newbamboo (u/newbamboo)

newbamboo commented on 65k fake students enrolled in the California junior college system openthebooks.substack.com... · Posted by u/SQL2219

mdavis6890 · 4 years ago

+1 Million on this!

Our efforts to avoid accidentally helping a rich person via means testing cause for more damage to our ability to help poor and middle class people.

Just give everybody the same amount of cash and leave it at that! There are few enough rich people (almost by definition) that it won't save much to exclude them.

newbamboo · 4 years ago

I feel like the public, even in may 2022, just can’t grasp the basic concept of inflation. A better way than dropping cash out of helicopters, or mailing checks, is to give people tax money back in the form of a standard deduction. It’s almost like people have thought about this stuff already.

newbamboo commented on 65k fake students enrolled in the California junior college system openthebooks.substack.com... · Posted by u/SQL2219

adam_arthur · 4 years ago

A bunch of The Bachelor contestants were also caught taking borderline fraudulent PPP loans.

https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachel...

These covid programs were certainly a massive handout to the unscrupulous. I feel sorry for those who worked hard and lived frugally, just to get steamrolled by the government money printer.

And look how reluctant the Fed and Fiscal were to reign in any of the madness. 0 moves until 8% CPI. Can't have housing appreciate at 10% instead of 20%, or stocks at 10 instead of 30 now, can we?

Never seen a class of people so eager to take wealth/future prosperity from their children

newbamboo · 4 years ago

“class of people so eager to take wealth/future prosperity from their children”

Agreed. Very Ugolino.

newbamboo commented on 65k fake students enrolled in the California junior college system openthebooks.substack.com... · Posted by u/SQL2219

Sniffnoy · 4 years ago

Benefits fraud and means testing are two separate concerns. Whether verification is performed is independent of whether the aid is restricted based on one's means. Verification needs to be performed, you're certainly correct about that, that much is clear; but that's a separate issue from means testing.

newbamboo · 4 years ago

Not really no.

newbamboo commented on 65k fake students enrolled in the California junior college system openthebooks.substack.com... · Posted by u/SQL2219

throwaway0a5e · 4 years ago

Maybe going all the way to legally accountable is a bit much but the incentive not to waste other people's money is too damn low these days. You see it in every context and it's so frustrating.

newbamboo · 4 years ago

Why would it be a bit much?

Banks can’t give out fake loans. They try to all the time and are rightfully regulated/fined/charged when they do.

Banks giving out bad loans caused the 2008 collapse. Student loans will one day cause a similar problem but it won’t be big banks going bankrupt, it will be us. Hearing that 20% are obvious fraud doesn’t even surprise anyone. Imagine a bank saying 20% of their loans are fraud but it’s “not their job” to check that loans are given to anonymous recipients who don’t bother to provide even a fake name!

It’s a crime. Like the banks, the people at the top are aware but profit off doing nothing. That they work for the taxpayers just makes it that much more criminal, not less!

newbamboo commented on 65k fake students enrolled in the California junior college system openthebooks.substack.com... · Posted by u/SQL2219

fortran77 · 4 years ago

But the colleges get "free money," too, for every fake student. So nobody wants to stop it.

> But Rich believes that these colleges do fear enrollment drops if they remove the fake accounts.

> At her college, the institution is considered a medium college — more than 10,000 students but less than 20,000 — but if it loses students, it will be considered a small college — less than 10,000 students — and lose funding down the road, the interim VP of academic affairs recently told instructors and administrators.

We need to change the laws to give any taxpayer standing to sue when they see taxpayer money being misappropriated.

newbamboo · 4 years ago

Exactly the same incentives problem with EDD. The more fraud, the larger their budget gets and so there is only one metric they care about; increasing the total number of recipients. Similar issue with fake user counts in the tech world. User count = money.

Unfortunately the dominant party also benefits from all of this fraud, so it is ultimately a political problem. Until there is viable outside political competition, there will continue to be zero accountability and wide scale fraud and corruption. User count = money = political power/voters. Mainstream candidates are owned, and so the only solution involves draining the swamp so to speak and it’s pretty clear at this point, the swamp usually wins.

newbamboo commented on 65k fake students enrolled in the California junior college system openthebooks.substack.com... · Posted by u/SQL2219

newbamboo · 4 years ago

“The financial aid administrators at Pierce College say it’s not their job”

Make them legally accountable.

Banks can’t assist fraudsters and then say “not my job.” The administrators should be jailed or lending to colleges with this problem should stop.

newbamboo commented on Why do you waste so much time on the internet? zan.bearblog.dev/why-i-wa... · Posted by u/memorable

scruple · 4 years ago

> Do lots of other folks experience this?

I don't think we're alone but I doubt that we're "normal."

newbamboo · 4 years ago

I’m normal.

newbamboo commented on Homes in 97% of U.S. cities are overvalued, Moody's says cbsnews.com/news/home-pri... · Posted by u/lxm

ehnto · 4 years ago

The saying used to be that many think they are Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires, but I think at this point it's fair to say that many people think they are middle class when in fact, the middle class has been swept from underneath them and they are now more or less comfortably-poor. Public services, housing affordability, food availability, product quality, fair pay and benefits. Previously middle class people are struggling to mesh it all together into a middle-class life, the money isn't there and the availability and quality of products and services isn't there either.

I think that in order to protect it's ability to offer a first world living by it's communities, the US needs to fatten up it's middle class with better wages. There could be a number of ways to do that, but the basic goal is to get more money into the hands of the average American so they can spend it in the community and make the whole country better.

newbamboo · 4 years ago

You should read about inflation. Efforts to fatten up the middle class with free giveaways to certain voting blocks has and will continue to spur inflation and make those same voters ever less wealthy. But voters are myopic, so they’ll vote for free money every time. Eventually you get Venezuela.

A better way would be to protect people by not making policy decisions that reward bad behavior and punish those who avoid debt and save. Rewarding terrible behavior may get you elected but it’s bad for society. Like giving candy to pacify a cranky baby.

But such opinions have become verboten now, and actually censored.

newbamboo commented on Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers? · Posted by u/tejinderss

newbamboo · 4 years ago

Another manifestation of problems in higher education. It’s not just software.

If you read up on the sociology of professional specialization you’ll learn that most technical complexity in a field is there for competitive purposes. Jargon exists more exclude and obscure than to facilitate.

So one predicts less productivity as competition increases lead to complexification of professions. This is all because higher education is broken. One of the functions of higher education, perhaps it’s most important function, is allocating human capital efficiently. It’s fully derelict in this, preferring instead to sell credentials to labor that labor doesn’t need, at the expense of the debt holders and students, to the delight of corporations. The result is zero productivity going back to the early 70’s.

newbamboo commented on Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning” statmodeling.stat.columbi... · Posted by u/luu

jjeaff · 4 years ago

Is this just your feeling, that western countries have just as many parasites as developing countries?

That makes me think you don't have much experience in developing nations. Sanitation is a serious problem in large parts of the 3rd world. Availability of clean water is a problem. Sewage capture and treatment is a big problem. These are not big problems in most of the western world.

I'm sure there are studies finding that most people regardless of where they live have some parasites. But the question is whether you have large amounts of the kind of parasites that make you sick and more specifically, the kinds of parasites that can be treated with ivermectin.

newbamboo · 4 years ago

“the question is whether you have large amounts of the kind of parasites that make you sick and more specifically, the kinds of parasites that can be treated with ivermectin.”

It would be a useful study, to the extent Covid remains a concern for public health agencies. If you are familiar with poverty in America, you wouldn’t think sanitation and parasites aren’t issues here. They just aren’t as common.