The specter of how to put two kids through college looms large in my life; I pick at it as one would a scab – and with similar results.
Recently, a mother of three told me her daughter, an grad who went on to a four-year school, has $60,000 in college loans – and she emerged with the least amount of debt among her friends.
Strangely, that kind of burden on the middle class doesn’t bother syndicated columnist Cal Thomas. In an op-ed piece in The Morning Call last week he wrote this:
“I feel about those with crushing tuition debt the way I feel about people who choose to live along the frequently flooded banks of the Mississippi River. If students and their parents choose expensive schools, they should accept the responsibility and cost of that decision.”
The difference, Mr. Thomas, between a house on a river and the education of this country’s youth is the house is never going to cure cancer, invent the next big thing, write the Great American novel or negotiate peace. Homes on riverbanks are not necessary for society to thrive.
Besides, Thomas makes it sound as if young people could graduate debt free if they would just steer clear of elite private colleges. But even state universities like Penn State are out of reach for many middle class families. Penn State’s tuition and room and board at the main campus is more than $25,000 a year and that’s before you include books and other expenses.
Private colleges, including several in the Lehigh Valley, typically give more aid than state schools but they also start with price tags of $40,000 to $55,000, when you include room and board.
Community colleges and trade schools are fine alternatives but the answer to staggering college costs can’t be that only the rich go to four-year schools.
These days pundits and politicians are quick to say they don’t want to burden the next generation with more national debt but most don’t seem to appreciate that we are burdening them in other ways.
In his fascinating article “The War Against Youth” in the May 8 Esquire magazine, Stephen Marche argues that the college loan issue is part of a bigger trend in this country. We are shifting resources to Baby Boomers while we “eat our young.”
After talking about huge college debts, Marche writes:
“Once you're out of college, you'll have to intern. Again, no choice. The practice of not paying young people for their labor has become so ingrained in the everyday practice of American business that we've forgotten how bizarre and recent the development is. In the early 1980s, 3 percent of college grads had had an internship. By 2006, 84 percent had done at least one.”
What if our kids instead go to law school or med school?
“In 1981, average medical-school debt was less than $20,000. Today it is $158,000,” he writes. “Law-school tuition rose 317 percent between 1989 and 2009.”
It’s not just that young people won’t be able to consider buying a house until they are 40. It’s that every kid who graduates with that kind of debt has to get a job that will make him lots of money as fast as humanly possible. Forget about taking a job with a low-paying charity or living on boxes of mac and cheese for a year so you can try to start your own business or invent a new product.
We’ll have a whole generation living with crushing debt, which means there can be no margin for error – or risk.
I would rather live in a society that pools some of its money to achieve collective goals that cannot be achieved individually--schools, roads, police, environmental and banking regulations, the funding of research that is necessary but which private companies are unwilling to do, protecting our food supply, caring minimally for those who are, inevitably, the losers in a capitalist economy... But I understand that others don't believe in sharing some of their wealth for collective endeavors (i.e. government). That is what elections are for. If the Tea Party wins, my point of view will lose and my compatriots and I will continue to try to convince our neighbors of a more communitarian style capitalism. In the meantime, it is clear that readers who agree with Margie Peterson's columns just nod their heads and get on with their lives while some others--a relative few--wait to attack, using whatever subject she writes about as an excuse to vent their anger and push their anti-government screeds. It is predictable and tiresome. And helpful ideas are reduced to such proposals as history majors not be required to learn anything but history to earn a BA degree. For that, one can go to a library--for free.
But your heartfelt comment is similar to others, essentially: "What was good enough for me should be good enough for everyone else, too." Those expensive higher ed loans seemed once like an expensive but worthwhile investment in an education that would pay off in future earnings. No one could have predicted that the Bush administration would run up such debt, after the Clinton surpluses, that our entire economy would be put at risk and the hopeful and reasonable plans of our college youth would then be the target of anti-government Republicans--the same ones who voted for W in the first place. If you think that private business creates jobs, not government, then vote to put Romney back into private business. He can't argue both that government can't create jobs and also that he should be the head of government because he knows how to create jobs. I regret the result of Bush's economic policies that gave rise to the Tea Party movement and pushed good moderate Republicans out of the picture. Congress needs them. The country needs them.
Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were "conservative" governments. Democratic Weimar, which the Germans voted to dissolve when they democratically handed Germany over to Hitler, was a liberal government. You sound to me like a fool when you attack people with labels. College costs have skyrocketed because of market forces, not because administrators are liberal or conservative. Lafayette College is a bastion of conservatism producing the next generation of engineers and hedge fund managers. Their tuition, room, and board is as high as liberal Columbia's. The bookstore is now buying back textbooks from students for over $100 for a USED text--which they will then sell to next year's students for $185, 25% off the price if new. What has this to do with liberalism? I'd be curious to know what you mean when you use that term, liberalism. Test your thoughts against George W. Bush's policies before you type anything about big government. But first, apologize for the Hitler analogy.
And for the sake of intellectual honesty, make your case against Obama; don't just call him names. For a definition of fascism, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism Finally, to say that Obama is better compared to a fascist than a Nazi is not an apology. You still owe Patch readers an apology. Obama is the elected leader of the greatest nation in the world. Feel free to disagree with him (and thus with the majority of Americans who elected him) but speak of him with respect because you include America itself in your trash talk.
