I do, however, suggest a more nuanced expression before labeling something as "good" or "bad".

> I assume you're picking nits over semantics because there's no disagreeing with the fact that over one million Americans file for bankruptcy due to unpaid medical bills every year.

> You know well the argument that was being made, but you decided to ignore the wider point to quibble pointlessly over semantics. Why?

I'm picking nits because the absence of precision leads to incorrect assessment and incorrect solution.

No, I do not dispute that there are one million bankruptcies filed in a year. I don't know how precise it is or how many are influenced by medical expenses, but I'm taking you at your word that you're making a truthful statement.

But I do assert that "one million bankruptcies" is an effectively meaningless statement without knowing more. For example, let's say you have no previous knowledge of the following:

"90% of residents in Oak Parks Village die within the first 5 years of their residency."

Assuming zero further knowledge, one could infer many things:

- Oak Parks Village is dangerous

- residents are unhealthy

- Oak Parks Village makes its residents unhealthy

- residents have a death wish

If we're stuck with no granularity, one could imagine that it's "a hell hole" or "a sanctuary" or any number of things. Solutions could be to eliminate Oak Parks Village, deter people from residing there, and so on.

To act or judge based on these assumptions is wrong. Why? Because Oak Parks Village is a nursing home that admits elderly patients, 80% of whom have terminal pre-existing conditions.

One doesn't necessarily need the granularity of the exact demographic of the facility, or where exactly it's located, or a whole bunch of other things in order to make a judgement. But some features of it are crucial to understand before one can understand Oak Parks Village or what, if anything, should be done about it.

If one, knowing this information, would like to extend lives, one could try to understand the medical conditions that lead to the greatest number of deaths and possibly address it. But without identifying relevant features—even if with broad strokes—any assessment or action would be irresponsible.

The statement "one million bankruptcies are filed due to unpaid medical bills every year" is almost as meaningless as just knowing that Oak Parks Village exists. Is the problem lack of insurance? Is it low wages? Price gouging? Lack of choice? What is the outcome for these people? What other factors contribute?

I'm not being pedantic. You're being general. Way too general to make an assessment or imply its contribution to the question seeking relevance to a problem.

One doesn't have to be without action in the absence of perfect information. But it is hugely irresponsible to communicate a problem when one cannot even identify the problem, just a symptom of something.

So no, I didn't ignore the wider point. I challenge that your wider point doesn't address the question of the parent comment because you're using side effects to insinuate a problem that you don't identify but presume to be understood.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with programming, but if you are, and someone files a bug "one million people file bankruptcy for medical expenses", would you be able to address it with no further information? What would be the changes to the "code" that you make? If you can't identify concrete changes, then you haven't identified the problem.

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