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On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:
Why Summer Jobs Don't Pay
Why can't kids today just work their way through college the way earlier generations did?
The answer to that question isn't psychology. It's math. A summer job just doesn't have the purchasing power it used to, especially when you compare it with the cost of college.
Let's take the example of a working-class student at a four-year public university who's getting no help from Mom and Dad. In 1981-'82, the average full cost to attend was $2,870. That's for tuition, fees and room and board.
The maximum Pell Grant award back then for free tuition help from the government was $1,800. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook for just about $1,000. Add in a little pocket money, too — say $35 a week. That makes an extra $1,820 for the year on top of the $1,000 tuition shortfall.
Now, $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage back then. So, making $2,870 meant working 842 hours. That's 16 hours a week year-round — a decent part-time job. It's also about nine hours a day for three straight months — a full-time, seven-day-a-week summer job. Or, more likely, a combination of both. In short: not impossible. Far from it.
For today's public university student, though, the numbers have all changed in the wrong direction.
For the school year that just ended, the total of tuition, fees and room and board for in-state students at four-year public universities was $20,090. The maximum Pell Grant didn't keep pace with that: It was $5,815. That left our hypothetical student on the hook for $14,275.
A student would now have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to get by. Research shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week, their studies suffer. If they're working full time, many will take longer to finish and end up paying even more.
To cover today's costs with a low-skilled summer job? Over 90 days, a student would need to work 21.9 hours a day.
Of course, you could seek work in a city with a higher minimum wage like Washington, D.C. ($12.50, as of July 1) or Seattle, where it's $13 an hour, on its way to $15 (but there, low-wage workers may have lost out on annual income).
Rents tend to be higher in those places, too.
Plus side: If you're working that much, you may not need to pay rent because you're hardly sleeping.
No wonder students are borrowing so much these days.
SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary
Both candidates had fairly notable platforms for post-secondary funding, and Obama made changes to the repayment options for existing student loans.
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On July 06 2017 02:39 plasmidghost wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:35 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:
Why Summer Jobs Don't Pay
Why can't kids today just work their way through college the way earlier generations did?
The answer to that question isn't psychology. It's math. A summer job just doesn't have the purchasing power it used to, especially when you compare it with the cost of college.
Let's take the example of a working-class student at a four-year public university who's getting no help from Mom and Dad. In 1981-'82, the average full cost to attend was $2,870. That's for tuition, fees and room and board.
The maximum Pell Grant award back then for free tuition help from the government was $1,800. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook for just about $1,000. Add in a little pocket money, too — say $35 a week. That makes an extra $1,820 for the year on top of the $1,000 tuition shortfall.
Now, $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage back then. So, making $2,870 meant working 842 hours. That's 16 hours a week year-round — a decent part-time job. It's also about nine hours a day for three straight months — a full-time, seven-day-a-week summer job. Or, more likely, a combination of both. In short: not impossible. Far from it.
For today's public university student, though, the numbers have all changed in the wrong direction.
For the school year that just ended, the total of tuition, fees and room and board for in-state students at four-year public universities was $20,090. The maximum Pell Grant didn't keep pace with that: It was $5,815. That left our hypothetical student on the hook for $14,275.
A student would now have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to get by. Research shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week, their studies suffer. If they're working full time, many will take longer to finish and end up paying even more.
To cover today's costs with a low-skilled summer job? Over 90 days, a student would need to work 21.9 hours a day.
Of course, you could seek work in a city with a higher minimum wage like Washington, D.C. ($12.50, as of July 1) or Seattle, where it's $13 an hour, on its way to $15 (but there, low-wage workers may have lost out on annual income).
Rents tend to be higher in those places, too.
Plus side: If you're working that much, you may not need to pay rent because you're hardly sleeping.
No wonder students are borrowing so much these days.
SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. I guess it's a good thing they're all getting pretty old so hopefully they all retire soon. The Democratic Party is about change, and it's high time it had some
Student loans are a massive issue, on the level of healthcare and immigration. For it to change, it would need to be the singular focus of an administration. It can’t be this part of this kitchen sink style of presidential run. My biggest criticism of Sanders wasn’t his vision, but the number of things he claimed he could accomplish in a single term. Even Obama limited his run to health care and saving the economy.
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On July 06 2017 02:39 plasmidghost wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:35 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:
Why Summer Jobs Don't Pay
Why can't kids today just work their way through college the way earlier generations did?
The answer to that question isn't psychology. It's math. A summer job just doesn't have the purchasing power it used to, especially when you compare it with the cost of college.
Let's take the example of a working-class student at a four-year public university who's getting no help from Mom and Dad. In 1981-'82, the average full cost to attend was $2,870. That's for tuition, fees and room and board.
The maximum Pell Grant award back then for free tuition help from the government was $1,800. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook for just about $1,000. Add in a little pocket money, too — say $35 a week. That makes an extra $1,820 for the year on top of the $1,000 tuition shortfall.
Now, $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage back then. So, making $2,870 meant working 842 hours. That's 16 hours a week year-round — a decent part-time job. It's also about nine hours a day for three straight months — a full-time, seven-day-a-week summer job. Or, more likely, a combination of both. In short: not impossible. Far from it.
For today's public university student, though, the numbers have all changed in the wrong direction.
For the school year that just ended, the total of tuition, fees and room and board for in-state students at four-year public universities was $20,090. The maximum Pell Grant didn't keep pace with that: It was $5,815. That left our hypothetical student on the hook for $14,275.
A student would now have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to get by. Research shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week, their studies suffer. If they're working full time, many will take longer to finish and end up paying even more.
To cover today's costs with a low-skilled summer job? Over 90 days, a student would need to work 21.9 hours a day.
Of course, you could seek work in a city with a higher minimum wage like Washington, D.C. ($12.50, as of July 1) or Seattle, where it's $13 an hour, on its way to $15 (but there, low-wage workers may have lost out on annual income).
Rents tend to be higher in those places, too.
Plus side: If you're working that much, you may not need to pay rent because you're hardly sleeping.
No wonder students are borrowing so much these days.
SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. I guess it's a good thing they're all getting pretty old so hopefully they all retire soon. The Democratic Party is about change, and it's high time it had some
The party members will retire, but the baby boomers will continue to vote for several more decades.
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On July 06 2017 02:38 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:35 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:
Why Summer Jobs Don't Pay
Why can't kids today just work their way through college the way earlier generations did?
The answer to that question isn't psychology. It's math. A summer job just doesn't have the purchasing power it used to, especially when you compare it with the cost of college.
Let's take the example of a working-class student at a four-year public university who's getting no help from Mom and Dad. In 1981-'82, the average full cost to attend was $2,870. That's for tuition, fees and room and board.
The maximum Pell Grant award back then for free tuition help from the government was $1,800. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook for just about $1,000. Add in a little pocket money, too — say $35 a week. That makes an extra $1,820 for the year on top of the $1,000 tuition shortfall.
Now, $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage back then. So, making $2,870 meant working 842 hours. That's 16 hours a week year-round — a decent part-time job. It's also about nine hours a day for three straight months — a full-time, seven-day-a-week summer job. Or, more likely, a combination of both. In short: not impossible. Far from it.
For today's public university student, though, the numbers have all changed in the wrong direction.
For the school year that just ended, the total of tuition, fees and room and board for in-state students at four-year public universities was $20,090. The maximum Pell Grant didn't keep pace with that: It was $5,815. That left our hypothetical student on the hook for $14,275.
A student would now have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to get by. Research shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week, their studies suffer. If they're working full time, many will take longer to finish and end up paying even more.
To cover today's costs with a low-skilled summer job? Over 90 days, a student would need to work 21.9 hours a day.
Of course, you could seek work in a city with a higher minimum wage like Washington, D.C. ($12.50, as of July 1) or Seattle, where it's $13 an hour, on its way to $15 (but there, low-wage workers may have lost out on annual income).
