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Thanks for posting this. Despite being middle-aged, its an issue I care deeply about, viewing it as my gens debt to society, since I realize how my parents, as part of the GREATEST generation, devoted their lives to working in a manner which would make MY life better than theirs. Unfortunately, my gen has become the MOST selfish I have ever seen, and the GREATEST gen who are dead must be turning in their graves.
This issue is far MORE important than tax cuts for my gen, more pork projects for my gen, or most anything else of benefit solely for my gen!
...is dead and gone. They preceded the GI Generation.
You would think the college educated journalist staff at CBS could come up with something more original.
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Originally Posted by newenglandgirl
...many of whom have big student loans on the promise of jobs on graduation.
There's no promise of jobs. The student loan contract neither promises nor guarantees jobs, and neither do universities.
I wouldn't consider $12,000 to be a "big" student loan. I mean tuition at more than 100 major universities is $3,000 or less, so how could someone possibly rack up $80,000 in student loans for $12,000 worth of education?
I don't feel sorry for them at all. There's a whole wide world out there. They can use their high school and college foreign language training to get a job in another country and pay off their car and clothes and Starsux Lattes and beer, which is what they used their "student loans" for.
What was the Great Depression generation????? Weren't they lost? My Great-Grandfather ran moonshine during the Great Depression and Prohibition, despite being a Godly Mormon man, in order to feed his growing family. There was no birth control back then, so your family just grew and grew and your money did not expand to meet the needs of your family. My Great-Grandfathers survived being wounded in France while fighting the Germans only to come home and face the Great Depression. Both of them lost sisters and brothers to the 1919 Flu Epidemic that gripped the whole world and was second only to the Black Plague in the number of dead. For some reason we do not talk about the 1919 Flu Epidemic that wiped out a good portion of the world. It is forgotten in our history. For some reason people do not talk about the horrors of trench warfare during WW I. It was so horrific with three sided knives that the Geneva Convention was enacted BECAUSE of the horror of WW I. Some of my family came home in coffin. The rest came home badly wounded multiple times.
Can I find a job? No. I am out of work. Do I have student loans? Yes, I do. Do I feel I am worse off than my Great-Grandparents? No. I am better off. I am much better off. My Great-Grandparents faced hardships I can not even imagine.
I have so many kinds of options for birth control and this was not available to my grandmas let lone my Great-Grandparents. I have color TV. I have cordless phones in the home. I have cell phones. I have desktop computers, laptop computers, tablet computers, iPads, iPhones, the Internet, Google, eBay, CraigsList, etc.
I have modern cars with seat belts, airbags, reinforced doors, crumble zones and the like that have saved my life more than once. I have MRIs, CAT Scans, PET Scans, better X-Rays, better blood tests, better and more accurate lab tests than ever before. My Great-Great-Uncle died of a burst appendix at age 5 because there were no tests back then to determine your appendix was about to burst. Luckily, I live in an age where they can figure out your appendix is about to burst and my life was saved.
I have traveled around on the world on cheap airline tickets that did not exist decades ago. Deregulation of the airline industry means I can go wherever I want when I have the money to buy a ticket. My Great-Grandparents did not have that luxury.
The gas and oil shortages of the 1970s where you could only buy gas on certain days due to the shortages were just like the WW II shortages. This seems to be a distant memory. A whole decade of inflated oil and gas prices and shortages seems to be forgotten.
The 1980s student protests on college and university campuses due to the rising costs of tuition did nothing to halt the rising costs. The cost increases were sometime 150% per year, but no one today remembers this.
My family members had to drop out of school in the 8th grade to go to work to help support the family during the Great Depression. I do not see people going to work at a full-time job at 13 or 14 years old and not allowed to return to school and going through life with only an 8th grade education because their education was cut short due to the Great Depression. You want to talk about a generation that had it tough? Look at the people who made it through the Great Depression without jumping out a window. We have nothing to complain about.
Every couple of decades the economy tanks. That is just how it is. We have the aerospace industry tank and all those people were put out of work and lost their homes to foreclosure. The dot.com industry bubble burst quickly and those people lost their jobs and their homes. It happens. That is just life. We must deal with it the best we can just like everyone else who came before us. We are not the first, nor are we the last generation to have a hard time, but we certainly do NOT have it worse than any other generation before us. We do not have rationing. We do not have shortages like during WW I, WW II and the Great Depression. Other periods in time have been worse. Yes, it is tough right now, but it could be worse. It could be much worse.
Calling today's generation "the lost generation" is inappropriate. It is appropriate to apply that label to the Great Depression generation as they lost everything. They had the Great Depression, the 1919 Flu Epidemic and WW I. That is a lot of hardship. Our hardship does not compare to theirs.
There's no promise of jobs. The student loan contract neither promises nor guarantees jobs, and neither do universities.
Don't kid yourself. These colleges and high school teachers sell the college degree as the road to riches. They talk about how you can go to college and get 50k/year straight out of college. Honestly, why would someone even pay 3,000+ per semester to learn stuff they can learn at the library FOR FREE? They are willing to spend that money because 3,000+ per semester is nothing IF you are going to make 50k/year! People are brainwashed into an irrational frenzy about the potential rewards of a college degree.
