Forum Post: Generation Screwed

Today Ginrich called “Generation Screwed” a generation of “coddled” easy-street kids. (Gingrich: No Role Model for Students?) Gingrich, tisk, tisk, tisk. First of all, a MARRIED man who was coddled by his parents through his entire education has no right to label the next generation as "coddled." Second, as one of the Boomers that fairly created the well-deserved title of "Worst Generation" for his era, there is irony in the fact that the "Greatest Generation" chipped in to ensure an affordable tuition for their children - free in CA – which you then had your parents pay for in the 60-70s. Since then, the Boomers’ self-indulged, creating the first credit society in U.S. history and rocketing the national debt to the location of your planned moon colony (1970: 370 Billion, Today: 15.3 Trillion). On top of this, the Boomers have decided that they will not pitch in to settle their bill, let alone the fact that responsibility to support the many Boomer-expanded institutions in the first place.

Because of your generation’s self-indulgence, it is becoming increasingly impossible for a student to self-finance an education the U.S. no matter what class he or she is from. You and other worthless Boomer politicians decided to take the system of government guaranteed loans created for the poor and turn it into a vehicle that would allow the Boomers to avoid paying taxes in favor of saddling today’s students with your bill. Your Boomer group wanted to make sure that there was no way out for today’s students, so the debt is now non-dischargeable (it would be irresponsible for student’s to avoid paying their bill, right Boomers?)

For example, the Boomers who run the academic institutions have exploded the price of education so that they can keep their bloated paychecks, keep their buddies around in the hundreds of public universities created to give themselves careers, and make up for the Boomer societies' unwillingness to fund this self-expanded institution. There is no incentive for the Boomers who overwhelmingly run the financial sector to reject lending for these tuition hikes because government backed means win-win. (If the student pays w/ interest, super win! If not, the taxpayer will pay it, win again!).

If it wasn't clear that mortgaging their childrens’ future became the Boomers' avenue to avoid paying their bill, it became clear when the Boomers in Congress created Direct Loans - which has almost completely replaced private loans with government so that government can collect all the interest, and decided to erase Subsidized Loans as a way to pay down the debt through more student interest rather than taxing the Boomers at all for their bill in the recent budget showdown. Both of these events have been explicitly touted by our current Boomer politicians as a way to clean up the Boomers’ mess.

So the result? Here at Penn Law, for example, the Ponzi scheme goes like this: First year, we are not allowed to work - for good reason. My scholarship cuts the $50.7K tuition down to $20K. This scholarship is supported by the kid paying $50.7. Living expenses are estimated at $20K on top of this, low when considering that books, supplies, and family, will mean that the school actually lends more for this. Working an increasingly rare summer associate position will allow me to substantially reduce my prospective debt of $160k now and in the future, but the kid who will be looking at $210k came into the school as a comparatively poor academic and will likely graduate with no career prospects (none of these debts are adjusted for interest, mind you).

To compare this to what the $2.3K tuition $1.8k living expenses the Boomers’ paid at the school in 1970, the enormous tax that the Boomers are now passing on to their children through education becomes clear. While law school is the biggest example of how education has been reinvented as an enormous tax, this is the standard situation at all levels of education today. Somehow, I was able to avoid all but $13K debt (wife + me combined – all subsidized, a luxury in hindsight) as an undergrad who worked through school to support himself, got scholarships (the wife too), participated in many community and student organizations, and began a family. Yet still, I avoided the worst of the tuition hikes that have seen the Boomer enforced student tax triple over the past decade while “union and administrative pay [at these schools] has also skyrocketed.” (CA, Political News).

The Boomers have ensured that their kids start adulthood not at the status quo, not at zero, but at a monumental negative at a time when most students will fail to gain the employment needed to erase this negative. So when Gingrich who represents a Boomer who controlled the levers that created this mess says that this generation is “coddled,” it is ironic to say the least. The Boomers, who were coddled by their parents’ societal contributions and are now coddled by their children who are paying the bill for them, are doing more than calling the kettle black. They are self-projecting in the extremist way possible. The Boomers, I’m sure, will continue to find new ways to pass accountability for their excess onto their children. The Boomers’ only hope is that the house of cards they created will not fall down before they can make a quick exit into oblivion.

If justice exists, they will be reincarnated as Chinese workers in one of their self-created free-trade-zone factories. An Apple Computer factory would serve these Boomers well, allowing them to learn the lesson that their parents tried to teach them by avoiding foreign products – thus keeping Sear’s products from all reading “made in Japan” at the time. Ironically, if their children can still afford Ipods, Boomers will be working on the opposite end of this system they created to provide their kids with the only good thing they every created: great advances in technology.