Don’t EVEN Get Me Started, Mythical Bootstraps College Student

On October 21, 2011 at 9:00 pm in Politics

This photo’s been kicking around Facebook for the past few days. The first time I saw it, it miffed me. The second time, it aggravated me. Times three and four I was angry. And now that I’ve seen the photo posted, shared, and tagged a half a dozen times, I’m enraged; which is where this post comes from, a place of fully developed rage.

This flip little photo angers me because it’s a lie.

I’m sure those who posted it thought it was pithy and bold and really hit home the “truth” of an already much propagated agenda. But the thing that is so very offensive about this photo is that there’s nothing true about it.

Even before I set out to do my research, my educator and lawyer hackles were up; this crap doesn’t even pass the smell test. If you thought it did, you weren’t paying attention. If you didn’t think it passed muster but wanted to share it as propaganda anyway, shame on you.

Two big problems underlie this Facebook photo sharing campaign: 1) If people want to believe something is true, they often will, even when the belief is baseless, and even when faced with extensive evidence to the contrary (this is a crazy scary phenomenon; the University of Michigan did an interesting study on it). 2) We’re susceptible to self-serving bias, which means that we want to attribute our successes to internal or personal factors, even when external factors, like family support, economics, and privilege actually play a major role in those successes. In other words, most people tend to think of themselves as folks who’ve “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps” and obtained everything they have through grit and determination – when, in reality, very few people fit that narrow profile. Similarly, people who’ve succeeded expect more from others than they do from themselves. A person without resources and support is expected, by the bootstraps myth believer, to achieve the same amount of success through sheer hard work as the person who achieved those things through, sure some hard work (probably… or at least, hopefully), but also a lot of inherent advantage – like the parents they were born to, the neighborhood they grew up in, the schools they attended, good health, looks, etc.

Knowing this, and understanding that, unless you already recognize that this photo that’s been circulating is B.S., you’re not that likely to change your mind, even faced with compelling facts. I’m going to break down why it’s B.S. anyway. Because I like facts. And I know that, even if the facts are skewed in the light most favorable to the photo’s agenda, they still won’t support the photo’s premise.

So here goes.

I took the information contained in this photo and put it up against the numbers. I used the stats for Seattle, Washington, because that’s where I live, and it’s also where many of the people who I’m friends with on Facebook who posted this photo live. While specific results would vary city by city, state by state, Washington is a place with strong public universities and as a state, it seems unremarkable in enough ways to provide a decent sample.

This photo suggests that a plucky someone, through hard work and austere living, should be able to graduate from college debt-free; this photo further suggests that one’s ability to do so is entirely within one’s own control, and that somehow not being able to do that constitutes a “bad decision”; the photo also suggests that this hypothetical student believes she/he is not part of the 99%, which, by contrast means she/he thinks she/he is part of the 1% (the 1% referring to the top income earners in the U.S.). I’m not going to dispute that particular 1% point, since it’s already self-disputed within the photo as the subject self-describes her/himself as a near minimum wage earner, automatically placing her/him in the bottom 99% of wage earners in the U.S. In other words, that part of the photo is especially ridiculous, too ridiculous to refute.

The rest, however, I’m happy to refute – with facts and stuff.

According the University of Washington (UW is a public university located in Seattle, WA), in-state tuition for the 2011-2012 academic year is $10,574. Over a four-year period, presuming our photo subject, a hypothetical student who refers to her/himself…wait…

Can we hit pause for a moment?

Calling the subject of the photo “she/he,” “photo subject,” “hypothetical student,” etc., is going to get tiresome. So for the purposes of this post I’m going to refer to the hypothetical student in the photo as a woman because women make up slightly more than half (51.7%) of the undergraduate student body at UW (and besides, that looks like a girl’s handwriting in the photo), and I’m going to call this female student Sally.

OK, un-pause.

So, presuming Sally completes college in four years, that tuition total comes to $42,296, at this particular “moderately priced, in-state public university.”

For a moment let’s put aside Sally’s scholarships, which apparently pay for 90% of her tuition (wowzer!), and move on to Sally’s living expenses.

Sally mentions her cheap but comfortable apartment. So I did a little apartment research of my own. I used Craigslist to look for apartments because I’m told that’s what the kids do. I don’t expect my Craigslist findings to be the gospel truth, I just want to explore plausibility.

The cheapest apartments I found in Seattle (well, Seattle-ish, I didn’t find anything near these prices in the University District, or even anywhere in Seattle proper) are as follows:

$480 to share a two bedroom with “Paul” (I’ll not include his picture, though he did include an interesting photo in his ad) in Federal Way (an arguably not-that-safe town located 22 miles south of Seattle).
$500 for a studio apartment in Bremerton. (Bremerton is an hour ferry ride from downtown Seattle.)
$350 for a roommate share in Tacoma (a city 34 miles south of Seattle).
$500 for another roommate share in Tacoma.
$465 to rent a mobile home in Tumwater (64 miles south of Seattle).

Let’s, for the sake of argument, pretend one of these housing arrangements is something a reasonable 18-year-old college freshman would be comfortable with (which is arguably kind of a stretch), the average rent of these five is $459. I’d like to go on record as saying, I don’t think this is realistic rent for a UW college student, and I can tell you that I one summer rented a room (one ROOM) in a shared house near UW’s campus and my rent was $400 a month… eleven years ago. But $500-600 with enough roommates might be doable in 2011, so I’ll take $459 and call it close enough. That’s $4131 for the year, assuming Sally can move home with parents in the summer, and $16,524 over four years, assuming no rent increases (because we know landlords never hike the rent up on their captive audience college student tenants).

Let’s estimate another $50 a month for utilities (again, I don’t know that this is a terribly realistic estimate for Seattle, it’s on the low side, but we’re playing a game here, and I basically grabbed this figure by taking my own Seattle Public Utilities bill and dividing it by a square foot estimate, and in case you’re wondering, I never set the heat in my house above 68, you can ask Gary Blonde). This $50 bill assumes that Sally’s water, sewer, and garbage are included in her rent so that she only has to pay for gas and electricity. That’ll be $450 for the year, $1800 for four years.

For the sake of argument, let’s say Sally doesn’t have cable TV and only uses Internet at school, so she doesn’t pay for home cable or Internet. $0 there.

I think Sally ought to have at least a basic cell phone plan for emergencies, so, choosing Verizon Wireless’s cheapest plan, which is $39.99, let’s say this student has a monthly cell phone bill of $45 (I used to have this plan, so I can represent that this total includes taxes, but excludes text messages, because we’re going to pretend that Sally, the rockstar student, doesn’t text), and this will be in lieu of a home phone. So $540 for the year, $2160 over four years.

