In July 2020 [during the pandemic], the Treasury Department announced it was giving a $700 million loan to the trucking company, helping it to stay afloat. But the loan immediately raised questions, in part because the firm was struggling financially and was being sued by the Justice Department over claims that it had defrauded the federal government for a seven-year period.
Seems like defrauding the government should make one ineligible for government money.
As of the end of March, Yellow’s outstanding debt was $1.5 billion, including about $730 million that is owed to the federal government. Yellow has paid approximately $66 million in interest on the loan, but it has repaid just $230 of the principal owed on the loan, which comes due next year.
Must be nice, can I get that on my student loans?
“We recommend that all Yellow employees who have personal belongings and tools at the terminals should take them home today,” wrote John A. Murphy, a co-chair of the Teamsters freight industry negotiating committee.
The relationship between Apollo and the White House runs deep. In 2017, Josh Harris, a founder of Apollo, advised the Trump administration on infrastructure policy and discussed a possible White House job with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. That same year, Apollo lent $184 million to Mr. Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies, to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper.
Yellow has paid approximately $66 million in interest on the loan, but it has repaid just $230 of the principal owed on the loan, which comes due next year.
Which is exactly what students deal with every day. But it’s ok to give millions of dollars to criminals, just not to students who are trying to improve themselves and the economy. If a college student cheated on their federal taxes for seven years, would they get a government bailout?
Tricky to elect younger & more competent when the older generation is so much more practiced at the schmoozing aspect, unfortunately. Not to mention better funded by special interests who trust their predictability.
We have them, they’re called elections. I don’t like most people in Congress, but it’s not up to me to decide who the people of Kentucky or California want to represent them. I have the right to weigh in on exactly 3 members of the legislature: 1 Congressional representative and 2 US Senators.
The money is only being spent on replacing the outdated military hardware that’s being sent over to Ukraine, which would otherwise be sitting and rotting in storage and would need replacement or expensive repairs to get running again. The US loses nothing from sending weaponry to Ukraine, and has everything to gain. It prevents continued Russian aggression on other countries (and Russia has explicit plans to invade more countries), saves Ukrainian lives and drives away the invaders so civilians aren’t being murdered in their homes, and boosts the economy through the increased number of jobs created for building the newer, better replacement equipment.
To claim that the money is being wasted is naive and misinformed at best, and actively disingenuous and malicious at worst. Putin would love for the US to stop sending support so he can continue his genocide.
The money is only being spent on replacing the outdated military hardware that’s being sent over to Ukraine, which would otherwise be sitting and rotting in storage and would need replacement or expensive repairs to get running again.
Would be totally fine with that if it were being deducted from the next budget, but it’s not, so it’s added to the hundreds of billions we’re already taking on in debt while also neglecting our own people.
It prevents continued Russian aggression on other countries
Couldn’t care less. Our people don’t have health care, education that they can afford, and the minimum wage is still 7 bucks. I’d much rather see that money spent saving our people from the aggression of our predatory economic environment, as is already the case in most first-world countries.
It’s not like your country was about to provide socialized health care, affordable quality education, and a living minimum wage, and suddenly stopped those programs in order to fund the war. And you politicians most likely to stop funding the Ukraine are the least likely to vote for any of these “socialist programs”
That doesn’t make it any less problematic, nor does it make me any less right in pointing out the extent to which our people are neglected so war profiteers can fund their golden parachutes. (Sadly, with help from a lot of chickenhawks, like the folks on this thread.)
‘varied’, you mean standing for whatever benefits them the most at any given moment even if it immediately contradicts the statement they made immediately before.
So that’s how the economy should be fixed. Let more people get away from paying what they agreed to pay. The only reason people are so for student loan forgiveness is because it actually effects them. You agreed, you signed the paper.
No one signs anything agreeing to be sucked dry by greedy companies while they desperately scrounge for affordable housing food and a job that pays a living wage with a company that doesn’t treat its employees like cattle. People sign with the idea that going to college will increase their chances of a better life; that’s what the “American dream” promises. People bust their ass, do everything they are supposed to do, but America (and the companies that run it), break promises (if not out right lied to begin with). How is anyone supposed live up to their end of the bargain, when America doesn’t live up to their’s?
