Thanks for responding to me personally. I've had several back-to-back shifts and wrote that post while management was having us do a bit of "hurry up and wait". Anyway...
I think that we're beginning to make strides towards resolving that [you were referring to our incarceration problems]
I see the fixes, even the proposed ones coming from the less as barely tokens. I believe, as Dr. King did, that this problem is rooted in economics far more than politics or legalism. Desperate people commit crimes, and isolated people seek substances.
Globalization, despite what some may have said, was always going to be a negative factor on the American workforce.
It didn't have to be though. A worker isn't an apple or a unit or iron. A worker is a citizen and the entire reason we bother with any organization or ism. Furthermore, our society didn't crumble before women entered the workplace and most households could thrive on a single income. Why aren't we making that much (as individuals) today? Because then we can't compete with the low wages of the third world? Why would we want to compete with destitute workers? let them have (as if they didn't already have) those jobs. THEN the real political question is "why would we trade with peoples who allow slavery or near-slavery" If that makes a Gap T-shirt cost $18.95 instead of $16.95, who cares? The consumers buying them would have the extra two bucks, if not much more because we refuse to trade with slavers on moral grounds. That's what people with moral authority do.
I just like renting. Hell, if in the future no one owned a car and there was just a self driving car service that picked you up and took you where you wanted to go that'd be awesome.
I agree. I'd love to not have to own a car... But I have to own a car. That's how we're set up. Self-driving cars will probably turn this around to some degree, but it's not a silver bullet, especially to those living outside of cities.
The home ownership thing... I dunno. I think most people just do it because it's a status symbol, when they'd be much happier renting a place they don't have to upkeep. Me, on the other hand, I run a business out of my apartment, have a woodshop on my balcony and my wife is a wildlife biologist and we REALLY want pets but can't have them. We really do need a house for actual reasons... And it's infuriating because I have built houses. My child-brain is like "I can do it! Why won't you just let me do it!" Because chase Bank and Vermont Student Loans own my ass until I'm 50 because I was stupid enough to get an education.
That's not really a choice. I want to be able to choose my fate.
Honest truth, I couldn't care less if my kids (potential kids...hey ladies...) went to College or not as long as I can get them excited about learning, and I think that will be a prevailing thought moving forward and we'll see the "College education is the only future" ideology fall by the wayside along with a large amount of that crippling debt you mentioned.
Preach it! If I had kids approaching college-age, I'd probably encourage them to get a super-cheap BA in something, because so many people really are obsessed with having that box checked, but unless you're IV league the details of the degree don't really seem to matter. Either way, you're going to have to do the unpaid internships (reason #2 for my debt) and then go get certifications and further education once you figure out an actual trajectory. Why go into that dropping an extra rent check every month?
Most people are living a decent life, not great, not even good, but decent.
They took my 20's. That was a decade I gave because the output promised to be a decent life where I could have kids and not scrimp by paycheck to paycheck. I'm just waiting for a sickness or financial mishap to take me out.
I just work. I work work work and all my money goes away when it should be going into retirement or savings. I am a servant. A peasant. I'm well-educated, my main job is considered professional, but by the time I got it I was in so much debt that my life has only declined.
Most people I know are in a similar situation, and it's not just millennials. My parents are stuck in their jobs because they're too old to get hired anywhere else. Their story is very common.
So many of us are just... stuck. It's institutional, it's a trap and it's a crisis. You hear about the 45 million Americans stuck beneath the poverty line. How high would that number be if you figured educational and health debt into that? I can't find the number through google, but from where I'm sitting that number looks astronomical. When one family has as much wealth as almost 50% of the population... That number has to be astronomical and definitely a crisis.