★ Liked “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Debt to Me”
My debt was the result, in equal measure, of a chain of rotten luck and a system that is an abject failure by design. […] Like many well-meaning but misguided baby boomers, neither of my parents received an elite education but they nevertheless believed that an expensive school was not a materialistic waste of money; it was the key to a better life than the one they had. They continued to put faith in this falsehood even after a previously unimaginable financial loss, and so we continued spending money that we didn’t have—money that banks kept giving to us.
May be a devisive opinion, but student loan debt is a curse on our society. A person shouldn’t be indebted in attempt to kick start his life.
Throughout my whole life (one I controlled), I have attempted to not be under any sort of unavoidable debt. If that meant me not having or doing a thing that I want to, so be it. I know not all may share this perspective, may be not all can “afford” the life without a form of debt (ironical, but practical), I have been thankful that I was able to put my life on track without falling behind the world around.
The problem, I think, runs deeper than blame. The foundational myth of an entire generation of Americans was the false promise that education was priceless—that its value was above or beyond its cost. College was not a right or a privilege but an inevitability on the way to a meaningful adulthood. What an irony that the decisions I made about college when I was seventeen have derailed such a goal.
Perfect!