When you sign loan paperwork, this isn’t an agreement with "America’. I’m not saying that most companies don’t do everything they can to fuck people over, but you can’t not pay what you agreed to because you are upset at the world. That’s a teenager mentality.
I get the point. It is just wrong. At the end of the day, you can’t make an agreement and years later say, “I shouldn’t have to pay this cause I’m upset at unrelated things”.
Or, we seize the assets of the rich, redistribute it to the poor, implement a wealth and inheritance tax, universal healthcare, free college education and universal basic income. As someone who doesn’t have student loans, fuck the paper and fuck this greed-driven system. Why does the richest nation on the planet still have poverty and homelessness and shit medical systems where people literally vomit shit because they can’t afford treatment?
Yes give people money for not doing anything. Thats fair. There is places with universal Healthcare, ask them how that works. Well doesn’t work more like. Free college will have big ramafications. What good will a degree be if everyone has one. Then everyone will have to get a university degree and cry about loan forgiveness for that.
Ask Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands. People like you are what’s wrong with the world. I bet you’re one of those people who thinks poor people only exist because they’re lazy and need to pull themselves up by their fucking bootstraps.
Weird that people from all these great places come to America for real Healthcare. That’s weird. There is many reasons why people are broke. Some of them are self inflicted, some aren’t.
They come to America for very specialized health care, and only that.
And you know why?
They won’t be bankrupted for an injury or illness in their own countries, and not a god damn one of them is going to sign up for American health care once they look at the medical bills we get for routine shit.
So strange that while the Healthcare is free that it takes months on a waiting list to get basic surgery. That most of it can’t be done there. Almost like the hospitals don’t have the time or money to treat everyone. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
It's taking me months to get a basic surgery, too. Because I either have to fight with the insurance company to get them to cover it, or I have to save up $60k.
If Europeans wanted American-style health care, every European country would have it. They don’t. They’d rather not mortgage their homes for health care like we do.
There’s a reason why the rest of the world doesn’t do health care the way they do. They don’t want to be left for dead when they can’t pay a price-gouged medical bill.
Well that would be a huge bumper sticker. No idea where you found that before. You really think the people have a choice? The European people have less of a say about their government than we do.
You and I both know that the odds are stacked, between the haves, and have nots. And for the halves to tell the have nots to suck it up and just pull up on their bootstraps doesn’t always work.
The first group of people (aka haves) getting into power forceify their power base so that only they and their friends benefit from it.
Democracy is supposed to prevent that, but it’s only as good at preventing that as it is the people you elect to office.
I wasn’t born with a silver spoon up my ass. I worked my ass off and used any resources that I could find. It took time and hard work. I didn’t sit around waiting for a handout and being upset at the world for not getting it.
The world isn’t fair. It is impossible to be fair to everyone and having and real world experience would show they. Especially since fair is subjective.
The world is what it is currently. You can change your perspective or option on it, but that is only internal. You can change how you react and deal with the world.
There is options for people of they can’t afford Healthcare. That’s like complaining that you don’t have a 401k when you are the only person to blame. If we are throwing out star wars quotes, “There is no ignorance, there is knowledge”. People choose to be ignorant about their options because it is easier to complain and wait for something to fall into their laps.
Look, not every opinion that you don’t agree with is a troll. >go back to reddit. Says the person that joined 3 weeks ago. Nice. How about you go back if all you want is a echo chamber. Reddit was perfect for that. The prefect place to pretend your the smartest person because you could report and ban everyone that didn’t agree with your narrow minded viewpoint.
That’s boomer talk there. Always worried about everyone else rather than themselves. "you shouldn’t have a good life because I worked my ass of for 6 hours a day in a factory job that afforded me a nice a house and two car payments with money to spare on steak everyday. The same job now that you’d need a roommate to live in a one bedroom apartment and ride a bike to work while eating shit food. Get over yourself.