Sally says she doesn’t have a “new car” but let’s say she doesn’t have a car at all, since we know how expensive gas and insurance can be; instead, let’s say Sally opts for the cheaper option of taking the bus to school. At the University of Washington you can get a U-Pass, it costs $76 a quarter. That’ll be $228 for the year, $912 for four years.

Food will run our college student, assuming she only eats at home and packs her own lunch, let’s say $200 a month (I used personalfinanceanalyist.com to come up with this number, the range they provided for a single person was $200-400 a month, I took the low). So that’s $1800 a year (again, this assumes that Sally has parents she can go sponge off of during the summer), $7200 for four years.

Books and supplies, based on UW’s website stats from 2010-2011, will run $1,035 for the year (oh, and you’ll likely notice that the UW financial aid office thinks Sally’s room and board will cost more than twice what we’ve estimated here), and $4140 over four years.

Hopefully Sally’s parents have health insurance that will cover her, but if they don’t, student health insurance will run $502 a quarter. That’s $1506 for the year, $6024 for four years.

All of this means that, even if Sally never goes to a movie, never buys a new shirt, never gets a haircut, never fills a prescription, and never has any sort of emergency expense, we’re looking at $81,056 for this student to go to college (at a “moderately priced, in-state public university”), $75,032 if Mom and Dad pay for health insurance.

You might be thinking, yeah, but Sally works a ton of hours! So I’m sure she can make it work!

Minimum wage in Washington State is $8.67 an hour, the highest in the country, so this will be a generous estimate for Sally. At thirty hours of work a week, which is what Sally claims she’s able to do while maintaining her course load, that’s $260.10 per week, I’d estimate $220.63 take home, you can adjust if you think this isn’t fair, but based on my personal experience as a wage earner, I feel comfortable representing that it is fair. There are 52 weeks in a year, and I’ll assume Sally works in the summer as well as during the school year. At 30 hours a week (I wasn’t able to find stats at UW about whether or not this amount of work is advisable, but I did find some info at the University of Northern Iowa that lists 30 hours of work per week as the maximum a student can work and 10-15 as the average among students who have jobs), that’s $11,472 for the year, $45,891 over four years.

Just over HALF what Sally would need to cover the bare bones costs set out above. And this is, again, at a “moderately priced, in-state public university.”

Sally said she’d been saving for college since she was 17, but frankly, I don’t know how much money she would have managed to sock away in a year of babysitting, working part-time, and collecting birthday money, so I’m not going to factor in that one year of college savings that Sally references.

Instead we’ll turn to Sally’s scholarships.

Our dear hypothetical Sally Student says she’s gotten 90% of her tuition paid by scholarships, LUCKY GIRL! Even under those fairy tale circumstances, this girl is barely scraping by on our basically mythologically good budget.

But let’s talk about how realistic Sally’s scholarship scenario is. UW financial aid says they gave scholarships to 2700 students last year. I don’t know if that includes just undergrads (of which UW has over 27,000) or undergrads and grads alike (as an educator and a former law student I can let you in on a little secret: the good scholarship money is reserved for really super smart grad students). Let’s just cut this in Sally’s favor and say that that’s just for undergrads. That means UW gave some scholarship money to about 10% of their students. How much money? Well, they said they gave $15 million to that group. If we just do an average, that’s $5,555 per student, about half of a year’s worth of tuition expenses. But it’s doubtful that the distribution was even across the board. Most universities, including the one I now work at, give academic scholarship money in steps – such as president’s level, dean’s level, etc., and they also generally reserve some scholarship money for need-based and diversity scholarships. At some universities, including UW, there are athletic scholarships as well. I don’t know if Sally qualifies for a diversity or athletic scholarship or not. In terms of academic scholarships, a dean’s scholarship generally covers somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-20% of a student’s tuition. President’s— perhaps half or more. A slight few at UW might receive “full rides,” but based on Sally’s GPA as a senior of 3.8, which would qualify her for neither summa cum laude nor magna cum laude honors at the UW, I have doubts that she’d be at president’s scholarship or full-ride level. There are private scholarships available, but I’m not sure if people are fully grasping just how little grant and scholarship (especially in non-loan form) money is being given away today. And local community level scholarships are often helpful, but small, awards of $500-1500.

All that said, even in a magical world where Sally Student managed to get 90% of her tuition covered, are we suggesting that if you can’t get a nearly full-ride college scholarship, you shouldn’t go to college?! Grading curves mean that not everyone gets to be at the top of the class. If every college qualified student had to wait for a 90% scholarship, our colleges would be empty, and we’d sure be hurting for nurses, teachers, doctors, judges, CPAs, research scientists, military officers, and everybody else who has to go to college as a prerequisite for employment.

That someone would need to have a scholarship that pays for 90% of their tuition in order to responsibly (because, remember, Sally thinks borrowing money for college is a “bad decision” that Wall Street shouldn’t be blamed for) go to college and be regarded as a bootstraps darling is an ABSURD break from reality.

Sally, our hypothetical college student, is touting herself as a hard-working superstar. Well, let’s look at another kid, a real life kid who had good credentials going into college.

Your very own Buster Blonde was in the National Honor Society, had top 10% grades, was co-captain of two cheerleading squads, co-captain of a state award-winning mock trial team, captained a Management and Economic Simulation Exercise (MESE) team, was a four year letter winner, student body inter-high representative, earned third place in the state Future Problem Solvers of America competition, won a Senior Project Award, was in one musical and one play, was a 400m record holding track athlete, took AP classes and advanced mathematics, was in the honors program, was nominated class speaker, was a member of the L-Club, the yearbook staff, and who knows what other Julie Joiner stuff I’ve since forgotten (I have no links to verify this info, but you can email me for my mother’s phone number). I volunteered both in school and outside of it working as an art teacher for kids and doing highway cleanup, I took piano lessons and performed in recitals all through high school and I had an over 90^th percentile SAT score, which means, to state the obvious, that I did better on the SATs than more than 90% of all the college-bound kids who took it in my year. I’m not saying this to be held up as some kind of kid awesome (because I was actually kind of a turd), I’m saying this to point out that I did plenty to be a good college applicant. You might even advise your kid that what I did, staying up well past midnight doing my homework because of my extracurriculars, was more than enough, and that kids should relax a little more than that. In any case, I don’t know how Sally Student would stack up against Buster Blonde, but I certainly did not get a 90% reduction of my tuition, I believe my total scholarship money for undergrad was somewhere in the neighborhood of $1200. For which I was very grateful, believe me! It was made possible by community organizations like the Rotary, which made me feel supported and invested in by my community. But had I not had parents to rely on in funding my education, it wouldn’t have made it possible for me to go to college without lots and lots of loans.

