A non-profit organization dedicated to the eradication of all student loan debt through activism, education, and legislation; because student loan debt is dangerous to the US economy and to the health and well-being of individual Americans and their families. CRYN JOHANNSEN, Founder & Executive Director
Sunday, October 31, 2010
College Educated Graduates Who Can't Buy Homes And Can't Have Families
Dr. Housing Bubble wrote a piece about recent college educated graduates who can't buy homes, because they must service their student loan debt. It is encouraging to see this type of post, as I too have written about the subject countless times here at Education Matters. This angle ought to make policy makers stop and think critically about the student lending crisis and how it is affecting the health of the housing industry. I mean, clearly they don't give a damned about the personal stories of suffering, so perhaps we should try to raise awareness about this fact. Moreover, those who would like to own homes are also putting off having children. Whether or not you support the idea of procreation isn't the issue here. In these situations people can't have children as a result of being indentured educated servants to the likes of Sallie Mae and Nelnet. So you have a generation of recent grads who have no purchasing power and who, not by choice, will remain childless. How's that for a healthy and robust middle class?
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12 comments:
How about simply staying together in the first place?
Student Loans pretty much broke up my marriage.
It was simply too stressful to stay together.
Too much anxiety and fear that the US Government would take away eveything we owned in much the same way they took away Bankruptcy protections when no one was looking.
That's a shame to hear, JDpainterguy.
I never thought I would be someone who regretted having children (in my late 30s) but...yeah. I love my (only child) daughter dearly, but it is very hard at the same time. Not in that "yuk, yuk, oh, having children is such a labor of love, ha, ha", but in the "my spouse and I both need to work to service debt, and day care is HOW MUCH?!?!?" way.
Forget housing. 20% of $350k is a lot of money, unless you come from a landed-gentry family. I know more that one dual-career couple with kids who took it on the chin in the downturn, and they question whether or not they will ever try to buy again. These were not investment-flipper people.
The baby-boomer economy is over, and there are just too many of us. The contraction in birth rate may just be a natural (and needed) response to the market.
"The contraction in birth rate may just be a natural (and needed) response to the market."
That is a powerful statement about the economy.
But the bottom line is that if you want kids then have them, have as many as you want. Do you think those families from the old generations had incredible gifts of foresight when they had 5-7 kids? Heck no, they kept their life simple and made the best of what they had. And there was no public assistance available back then, you just had friends, family and neighbors.
Just because you are a debtor does not mean your reproductive rights have been taken away. Forget any shame you have being educated and poor, just make babies and raise them right using all the knowledge you have, maybe this is the greatest gift you can give the world.
When will the gutless, pathologically corrupt cretins in Congress realize that it is better to make the banksters take a hit than it is to further sink our nation's future?!
@12:55:
As in: "The rich get richer and the poor get..... children."
Ain't we got fun!
Just a question:
When the Pioneers migrated west in their wagon trains, and built their log cabins, how much did it cost them to buy land and build and keep a home, vs what it costs today?
Did they pay property taxes?
For instance, did the Waltons pay property taxes on Waton's Mountain? Or the Cartrights on the Ponderosa? (I know they are fictiious people, but there were land-owners like them at one time.)
Imagine what the taxes on such huge tracts of land would be today?
Where does Henry David Thoreau fit in to this picture.
I often thought of the simplicity of making a home that Thoreau expressed in the midst of the Housing Bubble.
I can remember painting houses with a solid one piece marble bathtub, that had to be brought in by crane. Another mansion with a chestnut spiral staircase. Or a house with the largest order of imported mahagonany in the USA for the year. Or a house with 10 foot tall front doors of solid bronze. Etc. Etc.Etc.
As an adide, the greatest irony that stood out in my mind was that the owners of these homes had no problem with an ex-convict covered head-to-toe in tattoos walking through and working in their bedrooms, and at the same time would prohibit an educated law-abiding citizen with a poor credit score from ever working a low-level job in one of their corporations.
Also, they had no problem with undocumented citizens walking throug the entire house. No questions asked.
So far from the pioneer days.
So again back to Thoreau. The idea of a home is such a simple philosophical concept. Yet why can't America make it a reality for so many of its citizens?
@Nando - I am not sure when they'll get the point. They clearly don't give a s--t about the memo that is on their desks about the crisis and how it's affecting the housing market. You know that this situation is not small.
@JDpainterguy - I won't go into the questions that you raised, because that period of time ended up being filled with robber barons, too. I think your final question is a very good one, and I'm not sure why these people inside the Beltway can't seem to figure it out. But I think we all know why they can't figure it out. It's because they've been bought out by the lobbyists who promote/defend the banks.
In addition, they have been bought out by the lobbyists who promote the for-profits and the non-profit universities. These institutions INSIST that all federal loans, for instance, MUST go through their hands. God forbid, yes, God forbid (gasping) that any dime would actually reach the hands of a student. What a devastating problem for the institutions!
We also know that the Dept. of Education doesn't give a damned. Debra Wiley in the Ombudsman office keeps claiming she's going to reach out to me. Her excuse right now is that 13 hours difference is just too much to speak to me. I wonder what sort of excuse she'll have when I'm back in D.C. Oh, I can't wait!
I honestly think the Brahmins won't get the message that the educational ponzi scheme, the immigration problem, and the gross negligence in a variety of fields (real property, corporate policy) has killed a generation of Americans until the generation shows up with pitchforks at their doorstep.
Our leaders of the last 30 years have systematically destroyed the greatest country in the history of the Earth. And tomorrow we continue to vote their children in office. Yippee.
......."In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter......"
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
JD Painter Guy had a profound comment:
"As an adide, the greatest irony that stood out in my mind was that the owners of these homes had no problem with an ex-convict covered head-to-toe in tattoos walking through and working in their bedrooms, and at the same time would prohibit an educated law-abiding citizen with a poor credit score from ever working a low-level job in one of their corporations."
I think that's just profound in that it more or less sums up the value of higher education today. It sums up how the haves view the college-educated have-nots in a nutshell--lower than ex-cons.
Just found this site. What did you ever hear from Wiley at the Ombudsman's office? Just curious. I could write an encyclopedia with my stories about Her.
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