That’s boomer talk there. Always worried about everyone else rather than themselves.
Please don’t be Ageist. It’s not an age thing, it’s how you were raised thing.
Some of us “Boomers” (I’m actually first gen Gen-X but keep getting called a Boomer) actually do care about others, especially the generations coming up behind us, and want to strive for a win-win scenario for everyone.
It becomes an age thing when someone is talking shit about a younger generation not wanting to work or anything like that because as I said, back in their day a shit factory job was enough income to afford a house and two cars.
The “how you were raised” is a bunch of shit too. It’s who you decided to become.
It becomes an age thing when someone is talking shit about a younger generation not wanting to work or anything like that because as I said, back in their day a shit factory job was enough income to afford a house and two cars.
But that’s not automatic based just on the biological timestamp of the people expressing the opinions. And not everyone in that classification agrees with each other.
Yes, different generations have different living conditions, but don’t say they’re wrong just because they are a Boomer (which is usually used to signal that they are automatically out of touch and should be ignored), you say its based on the times/society they lived in instead which formed their opinion, and not their physical age.
The “how you were raised” is a bunch of shit too. It’s who you decided to become.
And you decide who you want to become based on the society you live in at the point of time you’re growing up and living in it, as its society which forces the rules to live by.
As time goes by and newer generations show up over the decades, they revise the rules of society and then yes at that point you’re supposed to change with them (but only if you agree with them; free will is a bitch), but you also have a hard coded base of beliefs already and rules that you’ve lived your life by that you’ve learned from earlier days.
You can’t hand wave that away no matter how much you want to. People do get set in their ways based on the society time frame they grew up in, and not their biological timestamp. If you want to change their minds you have to understand that fact and work with it.
I’m not saying overall you’re wrong, older generations are supposed to update their belief systems to match the times they’re living in now. But to ignore the fact that humans don’t like change won’t solve any problems.
I’m not a boomer and it isn’t a boomer mentality to think people should work for the things they want. If you really think that 6 hours is a long shift, just wait until you actually get a job. It is hard if you get an easy job. That’s a choice. So is getting a low yield degrees. Those are choices. If you choose the easy way now, don’t complain about the outcome later.
Hi, US Navy submariner here with an “actual job” that can last 16+ hours a day regardless of rank when underway. I think it’s bullshit civilians are forced to work 5 day weeks and 9 to 5 jobs in the 21st century when automation is literally right there and other first world countries already have free Healthcare and college. I am certainly not complaining about Tricare that I receive as a servicemember, or the job security, or the government provided housing I could ask for at any time if I needed it, or the tuition assistance I can use to go to college. I think all citizens should get these same privileges.
Was it Scotland that did free college and what happened? People got bullshit degrees and complained that they didn’t get them anywhere. Countries with free Healthcare not being able to take care of people in a timely manner forcing them to spend huge amounts of money going to other countries. While still getting taxes for Healthcare. Free doesn’t mean free. Governments don’t make money. They take money from their people and use that.
I see people who work 50-70 hours a week, and even with all that overtime they cannot afford their medical expenses, or they’re being forced out of their rental due to the landlord selling the property and now they have to cope with a move to a more expensive place that no longer fits their budget, they also have $60k in student debt on a degree that didn’t get them the job they have (despite being told by “experts” that you get a bachelors/masters or you’re useless, all to enter a saturated field that wasn’t saturated 2-4 years ago), and they can’t afford a reliable vehicle.
It must be nice to have that silver spoon you were gifted with, but there are many more who work hard but still have fallen off the edge of our system with no safety net. This isn’t about working for things you want, this is about people having the means to take care of their needs.
Quite frankly your view is narrow and outdated, hence the people that think you’re a boomer. If it’s so easy, then by all means tell us what the hundreds of millions of people should be doing without the canard advice of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, because that is a chickenshit weak argument by privileged fuckheads who have no clue.