According to UW, the middle GPA for incoming freshmen is 3.61-3.92. That’s what it takes just to get in to this “moderately priced in-state public university.” So, being a good, or even a great, student at your high school isn’t exactly going to result in a cavalcade of scholarships at your local public uni. It might not even get you admitted.

For those of you who are now somewhat convinced that “moderately priced in-state public universities” are a) not so moderately priced; and b) potentially inaccessible to a large number of college qualified students, you might be thinking, well, the students who can’t get into or afford a “moderately priced in-state public university” should go to community college first!

And before you go down that road, I’ll ask you to review the data on how many people actually complete community college and successfully transfer into four-year universities. Environment matters. And community colleges, while valuable and appropriate for some, are ineffective for others. Data varies from state to state, and I’m not aware of a comprehensive study in Washington (the state I’ve used for my other data here) on community college attrition, but Divided We Fail: Improving Completion and Closing Racial Gaps in California’s Community Colleges—Key Findings provides a great overview of the state of community college success (or lack of it) in California, and it would give you a place to start should you choose to research the reality of community colleges further.

The two pieces of Divided We Fail that strike me as most significant are that: A) the study found that six years after enrolling, 70% of community college degree seeking students hadn’t completed a certificate or degree and had not transferred to a university (most had dropped out, 15% of the non-completers were still enrolled); and B) only 23% of degree seekers transferred to a university. Is 23% that what you want for your kids? Or is that just what you want for other people’s kids?

Beyond the undergraduate funding problem, a perhaps even bigger graduate school funding problem lurks.

In law school, where I did get more substantial scholarship money, the stakes (and costs) are even higher, making it very frequently the playground of the privileged, of which I must include myself, since my parents burdened significant costs and invested in my future, something not everyone’s parents are able to do. Friends who didn’t have a family network took on significant debt, and what no one wants to tell you is that with less and less subsidized federal funding available, that money is loaned by private lenders with high interests rates and, in some cases, unscrupulous lending practices. So if borrowing money from private entities for graduate school sounds like a bum idea and you don’t want recent college grads making that “bad choice,” just know that, if you expect someone to “work his or her way through law school,” it will involve him or her managing to pay in-state tuition at UW of over $26,000 a year, $39,210 at Seattle University School of Law and $33,960 at Gonzaga Law School on the east side of the state. Lewis & Clark in our neighbor to the south, Oregon, will run $36,362, and $26,146 is in-state tuition at University of Oregon School of Law, $32,590 for out-of-state. By the way, in 2001, out-of-state tuition at University of Oregon School of Law was $18,000 a year; tuition has nearly DOUBLED in the last decade. Good luck doing that without loans and/or parents and/or lotto winnings.

So what are the takeaways I hope you’ll get from this angrily, but earnestly written piece?

If you went to college ten years ago, don’t pretend like you know what students face today.
If your parents paid for some or all of your tuition don’t you EVER post condescending and ill-informed posts about how a college student just needs to drive an old car and rent a cheap apartment plus work hard at a minimum wage job to fund a college education. Students of today aren’t playing on the same field you played on, their terrain is much, much tougher.
Whether Sally, who tells us that she’s not part of the 99, wants to be or not, she IS. Because, at minimum wage, she’s in the bottom percent of income earners. And however much she might want to protect or aspire to the top 1% of earners in this country; probability says she’ll never be part of the 1%. (Know where I learned about probabilities? In college.)
That moronically glib lines like “whether or not you’re part of the 99% is your decision” are complete horse manure (and, as an aside, I highly doubt a college student with a 3.8 GPA would make such a stupid claim, so let’s just say I doubt this photo’s veracity a touch too).

Here are just a few things that are not your decision and are not within your exclusive or even direct control:

How successful your parents are
How good your teachers are
Whether you will get a scholarship (though it is your decision to apply, so take on that onus)
Whether you’ll get into the college of your choosing (admissions criteria is tougher than ever)
How much rent will cost in the city in which you live
How much the minimum wage will be in the state in which you live
What kind of access you’ll have to low-interest loans
Whether or not you’ll be able to get into the major of your choosing
Whether you’ll have the aptitude to maintain a 3.8 while working 30 hours per week
Whether you’ll be able to get into grad school (I mean, if you want to be a 1 percenter you should go, most of them went)
Whether you’ll be able to afford grad school (most 1 percenters had their parents pay for theirs, ask Donald Trump about how much student loan money he borrowed – money trickles down… down to rich people’s heirs)
Whether you’ll be able to get a high paying job after grad school
Whether you’ll be able to get any job after grad school

Finally, the main takeaway:

This stupid little Facebook photo is not only ill-informed, it’s harmful. Nothing on it has anything to do with reality. It has everything to do with a false rhetoric that’s being promoted by people who either don’t know about the realities of higher education in this country, or don’t care.

You might think it’s cute and pithy and fits some Horatio Alger ideal, but guess what, that ideal is as fake as Ragged Dick (my favorite Horatio Alger character). This bootstraps college kid is a figment of your fudging imagination.

And, by the way, it offends me TO THE CORE that most of the people I’ve seen post this sign on Facebook were put through college, at least in part, by their parents.

I’m not begrudging you parents who can afford and are willing to send you to college, I was put through college by my parents, but I have the good sense to realize how fortunate that makes me! And before I go running off at the mouth about how irresponsible college kids are today and about how it’s their fault they’re in debt, before I go ranting about some chip about other people taking what’s supposedly mine, I take a good hard look at how I got where I got. There but for the grace of God…

I have been able to be successful, in large part, because my parents were successful. I did something with what I was given, but I was given a huge amount, and to have squandered it would have been criminal. Having done what was expected of me shouldn’t warrant a pat on the back, it was, whether I want to admit it or not, the bare minimum. And to expect someone who wasn’t given a fraction of what I was given to do the same without help is wrong, and it’s senseless.

If you’re a middle class kid, or an upper middle class kid, or a rich kid, you have no right to claim that you got where you got simply because of hard work. You got where you are, at least in part, because of what others did for you, and if you hadn’t been born into a family of people who wanted to and were able to do those things for you, you would have needed someone else to do it.

The takeaway here is really a request, I’m asking you to put agenda aside and be honest. And if you still think a Facebook photo like this one is worth posting, you’re not being honest, with yourself or with anyone else.

Get to know Buster Blonde

Buster Blonde has crafted 31 article(s) for Persephone Magazine.