Rents tend to be higher in those places, too.
Plus side: If you're working that much, you may not need to pay rent because you're hardly sleeping.
No wonder students are borrowing so much these days.
SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. The fact that the party laughed when plasmidghost spoke doesn't necessarily prove that the party is out of touch. We need more information before we can really judge.
Are you being satirical? The Democrats have barely won any election in about a decade...
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On July 05 2017 23:51 bardtown wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2017 23:26 xDaunt wrote:Now here's a fascinating example of unintended consequences: A dearth of marriagable men has left an “oversupply” of educated women taking desperate steps to preserve their fertility, experts say.
The first global study into egg freezing found that shortages of eligible men were the prime reason why women had attempted to take matters into their own hands.
Experts said “terrifying” demographic shifts had created a “deficit” of educated men and a growing problem of “leftover” professional women, with female graduates vastly outnumbering males in in many countries.
The study led by Yale University, involved interviews with 150 women undergoing egg freezing at eight clinics.
Researchers found that in more than 90 per cent of cases, the women were attempting to buy extra time because they could not find a partner to settle down with, amid a “dearth of educated men”.
Experts said the research bust the myth that “selfish career women” were choosing to out their fertility on ice in a bid to put their careers first.
They said sweeping social changes meant that many professional women now struggled to find a partner that felt like an equal match.
....
The anthropologist suggested some women might need to be prepared to compromise some of their standards in order to find love. But she suggested society should act to increase the number of men going into higher education.
“It may be about rethinking the way we approach this,” she said.
“Most women who are educated would like to have an educated partner. Traditionally women have also wanted to ‘marry up’ to go for someone more successful, financially well off.”
“Maybe women need to be prepared to be more open to the idea of a relationship with someone not as educated. But also may be we need to be doing something about our boys and young men, to get them off to a better start.”
Some women were paying a high price for feminism, she suggested.
“As a feminist I think it’s great that women are doing so well but I think there has been a cost that has been paid,” she said, warning that many had been left in “sadness and isolation”.
In some cases, the women taking part in the in-depth interviews said they would be happy to be in a relationship with someone less educated, but they felt they were “intimidating” to the men who were available. Source. Unintended, but predictable. The role of both men and women is devalued by the systematic erasure of our differences. Rather than working hard to provide for his family a man now works hard to... allow his family to work hard too. It's sad just how hard women have been played. They had the opportunity to choose between career or home life. Now, because of the obsession with the 'gender pay gap' etc, women are ceaselessly pushed towards a career oriented life that for many of them will be less enjoyable than the alternative while simultaneously disadvantaging their children if they even have the energy to have any. Meanwhile, their 'sexual liberation' means that men have no incentive to marry, and no role in the partnership if they do. Obviously people should have the choice, but it would be welcome if we could stop with the bullshit about people being able to make whatever choices they want without facing any criticism. Keep feeding young people the lie that they can live their life without any discipline and face no consequences and they will keep believing it. A world where everything is devalued other than your career is a world where people are nothing but fodder for corporations.
It doesn't even always have to be a choice. It's a cultural reality more than anything else that having a career and a family becomes mutually exclusive. Maternity accommodations across most of the Western world are garbage and the stigma of having to take care of one's children at some point in the day makes people assume you can't take care of your work despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
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On July 06 2017 02:41 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:39 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:35 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:
Why Summer Jobs Don't Pay
Why can't kids today just work their way through college the way earlier generations did?
The answer to that question isn't psychology. It's math. A summer job just doesn't have the purchasing power it used to, especially when you compare it with the cost of college.
Let's take the example of a working-class student at a four-year public university who's getting no help from Mom and Dad. In 1981-'82, the average full cost to attend was $2,870. That's for tuition, fees and room and board.
The maximum Pell Grant award back then for free tuition help from the government was $1,800. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook for just about $1,000. Add in a little pocket money, too — say $35 a week. That makes an extra $1,820 for the year on top of the $1,000 tuition shortfall.
