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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Some good content here, but offers false diagnosis of the problem., March 13, 2008
While Ms. Draut's book has a great deal to recommend it, she failed to convince me of her main premise, i.e. that young college educated adults today are being unreasonably economically oppressed through little fault of their own. Her book is well researched and succinctly written. She was honest enough to admit to some faults of her own 30-something generation, mainly their political apathy and poor state of being informed of current issues. I will even agree that it isn't exactly easy for young adults nowadays to establish themselves economically. The mistake, however, is in concluding that it's inordinately more difficult than in other eras when all factors are averaged together.
Ms. Draut lacks an accurate sense of how people born before 1970 actually lived. Establishing oneself in adulthood has never been a walk through the park. The difference is that in the past nobody expected it to be easy. Most adults in the 1950's ate out in restaurants far less frequently. Men in those times were far more likely to be shade tree mechanics on weekends doing their own repairs to the aging family car. Parents back then didn't buy their children anywhere near as many toys. Not nearly as many teens had a car given to them when they turned 16, and more often if they did it was an old beater. Talk to people of that generation if you're not of that age yourself, and it soon becomes clear: in the past, people were more resourceful and lived more modestly. To her credit, in some passages Ms. Draut implies some concession to the fact that young people today live at a relatively high level of consumption. But she thinks it's inconsequential in the larger scheme. I beg to differ. Even modest expenditures add up faster than most people think.
I've often heard people argue that many young people do in fact appear to have a strong work ethic. As evidence, they will point out that there are teen-agers and college students working in fast food joints or stores in malls 30 to 35 hours a week while going to school full time. True enough, but it's rarely for survival. Those same young people are driving cars that are nicer relative to the era than many middle-aged adults owned in the 1950's, and they have to make the payments. Or they're working to pay higher than necessary rent because they refuse to live in a bargain apartment. They're less likely to accept functional hand-me-down clothes, or patch together an old but functioning jalopy as their first car. They want quality material stuff and they may be willing to work long hours at the store in the mall in order to have it. But they're far less likely to be thrifty and resourceful and repair something before replacing it. As I see it, you can find young people with a good work ethic, but you'll find very few who have much of a sacrifice ethic.
I think these same tendencies carry over into their adult lives. They simply have an inflated idea of what a minimally acceptable standard of living is.
In what may be the most glaring omission in this book, Ms. Draut made no mention of the high price people pay for weddings nowadays. The average price of a wedding today is somewhere in the tens of thousands, and it logically follows that many if not most of those would be for young adults. She omits any mention of this (which may not be accidental) yet only serves to call attention to it by mentioning traveling to weddings of friends as a burdensome but well justified expense! Bad rhetorical call there, Ms. Draut.
The book discusses some solutions in the last chapter, most of them with some merit in my opinion. I particularly liked her idea of an apprenticeship path for young people to enter skilled professions, as an alternative to the standard path of borrowing large sums of money for college.
Some of her solutions were good as far as they go, but mostly they involved public policy as the answer. That has its place, but I wish she had discussed the possibility of behavioral and cultural changes as well. The recent generations have had it drilled into their heads that the only path to a secure existence is to go the standard route of college followed by relocating to some major urban area since that's where the professional track jobs are. So they start in the world with high college debt, high housing cost, and the continual expense of frequent long distance travel to visit family. These young people enter adult life so top-heavy. To her credit, Ms. Draut does allude to this, but she fails to think outside the box of the college/professional path and ponder any radical alternatives.
What about the possibility of taking a lower-investment sort of career path? What about going to vocational school to become a carpenter or an electrician? It's not such a bad life. Young adults might be able to stay closer to their original family homes, where often housing is cheaper and family help is more available. Regarding child care, they might be able to do what young parents had always done for generations before: get their young nieces and nephews or retired parents or grandparent to occasionally watch the children. What about returning to a lifestyle in which not every activity is a commercial transaction with strangers?
So my final verdict is that there's some good information here, some good discussion of economic problems, and some good suggestions for solutions. But ultimately Ms. Draut failed to accurately identify the real problem, which is a lack of resourcefulness and lack of individual accountability. Consequently her vision for change was sadly limited.
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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Don't forget Generation Me, April 20, 2006
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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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Provokes questions-- now we need answers, July 6, 2006
Strapped deserves 3 stars for good writing and thorough research. Even if you disagree with the author's interpretation of statistics, you have enough information to draw your own conclusions.
As a former college professor (currently a career/business consultant) who attended undergraduate school in the 1960s, I agree with readers who question the responsibility of these students. As a professor, I found that students at non-elite universities tend to bring expectations that were foreign to their Boomer predecessors. For example, I know a college student whose parents sacrificed to send him to a private college. He returned home several times a year -- mostly flying to avoid a long drive or bus ride. My classmates would go home for Christmas - period.
In general, college students actually seem to receive less value for their education, unless they attend an elite Ivy-level university. One study found they watch television more than they study.
And many have adopted elements of lifestyles that used to be open only to the very wealthy. When I was in college, I don't remember getting manicures, let alone pedicures, waxing and highlights. Cable television? Our dorm had one television for several hundred young women. Cell phones? One phone on each floor, serving 20-30 students. Now my friends call their college-age children two or three times a day.
I'd also take a look at rising college costs. Professors no longer work for slave wages (unless they're part-timers - another story) and in fact business school and law professors do quite well. Administrators earn considerably more -- but that's another story.
Maintenance costs have risen for everyone. But when I was a student, we did not have "counselors" on each floor, free rooms, as my own college does now. Our medical service was limited to one grouchy doctor (at a reunion, one of my classmates who is now a physician called her a "piece of work"). A couple of psychiatrists were on call. Now students enjoy a full range of health services, including mental and reproductive health. Sports programs have expanded since Title IX. Of course it's a much better situation, but somebody has to pay.
When it comes to careers, Draut is absolutely right. Many jobs are temp-to-perm and whole industries have been outsourced or mechanized. Today's young people may be forced into debt from the beginning because their own parents were laid off at just the wrong time.
She's also right about credit cards. A few months ago my Amazon Chase card quietly changed its pay-by-phone policy, burying the only announcement in the middle of a group of ads, headed just "News." Under the new rules, phone and website payments become due up to 24 hours before the actual printed due date! They agreed to drop late charges after several people complained but insisted that interest rates would be higher. After the local Attorney General denied interest, I simply cancelled my card.
Credit is simply too easy to obtain and -- as Draut points out -- the companies are unregulated.
At the same time, lifestyle expectations are higher. We've come to feel entitled to travel and double strength caramel lattes.
My own recommendation: Get entrepreneurial. Instead of a summer job, start a business that brings in real money. Once graduated, begin a legal, ethical part-time business that allows you to itemize deductions while earning additional money. Don't wait for someone to help you out.
To get some context, I'd suggest reading Freshman Year by Rebekah Nathan, The Disposable American by Louis Uchitelle, and JobShift by William Bridges.
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