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She wasn't on PAYE or any of the other income based repayment plans. You have to be on such a plan for payments to count.

I didn't downvote but jeremyt's statement is without evidence. It's certainly plausible that the statement could be correct but there really isn't any evidence given to support it.

It should have but she wasn’t aware of the program until after we met. I researched her options and PSLF is the best one. She works at a Hospital and thus has qualifying employment.

PSLF only takes 10 years so if he could get onto that program he’d save himself a lot of money. PSLF forgiven debt is not taxable.

That is cool. If they can pull it off that’d be awesome. Thanks for the link.

My wife has $4000,000 med school loans. We are on PSLF and payments are 10% of (adjusted gross income minus 150% fed poverty line). She’s an attending now and we do everything we can to decrease our adjusted gross income. Our payments do not cover interest on the loans. The balance increases each month.

In 8 years, if everything goes according to plan, her loans will be forgiven and be near $600,000. It’d be a lot more cost effective for society to just offer free med school and lower doctors’ wages. But our society has opted for inefficiency. Her large doctor salary is necessary to pay for her schooling but when the loans are paid off her salary won’t decline.

I think AI flown drones is a much more realistic goal now than AI driven cars. It’d certainly make it cheaper and easier for Google and Apple to update maps. Is there anyone working in this space?

What’s interesting about this problem is that the average American is way better off now than in the past. We have access to things unimaginable to people a mere 100 yeas ago. We live longer and have way more material wealth. It shouldn’t matter that so few own so much more but it does. In some sense it’s an issue of psychology.

This is a nice article. I teach mathematics at a community college and the last section of article resonated with me. What can we do about education of mathematics to improve it?

Years ago it dawned on me that most of the students taking a class of mine needed the class so that they could take physics. It’s been a long time since I took physics and I don’t really know what math problems students in physics classes have. I went to the physics department and asked for a list of types of mathematical mistakes that are common. Give me the list and I’ll make sure I emphasize this in my classes. No response.

I’ve since learned that what my students really need to know to be successful in physics really isn’t covered in course that is a prerequisite. I’m not really sure why I teach the topics I’m required to cover. They mostly are to give my students enough knowledge to take calculus and almost none of them end up taking calculus. I think things are done the way they are because it’s always been done this way.

Change is slow and hard.

I'm not comparing the atrocities of the Nazis to sexual harassment. I don't understand how you can think that I was. I specifically wrote that the scenario that started this thread was hardly a controversial one. I then said a better scenario, that is, one that isn't so easy to know the answer to, would be Nazi medical experiments. Clearly, I'm not in any way comparing Nazi medical experiments to sexual harassment.

It’s an odd way of trying to make that point. Wouldn’t it be better to just directly say that? It doesn’t seem controversial. A better scenario to contemplate would be the Nazi medical experiments. Absolutely horrific in every way. Suppose they were beneficial to our understanding of some major disease. Should we use the results?

It depends on when in his life this hypothetical is supposed to have happened. Given the era he did his important work it’d have to be rape that he was accused of to have had a major impact on his employment as a professor. Sexual harassment was rampant back then. Fortunately times have changed.

What is the purpose of the question? Is there some broader point you are trying to make? The only thing that I can guess is that you are trying to point out that people can make great contributions to human knowledge and also be crappy people in certain respects. I don’t think anyone denies this as being true.

EDIT: If it happened at the beginning of his career then he possibly wouldn't have become a professor and thus not have made his discoveries. If it happened at the end of his career then the discoveries would have already been made and hence nothing lost.

I've not indicated a child-like belief in the invisible hand. Labor is a product. If the supply is constricted then the price for it ought to go up. Isn't this generally true? So much so that if it isn't the case in this situation then one ought to provide reasoning for this.

A claim was made that constricting immigration will not lead to increased wages. I think this is contrary to how it normally works and thus the person making that claim ought to show why it's true. Let's turn it around, why don't you show the reverse of what you ask me?

I'm not an economist. I merely asked a question and sought input as to why labor prices wouldn't increase. I think you are reading too much into what I wrote. I'm strongly in favor of immigration. I'm a union member and I think labor laws are far too lax in the U.S. I think immigration would not be an issue if we had strong labor laws that were enforced. But we don't have those laws and thus people blame immigration for their woes.

But whatever one believes with regard to immigration it's extremist to think that there are no negative consequences of immigration and it's extremist to think there are no positive consequences of immigration.

From [1]:

For some subperiods and groups, the effects are positive or zero, but the most common result is that a 1 percentage point increase in the fraction of the population that is foreign-born reduces wages from 1.0–1.6 percent.

It's worth pointing out that the paper mentions that calculating the true impact is hard and controversial so who knows if the above is correct?

[1] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257%2Fjep.9.2.23

There are low wage industries that overwhelmingly employ illegal immigrants and legal immigrants. Those industries would need to raise wages and improve working conditions if immigration were curtailed.

I’m not advocating a position on immigration itself. Just stating one possible consequence of curtailing immigration.

I looked at my bill. I pay $140 per month for cable and internet. Actual bill is $181. So more like 30%.

That may be a result of decreased immigration. I’m only pointing out that if illegal immigration were wiped out then wages would increase.