Now, $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage back then. So, making $2,870 meant working 842 hours. That's 16 hours a week year-round — a decent part-time job. It's also about nine hours a day for three straight months — a full-time, seven-day-a-week summer job. Or, more likely, a combination of both. In short: not impossible. Far from it.
For today's public university student, though, the numbers have all changed in the wrong direction.
For the school year that just ended, the total of tuition, fees and room and board for in-state students at four-year public universities was $20,090. The maximum Pell Grant didn't keep pace with that: It was $5,815. That left our hypothetical student on the hook for $14,275.
A student would now have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to get by. Research shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week, their studies suffer. If they're working full time, many will take longer to finish and end up paying even more.
To cover today's costs with a low-skilled summer job? Over 90 days, a student would need to work 21.9 hours a day.
Of course, you could seek work in a city with a higher minimum wage like Washington, D.C. ($12.50, as of July 1) or Seattle, where it's $13 an hour, on its way to $15 (but there, low-wage workers may have lost out on annual income).
Rents tend to be higher in those places, too.
Plus side: If you're working that much, you may not need to pay rent because you're hardly sleeping.
No wonder students are borrowing so much these days.
SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. I guess it's a good thing they're all getting pretty old so hopefully they all retire soon. The Democratic Party is about change, and it's high time it had some The party members will retire, but the baby boomers will continue to vote for several more decades.
Precisely the point I think bears mention each time someone mentions that boomers are on the verge of retirement. Not to mention that a lot of people simply are not the retirement type these days.
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@bardtown post
I don't see how hard work and the financial independence following from it are bad. It's a liberation for the individual. This just sounds like a rant how glorious manliness becomes obsolete because the womenfolk now can take care of themselves.
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On July 06 2017 02:44 plasmidghost wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:39 WolfintheSheep wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:
Why Summer Jobs Don't Pay
Why can't kids today just work their way through college the way earlier generations did?
The answer to that question isn't psychology. It's math. A summer job just doesn't have the purchasing power it used to, especially when you compare it with the cost of college.
Let's take the example of a working-class student at a four-year public university who's getting no help from Mom and Dad. In 1981-'82, the average full cost to attend was $2,870. That's for tuition, fees and room and board.
The maximum Pell Grant award back then for free tuition help from the government was $1,800. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook for just about $1,000. Add in a little pocket money, too — say $35 a week. That makes an extra $1,820 for the year on top of the $1,000 tuition shortfall.
Now, $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage back then. So, making $2,870 meant working 842 hours. That's 16 hours a week year-round — a decent part-time job. It's also about nine hours a day for three straight months — a full-time, seven-day-a-week summer job. Or, more likely, a combination of both. In short: not impossible. Far from it.
For today's public university student, though, the numbers have all changed in the wrong direction.
For the school year that just ended, the total of tuition, fees and room and board for in-state students at four-year public universities was $20,090. The maximum Pell Grant didn't keep pace with that: It was $5,815. That left our hypothetical student on the hook for $14,275.
A student would now have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to get by. Research shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week, their studies suffer. If they're working full time, many will take longer to finish and end up paying even more.
To cover today's costs with a low-skilled summer job? Over 90 days, a student would need to work 21.9 hours a day.
Of course, you could seek work in a city with a higher minimum wage like Washington, D.C. ($12.50, as of July 1) or Seattle, where it's $13 an hour, on its way to $15 (but there, low-wage workers may have lost out on annual income).
Rents tend to be higher in those places, too.
Plus side: If you're working that much, you may not need to pay rent because you're hardly sleeping.
No wonder students are borrowing so much these days.
SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary Both candidates had fairly notable platforms for post-secondary funding, and Obama made changes to the repayment options for existing student loans. They did, but I didn't like either of them. I like that Obama at least did something, but I just wish he had did more. Given how partisan everything is, it's not looking good for what I believe to be positive changes happening in 2020, since it looks like Democrats will run another centrist establishment candidate. It's still at least two more years until we get serious candidates for that, though, and we have next year's Congressional elections to look at, so maybe if progressive candidates get elected, the Democrats will try out someone more progressive. Given how low Trump's approval ratings are sinking, it shouldn't be that hard to beat him, right?
