Mar 23, 2006

Muzzled Meatballs

There is social control in loading young people up with financial obligations. Burdened with debt and desperate to have and keep a job, there is no way they can take a wild year off and certainly no time for protesting, organizing or causing the kind of social and political trouble young people cause from time to time. Would there have been a civil rights movement? Would there have been an antiwar movement if those collegians had been saddled with the debts our present-day young people carry?

How many young people turn away from low-paying but vital professions because they can't earn enough to pay back their loans? How many potential social workers, pro bono lawyers, journalists, environmentalists, teachers, artists, secondary medical professionals and community workers are we losing?

The two things that make most of us cringe are the thought of 1984 and The Stepford Wives. In fiction both of those nightmares achieved reality through drugs or chemicals and voodooish alchemy. In actuality America can become a Stepford nation merely by adjusting the price of education and a few interest rates.
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