I guess my reaction was because it reads like "The only way to pay off your loans is to win the job lotto and get a $175k a year job". Or maybe that's the point - the claims that really the only way to get out of debt is to win a lotto or be super-well connected so you can get elected to Congress?
My opinion is probably clouded because when I graduated college in 2000 I had a debt to income ratio of about 50% - that is, my student loans the day I graduated was about 50% of my annual salary, and at 6.5% interest rate. Also, I got scholarships so only had to pay for 1 year (out of 4) of college. So my brain rationalizes that prices today are lower, if the average is only paying twice as much for four times (or more, since average students take more than 4 years now) as many years of school.
So when I hear complaints, about debt burden - I guess I just can't relate, because I worked to not need a lot of debt, and then I worked to pay off the debt I had. I'm also in that weird demographic age right at the end of Gen X; I remember growing up even noting that the worldviews and lifestyles of the kids as few as 2 years younger than me were very different than mine and my peer groups'. That still holds - my worldview in general is more optimistic and "if you work hard you will probably get ahead" (opposed to today's sentiment that even if you work hard, you probably won't get ahead).
So I'm sad all around - I feel on one hand that there's something wrong that people can't figure out how to plan and make things work. I'm sad that conditions have changed such that it is in fact more difficult (in sheer numbers, if not on a percentage basis) for students to get consistent employment to support their debt. I'm sad that society has done something to education in general, such that it feels like for the first time in a long time, we have a generation where people say "education today is not better than it was when I was a student" (opposed to the past 2 centuries, where most people confidently said things were getting better). I'm sad that the current young-adult generation is so disenfranchised and flat out fearful.
Born in '83 here. A Xennial, if you will. I've got a fair amount of Gen X in me. But I was also an early adopter of internet and right in the thick of the cultural switch you speak of.
I've worked really hard. Spent much of the past year recovering from severe burnout, because 2015-2018 I was basically working myself to death. But I know people smarter and harder working than I who haven't done nearly as well. I'm under no illusion that while my hard work and talents have been a valuable part of getting me to where I am today, they wouldn't have amounted to anything without a lot of privilege and luck. I make more with a single job than most of my peers, and I own a home. At the same time, I'm still buried in debt and live paycheck to paycheck. I admit some of that is because I've been stuck in a toxic marriage with someone who's mildly irresponsible with money (mostly spends too much on soda and eating out). But even without that, I don't think I'd be that much better off. It's just as much to do with kids and medical expenses, which are burdens that very few millennials or zoomers can bear anymore. My dad's sort of a big shot in his field and my parents are pretty financially secure. If I didn't have their support, I would have been completely fucked several times over by various emergency expenses. I don't know anyone with kids my age or younger who doesn't regularly get bailed out by older family, and those without such family support end up in horrible situations or more likely just don't have kids and accept that they'll never be able to responsibly afford kids even if they want them. And my job fortune has been just as much about receiving valuable tip-offs and good words from friends and being in the right place at the right time as it has been about hard work. I think I still have a shot at making it to a place of relative security before my parents are gone, but I've enjoyed very little of my life so far and don't know that I ever will because having to work all the damn time, so it's often difficult to see the point. I sincerely doubt I'll ever be able to afford a comfortable retirement... and that's if environmental collapse hasn't de-stabilized everything in the next 40 years. My retirement plan and only hope for the future, like much of youth today, is the death of capitalism.
I also graduated college in 2008. There's a really sharp line there between the experiences of those who "made it" before that cut-off, and those whose financial and career journeys began after the crash. Seriously look at the numbers and testimonies about how the experience of working up from entry-level has changed after 2008. The experiences simply are not comparable.
I think an even bigger part of the generational difficulty in sympathizing is that older generations did have their own struggles, and when we talk about our struggles, it feels like we're marginalizing yours. But it's not like that. They're just not comparable.
My dad's dad died when he was 15. His mother made him pay rent to continue living with her through his teen years. He did hard manual labor. He went to college, met my mom, and had me when they were 20. My mom dropped out of school and worked at McDonald's to support the family while my dad finished his Masters degree. They lived in a little 3-room shack with sections of floor missing about the size of your average 2-car garage. They feared the electricity being cut and me freezing to death in the Wisconsin winters when they were late on their bills. I get it. They struggled through genuine hardship. And they look at my life, and don't see the same.
But the difference is the things they did were possible back then. It was a hard path, but it was a path that was there. A single McDonald's income won't even pay rent for a studio apartment in many places anymore. They didn't even have to take out student loans to live on it (if barely) and afford school. My dad got a good job immediately after graduating, and the types of advancement opportunities that were available to him are not around today. For example, he was a computer geek in the 80's, and without any formal tech training or certification, he was the de facto network admin and IT expert at the global headquarters of a multinational corporation in the mid-90's. I'm also a computer geek and that's created some opportunities for me, but none nearly so grandiose, as corporate I.T. isn't that kind of wild frontier anymore. Nothing is. The world's population has literally doubled in my parent's lifetimes. Almost every job market is saturated, and dominated by middle-aged people who got knocked down a peg during the recession, forcing youth out completely. Desperation has everybody hyper-vigilant for a hole to fill, such that glaring voids like the one my dad filled as de facto I.T. don't exist for more than a year or two. When I started studying what I focused my degree on, the job market was starving for the skills I trained in. A couple years later when I graduated, I was already a dime a dozen and would have struggled to find a job even without the crash. And I never did end up doing anything with my degree, and instead settled for work I hate that I fell into mostly by luck.
We're drowning in shallow luxuries, which gives off the appearance of being spoiled. But luxuries are cheap, while necessities are expensive. Ten years ago, I was renting a two-bedroom apartment in the cheapest, trashiest complex in the city, and I live on the outskirts of Indianapolis where cost of living isn't very high compared to the rest of the country. I can build a capable gaming computer today for half of what a month's rent cost there ten years ago, which I'll get at least 5 years use out of. Giving up stuff like that would make almost zero difference in the struggle. It doesn't matter how much we sacrifice. We can subsist on ramen and spend our 2 hours a day not working staring at a wall, and if we didn't kill ourselves first, maybe that would get us to a place of financial security in our middle ages instead of never. The same opportunities and paths simply do not exist which did up until 20 years ago.
Meanwhile big brother is bigger than Orwell's wildest dreams, so it's ever in the back of our minds that we can't truly relax... ever. State governors ship their police forces across state lines to invade sovereign territory as if they're soldiers with blatant disregard for state, federal, and international law so they can maul protesters with dogs and shove them naked into dog kennels in winter temperatures for wanting to literally prevent apocalypse, and a Democrat president mostly pretends it's not happening for months (Standing Rock). Suicide is the leading cause of death among young men, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone under 35 who hasn't lost someone they cared about to it. I'm not a very social person and don't have a large circle, but I still see expressions of suicidal thoughts or severe depression from someone I know every single day. Corporations can openly kill massive numbers of people to make a buck and face zero consequences (opioid epidemic as just one example). Whistleblowers publish smoking gun evidence of massive high-level corruption and war crimes with regularity, and they face horrendous consequences while the wrongdoers exposed face none, because Boomers frankly seem to just admire that stuff.
Everything's damn bleak and absurd, and there is absolutely a generational reckoning coming. I just don't know when. There have been so many lines crossed that had me thinking "Surely this is the moment. Surely this won't be tolerated." But I've been continually disappointed. I've stopped looking for it. But it's definitely coming, and it's going to be a volcanic release of pressure and transformation of landscape.
I think Muse sums it up best...
