Google/Amazon struggling to layoff workers in Europe

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is a strange comment -- student loans in the US come first and foremost from the federal government (of outstanding student loan debt, 92% is to the federal government). This is why it comes with a number of bizarre rules, like not being dischargeable in bankruptcy, and why it is theoretically possible for the federal government to forgive it at all (the cases before the Supreme Court being about whether Biden has the ability to do so, or needs to seek congressional permission). High student loan debt in the US does not come from the free market. The very high tuition costs charged by colleges are possible because an enormous amount of that money is paid by the federal government, which doesn't negotiate with the schools. A free market system would probably see much cheaper tuition, but also significantly fewer people going to college at all (and probably a significantly greater skew towards the wealthy among those who do).

Universities are (generally) private and demand insane tuition fees. So yes, the debt does come from the free market even if it is owed to the federal government.

The tuition fees can get so high because of the way the laws around student loan debt are arranged give universities little reason to demand less.

[lfromnj]

What is money without security?

What is security without anything to secure?

Anyway I can get the argument that European labor law might be better for some group of workers but overall for tech workers America is much better than Europe.

[Vosem]

This is a strange comment -- student loans in the US come first and foremost from the federal government (of outstanding student loan debt, 92% is to the federal government). This is why it comes with a number of bizarre rules, like not being dischargeable in bankruptcy, and why it is theoretically possible for the federal government to forgive it at all (the cases before the Supreme Court being about whether Biden has the ability to do so, or needs to seek congressional permission). High student loan debt in the US does not come from the free market. The very high tuition costs charged by colleges are possible because an enormous amount of that money is paid by the federal government, which doesn't negotiate with the schools. A free market system would probably see much cheaper tuition, but also significantly fewer people going to college at all (and probably a significantly greater skew towards the wealthy among those who do).

Universities are (generally) private and demand insane tuition fees. So yes, the debt does come from the free market even if it is owed to the federal government.

...is public debt, even public debt used to pay private institutions, usually considered to come from the 'free market' in other contexts? The reason for my insistence that this is different is because private parties would be very unlikely to give out loans on the same terms (and for equally-expensive educations) the federal government does -- which is the whole reason the federal government has to do it at all.

[DavidB.]

...is public debt, even public debt used to pay private institutions, usually considered to come from the 'free market' in other contexts? The reason for my insistence that this is different is because private parties would be very unlikely to give out loans on the same terms (and for equally-expensive educations) the federal government does -- which is the whole reason the federal government has to do it at all.

The gigantic difference between tuition fees of U.S. universities and continental European universities does not reflect an equally gigantic difference in the quality of the education they provide. In much of Europe, students pay nothing or close to nothing to attend university - this means the state pays for it and universities retrieve most of their funding from the government. In the U.S., the choice was made to leave this to the market. As a result, tuition fees are sky high. This is a political choice and the debt students rack up is absolutely a result of leaving things to the free market, even when this debt is owed to the federal government.

[Vosem]

...is public debt, even public debt used to pay private institutions, usually considered to come from the 'free market' in other contexts? The reason for my insistence that this is different is because private parties would be very unlikely to give out loans on the same terms (and for equally-expensive educations) the federal government does -- which is the whole reason the federal government has to do it at all.

The gigantic difference between tuition fees of U.S. universities and continental European universities does not reflect an equally gigantic difference in the quality of the education they provide. In much of Europe, students pay nothing or close to nothing to attend university - this means the state pays for it and universities retrieve most of their funding from the government. In the U.S., the choice was made to leave this to the market. As a result, tuition fees are sky high. This is a political choice and the debt students rack up is absolutely a result of leaving things to the free market, even when this debt is owed to the federal government.

Sure, but in Europe in my understanding a large majority of the universities are public, so 'tuition' rates can be set by the government directly, and private universities do not expect most of their revenue to ultimately come from the government. In the United States private universities (...again, apart from a select few religious schools) have an expectation that whatever tuitions they set, the amounts will be paid for by the federal government, which cannot alter the fees itself nor negotiate what they might be because of laws surrounding the subject. The debt students rack up is downstream of essentially political decisions made in an effort to circumvent the market, which were never necessary in Europe because a market didn't exist in the first place which needed circumventing.

If you pass a law which says 'we will pay whatever price you set', and then after that prices rise in a linear way, then it seems kind of asinine to suggest the outcome is a result of the 'free market', unless any process in which private parties set a price is the 'free market' in some sense. (But I think most individuals would be comfortable saying that prices set by monopolists, or prices distorted by price controls, aren't really set by the 'free market' in a meaningful sense. From a European perspective maybe this is a No True Scotsman fallacy -- it isn't really the free market unless it meets all these conditions! -- but I think this would at least be the normal way discussions happen in the United States. Nobody really thinks of competition between universities -- or competition between entities competing for government contracts more generally -- as happening in the context of a 'free market'.)