cheers

A toast to the Talking Heads,
Here, here. I'm twenty-two. I have a college degree and $20,000 in loans. I'll pay of $35,000 with interest, because somewhere along the lines it became okay to charge someone one amount, then double it, especially on such a "frivolous" expense like education. I drive a van. It was donated to me by my aunt and uncle. It gets 10 miles per gallon. And now, it's making a sound, like a motor boat or an airplane. My mom lost her job, can't find a new one, and her property taxes are due at the end of the month. Her car failed the emissions test. So she is across town right now having it fixed. Another chunk of change to add to the already impressive $8,000 she has in credit card debt. Both my brothers are saddled with college loans. My dad died when I was seventeen. I am a part-time waitress at an unsuccessful pub. I couldn't even get a job at Starbucks because I want to get a Master's and that limited my time commitment to work there for only a year. You know places are being choosy when a woman with a Bachelor's degree, and two-years of barista experience can't get a job at a minimum-wage coffee shop because she can't make a 5-year time commitment.
I just wanted to thank you. Thanks to you, we've been paying exuberant sums into a social security we'll never see. We pay health insurance premiums with $5,000 deductibles. We pay the price of a new car for a degree that is now REQUIRED to have to work as a receptionist. We buy stocks that plummet when you scare us, rise when you comfort us and stay the same when you forget we're out here. We're all business majors and accounting minors with no money to count or businesses to work for. We get out of college, travel Europe, get home and serve food. I had bigger dreams than this. Thanks economy. Thanks taxes. Thank you propaganda manufacturers. Your fancy cars. Private homes. Your lack of touch with the rest of us. Keep running the country. Look where it got us. $700,000 billion bailout. Iraq War. Shitty elections that become the sole object of media coverage. We're ignorant and overexposed to ourselves, have no idea what's happening in the rest of the world and arrogant enough to think we're the land of the free. Freedom isn't paying off loans for the next 20 years. It's not being a woman who has worked her whole life to make ends meat, budgets responsibly and then suddenly faced with no job, racks up $8,000 in debt. Here's to you rich old white guys running this country, May your lies become truths, your financial solutions become realities and your arteries stay unclogged long enough for you to fully face the music for your corruption.
signed,
Just another American, frustrated.