I think an important thing to remember is the US’s insistence that certain fields are exceptional in the case of the US only (medicine, etc). It amazes me that many European countries churn out (on the whole) smarter graduates who have to turn around and redo their training in the US “just because”.
I call bullshit on that. I think people need to rethink their image of the US being the ultimate career destination.
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The list of basics was housing, food, childcare, healthcare, transportation and a cellphone. I agree that if the healthcare figure goes to zero (or is reduced by a factor of 10 or 20) then it is going to be a lot easier to cross the threshold and have enough to make ends meet. I have to imagine that from that list healthcare is the thing people most often forgo to make ends meet. Still, I’d love to have some sense of how bad it is in other places and exactly how not smug we non-Americans ought to be (obviously no one should be smug about America descending into a dystopia).
While I feel like the answer is probably yes, there does seem to be something remarkable about the current American situation of voting in people who are there to screw the people over.
I’ve been concerned for a long time about student loans being a new kind of serfdom. I guess these numbers make it look like the new serfdom is probably there for a lot of people who don’t have student loans; and student loans are just going to make it worse.
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And also rethink the idea of what is primary vs secondary education.
My parents and grandparents were able to attain well paying jobs that kept them in the middle class with only high school diplomas and in my mom’s case nursing school (which was just a two year specialized program, not a 4 year degree and sometimes post grad education too now a days).
If primary education is not enough to secure a middle class job as a project manager or developer…then whats the point of it?!
Every job from fry cook to CEO to neurosurgeon shouldn’t demand a degree. Do I wan a neurosurgeon to have advanced training and education…yes. Do they need it…yes! Does a project manager at a financial institution need a BA/BS? no. and we should stop putting such expectations on such things. OR alter our curriculum in primary education to give the skill sets and experience needed to get a nominal white collar job.
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You can get anything you want, excepting ALICE.
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We became debt free last year (including mortgage) and it was the single most liberating feeling I’ve ever experienced. It changed everything about how I currently live - it affects what I purchase (we don’t buy much anymore), how we live (downsized and reduced our ecological footprint) and value money (it’s just not as important anymore).
Unfortunately it came at the expense of losing a loved one but we took that negative experience and turned it into an opportunity to change our future. Just losing the stress associated with living in debt has made a huge impact on our overall happiness.
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There’s that conservative talk show about getting out of debt, and I’ve listened a couple times. I’ve noticed a pattern: pretty much everyone who is celebrated as getting out of debt had a huge bit of luck in addition to their financial thriftiness. Whether it be an inheritance, a family gift or landing a job making 150k a year. This isn’t a knock on you at all. That’s really wonderful that you’ve been able to get out of debt. I just mean, that it seems like in real life it’s never as easy as “not going to starbucks” or whatever we’re constantly being told by conservatives as the solution.
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I tend to agree - it’s not as easy as Dave Ramsey makes it out to be. Although, it is possible if you really commit to the change. In our case, we were already on the path when a relative passed away. While I did not receive any direct inheritance per se, we were able to make financial arrangements with family to get out from under our previous house and move to a smaller place in the city. We pay about the same in rent currently as we did before on mortgage but the overall effects of restructuring our finances from the ground up has made all the difference.
Yes, we were lucky in a sense in that we were able to accelerate our plan but the lessons are still there. Like losing a lot of weight, it takes time, hard work and commitment but it can be done. Most importantly, it takes both partners to absolutely commit to the plan and communicate constantly.
The lure of debt is still out there and it has a siren song quality to it that is hard to resist. I can already see that it would be extremely easy to get pulled back under if we’re not careful.
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Absolutely. On an individual level you gotta work hard to do what you can. whether it be getting multiple jobs, sharing an apartment with multiple roommates, spending less generally. Personally I moved back in with my parents for two years at 39 years old so i could just use almost all my income to pay off debt for a while. And I consider myself privileged on some level to have even been able to do that - a lot of people don’t have that sort of option. As a society we gotta wonder why it takes so much work and sacrifice to live at a basic level of existence when the people paying us and the people we are paying are getting rich. Sometimes so rich they don’t know what to do with their money.
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Genuinely curious to know what you think the American class system is based on, if not wealth. Lower-class, middle-class, upper-class… what have we been measuring all this time, and why didn’t I know about it?
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The estate tax laws are set up to make it easy to pass capital down to one’s descendants. Makes owning the pile of money a hereditary thing.
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I worked at a bank where a majority of the officers had not been to college. It did affect their ability to do their best work. They were diligent and honest, but didn’t know how to do research, think big, make new connections that could bring in more money and/or customers, etc. The bank finally got bought out, because there was nothing wrong with it, but it was stagnant in the water with all the other banks racing past them.
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So are you are arguing/of the mindset that college degrees are a requirement for all the entire workforce? Do you feel that an undergrad or grad degrees are a requirement to critical thinking or corporate leadership?
Why should I go hundred’s of thousands of dollars into more debt just because someone else couldn’t do those things? They sound like bad hires, not examples of why advanced education is needed (which may or may not have been your point…please clarify).
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Wealth is important, no doubt, but in the U.S. it gets complicated with other factors. This book, while somewhat dated, is still the best read on the topic:
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I know I’m wading into dangerous waters with someone of your username, but…where were you in 2008? My pay certainly took a hit because of the dipshittery engaged in by investment bankers.
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I wouldn’t go so far as to say college degrees for certain jobs aren’t important…only how accessible they are. We need to stop this privatization gravy train and make higher education available for all through progressive taxation systems.
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I was personally unaffected, buy YMMV and all that. I think its a mistake to make sweeping claims about where America is heading based on one particular event (the 2008 downturn).
It would behoove you to learn the difference between an op-ed and an academic treatise.
Secondly, it’s not the duty for anyone here to do the homework for you. Bring your own facts to the table before asking others to provide their own.
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It’s a pretty well-established pattern, and the de-regulation and greed substrate hasn’t changed much. The spores for the next round are well-laid.
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I know the difference, both only have value if they hew to the facts.
Bring my own facts to the table? Make sweeping claims and insist that someone else disprove you? Nonsense.
If you hadn’t noticed, the claims you state need citation come from the op-ed, not the author of this post.
Nonsense indeed.
I see a rhetorical question, and a personal anecdote. No sweeping generalizations.
Why not refrain from driving trollies altogether? Here at BoingBoing BBS, we love snark, but not so much trollies.
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