They should run an electable candidate with good approval ratings and good ideas. Left leaning or centrist. If you want big changes in student loans, congress is the place where that happens. Not the White House.
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United States43758 Posts
On July 06 2017 02:43 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:38 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 02:35 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:
Why Summer Jobs Don't Pay
Why can't kids today just work their way through college the way earlier generations did?
The answer to that question isn't psychology. It's math. A summer job just doesn't have the purchasing power it used to, especially when you compare it with the cost of college.
Let's take the example of a working-class student at a four-year public university who's getting no help from Mom and Dad. In 1981-'82, the average full cost to attend was $2,870. That's for tuition, fees and room and board.
The maximum Pell Grant award back then for free tuition help from the government was $1,800. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook for just about $1,000. Add in a little pocket money, too — say $35 a week. That makes an extra $1,820 for the year on top of the $1,000 tuition shortfall.
Now, $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage back then. So, making $2,870 meant working 842 hours. That's 16 hours a week year-round — a decent part-time job. It's also about nine hours a day for three straight months — a full-time, seven-day-a-week summer job. Or, more likely, a combination of both. In short: not impossible. Far from it.
For today's public university student, though, the numbers have all changed in the wrong direction.
For the school year that just ended, the total of tuition, fees and room and board for in-state students at four-year public universities was $20,090. The maximum Pell Grant didn't keep pace with that: It was $5,815. That left our hypothetical student on the hook for $14,275.
A student would now have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to get by. Research shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week, their studies suffer. If they're working full time, many will take longer to finish and end up paying even more.
To cover today's costs with a low-skilled summer job? Over 90 days, a student would need to work 21.9 hours a day.
Of course, you could seek work in a city with a higher minimum wage like Washington, D.C. ($12.50, as of July 1) or Seattle, where it's $13 an hour, on its way to $15 (but there, low-wage workers may have lost out on annual income).
Rents tend to be higher in those places, too.
Plus side: If you're working that much, you may not need to pay rent because you're hardly sleeping.
No wonder students are borrowing so much these days.
SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. The fact that the party laughed when plasmidghost spoke doesn't necessarily prove that the party is out of touch. We need more information before we can really judge. Are you being satirical? The Democrats have barely won any election in about a decade...
A decade is 10 years. 10 years ago was 2007. Do you not recall that time the Democrats swept the Presidency, House and Senate in 2008? I remember that pretty clearly. They used it to enact sweeping and unprecedented healthcare reform. It was a big deal at the time.
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The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved.
Well Millennials are predicted to be the first generation to be worse off than their parents in a long time and the generations between baby boomers and Millennials are likely going to be caught in that a bit too so maybe they're not that wrong :D unless you meant capital-G Greatest Generation.
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On July 06 2017 02:43 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:38 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 02:35 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:
Why Summer Jobs Don't Pay
Why can't kids today just work their way through college the way earlier generations did?
The answer to that question isn't psychology. It's math. A summer job just doesn't have the purchasing power it used to, especially when you compare it with the cost of college.
Let's take the example of a working-class student at a four-year public university who's getting no help from Mom and Dad. In 1981-'82, the average full cost to attend was $2,870. That's for tuition, fees and room and board.
The maximum Pell Grant award back then for free tuition help from the government was $1,800. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook for just about $1,000. Add in a little pocket money, too — say $35 a week. That makes an extra $1,820 for the year on top of the $1,000 tuition shortfall.
Now, $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage back then. So, making $2,870 meant working 842 hours. That's 16 hours a week year-round — a decent part-time job. It's also about nine hours a day for three straight months — a full-time, seven-day-a-week summer job. Or, more likely, a combination of both. In short: not impossible. Far from it.
For today's public university student, though, the numbers have all changed in the wrong direction.
