We know what we need. Just give us the money so we can do it. Delegate a little. Decentralize. Stop telling me what I want like you know. I live just blocks from the White House, and you really haven’t a clue what I need. So give us a all a raise and let us handle our own lives. We live our lives. You don’t. You want limited government: well, all you have to do is give us the money to live and reasonably achieve our goals and stop trying to put us in chains. That seems like an awful lot of work for someone who doesn’t want the government to do anything.
In summation, we’re somehow cutting expenses and saving what we can and never getting ahead. That’s not even counting the debt. With student loan payments, we’re going backwards. As a form of protest, I’d say don’t even pay them. It might cause a recession, but it’s better than a recession happening anyway and your not having money to ride out the storm. That’s sort of a game theory discussion that basically surmises that it’s better to not pay back the loans, irrespective of ability, because someone else might not be paying either whether they can or not. In short, you don’t want to be the only one paying. If baby boomers, the 1%, investment companies, insurance companies, large corporations, and so on can just stop paying whenever they choose, so can you. I mean, your income isn’t rising, your living expenses and interest expenses are, more and more of you are getting paid jack compared to what you’re worth, and it’s making so many of us so stressed out. So just stop coughing up the dough. See how the banks feel about it. Anyway, if we all have bad credit scores, they’re going to have to lend to someone or figure out a way to operate without Interest Revenue, their bread and butter.
Look, the money is out there. Some of it has left the country and won’t easily come back if it went to China and even a few ally countries, but mostly, it’s still here. It’s just in a very illiquid form. It’s untouchable. We can have any. That is temporary. We WILL get that money so long as it stays in this country or in an international trade system that allows that money to rotate through all of us and not in China where they’ll trap it and keep it away from us as long as they can. The vast majority of that wealth will stay here, and that’ll be a great benefit for us in the future. In terms of financial wealth, I do believe America’s best days are ahead of us. In terms of innovation and competitiveness, no way, but strictly speaking about a cash balance, we’ll be doing just fine as soon as those bloated billionaires, corporate slush funds, and investment and insurance companies are either forced to redistribute or die off.
In the mean time, the concept of minimalism is trending. It’s popular to live in a cubby hole or an attic in New York City while trying to make it as a musician. Maybe do that. In the short run, I’m not sure there’s a better way but bare-bones financial discipline. Skipping meals, doing your own home repairs, hoarding coupons, adding water to your soap bottle to get a few more squirts out of it, and so on. Taking a nap instead of going to the doctor. I mean, I don’t know how else people can save money. They’re paid nothing and are expected to somehow survive?
We need to be protesting, calling Congress, and boycotting the goods and services of our own employers. We deserve a fair wage. I know “we” doesn’t include me, and I know I have ineffable privileges in this world, but I’ve made it my darn business to know what it’s like to have nothing, and with what little I can truly feel about it, I have to tell you it’s scary. Running out of money is no joke, and yet the current administration is laughing at millions of American struggling to summon enough energy to walk to the bus stop while sick and hungry, half the time in cold weather.
Call your Congressperson and tell them to renegotiate student loan debt. Tell them you’ll stop paying unless you can refinance. Tell them you’re broke and that they know why. Tell them the biggest problem isn’t the debt but the inability to pay. Tuition shouldn’t be as high as it is, but we could’ve paid if it weren’t for so many other problems. Tell them to NOT support the RAISE Act, repealing Dodd-Frank, rollbacks on labor regulations, reneging on student loan forgiveness programs, and anything else that doesn’t empower you to take care of yourself. Like I said, you know what you need.
We can do this. We can get them to listen to us. We can get enough people in office in 2018 to get appropriate bills passed. Stay strong. Keep fighting.
You’ve reached the end of Series 29: Student Loan Crisis
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Just a thought, but do a cost benefit analysis before you go to college. Also…
“Want to close wage gap? Step one: Change your major from feminist dance therapy to electrical engineering.”
“If you’re studying interpretive dance, God bless you, but there’s not a lot of jobs right now in America looking for people with that as a skill set.”
“Educators need to stop perpetuating “this idea that simply going to college is enough,” Bevin said. A college degree isn’t sufficient if students “aren’t studying the right things.”
These are excerpts from an excellent article: http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/why-interpretive-dance-not-going-set-you-apart-workforce
I’m not trying to be mean, but you have to be realistic about your choices in life – and accept the consequences of those choices. I don’t think anyone put a gun to your head and made you go to college.
Thank you for your comment. Everyone has their thoughts about what is best for them. I majored in economics and finance and got a good job out of college. The cost/benefit analysis was easy because my parents paid the cost, plus I had a scholarship. Someone else may have a different situation and make a different decision.
Additionally, the odds are against many of us because companies try to keep us stupid so that we can’t make the right decisions. Take a look at the recent article about the FCC voting to allow corporations to decide which websites we’re allowed to access without an additional fee per website. There’s so much to learn on the Internet, and they want to control what we learn.
A college degree used to be enough. Now, with more people going to college and more companies leaving the United States, it’s even more important to get a good education. I’m not sure electrical engineering is a smart decision because that can be outsourced. However, psychology sounds very smart because you can’t outsource therapy, and a lot of people are stressed out these days.
As far as the comment about “feminist dance therapy,” that’s an attempt to throw as many political as possible into an example of a degree that doesn’t exist.
We do need diversity of skill, not just engineers. Corporations decide what we should study because they refuse to pay a living wage if we don’t follow their commands. However, their bullying doesn’t make them right. I’ve known many people who have seen therapists and become productive and hard-working afterwards. Mental illness is real, and we need people who are trained to help.
Also, the idea that feminism is a problem, or that women are the problem, seems to claim that our country’s GDP would be larger if the workforce got smaller. If we stop employing women, GDP doesn’t rise. It falls. In order to be productive, we can’t have sexual harassment and other problems harming female employees to the point that they can’t do the job they’re not even paid enough to do.