Tags: 53%, 99%, costs of living, OWS, the 1%, you'll never make it out there

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561 responses to Don’t EVEN Get Me Started, Mythical Bootstraps College Student

eleglavie said on October 28, 2011 at 6:52 pm

My greatest problem with this article is the assumptions. I go to a public four year university and am going out of state. I had a 3.7GPA in high school. I was accepted to my school and received a nonresident waiver for my tuition as well as several other scholarships. Added up I am paying nothing for my education and in fact am receiving some money for living expenses now that i live off campus. apartments here run anywhere from 300-500 a month. so in my situation even working only about 15 hours a week, with a modest food budget and no frills I am going to come out of college debt free. An instate student could do this even easier. So do not assume all universities are the same when it comes to getting out debt free. It can be done, and even if I wasn’t coming out debt free I would never blame wall street for it. This picture might not be entirely realistic but in no way is it harmful.
- Chicagato said on October 28, 2011 at 7:18 pm
  
  ****
  
  Warning . . . . incoming . . .. . You are about to be attacked! :-)
- Jane Dizzle said on November 17, 2011 at 8:32 pm
  
  I don’t plan to attack (Chicatato) but I disagree that the author made assumptions. The article very clearly outlines the statistics for one state and posits that those numbers are more representative of the norm than the info outlined in the photo; individual anecdotes shared here don’t do anything to substantially refute what the author posited.
  
  You mentioned you received several scholarships, well done! The authors point was that scholarships are only in part the result of hard work, they’re also the result of the kindness of others, something that is beyond one’s own control; the student in the photo seems unaware that the gifts she received from others were, in fact, gifts, as she claims she’s gotten everything she has by “working her a$$ off.” She defaults to self-serving bias, taking things that are partly due to luck or privilege and calling them the fruits of her labor.
  
  It’s also not helpful to point to massive scholarship funding as the representative college experience, in that not all college qualified students will get scholarships, and most, if they do get some, won’t get much, there’s simply insufficient funding. Asking someone to consider going to college ONLY if they get nearly full ride scholarships, is tantamount to telling most college bound kids (whether they’re great candidates or not) to not go.
  
  Where I get a bit offended with your comment is where you state that you’re paying nothing for your education, as if that’s a commonly attainable situation for college students. If you can’t see that that makes you much, much better off than most other college students (due to factors largely beyond their control), then I’m not surprised that you can’t see why the snotty remarks made by the student in the photo are harmful.
  
  You next claim that an in-state student could achieve what you achieved “even easier”, which doesn’t make sense since you mentioned that you received an out-of-state waiver, putting you in the same (not a worse) situation than in-staters. And only an in-stater with your exact same set of circumstances which, again (and this is not an assumption, but a FACT, since most college students pay a lot for their education rather than nothing, which is what you say you pay) is a very uncommon set of circumstances, would manage to achieve the same.
  
  Finally, you begin to lecture the author about not making assumptions that all universities are the same, which isn’t something that the author did. The author very clearly stated that the statistics provided were for a particular university. Never once was it implied that there wouldn’t be universities that cost less or more, that was your inference, and so the admonishment to not assume should be directed at you instead.
  
  That you would “never blame wall street [sic]” is a statement you haven’t provided reasoning for; it’s your right to support corporate greed and the ability of companies that have no regard for you to take advantage of you, but the fact that you take that (in my opinion naive and misguided) position has no bearing on the article.
  
  It shows a limited world view when a person thinks that just because a particular path unfolded for him or her, it unfolds the same for others. The fact that you did something doesn’t mean it’s representative, thinking that it is representative causes harm. It results in divisiveness, lack of compassion, increased entitlement, and treating privilege as property. The student in the photo lacks awareness, and in sharing that misguided and myopic message, s/he shared something harmful. Whether you choose to acknowledge that harm or not, it exists just the same.
lisawhip said on October 28, 2011 at 2:41 pm

Found this on a friend’s Facebook wall, where they are now arguing whether your point is valid because you chose to run numbers on an expensive city…

I can’t say whether this picture is fake or not, but the objection I had was the “if I can do this, anyone can” assumption behind it. The questions it raised for me were about the scholarships and about the job.

Scholarships: When I was in college (more than 20 years ago–and I am learning, to my utter shock, how different it is now), in order to get ANY kind of need-based financial aid, you had to take out student loans. Mine was a state loan handled by a local bank. The loan capped at $2,500 per year (I think), so while I graduated with debt, it was far less than the figures I am hearing about now. My small, liberal arts college did not offer merit-based scholarships (AND they gave me more aid than my state school would have). I did have some merit-based money, but it was cobbled together in 3-4 figure amounts from private orgs here and there. So, my questions are–since I simply don’t know:

- Are students still required to take out loans in order to get need-based aid?
- Is there that much merit-based scholarship money out there? I could have probably qualified for more, but chasing down what I did get took up more time than I could afford.

Job: What kind of job is this? Is it waitressing, where she’s on her feet 30 hours a week, plus a full courseload, or is it something at the library where she could theoretically get in some studying? I know that my experience is not comparable to today’s students, but when I was a student, a major part of my aid package was an on-campus job. Sometimes I could get one where studying was possible, sometimes not. There were some off-campus jobs I know people took in addition to everything else, but those people tended to end up in the infirmary a lot.

We’re helping my nephew with college. He just started at the University of Montana as an in-state student. His dad is a waiter, his step-mother is a public school 3rd grade teacher, his mom (my sister) is an artist on disability (mentally ill), and his stepfather is a social worker. I was SHOCKED at how little aid he qualified for. Fortunately, we are able to help. Especially since my mother and stepfather are now making their help contingent on his a) not taking out loans (which may or may not negate all his other aid) and b) changing his major to something more practical–in their eyes.

Also, do note that Sally has not yet graduated and tried to get a job. Maybe her note will change in a few months…
- [E] Michelle Miller said on October 28, 2011 at 11:35 pm
  
  I have no idea how to answer your questions, since I’m a few years out of college myself. However, I do not recall merit-based scholarships requiring student loans. As for their availability, I can only speak from personal experience, though the lack of government aid is well-documented for those who make “just a little too much.” Personally, I had high test scores, a ton of community service, and an AA by 18, and I applied for LOTS of merit scholarships–some from private sources and others from public sources. I received very little aid from them, however, and they cited the enormous number of applicants as the reason, not any personal failings on my part. I ended up paying less to attend a small, private liberal arts college than I would have to attend the UW (got a better education, too).
  
