I put the picture I am talking about down at the bottom, because it really is a footnote.
There have been a whole bunch of people out there who have been doing the little hand-printed "rebuttals" to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) or 99% movement. I spent some time thinking about what they wrote, and the more I think about them, the more that I think that they are wrong.
Look, no one is looking down on you because you busted your ass to get through a system that is stacked against you. Hell, most of us are amazed and proud. What you went through is noteworthy and to be commended. I can't praise you enough for your not having a iPhone and living within your means in cheap apartments is cherishing a time-honored trend, students have always lived in cheap apartments (mine was a basement with a pipe running through the living room that cost $135.00/month).
But my question is, why the hell did you have to do it? What the folks in the movements are speaking of is a society where the maldistribution of wealth is rampant. It is this maldistribution of wealth that needs to be addressed on a societal level. The colleges have become profit centers with college cost vastly outrunning inflation.
The student loan game is nothing less than corporate loan sharking. Not meaning to be overly effusive in my praise, but you are a level headed kid, a lot of your fellow students really are dumb-ass teenagers who think nothing of signing a non-dismissable note which cannot be gotten rid of for the rest of their lives. I am a cynical old man, but this is nothing less that preying on the stupid. That should be banned.
What the occupy movement should be about is returning a balance to the conduct of our government. We are over-rewarding the haves at the expenses of the have-nots. We are allowing the field to be narrowed to those few who, like you are level headed and willing to kill themselves slowly, and the rich who can afford to buy the paper ticket of success for their spoiled children.
1 comment:
We have the best government money can buy.
The "academics" are a truly sickening lot. Some universities have endowments in the BILLIONS, yet their tuition goes through the roof. Professors are expected to rake in the research bucks, as are students in the advanced degree programs. Meanwhile, the universities churn out brainwashed NUBs (Non-Useable Bodies, a Navy term) who can barely tie their shoes without a diagram. These NUBs expect (and often receive, when they can find a job) salaries equal to and beyond folks in the same job with years and even decades of hands on experience, all because they have their over-priced goddamn piece of paper.
But that's the culture we've developed in this country, mostly because folks are afraid of honest work these days. The "American Dream" TM has been changed from working hard to make your own way, to purchasing "success" on the "easy payment plan". Just get that precious degree in basket weaving (or sociology, psychology, political "science", etc., all about as good as basket weaving) at enormous expense and all your dreams will come true.
Welcome to the Ponzi scheme, suckers...
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