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I wouldn't consider $12,000 to be a "big" student loan. I mean tuition at more than 100 major universities is $3,000 or less, so how could someone possibly rack up $80,000 in student loans for $12,000 worth of education?
Its not but if you end up making 8-10$/hr working a dead end job then that's a serious amount of money. If you are only making 10-15k/year. 12k is huge.
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I don't feel sorry for them at all. There's a whole wide world out there. They can use their high school and college foreign language training to get a job in another country and pay off their car and clothes and Starsux Lattes and beer, which is what they used their "student loans" for.
Why would someone want to hire an overpriced american when they can just hire someone from the millions of unemployed people in their own country? Most of which are willing to work for far less than an american.
There's no promise of jobs. The student loan contract neither promises nor guarantees jobs, and neither do universities.
I wouldn't consider $12,000 to be a "big" student loan. I mean tuition at more than 100 major universities is $3,000 or less, so how could someone possibly rack up $80,000 in student loans for $12,000 worth of education?
I have no idea what school you are talking about that is $3,000 or less. Private schools are not $3,000. Med school, law school, veterinarian school is more like $150,000 on the low end and half a million if you are talking Ivy League Schools. Maybe 20 years ago it was $12,000 to go to a public school for under grad, but I doubt that is the cost now.
Why would someone want to hire an overpriced american when they can just hire someone from the millions of unemployed people in their own country? Most of which are willing to work for far less than an american.
English schools in China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and other countries hire people from America, Canada and England to come work under contract to teach English. You can work for a private company teaching English to the workers or you work for a private English school where people of all ages come to take classes. You can make a contract for 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months or 24 months. It is your choice. You get to see the country while you live there, meet people, make friends, learn the culture, learn the history, visit museums, eat authentic food, learn to cook the food, learn a little bit of the language and have a nice time while you work. It is travel, adventure, fun times and work all at the same time.
When Google goes into a new area they take with them people from the US and also hire locals. That is what happened when they went into China. It is possible to get a job overseas. It is not impossible.
If you look on YouTube you will see videos from English teachers in Taiwan, Japan, Korea and China. They film their adventures and post them on the Internet. Native English speaking teachers are very desirable in Asia.
I've known beautiful American girls who worked as dancers in Japan. They were Vegas type showgirls. They made a lot of money and the club owner looked after them really well. He gave them bodyguards so they would not be kidnapped, stolen and sold into sexual slavery by the Yakuza. The Yakuza, like any mafia, specializes in human trafficking.
If you look on YouTube you will see videos from English teachers in Taiwan, Japan, Korea and China. They film their adventures and post them on the Internet. Native English speaking teachers are very desirable in Asia.
They earn a pittance. I know, as my daughter taught English for a year in Korea and was really taken advantage of. The kids there go to school in TWO full sessions per day, six days a week. The pay and living conditions for her were terrible. A lot of graduates are doing this kind of thing, or joining Americorps, because they are out of work with no job prospects whatsoever. And I commend them.
The current "lost generation" is more "lost" than the pre-war generation because the traditional American model of school-to-job-to-career-to prosperity is largely GONE for them, never to return. Jobs were generated for the Depression era folks by...guess what? WAR. A major world war that was a humanitarian catastrophe generated all those jobs and got America back on its feet in the 1940s and 50s, giving rise to our parents' generation's general success and all the benefits of it, including....guess what? BABIES. Thus the advance of the great Baby Boomer generation, with buying houses, cars, vacation homes, insurances and securities up the wazoo. Those who are now in their 20s and 30s will never have that boom opportunity, the jobs are gone. Guess where...? Cheap labor countries. A new generation of job opportunity could only come from...you guessed it, a WAR economy.
Why would someone want to hire an overpriced [insert comment] american when they can just hire someone from the millions of unemployed people in their own country? Most of which are willing to work for far less than an american.
[and poorly educated, even if with a college degree]
They earn a pittance. I know, as my daughter taught English for a year in Korea and was really taken advantage of. The kids there go to school in TWO full sessions per day, six days a week. The pay and living conditions for her were terrible. A lot of graduates are doing this kind of thing, or joining Americorps, because they are out of work with no job prospects whatsoever. And I commend them.
The current "lost generation" is more "lost" than the pre-war generation because the traditional American model of school-to-job-to-career-to prosperity is largely GONE for them, never to return. Jobs were generated for the Depression era folks by...guess what? WAR. A major world war that was a humanitarian catastrophe generated all those jobs and got America back on its feet in the 1940s and 50s, giving rise to our parents' generation's general success and all the benefits of it, including....guess what? BABIES. Thus the advance of the great Baby Boomer generation, with buying houses, cars, vacation homes, insurances and securities up the wazoo. Those who are now in their 20s and 30s will never have that boom opportunity, the jobs are gone. Guess where...? Cheap labor countries. A new generation of job opportunity could only come from...you guessed it, a WAR economy.
Very well said....
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