You can’t blame a landlord for doing what’s best for them. They can’t take the hit for people just cause it is hard for them. What experts are you talking about? If people didn’t research before hand, they are the only ones to blame. Yes the automotive market sucks, yes the housing market sucks. That doesn’t mean crying about it and waiting for a handout will fix anything. I didn’t have any spoons. When was going to college I realized I couldn’t afford it and the degree I wanted wasn’t going to work for me, got a job, worked my ass off hopping from job to job trying to find something. When my car broke down, I didn’t get the car I want, I got a car that works and can get me places. Slowly moved up while finishing up a degree that can actually do something, found a stable job and now going back for a bs in something that might not be what I wanted to do with my life, but something that can help me lead the life I want. I’ve been trying to buy a house for years and instead of jumping into the first opportunity that looks good, I’m waiting and researching to make sure I don’t put myself in a worse position. You are your safety net. You shouldn’t expect someone else to pick up after you when you make mistakes unless you are a child. People like you confuse want and need. You want a nice fancy car, but you don’t need it. You want a huge house, but then you are setting yourself up for failure. I’ve know people that didn’t have the best start to their lives and made the best of it and found resources that could help. The people around them that just sat around complaining without doing anything about it are still doing just that. All you can do is call my argument names and complain that you should have shit handed to you. What’s your argument? What’s your way to fix things that doesn’t include bitching on the internet?
So you don’t believe that for the past 40 years, the prevalent career advice given to the youth is to go to college? The experts range from professors, politicians, executives, economists, K-12 schools, to pretty much anybody that chimes in on what everyone should do after high school. If you’re unaware of the advice given for half a century to young adults, then its no surprise you’re a completely out of touch moron.
If people didn’t research before hand, they are the only ones to blame. Yes the automotive market sucks, yes the housing market sucks. That doesn’t mean crying about it and waiting for a handout will fix anything.
You’re absolutely right, which is why its important to recognize the problem and then support the policies that fix it, because the free rigged market’s only been making it worse.
I didn’t have any spoons. When was going to college I realized I couldn’t afford it and the degree I wanted wasn’t going to work for me, got a job, worked my ass off hopping from job to job trying to find something. When my car broke down, I didn’t get the car I want, I got a car that works and can get me places.
That you had the means, indicates you had a privilege the majority of people don’t have. Luck got you through all that, not your hard work. Contribution bias is a bitch, and it’s time you recognize it. Refusing to acknowledge the role luck played for you is exactly what makes you an asshole.
You are your safety net. You shouldn’t expect someone else to pick up after you when you make mistakes unless you are a child.
So by your own logic, we should abolish the ADA, disability, and social security, along with public highways, streetlights, and EMTALA. We should just all be our own safety nets, and fall over dead because of bad luck. It seems like you’re all about luck that favors you, while discounting the misfortunes that happen to others. Sounds like a typical conservative, privatize your profits but subsidize your losses eh?
People like you confuse want and need.
EMTALA passed a real long time ago because we as a country decided that life should take value over “muh profits”. I should remind you, EMTALA was signed into law by Reagan. People need a home, access to healthcare, and a way to get to work. Since public transit is unpopular in most of North America, cars are the option available. Funny how you twist my words around to assume when I say “and they can’t afford a reliable vehicle” you infer that I meant a “fancy car”. Same for the allegory of a place to live. People are expected to pay thousands per month for shitty housing infected with bed bugs, roaches, or have faulty heating and electrical.
Judging by the terrible grammar, I’ll bet you’ve been working on your degree for a very long time, and will continue to do so. I’m convinced you’re lying, and that you actually are an ignorant 50+ year old dumbass boomer. You’re so full of shit or you’re so out of touch, your idiotic and flaccid opinions may as well be scrawled in shit on the side of some dank subway tunnel, with flies buzzing around it.
