Been following ATS for years, finally decided to join.

Hi everybody, I am a noob who has been visiting the ATS site multiple times a week for the past few years. Today I decided to join after seeing that the one guy running for potus 2012 that I may actually support seems to think that I should not be in college. What brings me to feel this way is that after seeing Dr. Paul's short interview on CNN today I felt it appropriate to further research his stance on federal student loans. While I can sort of see why Ron Paul wants to drop these loans, I cannot see how doing so would help young Americans anymore than the debt they bring will hurt us. With that being said allow me to offer a proper introduction of myself and then explain why I feel the way I do about Dr. Paul's position on federal student loans.

First of all I am not an average American. Many "average Americans" would consider me to be unimportant. I am a 23 year old who was born into poverty and has never seen a lifestyle beyond it. My parents are both uneducated, by that I mean my mother is a high school dropout and my father is practically illiterate, I don't even think either of their parents had a proper high school education and I know for a fact that both of my mother's parents never seen high school. This of course means that the best job my parents would have would pay minimum wage which means not only they, but also any children they would have would have to live in poverty.

As a child I had no control of the kind of lifestyle I was given. In elementary school I had no friends because I was from a rather white trash family. Let me tell you nobody hated my lifestyle more than I did. The funny thing is that I was always the most intelligent child in the classroom. Teachers wanted me to move up a grade level but my parents would not allow it. I would get beat up by other children and come home and have my dad "put a bot in my ass" for getting into a fight at school. Eventually this best in the class style I had going would begin to crumble. I just didn't give a damn anymore. In my opinion it is sad that a child in the 5th grade could actually hold that kind of an opinion on life, but I did at the time.

Over the summer my parents would split and my mother took my brothers and I to live with her parents in a different city. I went through a major growth spurt between the 5th and 6th grades so bullying would no longer be an issue in my life, I wasn't afraid to fight back. I convinced my mother that we should not live with my grandparents who had three of my uncles living with them as well, so she got us into project housing. Before this I had lived in a crappy trailer park and my father would not allow me to go outside or communicate with others my age. So now I had what some might call freedom, my mother certainly didn't care what I did. This meant that I would make friends.

I was a white kid in the projects so the only people at school who would accept me were other poor students. If you lived in trailer parks or projects in middle school, you would be considered a nobody by most other middle school students who had the luxury of having parents that could provide them with a middle class lifestyle. So in such a situation you would have a few choices, you could be the loner who has no friends or you could hang with the kids who always get into trouble because most poor kids seem to always be getting into trouble, most of the time this is because their parents get into a lot of trouble with the law. I wanted friends.

As a young teen i knew some people who sold drugs, which offered a much better living than the 40 hours a week at McDonald's, much better. Most "good" drug dealers that I've known actually held steady full time jobs, those jobs just didn't pay jack. Selling drugs was kind of a second job, but that second job paid well compared to the other options.

Neither of my parents sold drugs. My mother had a full time job at a factory which paid her minimum age. She wasn't mentally capable of raising children in my opinion but she would give my brothers and I whatever money she would have left. Working full time for next to nothing and having 3 children dependents meant that she would at least get a nice tax return every year. Now at 15k a year with around 4k tax return that still falls under the poverty line and even if used for what I believe it is intended for, saving to pay the bills, you still cannot live happily on that kind of money in this country. Please do not argue that one can live well with such money until you can actually prove to me that you have done so. Anyway to my point, I used this money she gave to me on drugs that I would flop. Eventually I was making more money than my mother and selling weed and pills to those middle class students in school that were so much better than me. All the while I still had As in school, until I decided that drugs was a better living than any minimum wage craptastic job I would get after school so why not just drop out and get a GED.

Yes I admit I fell into what I was surrounded by as a teenager who was raised in poverty. I made that mistake as a teenager, they tend to make mistakes. I make no excuses for the mistakes I made as a teen, nobody forced me to make them, I did so of my own accord. However, I did grow up. I was 17 when I came to the realization that I was living life the wrong way and needed to change. As a lower class teen with more cash on hand than most others I was fairly popular to the others in my category, I got around. But eventually I found a girl who I knew I actually cared about, she was actually from a very different lifestyle than myself, while she was also poor and from a single mother household. So after knowing her for a while I eventually asked her out, she was the only girl I think I ever asked out, girls always asked me out. After dating for a while I proposed, I was 17. This is more or less when I knew I had to grow up.

Soon she ended up pregnant, advise for the young, protection doesn't always work. She went through her last year of high school pregnant and graduated. She didn't use pregnancy as an excuse to quit school as many do. We were both looking for a job and weren't finding anything. Eventually she got on at McDonald's and worked there for 2 years, earning some promotions, I still couldn't find anything that would work for us with no car. We couldn't afford a car with her job, and we lived in a very crappy apartment. She was taking a birth control shot so that we wouldn't have another child until we could afford it, unfortunately the meds she had to take when she got the flu counteracted the birth control and we had another child on the way.

