Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Hey Millennials, Debt Becomes You

I just read an article that basically said our kids will be paying down their college debts until they retire. That we are leaving such a terrible financial burden to them that they will will be scrounging their whole lives to keep afloat. What kind of a country thrusts this condition on their future generations? What kind of place will this be in the future?

Educational debt is the most visible—but not the only—barrier to the well-being of the “millennial generation,” roughly defined as Americans born after 1978. Every gate on the way to middle-class life is now tougher to unlock. Mortgages, health insurance expenses, car maintenance, child care and tax loads for two-income families have all ballooned.

The accumulating stress on this generation is spilling over—not yet into the street, as it did in France in late March, but into some emerging forms of collective action.