Home > Uncategorized > Leftie- and enviro-hater Alan Caruba is right about the "screwed generation" of college graduates

Leftie- and enviro-hater Alan Caruba is right about the "screwed generation" of college graduates

I got an interesting blurb in my email inbox from “Tea Party Nation”, and thought I’d share excerpts from the linked article with you.

The article was by one Alan Caruba, PR specialist for the pesticides industry and, not surprisingly, a dedicated enemy of enviros. I don’t recall reading much by him on environmental issues and imagine I’d find him to be a partisan rather than a clear thinker, but I did like his piece at Tea Party Nation. Indeed, I think that Caruba pulled his punches, by failing to discuss the many ways that government itself is at the root of the bad economy and lowered possibilities that college grads now face.

Problems on the job front are suffciently bad that they are not confiened simply to new graduates. Ludwig von Mises Institute President Doug French has a great post om May 2, The Plight of the MBA Generation, that focusses on the difficulties of college-educated men ages 35 and older.

I’m not sure all of my readers will want to register over at Tea Party Nation, so here is a condensed version (emphasis added) of The Screwed Generation:

June is famous for weddings and graduations. Both are filled with great expectations and both are subject to great disappointments.

Today’s college graduates are thoroughly screwed. According to Matthew Segal, the president of a non-profit membership organization called Our Time, “With 85% of college graduates moving back home and an average debt of $22,900 per student, thousands are staring at a bleak economic future.” You think?

Aren’t these the eager, besotted youngsters who, at age 18, voted for Barack Hussein Obama as if he were the Second Coming? In the words of Herman Cain, a GOP presidential contender, how did that work out?

“New college graduates,” said Segal, “are entering an economy with an almost 17% unemployment rate for Americans under the age of 30.” Despite that and other horrible statistics, Segal insists “We know there is still a bright future out there…” Oh, yeah? High unemployment. Having to move back home. Graduating with a huge debt. That’s not my definition of a bright future. …

For those graduating from college at age seventeen or eighteen this year, it means they were born in 1990 or 91. They were ten or eleven years old on September 11, 2001; just old enough to know that something terrible had happened, killing thousands of Americans who probably thought they were not at war with militant Islam. Since then, this generation has not known a day of peace.

A subject of growing contention is the way the nation’s educational system has been “dumbed down” since the 1960s or the growth of “political correctness” that thwarts addressing issues involving ethnicity, ancestry, religious faith, and gender. Nor is there much discussion of the way colleges and universities have become sausage factories squeezing parents and working students for every dollar, pushing them through, and conferring degrees that, with the exception of the professions, often have dubious value.

This new generation is very “connected” in ways earlier ones could never imagine. Facebook, MySpace, and all manner of other Internet machinery have transformed how they perceive themselves and the world. It has not, however, significantly educated them in the traditional sense of the word.

They will doff their caps and gowns and go home to mom and dad. A friend of mine graduated from Georgetown University in 1982 after working his way through. He recently calculated that it cost $232,000 to graduate today. What teenager could ever take on such a burden [without federal guarantees] and why should their parents be expected to shell out the kind of money that could purchase a second home?

Today’s graduate is not likely to see any return on the money he or she pays into Social Security or Medicare. The dollars they earn will have diminished in value from those of my time or my friend’s. …

Welcome to the world of faltering economies from here to Greece and back again.

Welcome to outsourced jobs.

Welcome to rapacious bankers making money on housing loans they knew were bad for those in search of the American Dream.

Welcome to useless pat-downs every time you fly.

Welcome to “reality TV” and vulgar “entertainment”.

In these and so many other ways, this new generation is thoroughly screwed.

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