I’m aware that people are pushed to go to college. I’m just not a moron enough to think that every degree is worth the same at the end of the day. If you didn’t study up on your path in life, well tough shit. You decided to get a degree in humanities, well your going to live with the consequences. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to what you study mattering. Unless you really didn’t pass middle school reading comprehension and still somehow can act high and mighty. The problem isn’t just the “system” it’s also about the individual. I actually am starting to feel bad for you. I understand the exact kind of person you are. The kind that can’t comprehend that they didn’t work hard enough so all they can do it say everyone else is lucky. I’m sorry sweetheart. You just suck. Nice straw man, I hate bringing up these kind of terms but your responses are typical social media brain damaged crap. It’s sweet you think you can argue. Ohhh, thousands for a shit house? So your going to blame other people that you aren’t smart enough to move somewhere cheaper and with a better quality of life? What’s next? You gonna blame Trump that your shoes are untied? Those damn conservatives. Got any other hot button words to throw out? Enjoy the image of that subway tunnel, that’s the only place your simple minded, victim mentality, my problems are everyone else’s fault, attitude will get you. I’m sure once you get some real life under your belt, you’ll realize how. cringy you sounded. Well hopefully. Just remember, money only solves money problems. Your are still the same person on the inside. You can get your student loans erased, you will just find something else to bitch about. A happy life cannot be bought, it has to be earned. Go out there and get it, maybe you’ll stop being so miserable. First step is to stop blaming everything else on your issues and look inside.
Do you mean that in a fix the tax code sort away, or literally walking up to their front door with pitchforks and torches and breaking their front door down?
If we don’t try the former, the latter becomes inevitable with time. Witness the multitude of civilizational collapses and revolutions and peasant rebellions that have occurred throughout history all over the world. Personally, I’d rather head off such an event and do it peacefully, but that will only be an option for so long.
Yellow has been a horribly managed mess for at least 25 years. I was involved in LTL logistics back then and we avoided those dunderheads like the plague. It’s a shame that they’re taking $500 MIllion of taxpayer money with them since they can’t repay their loan but that company should have died years ago.
No, because this sets an extremely bad precedent. The simpler answer is just not give bailouts like this. A properly functioning anti-trust department wouldn’t let these private companies get so big they are deemed “too vital to fail” … but here we are.
They haven’t been doing their job for decades now. It must actually be kinda awesome working there. Your entire job is just to LOOK busy but never actually do anything. Man, I could read a ton of books, do some hobby coding, plan some really need landscaping projects, OOOOO man I could do so much! Maybe I should apply for a job there. Here would be my interview:
What are your qualifications for this job? Absolutely none. I will be terrible at this job. You’re hired!
This has changed with the current admiration, Biden has brought in a trust busting menace- Lina Khan author of Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox. Progress is being made.
Gotta be a special kind of incompetent to crumble in a booming economic period.
Yellow has been horribly mismanaged for at least two decades. They should have died long ago and in any environment but one that’s literally awash with money looking for investment opportunities they would have. For structural reasons IC is drying up so we’re going to see a lot more badly run and unprofitable companies going belly up. This is a trend that’s already started and its just going to pick up speed from here.
There is a large difference between a 700 Million dollar loan and a 40 Billion dollar forgiveness. I’m not saying the student loan forgiveness is bad but there is a big difference in the dollar amounts between these two things.
If you’re talking about the 2018 auto bailout, that ended up making the government money because they managed to emerge out from it and the government charged a little interest.
I am talking about the stock swap. You know the giant well over 10 billion dollar wealth transfer that was never paid back. You do know about this as you are talking about it, I trust.
Also I am curious now, why does a car company make the US government money but not people with degrees?
The 2008 TARP that bailed out GM and Chrysler may have had widespread support but it wasn’t universal. In my opinion it shouldn’t have been done either and was probably only necessary because of the original Chrysler bailout back in the day. Without that “The Big Three” would have been subject to market forces and turned into “The Big Two”, the healthier market may have kept GM from being in the position to need a bailout.
The other point of note is that GM did repay their loan so at least in that instance it worked out. I have no idea why anyone in the Federal Government thought that Yellow would be able to successfully repay this one.
I had to look that up because honestly I had forgotten about it. It’s not that I “like” to, I just did.