  Still paid way too much for it, of course. :)
  
  As for Washington, it IS expensive, but it also has one of the highest (if not THE highest) minimum wages in the nation–somewhere around $8.50/hour. We also have a lot of social assistance programs to help those out who are struggling to make ends meet and a fairly strong union presence. I mean, we ARE a pricy place to live, no denying that, but some of that is off-set by the superior job market and the higher base pay for even the most menial labor.
  
  I’m so pleased to hear that you’re helping your nephew get an education. That sort of social support is invaluable and I suspect he’ll really come to value that assistance as he enters the job market. The very best are struggling right out of college and it’s not uncommon for someone to go several months or a year before finding a job. His not having loan payments will be a real blessing if that turns out to be the case for him, too.
uwstudent said on October 28, 2011 at 2:08 am

Let me start off by saying that while I’m part of the 99% I have absolutely no desire to be grouped there when it comes to what the “99%” stands for. The numbers I’ll post for your benefit are derived from what I actually make/pay every year, although modified since I’m married and have a child (although I’m only 22) to be more appropriate for a single college student.

UW Tacoma tuition costs ($10,344/yr)

UW Tacoma bus pass costs ($132/yr, it is only $44 a quarter since it is for Tacoma)

books ($300 max/yr, all bought used and sold at the end of the quarter to add to my income)

rent ($5400/year, utilities included for a shared 2-bedroom duplex in Auburn, which is cheaper than surrounding towns like Federal Way)

grant money UW gave me ($18264/yr without loans)

income, assuming what I’m making now ($11/hr) and the hours I’m working during the school year now (28.5 minimum/wk), 25% removed for taxes, and 40 hours/wk whenever there is no school ($14066/year) (yes, between work, school, homework, and family I get almost no sleep and often work 7 days a week to get more hours, but it is do-able, I’m on my second year of this routine now)

health insurance through UW ($1500/yr)

Now. This is assuming that my grants are equal to a single person’s, which they aren’t, but it is an approximation and still gets my point across. It is also assuming that people without a college degree can earn over minimum wage, which isn’t a far-fetched concept.

With these numbers, it is clear that I would be making $14654 a year to be divided among various costs such as food and car and whatever else would need to be paid for. So I’m a bit confused how graduating without loans isn’t possible.
- whatthechuck said on October 28, 2011 at 6:07 pm
  
  How do you get that you have $14,654 to spend when your income is only $14,066? So how do you somehow end up with more money than you earn for food and a car or whatever. Or maybe you just really need remedial elementary school to learn how to do basic math.
  
  But even ignoring your math problems, like the article indicated, that amount in grant money is very fortunate, and not the norm, no matter what your qualifications/grades were. So what are we all missing out on to be as lucky as you with $18,000 in grant money? It’s possible, for very few persons like yourself. But the point is that even for the next hard working person, they aren’t going to get $18,000 a year free, it’s very much an anomaly. I sure didn’t get that kind of money, and I dare you to tell me I am lazy or not hard working, magna cum laude and 2 master’s degrees later. So count your blessings, but don’t act like you could do it without that grant. And don’t act like they are throwing $18,000 grants around for everyone who needs or deserves it. Or can you honestly tell me that you deserve it more than the other 80% of people who didn’t get enough grant or scholarship money?
  - uwstudent said on October 30, 2011 at 7:07 pm
    
    Actually, I did do the math right, maybe you should be re-doing those math classes? Grant money is money given to you (mine is deposited directly into my bank account, even) that you aren’t expected to pay back, so I included it as income when I did my math, and then deducted things like tuition from my 32000ish income a year. I thought it was pretty clear, but maybe I needed to do the math a little easier? Sorry about that.
    
    Also, in my opinion I didn’t have any reason to get grants, but it seems to be based on income rather than qualifications. Maybe you weren’t far enough down in the 99th percentile of incomes to qualify as needing grants? When you fill out the FAFSA there is no question for what are your extracurricular activities, or what was/is your GPA. All of the questions are income based, and so I believe that a large part of why I got more grants instead of other college students is because I am considered an “independent” student, rather than “dependent” on my parents. Therefore, I have less income to support myself with and so get more money in grants from federal/state/institution.
    
    I’m not saying that the grants would go to everyone, I agree that’s not possible, I was more saying that it is possible for someone to go to school without going into debt to do so. If I hadn’t received the grants I would be doing exactly what I did last year, working two jobs while going to school, but I decided I’d rather have a little debt than walk through life like a shadow because I was so exhausted. Oh. right. I forgot to include I did the two jobs and school while also pregnant (I did a good part of my sleeping while on the bus commuting or while sitting on the couch trying to get through homework at 3am). If you stopped by Sears in Federal Way and saw the preggo working as a cashier that was me. Don’t tell me its not possible to work that much during the school year as the original argument indicated.
    
    While it isn’t possible for everyone to do what I did, I think that saying NOBODY can graduate without debt is a statement that is far too easily disputed.
    - whatthechuck said on October 30, 2011 at 8:45 pm
      
      Yes, it is mathematically possible, but the likelihood is what borders on the incapable. I am not trying to diminish your reality, but the reality of the greater situation is that having to qualify as being in abject poverty just to receive financial assistance for college is ridiculous. So because I wasn’t as poor as you, though I was in no way well off, I will now be saddled with unreasonable amounts of debt for a large majority of my life? And in a field that is necessary for society, education. The problem is bigger than whether you, a single anomaly amongst the large majority, can complete education with no, or limited debt. The 99% stands for the idea that education should be attainable for more than just the rich, and I guess to include you, the most destitute. What about everyone in between? Although the system worked for you, maybe try taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture. Is this really something that can be attained by many, and how are the rest managing?
      - uwstudent said on October 31, 2011 at 1:09 am
        
        That’s why I wasn’t replying to a post about the overall big picture, but rather about this argument over whether graduating from college without debt is impossible or not. I was addressing the problem at hand rather then the big picture, to dispute the original argument’s validity.
        
        And yes, numerically I may be below poverty level, but like “Sally” for me it is a matter of perspective. It means I don’t waste money, I make wise decisions, and I live in a home that is ok but not updated or in a fantastic area. I wouldn’t say I’m in abject poverty, though, I have a place to live, a car to drive, food on the table. Yes, my life could be nicer, but I have the necessities and if I want to buy something that I can’t afford I work extra hours and save for it. School is obtainable for me, but even without grants the loans each year wouldn’t kill me once I graduate. Before going to UW I went to Seattle U, where tuition was running (if I remember right) somewhere between 20000 and 30000 a year (so yes, I have loans from that) but I think its safe to say that public schools like UW are quite affordable, without any grants or scholarships tuition for 4 years runs at 40000ish, but if you work and do school that can be paid down easily. I wouldn’t consider that cost unreasonable, especially considering the data out there that suggests college graduates make more money that people without degrees.
        
