32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
One-sided Class War, May 25, 2006
This review is from: Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead (Hardcover)
I'm a working student. I can tell you that outreach to underrepresented students is not behind the double digit percentage increases in tuition. Try static supply and increasing demand. Try corruption.
Draut's thesis is simple: making a living and becoming an "adult" according to certain criteria (education, house, baby) is drastically more expensive now than it was several decades ago. Since the 70s, American productivity has skyrocketed and wages have flatlined or regressed. Let's face it, an undergraduate degree is the modern day equivalent of what the high school diploma used to be.
Instead of questioning why this might be the case (uh, health insurance anyone?), some folks want to put the blame squarely on the (not just young) people who get hit with these costs--"the me generation," "entitlement," and the mother of all conservative memes, "personal responsibility." Hey, individual choice and systemic change AREN'T the same thing.
Draut doesn't argue that people should spend beyond their means, or not try to pinch pennies to survive. Instead, she looks at the damage caused by "free market fundamentalism": disintegrating social cohesion, rigidifying class mobility, a health care catastrophe, the casualization of the workforce ("contingent workers make up 33% of the workforce") etc. "Today," she writes writes, "In the midst of historic income inequality, our nation's primary engine of social mobility, education, is broken."
"Back in 1972, the typical male high school graduate earned just $42,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars," she writes elsewhere, "Three decades later, male high school graduates in this age group [25-34] are earning just over $29,000." Coupled with astronomical housing prices, it seems strange to keep arguing that young people should just tighten their spending without addressing some of the larger social shifts taking place--monopolies, corruption, brutally regressive taxes, just to name a few.
Although I have to admit that the portraits of mostly young (white) professionals had me peeved--jetting off to Europe or having "that perfect wedding," yikes--there are plenty of folks who are barely making it and not because they buy too many CDs a month.
If a fairer charge could be leveled at Gen Xers, Draut's diagnosis of the political ignorance and apathy seems sadly accurate. Which is not to say that there aren't politically engaged young people, but the lingering Reaganite rhetoric and "streak of libertarianism" that hangs over this demographic leads her to ask, "It's time to ask ourselves, what good is an economy that generated $11 trillion where one third of us go without health insurance? Where three quarters of us can't afford to get a four-year degree? Where more than half of us lose a day's pay if we're sick? Where half of us must go back to work less than three months after having a baby?"
Good questions.
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Responsibility, January 31, 2008
As a non-socialist European I have rejected the idea of a "Nanny State", I think that all able bodied people have an individual responsibility to oneself, one's family and society, to maintain independence for the betterment of the whole. That said I have always believed wholeheartedly that the government should secure for its citizens two things: Education and Health, the rest is up to the individual. As I see it, the idea of a socialized system in America is completely unviable, it is simply not in the psyche of America to accept it. BUT the government does have a responsibility to supply its citizens with affordable health care and education. This is clearly not happening.
It is far more expensive to pursue education in the US than it is in the UK because there are no private schools in the UK and the government caps tuition heavily to prevent an economic elite. Although there are problems related to class and race distinction, a student would not be rejected because of an inability to pay; the colleges are simply not permitted to charge their students tens of thousands of dollars a year to gain a degree. We still end up in debt to some degree because of high living costs but the loan companies are again regulated by the government to prevent high interest rates, the payments are deferred until the student is in full time work and the payments are percentage proportional to earnings. i.e. you pay back what you can afford.
As a 30 year old Brit married to a 35 year old American and living in DC, we are the epitome of the GenX demographic. The big difference is that we took a very different path from the examples described in Draut's book. Gaining my degree in the UK I was stunned at the total lack of guidance that young adults are given in America. US students are coming in to higher education without the most basic of skills; the ability to live independently, self restraint and discipline. Although at college I was no angel by a long stretch, I would never have dreamt of going out more than once or twice a week, and that was to the student bar. I barely drank because it was too expensive, I wore the same clothes for three years, never took a trip anywhere, including home but three times a year, and you can forget about electronics; I didn't even have a television! Most importantly though, I didn't have a credit card. This was the same for most of my classmates, you simply didn't spend what you didn't have.
There is a two fold issue going on with the education system in America but I think that we have to accept that the hole that has been dug is far more complex than simply the lack of hand-outs from the government. Young people need to be taught the skills to understand how to behave like an adult before they even get to college, not after the fact.
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36 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Don't forget Generation Me, April 20, 2006
This review is from: Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead (Hardcover)
As a 20-something who has worked hard for a good credit rating by carefully managing my spending and student loans, I found the author's indulgence of my peers a little annoying. I haven't gone to important weddings or jetted around the world unless I had the money saved up first. As someone strapped and in grad school in another state, I also don't fly anywhere to visit family unless they're paying my way.
I do, however, know many talented, hard-working, and sharp people in their 20s and 30s who just can't seem to get ahead. Especially because our career choices are often limited to 5 flavors of highly specialized underemployment at poor wages. So most just flit between careers trying to find a hot opportunity or the yoke of underemployment that fits best. The question i find most compelling is why have incomes shown negative real growth? Market forces, of course. Call me crazy, but it seems that a lot of good jobs are filled with aging boomers, whose tenure and salaries have grown large enough to support an adult kid - a kid likely working for some other highly paid boomer!
I hate to say "blame the old," since my parents are both retired pre-Boomers. But it sure is looking like a lot of the wealth and social spending in the US (including tax schmemes that redistribute wealth upwards by strategic cutting of taxes) is going to Generation Me. While they form the basis of the "ownership society," sending their cash abroad to find wealth in hot foriegn markets, the younger of us struggle with the consequences of a highly competitive and globalized economy where govt intervention works against us.
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