You’re already screwed. No, really. I mean that. I don’t like to say that “I mean that,” but until conditions in the USA change substantially, you may as well come to terms with the fact that “the American Dream” that your Mom, Dad, and Grandpa taught you to expect and to work for … is gone, and it isn’t coming back anytime soon. Let me explain.
In the 1960s, you could essentially go to college for free. And, as Billy Joel once said in a song, “every child had a pretty good shot … to go at least as far as their old man got.” President Eisenhower had recently spoken about “fine, well-equipped hospitals.” Of course you could go in to one, get treated, and come out not-bankrupt. You went to school and you got the professional position that a college degree conferred upon you. You bought a house: four walls that actually belonged to you. You had kids. (That means you, “kid.”)
First beginning in the 1980’s, and hurtling with ever-increasing speed, all of these social structures have been demolished. They didn’t “throw an American flag in your face.” They threw a foreign one.
I can tell you of the days that I remember: when votes were cast, and counted on paper, and sometimes re-counted, and they could be, and there wasn’t too-much :rolleyes: of reading names off tombstones to add to the voter rolls. I can tell you that my complete college education took about $11,000 and that somebody else paid for it. (Today, in that same public school, one semester costs about twice that out-the-door.) The Glass-Steagall Act was the law of the land, so banks, insurance companies, and financiers were forced to remain at arm’s length. Consumer interest rates were capped at about 6% by anti-usury laws which existed throughout the land, and you could deduct credit card interest on your taxes. There was no type of debt that you could not discharge in bankruptcy if you really fell-down. Sure, politicians took bribes as they always do, but it was illegal to do so.
Today, if you finished college … if you even finished the semester you’re already in … you would be “another day older and another $40,000 in debt” … in hope of getting a job that you won’t get.
Surely, you’ve heard of the H-1B Visa program, which lets about 250,000 people a year come in to take American jobs for six years. But that’s not the real problem. The L-1 program allows foreign corporations, while still remaining “foreign,” to bring their “foreign” workers in unlimited quantity, to feed and clothe them however they wish, and to pay them the wages of the home country. The USCIS wrings its hands and squirms that it “doesn’t know how many” people are present on these wretched terms. I assure you that it does.
But, let’s go one step further here: CG work can be done anywhere, because the work only produces great big digital files. And to someone out there, the quip of “a million monkeys can write Shakespeare” became a business plan: “bring on the monkeys!” Find the cheapest, most disposable labor pool that you can, and work them to death.
And, in case you think there’s particularly something that you can do about it, think again. Votes are counted by electronic computers that don’t give you a receipt. There is no paper trail. And, there is no proof of who, supposedly, cast any vote, or could have cast it. The “winners” of the next US Elections have already been selected. The official tallies are completely unauditable. “Buy a hamburger and don’t get a receipt = free hamburger. But, cast a vote …”
So, the very best thing that you can do right now is to quit school immediately and try to be one of the first truck drivers. $60,000 a year, no debt. But don’t spend any more of that money than you have to, because things are going to get a lot worse … “Great Depression II” worse … before they ever even begin to turn around. Quietly sell that $6,000 bicycle of yours. Don’t waste money going to movies or buying computer games. As soon as you are able, buy the tiniest piece of land that you are able.
This is not “a political rant.” It’s someone who remembers when this country was comfortably clothed, pointing out that it has made itself naked, while less-than-a-thousand people at the very top (out of more than 350 million in the country at large) are sitting around in their halls of power, drunk as a skunk. History has repeated itself, and has laid a tremendous problem at the feet of your generation.
This is also not saying that you should “give up” on your careers and future. Transportation is a future, too. What you are avoiding is a mountain of debt that you can never repay … debts that, fifty years from now, will be garnishing your Social Security income on the off-chance that such programs still exist at that time. You don’t have a “career future” if the numbers are against you. And right now, it’s time to face the facts that: they are against you.