Student Loan Blues

You can't get a decent job with a high school diploma anymore. Careers in fields like transportation, construction and manufacturing are either dead ends and/or no longer pay enough to support a family. The Conservative point of view on this is, “Well, they just need to go back to school and they can get a better job.” The problem with this is that most students graduate college with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, if they can qualify for the loan in the first place; if they have never had the misfortune to run afoul of the War on Drugs.

It used to be that the American dream took hard work and brains to achieve, now it takes that and access to funds to finance your education and enough savvy to keep your footing in the economic shitstorm that is currently gripping the world.. In the past you could actually “work your way through college” with a crappy job. It was part of paying your dues. Now, our new President paid off his and his wife's student loans with money from his best-selling books! He was a state legislator, she was a successful lawyer and they were still making payments on their own education, while trying to raise a family and have something left to pay for their kids' college. WTF?

America is the only industrialized nation that does not provide free or cheap higher education to it's citizens (or health care, but that's another rant). It makes no sense, especially when the “global economy” is so competitive. People with degrees simply make more money than those without one. If they make more, they can then spend more and keep the expansion model economy chugging along. They can also pay a little more in taxes, which is not an entirely bad thing.

The cynical view is that “the Man” is trying to continue the dumbing down of America to the point where jingoism and propaganda take the place of practicality and critical thought on the big questions like “Should we go to war with x ?” and “Where are we going and why are we in a hand basket?”

Keeping one eye on the powers behind the powers,

OneEyeChuck