MIA: American Student Outrage
http://townhall.com/columnists/LuritaDoan/2010/10/25/mia_american_student_outrage
by Lurita Doan
10/25/10
American college student activists, long seen as a bellwether for
populist outrage, are missing in action. They are not staging
protests concerning political, social and financial issues which
affect them more directly and more profoundly than another other
generation of Americans. Current college student passivity is both
surprising and disappointing.
Last week, more than a million French students and workers rioted in
protest of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's recommendation to
increase the retirement age by two years from 60 to 62. From Lyons to
Marseilles to Paris, French student anger over decisions about their
futures dominated French news. Raising the retirement age from 60 to
62 in a country that only has a 35 hour work week seems hardly dire,
yet French students took to the streets.
American students, by comparison, have staged only lukewarm protests
over the changes to state university education loan policies, to the
plight of the treatment of farm workers in Florida, and outrage over
cancellation of sign language classes. Students have even protested
oversexed apparel advertisements, but on the critical issues of the
day, where a misguided Congress and the Obama Administration have
enacted flawed policies that will shackle American youth to a future
of burdensome debt and a lower standard of living, students have been
silent. The question is why?
Are American students too uninformed to understand that extremists in
Congress have mortgaged their futures? Could students have been
brainwashed by the teachings of left-leaning, Keynesian academics
that are reflexively knee-jerk pro-Obama, regardless of the policy?
The Obama Administration has implemented a series of long-term,
economically destructive policies that will affect the ability of
current college students to have a better standard of living than
their parents. In September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed
that unemployment among college age students was up dramatically from
2009 reaching at a national high of 9.1%. And, with national
unemployment remaining high at 9.6%, and expected to continue that
way for some time, given the Obama's Administration's anti-business
bias, newly minted college graduates face a grim employment future.
Healthcare reform, which many college students supported, will almost
certainly turn out to be one of the greatest of curses. Students will
be forced to spend hard-earned cash on medical plans that benefit
them little but do much to subsidize the medical costs of older
citizens and illegal immigrants currently in the system. Even the
benefits of remaining of mommy's and daddy's medical plan for a year
or two after college whilst entering their new, adult-worker lives,
is a decision that will cost a person between the ages of 21 to 26
approximately $21,000.00.
With the economic downturn, still unimproved despite over a trillion
dollar spent on fictitious "critical infrastructure projects" that
were allegedly going to generate or save 3.5 million jobs, older
American workers have less ability to retire, so they remain in their
jobs, which has the unintended consequence of reducing upward
mobility in the younger work force. This decision, coupled with all
the other financial mismanagement by government will cost each
American $44,200.
In addition, Obama's financial reform legislation made it more
difficult for middle-class students to obtain family backed
collateralized loans from banks while, college costs have been rising
at two times inflation. Despite some increase in the amount of
funding for federal PELL grants, because of the economic downturn,
that funding must now cover more students, so the amount of the
average Pell grant actually decreases.
These so-called "enhancements" from the Student Aid and Fiscal
Responsibility Act of 2009 will cost students exorbitantly since the
additional $1 billion of funding was provided with dollars borrowed
from the Chinese, a debt that American young adults will be
responsible for repaying. The bigger point is that the Obama
Administration has made a conscious decision to engage in wealth
re-distribution schemes to reward older Americans, punish success,
and reward the most financially irresponsible while simultaneously
punishing the most thrifty. When added together, Obama has placed a
tremendous burden on the youth of today.
American college students seem oblivious to the Administration's
plans that enslave them with dependency and burdensome taxes. You'd
think there'd be some anger; you'd think there'd be some outrage;
you'd think, like the French, they'd be rioting in the streets. For
now, at least, it seems that American student outrage is MIA, and our
country will be the worse for it.
The poet Kahlil Gibran, told us that our children " souls dwell in
the House of Tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your
dreams." We may all be glad of that since the Obama Administration
has ensured that the House of Tomorrow for the young people of today
is the stuff of nightmares.
.
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