Ed posted the URL to a Washington Post cartoon of college diplomas
being presented with a ball & chain of debt attached. The same day he
posted:
http://www.alternet.org/story/155186/?page=entire
Humans will always work. But that whole employee-employer thing is
optional. It's time to start looking for another model.
If there is a really big cohort of un-employed people bright and
diligent enough to get an undergrad degree (even in an era of less
demanding academic standards) then there's going to be a bog cohort
that has the potential to collaboarate on doing something different.
This piece:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/8901-the-crushing-burden-of-student-debt
is a panel discussion with 4 voices and a moderator so it's a little
scattered and hard to read. But:
Last quick point on student loans: If I am driving around while
texting, and I negligently run over and kill a child, or if I am
in a gambling institution and I have an 11 and the dealer has an
ace, and I mistakenly double down and get a huge gambling
debt?those kind of debts?hurting someone, killing someone,
gambling debts, or all kinds of other debts?are treated less
harshly under our bankruptcy code than the debts associated with
trying to educate yourself. Student loans are the most repressive
kind of debts under the legal structures that we have. These are
democratic bills. People voted for them. Hillary Clinton voted for
the 2005 bankruptcy bill. Biden voted for it; Biden pushed
it. These are things we have chosen, and they are incredibly
repressive for student debts.
Are all these grad going to submit to the equivalent of lifetime
indenture because the financial system has them all cornered and
doesn't care?
I graduated with circa $2K debt (Say, $12K in today's money). Newly
married, we both worked. We lived on her income and my (rather measly)
income paid off my student debt in 11 months while living in somewhat
tatty [1] but non-slum apartment.
Here's a some good scrutiny of the environment in which indebted
students find themselves:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/8858-from-current-business-paradigm-to-second-renaissance
Our financial system is supposed to support the real economy of
goods and services. However in the last 30 years, the unhealthy
situation has developed that the real economy has suffered from
excesses in the financial sector.
....
Enormous wealth was transferred from the real economy to the
financial sector. In 2007, the year before the bankruptcy of
Lehman Brothers, the financial sector's profits accounted for an
astonishing 40% of the entire economy. Yes, the tail is wagging
the dog. How else to explain that the "best and the brightest" in
the financial community continually fall for an earnings story
that derives from fatally flawed assumptions that end in financial
chaos and often financial panic?
Debt-laden grads are mired in the ratbag of finance as she is now
done.
Thing is, can they abandon expectations of a conventional as-seen-on-
TV life, abandon careers in which (at least in some cases) they're
intellectually engaged to experiment with the kind of alternatives
called for in Frank Joyce's Alternet article? A lot of determined
people went into the 60s commune thing. The ones I knew lasted for
over 25 years. If they smoked a little MJ, they weren't witless
stoners. They raised kids, built buildings, supported a blind member
and provided a workshop for a wheelchair-bound member. Those whom I've
followed are doing useful, interesting and provocative stuff. But
they're doing it under the current "jobs" rubric.
The entire incumbent system is and will continue to be hostile to
innovation that seems to work because the success of any such
innovation will neccessarily subtract from existing power.
And in doing that, in keeping with the spirit of OWS, we're also
not asking for any sort of reforms; we're not asking for the
powers that be to take a certain set of action. Rather we're
trying to change the landscape of the power structure itself and
create a new empowered body, political body. [2]
Well, more muttering in my beard, but I wanted to respond to Ed's
posts.
- Mike
[1] The Kennedy townhouse, 3 or 4 blocks away on Louisburg Square,
had cockroaches, too. :-)
[2] http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/8901-the-crushing-burden-of-student-debt
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