For the school year that just ended, the total of tuition, fees and room and board for in-state students at four-year public universities was $20,090. The maximum Pell Grant didn't keep pace with that: It was $5,815. That left our hypothetical student on the hook for $14,275.
A student would now have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to get by. Research shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week, their studies suffer. If they're working full time, many will take longer to finish and end up paying even more.
To cover today's costs with a low-skilled summer job? Over 90 days, a student would need to work 21.9 hours a day.
Of course, you could seek work in a city with a higher minimum wage like Washington, D.C. ($12.50, as of July 1) or Seattle, where it's $13 an hour, on its way to $15 (but there, low-wage workers may have lost out on annual income).
Rents tend to be higher in those places, too.
Plus side: If you're working that much, you may not need to pay rent because you're hardly sleeping.
No wonder students are borrowing so much these days.
SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. The fact that the party laughed when plasmidghost spoke doesn't necessarily prove that the party is out of touch. We need more information before we can really judge. Are you being satirical? The Democrats have barely won any election in about a decade...
I think we all underestimate just how meaningful it was that beneath the surface of Obama heading up a shitty obstructionist government, the Republicans were winning because Democrats were just genuinely that unpopular. It took me until the very end to see the depths of how scummy and undesirable the Democratic rank-and-file was. I suppose it took longer than it should have because Obama had an impressive "nothing really changed but things are somehow better" aura with every talk of his.
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On July 06 2017 02:51 plasmidghost wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:46 LegalLord wrote:On July 06 2017 02:41 WolfintheSheep wrote:On July 06 2017 02:39 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:35 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:
Why Summer Jobs Don't Pay
Why can't kids today just work their way through college the way earlier generations did?
The answer to that question isn't psychology. It's math. A summer job just doesn't have the purchasing power it used to, especially when you compare it with the cost of college.
Let's take the example of a working-class student at a four-year public university who's getting no help from Mom and Dad. In 1981-'82, the average full cost to attend was $2,870. That's for tuition, fees and room and board.
The maximum Pell Grant award back then for free tuition help from the government was $1,800. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook for just about $1,000. Add in a little pocket money, too — say $35 a week. That makes an extra $1,820 for the year on top of the $1,000 tuition shortfall.
Now, $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage back then. So, making $2,870 meant working 842 hours. That's 16 hours a week year-round — a decent part-time job. It's also about nine hours a day for three straight months — a full-time, seven-day-a-week summer job. Or, more likely, a combination of both. In short: not impossible. Far from it.
For today's public university student, though, the numbers have all changed in the wrong direction.
For the school year that just ended, the total of tuition, fees and room and board for in-state students at four-year public universities was $20,090. The maximum Pell Grant didn't keep pace with that: It was $5,815. That left our hypothetical student on the hook for $14,275.
A student would now have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to get by. Research shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week, their studies suffer. If they're working full time, many will take longer to finish and end up paying even more.
To cover today's costs with a low-skilled summer job? Over 90 days, a student would need to work 21.9 hours a day.
Of course, you could seek work in a city with a higher minimum wage like Washington, D.C. ($12.50, as of July 1) or Seattle, where it's $13 an hour, on its way to $15 (but there, low-wage workers may have lost out on annual income).
Rents tend to be higher in those places, too.
Plus side: If you're working that much, you may not need to pay rent because you're hardly sleeping.
No wonder students are borrowing so much these days.
SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. I guess it's a good thing they're all getting pretty old so hopefully they all retire soon. The Democratic Party is about change, and it's high time it had some The party members will retire, but the baby boomers will continue to vote for several more decades. Precisely the point I think bears mention each time someone mentions that boomers are on the verge of retirement. Not to mention that a lot of people simply are not the retirement type these days. And my generation just doesn't seem to give a shit about politics and never turns out to vote. I really can't understand why that is, maybe we're all just lazy
I'd guess a mix of that and choosing to protest by not voting. It's probably the wrong choice but it is what it is.
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On July 06 2017 02:50 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:43 a_flayer wrote:On July 06 2017 02:38 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 02:35 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:
Why Summer Jobs Don't Pay
Why can't kids today just work their way through college the way earlier generations did?