We did our research and realized that we could actually go to school if we used federal loans. The only reason we hadn't went earlier was because of horror stories from her mother about private loans and her experiences. We didn't know much about the federal loans. We decided that this would work for us because no co signer was needed and it would not be based on our credit which we had none of at the moment. Now at this point in time we are both in college at ETSU, she has a 3.8 and I have a 3.6. If it were not for federal loans we would have no chance of getting out of poverty and many like ourselves who are very capable of success would not have the opportunity of providing a good life for themselves and their children simply because they were unfortunate enough to be born into poverty.

Concern understood.. however, consider that the federal student loan program is a significant part of the reason for high tuition costs these days. When the government guarantees pay, the colleges know they can charge whatever they want. So take away the government guarantee of free money, and you'll see the tuition costs go down. Also, remember that an end to FEDERAL student loans does not mean an end to student loans all together. As is the answer to most of Ron Paul's criticisms to federal bureaucratic intervention, the private sector would step up. Rest assured, there would still be student loans to be had, they just wouldn't be artificially manipulated by the government.

Now I'll read the rest of your post.. welcome to ATS, always glad to have another critical thinker aboard

reply to post by bacci0909


My fear is that those other loans will be all but impossible for those less fortunate to get. I'm not 100% sure about this but I think that the whole reason for the federal loans to come along in the first place was because many did not qualify for a private loan. I truly fear that if we had a sudden departure of the federal loan option many young people would be left with only one option, that being to work in the fast food industry. At this point in time many parents are actually taking those jobs, so they young will be competing with their parents for a job that has no room for advancement. Today in the U.S. more and more jobs are requiring a college education. I feel like it would be wiser to solve the job problem in this country before forcing young Americans such as myself who are the future of this country to be less qualified for those jobs that are already hard enough to get. This would hopefully not apply to me anyway because I am a current college student, and if it did I suppose I would be a forced dropout who would never be able to pay those loans back.

We are Rigel4...................................
You can't see the eyes of the demon until him come callin.

reply to post by doomedtoday

Don't sling dope. Don't take that enormous debt plunge known as a house. Be happy you're indoors. Welcome to ATS: the real school. Well debunk everything you ever learned. You're already way ahead of most.

I too just signed up today (10/29/2011) after having been a ATS follower for some years. Welcome!

I joined because of a particular story I have which I will save for later, but it's definitely one for the Grey Area. I'll save it for there, but happily this can become one of my 20 posts to allow new threads.

A small bit about myself:

I'm a 24 year old who is engaged and lives in Chicago. I have practiced Zen for several years now, I am a musician (primarily guitar/vocals) I am a tattoo artist as well, trained at Ink Dimensions Tattoo in Pigeon Forge, TN.

I have a very wide view on issues from ELEs, UFOs, ETs, NEOs, the NWO, etc etc. I have spent years immersed in research about all this stuff, while trying to keep balanced in my viewpoint. These topicss naturally frighten us, infuriate us, paralyze us and motivate us. However, they also enlighten us, being the truth (in in some cases.)

I just appreciate the forum, as a general concept, and ATS as well. There is a very great collection of discussion, demonstration, and evidence here.

I have much to contribute, and much more to learn.

Originally posted by Aqualung2012
I too just signed up today (10/29/2011) after having been a ATS follower for some years. Welcome!

I joined because of a particular story I have which I will save for later, but it's definitely one for the Grey Area. I'll save it for there, but happily this can become one of my 20 posts to allow new threads.

A small bit about myself:

I'm a 24 year old who is engaged and lives in Chicago. I have practiced Zen for several years now, I am a musician (primarily guitar/vocals) I am a tattoo artist as well, trained at Ink Dimensions Tattoo in Pigeon Forge, TN.

I have a very wide view on issues from ELEs, UFOs, ETs, NEOs, the NWO, etc etc. I have spent years immersed in research about all this stuff, while trying to keep balanced in my viewpoint. These topicss naturally frighten us, infuriate us, paralyze us and motivate us. However, they also enlighten us, being the truth (in in some cases.)

I just appreciate the forum, as a general concept, and ATS as well. There is a very great collection of discussion, demonstration, and evidence here.

I have much to contribute, and much more to learn.

NIce, welcome man. I'm 24 and originally from Chicago. Am also a musician (drummer). I've been in LA for 2 or so years, but I'm working towards moving back in maybe a year..

Where abouts in Chicago do you currently live?

Originally posted by bacci0909

NIce, welcome man. I'm 24 and originally from Chicago. Am also a musician (drummer). I've been in LA for 2 or so years, but I'm working towards moving back in maybe a year..

Where abouts in Chicago do you currently live?

Well currently I'm staying out in Elgin (a western Suburb) but I grew up on Wolfram and Pulaski.

I'd definitely wait on that move back until these winters calm down. I've heard talk of us looking at 86 inches this year. Quite a shock (especially going from living in LA for some time.)

I wanted to join to post a picture that I thought would interest everyone didn't kknow of the 20 post rule... lol Guess it will have to wait until i have time to post.