I came across this posted in the Good Post Gallery.
Most students are studying under the pall of five-figure debt, marginal job prospects at graduation, and parents whose retirement remains totally unsecured. Nearly half of them won't finish their degrees, and increasingly large shares attend "schools" that we wouldn't recognize as institutions of higher learning in the first place. Many are "non-traditional" students, which usually entails balancing one's studies with menial service sector work, child care, or elder care.
snip
across most walks of life in the United States, "higher education" has come to resemble nothing so much as Saturn devouring his young.
Lately I've been finding this rhetoric ringing hollow. That's not to pick on Maddy or Averroes. This sort of argument about economic decline can be found all across the internet from both left and right.
I won't bore you with some tedious story about how hard I worked and how I did everything right, but to make a long story short, my wife and I both graduated without too much student debt and make reasonable incomes. Our parents are both set to retire in the next few years and will have comfortable if somewhat modest retirements. There is also economic data out there, that would suggest that while things are not booming, the middle class is not on the major decline some make it out to be.
Am I completely in the wrong here? Or do others feel similar to me? Is "the system" working?
This sounds more or less like
"I got mine Jack, now root, hog, or die!"
You are part of what used to be rather normal. Most people could expect that... but the trend/momentum is really what drives peoples' feelings about the state of things. The fact is, is that it is getting harder and harder to achieve normal middle class life (the blue collar route shut long ago... the white collar route has red flags and flashing lights all over it indicating it, too, is shrinking).
We could be doing so much better. We could be using technology and our resources, as crabcake said, to really provide hope and meaningful changes to peoples lives (like, you know... adequate medical and dental benefits for everyone, adequate access to nutritious food (ie not processed simple sugars mixed with cheap vegetable fat) and a basic income security that means everyone can achieve a good work/life balance that allows them to be with their families).
Poll