The answer to that question isn't psychology. It's math. A summer job just doesn't have the purchasing power it used to, especially when you compare it with the cost of college.
Let's take the example of a working-class student at a four-year public university who's getting no help from Mom and Dad. In 1981-'82, the average full cost to attend was $2,870. That's for tuition, fees and room and board.
The maximum Pell Grant award back then for free tuition help from the government was $1,800. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook for just about $1,000. Add in a little pocket money, too — say $35 a week. That makes an extra $1,820 for the year on top of the $1,000 tuition shortfall.
Now, $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage back then. So, making $2,870 meant working 842 hours. That's 16 hours a week year-round — a decent part-time job. It's also about nine hours a day for three straight months — a full-time, seven-day-a-week summer job. Or, more likely, a combination of both. In short: not impossible. Far from it.
For today's public university student, though, the numbers have all changed in the wrong direction.
For the school year that just ended, the total of tuition, fees and room and board for in-state students at four-year public universities was $20,090. The maximum Pell Grant didn't keep pace with that: It was $5,815. That left our hypothetical student on the hook for $14,275.
A student would now have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to get by. Research shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week, their studies suffer. If they're working full time, many will take longer to finish and end up paying even more.
To cover today's costs with a low-skilled summer job? Over 90 days, a student would need to work 21.9 hours a day.
Of course, you could seek work in a city with a higher minimum wage like Washington, D.C. ($12.50, as of July 1) or Seattle, where it's $13 an hour, on its way to $15 (but there, low-wage workers may have lost out on annual income).
Rents tend to be higher in those places, too.
Plus side: If you're working that much, you may not need to pay rent because you're hardly sleeping.
No wonder students are borrowing so much these days.
SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. The fact that the party laughed when plasmidghost spoke doesn't necessarily prove that the party is out of touch. We need more information before we can really judge. Are you being satirical? The Democrats have barely won any election in about a decade... I think we all underestimate just how meaningful it was that beneath the surface of Obama heading up a shitty obstructionist government, the Republicans were winning because they were just genuinely that unpopular. It took me until the very end to see the depths of how scummy and undesirable the Democratic rank-and-file was. I suppose it took longer than it should have because Obama had an impressive "nothing really changed but things are somehow better" aura with every talk of his.
From the NYT today:
‘‘Liberal’’ has long been a dirty word to the American political right. It may be shortened, in the parlance of the Limbaugh Belt, to ‘‘libs,’’ or expanded to the offensive portmanteau ‘‘libtards.’’ But its target is always clear. For the people who use these epithets, liberals are, basically, everyone who leans to the left: big-spending Democrats with their unisex bathrooms and elaborate coffee. This is still how polls classify people, placing them on a neat spectrum from ‘‘extremely conservative’’ to ‘‘extremely liberal.’’
Over the last few years, though — and especially 2016 — there has been a surge of the opposite phenomenon: Now the political left is expressing its hatred of liberals, too. For the committed leftist, the ‘‘liberal’’ is a weak-minded, market-friendly centrist, wonky and technocratic and condescending to the working class. The liberal is pious about diversity but ready to abandon any belief at the slightest drop in poll numbers — a person who is, as the folk singer Phil Ochs once said, ‘‘10 degrees to the left of center in good times, 10 degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.’’ The anonymous Twitter account ‘‘liberalism.txt’’ is a relentless stream of images and retweets that supposedly illustrate this liberal vacuousness: say, the chief executive of Patagonia’s being hailed as a leader of ‘‘corporate resistance to Trump,’’ or Chelsea Clinton’s accusing Steve Bannon of ‘‘fat shaming’’ Sean Spicer.
