Quote from Sandybestdog:
Joe and Bob grow up together. They are both smart kids and do good in school. Joe gets into Harvard and Bob goes to Yale. Joe fudges his numbers a little on the financial aid forms to make himself look like a poor helpless person, so he gets free tuition. Bob comes from a middle class family whose parents have paid taxes for years, so the government assumes his parents can chip in and so he gets nothing. Bob says itâs worth it because when he graduates, heâll get that great job and pay back the 100k in student loans heâll have to take out.
They both graduate and Joe gets a job at JPMorgan and Bob lands one at Bear Stearns. They both work hard and start making some money. Then one day Bob finds out his company is gone and heâs suddenly out of a job. He doesnât panic because he managed to save 6 months of living expenses. Combine that with the $350 a week in unemployment benefits he gets, and heâll be able to survive for awhile. He starts hitting the job market. He sends out countless resumes. Most give him the same response, âdonât you know weâre in the middle of a recession? Weâre not hiring.â
Meanwhile Joe is doing great. Heâs making lots of money now, mostly due to the fact that JPMorgan is picking up great bargains for pennyâs on the dollar and forcing the government and the Fed to secure all those assets. Bob on the other hand, has almost depleted his savings. One day, he has the choice of paying his mortgage or credit card. He picks the mortgage and manages to pay his credit card bill 10 days later. When he goes to pay, he notices his interest rate was jacked up to 28%, along with a $39 late fee. He calls the company and explains the situation, but they donât care and refuse to lower his rate back to where it was because they now deem that he is a greater risk.
A month goes by and Bob decides to not pay his credit card for now, because the whole payment will just go to interest and heâll never pay it off that way. Then, his daughter feels sick one day and the doctor says she needs an appendicitus. But because the COBRA on the health insurance plan from his old job was $800 a month, he decided to forgo the insurance and assumed he could get another job before anything major happened. Instead, he will now have to finance the 15k operation with the hosipital.
More time goes by, and Bob realizes getting a job in the financial field is tough now, so perhaps he needs to look elsewhere. Realizing he has little skills to perform another kind of job, he thinks going back to school is a good idea. Heâs shocked when he sees how much tuition has skyrocketed in the past 10 years. He fills out the financial aid forms, but they just laugh at him because his tax return shows he made 80k last year. He looks to take out more loans, but they deny him. Afterall, how are you going to pay money back with a job you donât have?
Finally the call comes through. He gets an interview. He goes there and they like him. Theyâre about to offer him a job, and do a background check as a formality. It is then that they discover his trashed credit history. They tell him they canât offer him the job because, afterall, how can they expect him to be loyal when he canât even pay his bills on time.
Desperate, Bob sees bankruptcy as a possibility. But then he remembers that the 75k left on his student loans doesnât come off in a bankruptcy, so it wonât do much good. Finally, just to make some money, he goes down to the local pizza joint and starts working as a driver. At least he can make a little money. Soon, he mangages to get another interview. They see how long heâs been out of a job and asks him what heâs been doing in the meantime. Bob comes out with the truth and admits that after looking for several months, he finally started deliverying pizza just to make some money. The interviewer hears that and says theyâll call him if they can offer him something. But they never will, because they heard he delivers pizza, so they assume heâs a complete loser. How are they supposed to hire someone like that?
People on this thread like TraderAntiChrist and the like, will use their narrow minded simplistic logic to obviously come to the conclusion that Joe is a hard working guy who gets paid well because of the so called âvalueâ he brings to this world. Meanwhile, Bob is a lazy, pathetic, worthless loser who thinks heâs entitled to everything. He is obviously broke because of his poor choices. He deserves to be thrown in debtors jail and live a life of poverty. When he attempts to get back up and try again, you people will hurl insults and try to kick him back down, just to make sure heâs had enough.
Of course the difference between these two people are actually very small. But one is living a great life and one is not. How they got there doesnât matter to people who spout their simplistic, unattainable logic. Sure there are people who abuse the system, and they shouldnât be allowed to, but a lot of people are just finding themselves in bad situations. Maybe this thread wasnât the best place tell a story like this, as it seems that some here may be deliberately trying to not pay their debt, but the amount of good, hard working people who had one or two things go wrong that spiraled out of control greatly outnumbers those that abused the system.
