I seem to have been pretty pissed the last few days, but for good reason. I was in class today talking with someone about how it is that Affirmative Action sucks, citing this book the school gave the top 20% students to use to apply for scholarships and how the only available ones prove the point of one of my previous blog entries. This girl who we weren't even talking to pipes up and starts attacking us, saying that because our parents make around 100 grand a year, we shouldn't complain and we'll be able to pay for school.
Is it me, or is that total bull? I get SOME of it...that we have been provided for compared to others, I'll happily admit and go further to say that we are lucky to have the luxury of stability. But I have 2 other sisters, my dad is the only one that works, and on TOP of that, the medical expenses we have would startle the average person.
Just because a lot of money is earned doesn't mean we see all of it. I mean, this is where people complain about the rich getting a break, but when you think about it, they're just about as screwed as we are when it comes to taxes. In the developing middle class family I'm in, we don't have much money left over when the mortgage and utilities are paid, taxes, meds, and miscellaneous things are paid for. Do you really think that that much of an income is going to support 3 kids' college educations on top of that?
Sure, you can argue that the kids work for their own keep. I do, and I plan on footing most of the bill for my college as such. Go to community college instead of some fancy private school. Reasonable, practical.
But isn't it sad that there are so many people who have to give up their dreams to go to this place and earn a degree in this subject because money doesn't permit them to? The American Dream has declined as a result of the higher costs of life, and it seems like the standard of living is declining with it.
I don't know. College has quadrupled in cost over the last thirty years. It's getting to the point where only the select few can go, and I really don't understand why. Is any of this wrong? Am I that ignorant?
According to the FAFSA, my family should be able to offer $15,000/year for me to go to college. Too bad we only make about 2x that.
Nicholas Aden
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I personally think FAFSA is the most evil thing on the planet. Where do they come up with these numbers? Trying to make things worthless become assets isn't what I call a correct analysis of how much a family will be able to do.
Thanks so much for commenting.
In one of the conversations with my father which took place years ago (I am the age now which he was then) he once uttered the platitude, "Life is hard," and my reaction at the time was a resistance to this notion being a particularly apt description of his situation and postion. I knew damn well that MY life was hard. But his? C'mon, I thought, Dad, you must be pulling in about $75,000 a year, you're a fully-tenured professor near the end of your career. But I said none of this to him. I expressed none of these reservations.
I think the British economist Maynard Keynes had a theory that people will spend close to every penny they earn, that this was natural human behavior. This sounds fairly plausible since everyone seems to have a hard time saving a dime.
Perhaps the hardest struggle begins in one's twenties, on the first occasion when one tries to live entirely on one's own. But realistically I can only speak with assurance about my own situation in a matter like this. Sociologists might have some ideas on the matter but I haven't read any of them recently.
I will say that America is overall a profligate, spendthrift country now deeply in debt. Why is that so? . . . In the end it's because most of us want things immediately and there are such things as a credit card and the installment plan which makes it so wonderfully easy to acquire them.
I remember years ago when I read Michner's Hawaii, and the reader is now among an imporverished Chinese family newly arrived on the island. The husband and wife work all day long like pack animals and are so exhausted each night they hardly have enough stamina left to make love. But they plod on each and every day, and they save, and they save, and they save. Two generations later the family is now quite a wealty clan, with all manner of holdings.
Americans have lost the Pioneer Spirit. We lost this long ago with the advent of cars and the installment plan, and the addition of Hawaii as the 50th state.
GroundsKeeper.
Neil Diamond has me sold in his book, Collapse. He says that it's a new characteristic of this generation to expect a college education and to have a high standard of living. The older generation is fond of reciting the words, "when I was young, I expected to be poor for at least the next 20 years, then life might get easier."
For me, I'm a live simply kinda guy. Gotta get my education, then eat dee Ramen noodles.
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