Letters to the Editor
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Neo-con think tanks are seeing the fruit of their thinking.
If there is not enough to go around; good jobs, good homes, and the good life than the so-called have-nots will increase in numbers, and they are. Think tanks beginning in the 50's have worked towards protecting the rich and their conservative ideals. They have been very successful in this endeavor. Now we have the diminishing middle-class and the conservative elite rich need protection from the masses. So we have laws in place to give the federal leaders in DC what they will need to nationalize the state national guard and protect the rich. Lots of prisons have been built and we now have a lean and mean military to enforce laws and protect the elite. There are hundreds of thousands of military suffering in many ways due to Iraq and they can be unleased on this country in several ways. The Iraq Veterans against the War are not yet organized in such a fashion to make a difference but they could use some support.
So why can't all of you 20 and 30 somethings take one day, maybe even two days, off each year to join well planned and organized demonstrations against our corrupt government? Do you think 5 million people marching for a just cause on a Saturday will go unnoticed? Do you think that one or two days out of your labor to repay debt will be disastrous to your general welfare?
The trap is not an either/or situation. Give up a few ideals to make a living but take to the streets at least once or twice a year.
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At All Levels
I'm willing to believe "The Trap" has always existed, and it's not just outside the academy. I spent 10 years working toward a PhD in English with the desire to teach, with accolades in grad school as a T.A. I got a lousy "temporary" teaching gig when I was ABD, finished the degree, then found myself in a world that didn't need English teachers (at least not from state schools). I taught myself to use a computer and started over as a corporate technical writer with a huge student loan debt and a deflated desire to "make a difference."
Now I'm in my early 40s; I've been a moderately-paid drone for a decade. With student loans and child support payments, I don't see my salary except to wave goodbye. And I think of all the things I once wanted to do to make people's lives better. Now I can't even do anything about mine. Pity party? Maybe so...but it ain't just people in their twenties. The Trap's been around a while, indeed.
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You say that like it's a bad thing.
What's wrong with a little ruthless competition? How many, since you opened the door, how many of the thousands of US colleges are this way? Because as far as I can tell the Ivies were always thus. Always. Take Dartmouth for instance, the last Ivy to admit women I believe. But they refused to reduce the number of male admissions so they went from a 16 week semester to a 9 week trimester overnight. Pressure cooker. But so? How many Darmouths are there? True it's a little easier for the legacies to get in but the advantage stops there. I guess there's one or two people who built a Library or something and their kids get a pass - but that's exceedingly rare.
In either case the competition in NC State, yes a public college or the hallowed halls of Berkeley where all the Salonocrackpots come from (or would like to have) - is fierce. How low a pressure education do you want for the people designing CAT scanners?
Isn't the competition for the Iowa Writer's Program fierce too? Isn't the competition for the Berklee College of Music fierce too?
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Trap in the 40's too
It isn't just people in their 20's and 30's. I lived the poor bohemian insurance-less lifestyle. I work in a corporate cube too, and I'd rather spend my time doing something more useful. Some thoughts come to mind though. "Checkbook activism" is a derisive term for those who activism consists of writing a check, and while it doesn't take long for me to write a check, earning the money does take considerable time. Since part of the problem is non-profit work pays so little, maybe checkbook activism is actually a big part of the solution. Those of us who can donate make possible the work of those doing what we'd like to do. I bought the premium membership to Salon, thereby helping Salon employees keep going, and honestly, I'd rather be working for Salon than doing what I do now.
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On the one hand and on the other
I'm very conflicted about this article. The actual facts that are cited -- the extent to which a Pell grant covers college tuition, the starting salaries of teachers v. first-year lawyers (though I'm rather skeptical of this one) -- go some distance toward persuading me that, yeah, maybe things are tougher for today's Youth than they were back in the day. But at the same time, I vividly remember being an aspiring actor in New York in the early 80s, when all my friends were similarly aspiring actors/dancers/painters/community organizers/what-have-you. And it seems to me that the Aspirers of today have a lot more demands than we did, that they effectively want a middle-class lifestyle while working only the groovy gigs. It doesn't work that way, and it never has.
When I was an Aspirer, my friends, if they lived in Manhattan (and many of them lived in Brooklyn or Queens) lived in shares or unspeakably horrible basement studios. None of us had cable TV or air-conditioning; we all lived in 4th- or 5th- or 6th-floor walkups. We bought all of our clothes at thrift shops, we cut each other's hair or opted for the 10-buck cuts on Astor Place. If we went out for food, it was for pizza or felaffel -- someplace where "dinner" cost considerably less than 10 bucks. We went dancing at sweaty, jeans-and-sneakers gay bars, leaving the glitzy clubs to the Bridge-and-Tunnel brigade. If we drank outside the house, it was Buds or Rolling Rock -- no microbrews, nothing imported, and certainly no cocktails. Nobody had health insurance or gym memberships.Nobody went out of town on vacations. The only thing we spent occasional money on was relatively bad weed; nobody could afford cocaine. And we all worked considerably more than 40 hours a week, typically at more than one job.
It's not that we were so noble or self-sacrificing -- everybody we knew was living that way. So when I read an article like this one, I can't help wondering whether these kids, today's Aspirers, aren't assuming entitlement to a whole host of pricey offerings -- broadband service, cable with premium channels, gym memberships, regular $3 lattes, good haircuts, boutique clothes and shoes, regular Cosmos, sushi a couple of times a week,1 35-hour work week, Manhattan one-bedrooms with central air, an elevator and but a single roommate -- that just weren't part of the package 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.