        Jane Dizzle said on November 16, 2011 at 8:41 pm
        
        You stated, “That’s why I wasn’t replying to a post about the overall big picture,” but, you see, that’s the problem. Because the article IS about the big picture, as is the discussion taking place in this comments section. It’s pure myopia to quibble about individual details that you’re really only attempting to refute with anecdote, it doesn’t add anything of value to the conversation. And where the article’s author points to founded information, you rely on guesses — like how much debt you assume “can be paid down easily” (not to mention the original handwritten poster doesn’t approvde of debt, so it’s somewhat disingenuous to support his/her point of view while stating that borrowing money to pay for school is appropriate).
        
        The big picture, if you were interested in it, would say that because you’ve borrowed money, you haven’t done this all on your own anyway, you’re reliant on creditors and, if you have any federal loans, government subsidies.
        
        Finally, since your screen name is uwstudent, I’m assuming you haven’t graduated yet. I’d be interested to hear just how easy you find those loans are to pay down once you graduate from college, spend a little time unemployed (which could happen, recent college grads have been the hardest hit by the tough job market), and try to do things like buy a house and start saving for retirement. You don’t yet know what’s coming, be careful you don’t speak too soon…
        
        Jane Dizzle said on November 16, 2011 at 8:48 pm
        
        p.s. ”I wouldn’t consider that cost unreasonable, especially considering the data out there that suggests college graduates make more money that [sic] people without degrees,” this comparison isn’t answering the reasonableness question, you should be looking at what the average college graduate for your major field of study makes in comparison to how much you’ll owe in student loans: likely monthly take home vs. monthly loan payment, that’s how you’ll be able to determine if it’s a reasonable burden.
        
        That is, if you manage to get a job in your major field of study.
        
        uwstudent said on November 20, 2011 at 2:40 pm
        
        “Finally, since your screen name is uwstudent, I’m assuming you haven’t graduated yet. I’d be interested to hear just how easy you find those loans are to pay down once you graduate from college, spend a little time unemployed (which could happen, recent college grads have been the hardest hit by the tough job market), and try to do things like buy a house and start saving for retirement. You don’t yet know what’s coming, be careful you don’t speak too soon…”
        
        You are right, I haven’t graduated yet, but I’ve done my research on how much my loans would be. There is an option to have them paid off based on income, so $120 a month for me once I’m working full time at my job again. And I do have a job already, as I mentioned in my original calculations, so as long as I don’t quit until I have another job finding something to pay the bills shouldn’t be hard, since I already have something. If I get another job that pays more my loan amount would go up, but so would my income so overall I would still be in an equal or better position to what I’m in now. Buying a house if you are unable to pay for student loans seems like a stupid decision, so I don’t think that’s much of a factor until you get a job that pays enough to cover both payments each month.
        
        Also, I don’t think that whether a job is in the same field as your degree impacts how much you make at that job…you might enjoy it more but, as you point out, it is a tough job market so a job is a job.
KainAnderson said on October 27, 2011 at 9:32 am

I’m sorry, but Buster Blonde and all of the others commenting below throwing around the term bootstrappers have completely missed the point of the photo. The photo is meant to attack the OWS’ers who have an entitlement mentality. There is a sizable portion of people on the lower quintile (and trickling up into other quintiles) who believe that the government is here to guarantee equal outcomes. They, as stated by others below, think the pie is finite and nobody should have a larger size. Lefties always talk about entitlement on the right (rich, white, etc… We all know the stereotype). Those people obviously do exist as well. The entitlement mentality is a human condition that spreads across all levels of income. Unfortunately, the loudest voices in the 99%’ers and OWS’ers seem to come dripping with an institutional entitlement mentality, especially those calling for the end of capitalism and the establishment of one of the many “isms” that are offshoots of socialism.

I’m glad the photo makes people angry. If it made you angry it probably means you need to take a long look in the mirror and do some life evaluation. That being said, attacking her as being non-existent was a waste of time. There are a number of factors you left out (including living in a red state where tuition and living expenses are far lower) that makes her situation plausible. Even so, it’s obvious by the fact she has 90% of her tuition covered and was able to save money from age 17 that she had a different starting point than everyone else. The point of the “bootstrappers” or 53%’ers or whatever is that hard work and good decisions will advance your station in life no matter who you are. Virtually every income study coming out of the treasury department (notice I said treasury and not left-wing group xxx that studied 5000 families or some sub-slice of the population) over the last 3 decades proves that America has a broad income mobility and that people aren’t born into “classes” and stuck there.

Everyone has a different starting point and people like the girl in the photo acknowlege that. It doesn’t mean she didn’t pull herself up from her bootstraps just because she had help from others along the way. It’s a frame of mind where you do not EXPECT help from others (entitlement), but you work hard to make sure you take advantage of every opportunity you do receive. This could be a person from a trailer park who enrolls in nursing school just to have a shot at making 2x minimum wage (maybe higher) and then later in life pursues higher education when she can afford it or simply uses her new station in life to ensure her kids get into community college. It could also be a kid whose parents put him through ivy league school and instead of partying and wasting time he actually works hard to become a leading scientist, doctor, attorney, etc. It’s about making the most of whatever life gives you good or bad and not blaming other people or the system because your starting and ending points are different than someone else’s or because you fail.

What surprises me most about the younger 99%’ers and OWS’ers (and the greatest indication that they are intellectually lazy) is how many of them are taking their frustration out on Wall Street. I’m sorry, but capitalism, WS, and free market economics in general have no bearing on college costs. You kids should be marching around the campus of your nearest University complaining and demanding tuition costs be put back at 1980′s levels. It’s BIG GOVERNMENT, the very thing OWS’ers are calling for MORE OF, that is responsible for virtually every woe on their long lists of complaints. In the example of higher education, BG is what regulates the university system creating a coercive monopoly. There has NEVER been an example of a coercive monopoly in human history in a free market system. All examples of coercive monopolies were caused by government regulation allowing some segment of the economy to protect itself FROM the free market with laws. Education is no different. Because education is now scarce because of regulation, prices go up. When the government steps in with more money so more people have access to an already scarce resource, prices go up more. When unions help professors get higher salaries and tenures, prices go up even more. It’s an endless cycle that only the universities benefit from. Get the government out of the way and then maybe everyone will have access to a college education at an affordable price. That being said, just because a university SCAMMED you out of $40-$80K for your education doesn’t mean you now have the right to go blame the bank who lent you the money. If you couldn’t afford college (or your parents), maybe you shouldn’t have felt ENTITLED to go and should have went the trade school route? Yes, we understand that statistics show that a college education will probably get you a higher salary in life, but it’s not the ONLY way to prosperity and many who do get college educations live lives of mediocrity (it’s no guarantee). Again, that gets back to the whole point of the photo doesn’t it? Quit feeling entitled because you aren’t. Go work your @$$ off to make the best of whatever advantages you do receive. Go make your life better regardless of your starting point. And finally, pick yourself up and try again when you fail instead of blaming others or capitalism.
- ThurmanHart said on October 27, 2011 at 8:26 pm
  
  There has NEVER been an example of a coercive monopoly in human history in a free market system.
  
