John Oliver's Last Week Tonight

Still gotta finish this week's episode. I did indeed see his reminder to Thomas in the opening though.

Thomas has a lot of respect from his wealthy friends, so had he accepted the deal, it would've further wrecked his already pretty tarnished reputation and just proven John right about how easily he could be bought.

This week on "Why America So Bad", student loans.

Man, how long before this financial time bomb is going to burst?

It already kinda is. A lot of people in their twenties are living with parents, or not able to buy a house for a myriad of reasons and student loans contributing. It's been influencing political debate, but it's also part of the larger rising inequality issues.

I mean, actually, the bubble is kind of reversing.

Biden's reversal of $138 billion of debt has probably done more individually to help Americans than anything else he's achieved.

Think how much would have changed if he'd cancelled all 400 billion he'd wanted to.

This is his biggest win, IMHO.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 21st 2024 at 6:11:41 AM

Oh hey! Embeds are working again!

That's a good start, but it doesn't get at the underlying systemic issues, as John also mentions. As long as those don't get fixed, the bubble will just fill back up again in a matter of years.

Student loan forgiveness is nice short time politics, but it isn't sustainable.

I also think he left out one huge reason why college is so expensive: College sports.

How so?

College sports are generally pretty self-funding, if not outright money makers for the universities. There's a lot you can complain about when it comes to college sports, but contributing to the cost of college education isn't one of them.

For now, I just keep paying my loans as is until I hopefully come into a large amount of money to wipe it all out at once. At least the interest on my credit card is worked into the overall amount. Same with other things I gotta pay for like my rent and my car.

The show was off this past weekend obviously. They'll be back this upcoming weekend on Easter though.

The big problem of college sports is it's so lucrative it's caused many universities to become for-profit.

Who does all that money go to, anyway?

Coaching staff.

I wish I was joking but they've crunched the number but very often as sports coach is the highest paid public official in pretty much every US state with the only difference being which sport.

A lot of it goes to the coaches, yes, but you have to realize that college sports bring in a lot of money. Uniform deals alone can bring in over 10 million per year, without even getting into ticket sales and TV deals (TV deals tend to be the biggest source of income). So a big chunk of money is going towards the coaches, then some more goes towards the facilities, and the non-revenue sports (the funny thing about college sports in the US is that only football and basketball are moneymakers, meaning that those two sports fund all the other sports). After that, whatever is left (and there is money left after all of that) goes back into the university.

If a state has a literacy rate below war torn developing nations and a college football stadium more fancy than ones owned by professional teams, that is a policy failure.

Edited by JethroQWalrustitty on Apr 2nd 2024 at 10:32:08 PM

I love how the end of the description in each upload is almost always a seemingly bizarre non-sequitur.

This show has gotten to a point where John can bring up any topic, and I immediately go "oh god, how bad is it?"

Does he mention Instacart?

Something he's repeatedly lampshaded in these segments as well.

Am I the only one who's never used a food delivery app? Doesn't mean I never will, but I tend to either eat in a restaurant or drive there myself if I'm getting it to go. Again, I know that's not feasible for everyone. I'm just speaking personally.

I've never used a food delivery app, but I have ordered online via Beyond Menu or Slice. There are good reasons, from 'I'm sick' to 'I was drinking and don't want to drive' to plain old 'I am so tired from work the idea of cooking or going anywhere pains me'. I do pick up food at places that use Door Dash or Grub Hub, though that was mostly because I don't want to bother with that interface and am fine ordering pick up.

When my wife was recovering from surgery, we asked our friends to give us GrubHub gift cards. We got a truly staggering amount of them, and so we lived on food delivery for a few months. We never had bad service, although it was stupidly expensive and we stopped once the gift cards ran out.

I have never used it, I cook all my own food. The only online service I use is occasional delivery of groceries, and their service is generally good.