Shouldn’t the decrease in available labor as a result of decreased immigration lead to wage increases? Particularly for jobs that aren’t going to be shipped overseas (construction, manual labor..).

EDIT: I know the topic of immigration can evoke strong emotions. I’m just pointing out that a decrease in labor pool ought to increase wages. Isn’t this just law of supply/demand?

What Comcast doesn't mention is that when you get a TV bundle to save on internet costs the fees they tack on for TV increase the monthly bill by around 40% of the advertised rate. Bundling TV is actually more expensive when you look at the total bill but people buy according to the advertised rate vs. the actual bill.

It’s a very well written article and talks about an aspect of racial disparities that isn’t talked about much in the public sphere: culture. At some point negative aspects of poverty culture in general and black poverty culture specifically needs to addressed and talked about. The impediments caused by negative cultural aspects are real. With regard to education, the only real way to improve schools is to improve the culture toward learning.

Yes there is lots of room. There is plenty of food. But what kind of place will the planet be in 100 years on our current trajectory? Pollution is being done on a grand scale. Deforestation too. What good is it to have all that land when it's polluted? As the world gets richer and people consume more it seems clear to me that the present path is not sustainable.

In my short lifetime I've seen drastic changes. I've been to many countries and to many national parks. I've seen the degradation and I know it constitutes anecdotal evidence. In the 70s things were not so bad. Now, it's terrible. Trash a much more common sight in the ocean and in reefs. Micro plastics everywhere. Deforestation. We have room, we have food but soon we won't have a decent place to live in. It'll be too polluted

I'm not smart enough and don't have enough moral insight to be able to determine who should be gotten rid of as you put it. That's too great a power for me to responsibly wield. I don't think anyone should be gotten rid of. I think people should breed less. But even though I haven't enough insight to say how to get to the desired outcome, less people, I know that it's the outcome we need.

There is plenty of food being produced to feed everyone at present. The problem of starvation is one of distribution and not one of production.

It seems to me that overpopulation is presently a reality. As far as I can tell there are way too many humans given our level of consumption. At the rate we kill off other species, destroy ecosystems, pollute, and generally make large portions of the planet toxic I think it's clear there are too many people.

It's not the same thing as a false positive by an eye witness. Eye witness testimony is well known to be prone to false memories. Hence there needs to be corroborating evidence. I think people are too readily willing to accept a technological identification. I can see a claim being made that the computer is wrong only once in a billion cases without proper justification. There are people today who still think lie detectors are reliable.

I can see a time where the presumption of guilt is assumed simply because the technology says so. Clearly we are not there yet and possibly never will be. I hope that issues will be sorted out before the technology gains widespread use.

We could rely on the Supreme Court but I'm skeptical that they will put the public interest above the government's interests. I think a new Bill of Rights will be needed if there is sufficient outcry over abuses.

At some point in time we Americans are going to have to come to grips with the computational abilities of the state. There are way too few safeguards in the system and the Bill of Rights does not seem to be adequate in dealing with the new reality that private companies can acquire a vast amount of information on us and thereby sell it to law enforcement. Law enforcement can use privately obtained information without a search warrant [1].

What happens with false positives? What's the recourse? This very real, pernicious circumstance is rarely well thought out in advance. The no-fly list is a great example of what happens when there are not sufficient safeguards in the system.

The reality of the computational state is not going to go away. As technology progresses the informational capacity of the state increases. Are we prepared for this? At present I think not. See the reaction to the NSA warrantless surveillance of phone calls. Our leaders for the most part decried the leaking of the surveillance rather than the act of the surveillance.

[1] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/searches-private-cit...

If the time spent on troubleshooting cuts into the number of billable hours then one should factor in the wage for those billable hours. If it doesn’t subtract from the number of billable hours then the wage of a billable hour doesn’t factor in.

Where you mention cutting into personal time with family is precisely what I mentioned when I said the opportunity costs aren’t monetary when at full employment. If that non monetary opportunity cost is too high then one should rent the modem.

The problem with the calculation you made is that he is not making $50 per hour every hour of the day. If a person is at full employment, that is they can’t or won’t work more hours, then the calculation changes. The opportunity cost of dealing with tech support is no longer monetary and the cost of equipment rental is no longer negligible.

They charge a fee for using their modem.

I claim it’s extreme and unreasonable because it’s outside of the view most people have on the issue. Most people do not see unions co-opting the normal political process. Most people don’t think being a public employee ought to mean giving up rights. The exceptions I mentioned are exceptions in current law, not necessarily exceptions that I support. The law has inconsistencies in it. In the comments one lawyer mentioned that the government can’t censor and this is of course not true. CIA employees have limits on their free speech rights for instance.

He is free to believe this. He is free to advocate that his state become a so called right to work state. It’s not the place of the Supreme Court to play the role of the legislature. Janus’ claims to having his free speech impinged are ridiculous. He can’t point to an aspect of free speech that he can’t now do but could if he didn’t help pay for his collectively bargained contract. His claims in this regard are ridiculous.

He’s already entitled to a refund of the portion of union dues (if he decided to join it) that go to political activities. This is the Beck decision in the late 80s.