  Um…Standard Oil? AT&T? Microsoft?
  - Synthetic Descartes said on October 27, 2011 at 10:20 pm
    
    Let us not forget Southern Pacific Railway.
    - KainAnderson said on October 28, 2011 at 12:32 pm
      
      I’m sorry…which part of “caused by government regulation” did you not understand? Explain to me how Standard Oil, AT&T, or Southern Pacific Railway (Microsoft has never been a coercive monopoly) are examples of a FREE MARKET SYSTEM when all three of them got and maintain(ed) their monopolies via government regulation of land, utilities, etc?
- shehasmoxy said on October 27, 2011 at 9:25 pm
  
  The rising cost of college tuition is directly related to wall street and the economy, and the incredible amount of money wall streeter’s make off of loaning out money to college students.
- Jane Dizzle said on October 27, 2011 at 10:19 pm
  
  Great solution: poor kids, you go to trade school; upper middle and rich kids, you go to university. Yeah, that’s just dandy. Let’s just fast track it and go right to an official caste system. [Please note extreeeeme sarcasm.]
  
  As for, “pick yourself up and try again when you fail instead of blaming others or capitalism”, I’d like to see AIG pick itself up. Oh wait, in crony capitalism, only little people have to bear the consequences for their mistakes. The top 1% (*phew* for them!) don’t have to.
  
  And unless you’ve personally lived the life of a person who was born into nothing, or next to it, and had to work against obstacles at every possible turn while slammed by others for taking “handouts”, you can zip it.
  
  By the way, making the statement that anyone who’s ticked off by that snide and misguided photo needs to look in the mirror, is tantamount to saying, “You don’t agree with my politics, therefore you’re making bad life choices.” That’s some nerve. There are people out there who actually care about those who are less fortunate than themselves, having compassion for the non-Sallys doesn’t make someone a screw-up.
  - KainAnderson said on October 28, 2011 at 1:17 pm
    
    A caste system would be one in which you or your offspring never move up. The treasury stats clearly show that is NOT the case. Also as I explained above, if you can’t afford a university, then you can better your station in life via other ways such as trade schools. Let me phrase it another way so maybe you can understand it. I went to a regular university because I couldn’t afford to go to an ivy league (even though I did have the grades and ACT scores). Had I felt “entitled” and chosen to go ivy league and racked up massive debt doing so, whose fault would it be again when I could have afforded state school? What makes choosing a trade school any different had my starting point been even further down?
    
    I’m glad you acknowledge crony capitalism. Every Tea Partier hates crony capitalism. What causes crony capitalism? Oh, right, it’s Big Government. I believe it’s Ayn Rand’s novels that paint such a clear picture of what happens when you give a “Progressive” government the power to regulate a “free market” (that in fact becomes no longer free) and how corrupt men will use money and politics to create crony capitalism. In a free market there are no bailouts. To take crony capitalism and its recent failures and try to conflate that with free market capitalism is a lie. That which the OWS people are calling for more of (Big Government) is what creates and perpetuates crony capitalism.
    
    I wasn’t born into abject poverty, but I certainly did my stint in the lowest tax bracket. Several years to be exact during the “wonderfully prosperous” Clinton years. I graduated from a University with tens of thousands in debt. I could only find jobs making just above minimum wage. I looked everywhere and saw only walls. I was the poster 20-something for an OWS had they had one in 1996. I had a friend who went to trade school making 2-3 times as much as I was who kept pushing me to CHOOSE a different path. So, I changed my career path, abandoned my major and my college degree, and now I’m in the 4th quintile (next to top). Again, the point of my post is that statistically you have a better shot at moving up the quintiles than not regardless of your starting point and to not expect “handouts” as you called them (i.e. don’t have an entitlement mentality) but if you do receive some helping hands and pushes along the way make sure you utilize them to their full potential.
    
    I stand by what I said about the photo. Unless you’ve been poor for 20 years due to absolutely no fault or choices of your own, then yes, you definitely need to take a good hard look in the mirror. Otherwise, you need to get out there and bust your butt like the rest of us did when we were broke. By the way, compassion is a person face-to-face helping out someone less fortunate than themselves and trying to help them up the ladder. It gives a sense of purpose to the helper and breeds a pay-it-forward mentality in the helpee. When the government plays middle man by taking from one group and giving to the other with no regards to the moral growth of either party (which is what socialist redistribution basically is), THAT is not compassion.
    - Jane Dizzle said on November 16, 2011 at 10:46 pm
      
      The social mobility to which you refer is shrinking, that’s why people are pissed off. OWSers want their positive efforts to yield positive results (which I think is what you want too), but the corporatations that we’ve handed our government to, through deregulation, pay big bucks for the unwarranted privilege of making the wealth gap bigger every day. And they disdain both you and me equally, that’s not entitlement mentality, that’s awareness.
      
      No one cares less about personal accountability, helping others up the ladder, rewarding integrity and genuine work ethic, true purpose, and paying-it-forward (things you seem to support based on your comments, and things that I support as well) than big corporations. Corporations that *by definition* (in the way of our current construction of duty to stakeholders), without government regulation, must make decisions based on profit alone, consequences be damned. Corporations, the scope of which did not exist when the Constitutional founders were alive, the scope of which they could not conceive. Corporations that benefit from blindly hands-off governing. Corporations that seek to advance the top 1% while saddling the 99 with the consequences of their mistakes.
      
      Put simply, wealth doesn’t trickle downhill, but shit sure does.
      
      Companies cannot be counted on to do right on their own. And in many instances individuals can’t either. The tragedy of the commons in its simplicity reminds us that we’re just not as good as we wish we were. And the conservative defense of pure self-interest has spun out of control, pure self-interest benefits no one, not even the individual.
      
