It’s September, which means you’re probably leaning back in your armchair, lighting up your pipe, and saying to yourself, “Hrrrr. . . I wish I had some nice meaty content to read to occupy these dark, dark nights which will soon be getting even longer.” Well you’re in luck! I published a story today, and one a few weeks ago, and both are nice, meaty dives into two separate topics: the sleight of hand of gunmaking companies, and the lure of a debt-free path to good tech jobs. And don’t worry, they’re not 10,000 words each! That would be silly! They only add up to 10,000 words.
Here they are:
They Were Told They’d Find Good Tech Jobs. Now They’re Being Hounded for Thousands of Dollars
When There’s Talk of Gun Control, Gunmakers Play the Jobs Card. They’re Often Bluffing
For the first, about tech jobs, I’d long been interested in the messed up student loans system, because I kept talking to people for other, unrelated stories, who would casually add how much student debt they had. It was usually in the tens of thousands of dollars, and many of them thought they’d probably have it until they died.
I was looking for a way to explore how many people got sucked into this system that left them so indebted, but lots of those stories have been written. After being told for life that a college education was the best way to a good career, students took out loans to attend said college, then those career prospects didn’t pan out, or they weathered not one, but two recessions, or their wages couldn’t keep pace with their interest payments. Who to blame there? The amorphous ‘system.’
But then I heard about a new type of student loan problem, one that had sprung up in part for students who didn’t want to take out loans. Income Sharing Agreements (ISAs) allow students to pay no tuition upfront, as long as they agree to pay a certain portion of their income after they graduate. Sounds great, on paper, but student advocates say that by saying they are not loans, ISAs mislead students about how much money they’ll owe. And sometimes, as in the case of this school I found, Flockjay, students didn’t actually get a useful education and still owe thousands on an ISA.
Flockjay is especially interesting because it was targeted at Black students and backed by venture firms founded by Serena Williams and Will Smith. “Their shtick was that it was about getting Black people into tech—but over the 10 weeks, they didn’t train us for any real-life situation,” one student told me.
Read more here: https://time.com/6211477/tech-boot-camps-isa-students/
The second story is part of coverage that TIME launched about the business of guns. I was at first reluctant to do any story in this arena, because it feels like there have been a lot of stories about guns and gun control and shootings and nothing ever changes (I think TIME has even had two recent covers after mass shootings that say ‘ENOUGH.’) But when I started looking into Remington, which filed for bankruptcy in 2018 and 2020 because of alleged financial mismanagement by the private equity firm that owned it, I became more interested.
I visited the town of Ilion, where Remington has been for centuries, and which Remington periodically pledges to leave whenever New York talks about passing gun control laws or when another state offers them a bunch of money. I was surprised how laissez-faire workers were about Remington’s latest announcement that it was leaving, until I started looking into it and found many, many examples of gun companies making a big announcement that they were leaving the Northeast for friendlier climates—only to keep manufacturing and most of their operations in the Northeast and just move distribution to the South or somewhere that offered them lots of money.
Smith & Wesson, for instance, said last year it was leaving Springfield, Mass., for Tennessee, but if you read the fine print, they’re keeping 1,000 manufacturing jobs there. A lot of the jobs they’re moving are actually from Missouri, which is the last place they said they were moving to, after Missouri offered them a 50% tax break. The Missouri facilities, opened in 2017, are now closing. This behavior reminds me of when I was little and apparently told my neighbor Richard that if he didn’t do what I said, I would ‘take my toys and go home.’
Here’s that story:
https://time.com/6206785/gunmakers-remington-ilion-firearms-economy/
I wish I had some other books or articles to recommend to you, but I have honestly only been reading the book I’m A Truck over and over again, and I can’t say I necessarily recommend it.