This shift in terminology can be confusing, both politically and generationally — as when baby boomers describe fervent supporters of Bernie Sanders as ‘‘very liberal,’’ unaware that young Sandersistas might find this vomit-inducing. It can also create common ground. Last year, the young (and left-leaning) writer Emmett Rensin published a widely read piece on Vox deriding liberals for their ‘‘smug style’’; soon enough, one longtime adept of the right, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, was expressing his partial approval, writing in Bloomberg View that what contemporary liberalism lacked most was humility. Here was a perspective common to both sides of the old spectrum: that liberals suffered from a serene, self-ratifying belief in their own reasonableness, and that it would spell their inevitable defeat.
When it comes to diagnosing liberalism, both left and right focus on this same set of debilitating traits: arrogance, hypocrisy, pusillanimity, the insulated superiority of what, in 1969, a New York mayoral candidate called the ‘‘limousine liberal.’’ In other words, the features they use to distinguish liberals aren’t policies so much as attitudes. The profane hosts of the popular podcast ‘‘Chapo Trap House,’’ prime originators of the left’s liberal-bashing, spend a good deal of airtime making fun of liberal cultural life, with one common target being fervor for the musical ‘‘Hamilton.’’ ‘‘Nothing has represented them more: a hagiographical musical where they can pretend to be intersectional and pretend to be multicultural,’’ said Felix Biederman, a co-host, on the second episode of the show. ‘‘They have no policy. They’re all cultural signifiers.’’
To be a ‘‘liberal,’’ in this account, is in some sense to be a fake. It’s to shroud an ambiguous, even reactionary agenda under a superficial commitment to social justice and moderate, incremental change. American liberalism was once associated with something far more robust, with immoderate presidents and spectacular waves of legislation like Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Today’s liberals stand accused of forsaking the clarity and ambition of even that flawed legacy. To call someone a liberal now, in other words, is often to denounce him or her as having abandoned liberalism.
Liberal-bashing on social media has reached a kind of apogee, but its targets have not yet produced much real defense of the ideology. This means the word ‘‘liberal’’ is, for the moment, almost entirely one of abuse. It is hard to think of an American politician who has embraced it, even going back two or three generations. If liberalism is dead, then, it’s a strange sort of demise: Here is an ideology that has many accused sympathizers, but no champions, no defenders.
Source.
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On July 06 2017 02:48 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. Well Millennials are predicted to be the first generation to be worse off than their parents in a long time and the generations between baby boomers and Millennials are likely going to be caught in that a bit too so maybe they're not that wrong :D unless you meant capital-G Greatest Generation.
The boomers rode on the coat tails of the real Greatest Generation ™ and then believed they solved every problem in history. Everyone went to college and was educated. Racism was beaten, even though they did nothing. Equality obtained. Sexism was a thing of the 1950s. Now we have arrived at the end of their economic boom and everyone can’t figure out why the economy isn’t as awesome as it once was. Except the people who have been warning about the boomers retiring for like 2 decades. And now the boomers are mad that the current generation wants dirt cheap education too.
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On July 06 2017 02:55 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:48 Logo wrote:The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. Well Millennials are predicted to be the first generation to be worse off than their parents in a long time and the generations between baby boomers and Millennials are likely going to be caught in that a bit too so maybe they're not that wrong :D unless you meant capital-G Greatest Generation. The boomers rode on the coat tails of the real Greatest Generation ™ and then believed they solved every problem in history. Everyone went to college and was educated. Racism was beaten, even though they did nothing. Equality obtained. Sexism was a thing of the 1950s. Now we have arrived at the end of their economic boom and everyone can’t figure out why the economy isn’t as awesome as it once was. Except the people who have been warning about the boomers retiring for like 2 decades. And now the boomers are mad that the current generation wants dirt cheap education too.
I find it really funny to talk to Baby Boomers (or even some Gen Xes) who brought a house before 2008 try and comprehend how people who didn't can't afford a house and then give great tips like, "Well go and buy as much house as you can" not realizing that amount of house is 0 house.
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United States43758 Posts
On July 06 2017 03:00 plasmidghost wrote:
That NYTimes article is pretty much spot-on, and people like KwarK who wonder why I hate them so much, all they have to do is read this article to see why
I think we both know that it's not really me you're angry at, it's yourself.
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EPT