The argument that GM should have been required to make up the difference seems reasonable to me, of course I think the bailout was unreasonable in the first place sooooo…
But you knew it at one point. We all did. No one likes the idea that a private company was given well over 10 billion dollars, never paid it back, and the only reason they were given it was because they failed at the free market.
No one wants to remember that they flew in on a private jet to Washington DC to beg for money. No one wants to remember that they were having problems for decades. No one wants to remember the blatant corruption of a Democratic party Congress with a Democratic party president awarding money to a solid blue state. No one wants to remember that they withheld evidence about their ignition locks and a women was falsy imprisoned for years for murder charges. No one wants to remember that they had since the 1970s oil crisis to adapt.
All this stuff you read at one point or heard about on the radio or saw a program on TV or heard someone discussing it. A week from now you will forget it again. Because it was shitty and wrong and they got away with it. It is like a cognitive blindspot.
Criminals giving criminals money, then socializing the criminals’ losses, then gifting the criminals a golden parachute. There is the ruling class and everyone else. Most of the country is distracted by UFOs and drag queen brunches to care about the real problems.
That loan saved the pensions of those people working at Yellow, if you maybe want to take that into account while you’re fitting people for black hats.
Even if it did, it’s not like the government has lifted a finger to help any other workers or students recently, and actively works to make their lives harder instead.
401ks are still related to the person’s place of employment, so they don’t actually solve that problem. I’d rather see us ditch them in favor of higher contribution limits to IRAs.
Defined-contribution retirement plans (401ks and IRAs) in general are not an adequate replacement for defined-benefit ones (pensions and Social Security) because, frankly, people are too stupid on average to plan properly for their future. And even if you think stupid people deserve what they get, it’s still a problem that affects you because of the collective burden massive numbers of indigent elderly would put on society.
401ks never should’ve been created, and the replacement for private employer pensions should’ve been an expansion of Social Security.
(I say all this as someone with much larger than average retirement savings who’s aiming for FIRE, by the way. This is a critique of the system from someone who has benefited from it, not sour grapes from a stereotypical poor millennial.)
I might agree with you if I had the option of opting out of Social Security. It’s an absolute disaster and it’ll never be fixed. You can say it should be, but if we’re debating impractical solutions we may as well just include “everyone lives forever and always has everything they ever need”.
TL;DR: I keep my household expenses very low (roughly $30k/year) and save a very high percentage of my income so that I can retire very early. The pandemic changed my plans a bit, but I’m expecting to be done by age 45. (By the way, to address a common criticism of the idea: "retire"means doing whatever I want without being beholden to working for a wage, not necessarily vegging out in front of the TV and stagnating as certain workaholics assume. The important distinction is that I could choose to work if I wanted, but wouldn’t need to.)
401ks are a time bomb waiting to go off. If / when there’s another severe stock market crash (and make no mistake one is coming) tens of millions of retirees are suddenly going to be penniless.
If a crash of that magnitude happens it’s not like social security would fare any better. At that point you’re talking about full scale economic disaster that affects the entire world.
It doesn’t require a full scale Great Depression style meltdown, the ‘downturn’ of 2008 caused significant difficult for many, it simply requires a sharp enough retraction of Investment Capital. That retraction is already in progress as the retirement rate for Boomers escalates and more of them begin selling their stocks and bonds; either directly or through their retirement instruments like 401ks and Pensions.
I’m not a doomer but I am fairly convinced that 401ks are a timebomb.
401Ks are just investment accounts. They have exactly as much risk as you expose yourself to. Balance your portfolio, use index funds intelligently, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and you’ll be fine.
The US fucked this up during WWII when it froze wages to prevent businesses from swiping the limited number of available employees from each other. So instead of wages employers started offering benefits instead, two of the commonly offered benefits were Pensions and Medical Insurance.
As a nation we really should fix these problems but doing so would be hella expensive and perhaps even impossible as we’re hitting the same demographic off-ramp that France and so many other Western Nations are already on.
Were they not covered because of a technicality (for example being a contractor versus an employee), or did ERISA just fail to make them whole as they should have?
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