Whilst wikipedia isn't the greatest place to learn history, your cited article, amongst other things, shows that Fascism isn't either right or left, or conservative or liberal, though many people from both sides of the political spectrum mistaken think that it is the opposite of their own views. Politics isn't one dimensional, rather it is mutil-dimensional. I'm not using the term Fascist as an epithet, as many would, but instead as a very dry category. And I didn't even call Obama a Fascist - I said only that it was a better analogy for him, and that's because he exhibits many Fascist tendencies, which no one could deny, especially his critics from the left! BTW, the oriiginal Nazi's were also Fascists, but that's another story.....
As a liberterian, I find Obama's approach to force churches to fund abortion by his unlegislated regulatory executive order to be an abomination, even though I support choice! That would be one specific example of his autocracy. Likewise his approach to insurance for health care, no matter how one feels about its merits, is a centralizing usurpation of authority that is not authorized by the US Constitution, so it is a right reserved for the states or the people. Finally, with regards to the broader economics, I could say that Obama is a tool of the banking cabal as much as any other of his predecessors. After all, along with Bush, Obama did back the original bailout that occurred just before his election, and they even twisted McCain's arm to join them after his initial reluctance. (look it up!) I'll leave it at that.....
Obama did not require churches to fund abortion. He required employers (except religious institutions) to provide health insurance for their employees. Employers do not get to decide how we will use our health insurance. It's none of their business unless it's illegal and a woman's right to choose whether or not to have an abortion is a right supported by the Supreme Court. A religious institution cannot take that right away. Health care was voted in by Congress (are they then "fascists"?) not the President. And the Constitution gives the federal government the power to regulate interstate trade. Everyone agrees that that the economic impact of the health care delivery system is an interstate operation. The question is about the mandate. And the federal government has, in the past, mandated health insurance. You just don't hear that among the libertarians. Do you prefer the present system where any uninsured person can walk into an emergency room and demand health care for free? The mandate was a Republican idea to hold people financially responsible for their own health care. Otherwise YOU pay for their care. Certainly Wall St. bankers have lots of power. But it was Obama--opposed down the line by Republicans--who sought to regulate the investment banks' risky behavior. Obama is trying to reign in the banks. Republicans won't let him.
Just another aside, by some estimates the Fed provided two trillion dollars to banks across the globe, not just in the US, the justification being that since every human on the planet is now connected that all the banks had to be supported. What do you think about supporting the Postal Service in a like manner? Why hasn't this been done? 10 billion would go a long way, trillions are not needed. Would you rather have one less bank or one less Postal Service? Furthermore, I think it is obvious that the Democrats and Republicans together have run the country into the ground at the behest of the defense industry and their campaign for endless war. Pat Buchanan pretty much summed it up when he said, "Today, candor compels us to admit that our vaunted two-party system is a snare and a delusion, a fraud upon the nation."
I cannot believe that you are this foolish. Anarchy is a state of disorder because there is no govermnet. You seem to want to tell us that anarchy is nothing but a hippy commune. As to that "People just get along" comment, might I ask what kind of society is that. As long as people are people we will have those who will not get along because they will be a diversity of opinions and ideas. Were that to disappear I would suggest you coule label you community "Boredom Village" As to Maggie's column, I think you would discover that she tossed the article out there to see what would come forth.
Here again I would ask that you take a real look at the educational system across the nation. It is nothing but big business. You talked about social studies. It is not the way to go because it is nothing but slivers of various disciplines. It is far better to have a history course, a geography course, various math courses. and so forth. This way students get more information pertaining to the subject matter. Costs in local education have gone through the roof because we have added stuff. At the college level we have added staff. Yet at the local level student populations are going down. while staff and building is going up. Check something before you write about it. Careles fills has taken you apart with correctness.
Let me add that Obama is also a narcissist. He is a very bad man and has lied to you and others who supported him. Have you read the books he has written? You should do that and then you will have the essence of the man. Check the past of his Kenyan father. I think you will find that it was not the Kenyan father who was the father. And yes, Mr. Obama is a Fascist.
1) Obama's executive order to make churches furnished insurance cover abortions could be deemed a unilateral, autocratic, and fascist usurpation of power. 2) Or that health care is a fascist centralization of power. 3) Or that by his actions, Obama proved he is just as much a tool of the banks as all of his predecessors. BTW, it was the Republicans in Congress that tried to block the bank bailout in fall of 2008. I actually think it was necessary. See Maria Bartilomo's excellent book reporting on the minute by minute happenings in one weekend.
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2012/05/16/mark-cuban-college-is-a-business-decision
1) Don't give up on applying to private school because of cost. Often the financial aid package will reduce costs to same as state colleges. 2) Community college is often a very good option, even for those who will go beyond two year degree. Many schools have articulation agreements with state colleges. My family has also had some excellent experiences at our own community college. One child, who attended for a semester, in transition between two other more highly regarded schools found the instructors at LCCC top notch and second to none of those he had at the other places. Ditto for me, for the classes that I've taken there as an adult for enrichment and a possible future second career.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57400369-503544/national-debt-has-increased-more-under-obama-than-under-bush/