      As neat a concept as it may be, government that is too little, equals businesses that are too big. Neither you nor I will ever be part of the 1% (and since I have an 80th percentile income, I’m closer than most), as a result I do not fight for the 1%, I fight for the 99. That’s not an entitlement mentality, that’s just good sense.
      
      What small government would call for at this point, would be asking the people who didn’t make the messes to clean them up. Thinking that is FUBAR does not amount to entitlement mentality, it amounts to being awake and paying attention to what the F is happening.
      
      As for compassion, I am not satisfied to let an indigent mentally ill person die in the cold because there’s no funding for group homes and meds, that is not an entitlement mentality, that is an acknowledgement that the measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members, and our government is inextricable from our society. Just as I am not satisfied to watch a deserving kid get priced out of an education when she had no role in college costs and loan interest rates spinning out of control.
      
      And my compassion may come in many forms: personal donations, mentorship, a letter to the editor, my vote, my words; compassion encompasses a much broader definition than what you’ve chosen for it to encompass.
      
      Your definition: “…compassion is a person face-to-face helping out someone less fortunate than themselves and trying to help them up the ladder. It gives a sense of purpose to the helper and breeds a pay-it-forward mentality in the helpee. When the government plays middle man by taking from one group and giving to the other with no regards to the moral growth of either party (which is what socialist redistribution basically is), THAT is not compassion” is arbitrary and is based on one particular world view, it’s far from gospel truth. As an aside, you mention the Tea Party in your comment, so I’m guessing you identify or affiliate with the Tea Party movement in some way, so you should probably keep in mind that meaning is static, your ex post facto opinions are withou value, according to the Tea Party’s own precepts. And as your opinion on what constitutes compassion and help is inherently useless (or so says the TP) it doesn’t have any place in this conversation.
      
      I, on the other hand, love opinions :) So I’ll keep sharing mine…
      
      This conversation isn’t about an entitlement mentality, as you claim. No, that’s far too subjective. Because you deem a person to have an entitlement mentality when they want something that you personally don’t think they should want. When they want something that you like, it’s just fine…
      
      I happen to think that, in addition to the 1% (who’ve pretty much cornered the market on entitlement), Tea Party supporters are pretty dang entitled too.
      
      Here are just a few things Tea Partiers feel entitled to:
      
      - An originalist interpretation of the Consitution, despite hermeneutic difficulties, the impossibility of dealing with originally broad and ambiguous Constitutional phrases, dead handedness, and the fact that the 9th amendement itself mandates the necessity of constitutional interpretation
      
      - Preventing gay and lesbian couples from legally marrying even though it’s none of the Tea Partiers damn business (upwards of 82% of Tea Partiers espouse the view that gay and lesbian couples should not be permitted to legally marry: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politicsnorthwest/2012005031_new_poll_looks_at_tea_party_vi.html)
      
      - Social Security
      
      - Medicare
      
      - Polluting an earth we’re all forced to share
      
      - Big, big government when it comes to addressing immigration
      
      (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html?pagewanted=2)
      
      Tea Party (and other conservative leaning) claims at small government only apply to a handful of things, on other things big gov is just fine, there’s no government bigger than one that wants to legislate what goes on in your bedroom, your family, or your womb. So I find the entire rhetoric disingenuous.
      
      Anyway, I’ve gotten carried away and typed more than I originally intended, all I really meant to say was that I find the majority of your arguments to be intellectually dishonest, though I’m sure you’re a very nice person.
      
      By the way, mentioning Ayn Rand is a party foul, there’s no such thing as objectivism, most people figure that out sometime around junior year of high school. (Hey, you scolded me, “Let me phrase it another way so maybe you can understand it,” so I owe you one ;) Plus she was a hypocrite: she claimed one’s own happiness was the only moral purpose of life, yet lambasted homosexuality as “disgusting and amoral”; she opposed the Vietnam draft, but called draft dodgers “bums”; her own objectivist followers describe her NBI as promoting a culture of intellectual conformity; and, most hilariously, when her young protegee boyfriend broke up with her, despite this being in full concert with his own happiness and therefore a perfectly valid moral choice, she began a campaign to ruin his reputation.
prairiejane said on October 27, 2011 at 1:15 am

I could have written most of what’s on the poster in the photo. I truly did graduate from undergrad debt free and took out only one modest loan for my first year of graduate school. I attended an out of state moderately priced undergraduate institution and received 4 years of full tuition, room and board from the college (meaning I lived on campus in a tiny dorm room and ate cafeteria food for 5 years). I also applied for and received a fellowship that paid for a 5th year as well as books for all 5 years. I came home one summer and “sponged” off my parents while working 2 part time jobs (about 50 hrs a week). After that, I earned several fellowships that paid me to do research over the summers. Some of them paid my room and board (as well as travel expenses) and others I had to rent crappy apartments and pay my own food. My final year I worked at an internship for half the year, getting paid while also earning credit. I worked through high school from age 16, which allowed me to buy a car and pay my basic living expenses my first year (with summer fellowships paying expenses the remaining years).

My parents did pay for my health insurance while I was an undergrad and paid 1 car insurance payment per year (I paid the second in the summer). My parents paid ZERO toward my actual education though when my car died my last year, they cosigned a loan, which I paid off in full during graduate school (on a TA stipend = poverty level wages). I’m a first generation college student from a single mother with no support from an alcoholic father. I had no choice but to do it primarily on my own. This was before the age of cell phones, but to this day I have a very old, very basic cell phone/plan, drive a 10 yr old car, own less house than the bank says I can afford, and carry zero credit card debt. At age 40, my student loans are completely paid off (I deferred about 5 years while unemployed due to having children) and my husband and I are 8years ahead on our mortgage. My husband similarly went to undergrad on a full ride, had no vehicle, and worked his rear off in farm labor every summer from the age of 14 – 21. So yeah, what Sally Student describes is completely possible – not all of us live in the city, you know? Speaking from personal experience, the cost of living in the midwest is a mere fraction of the west coast.

Now having said that, I still think Sally is a little snot. By definition if she’s working herself through school, she IS the 99%. Because you know how the 1% get through school? Their daddies set up trust funds that pay all their expenses and they work their connections with the Ivies to get their little babies in without regards to merit, writing a hefty check to the endowments if need be. This woman is delusional. The 1% doesn’t do anything as plebeian as working a minimum wage job to pay for college. Clearly her bachelor’s degree hasn’t done her a lick of good. She needs to be knocked upside the head with some common sense.

As a side note, all my fellowships came from the federal government and my scholarships came from state governments. I’m not so flipping stupid that I don’t realize that taxes made it possible for me to receive an education that would allow me to break out of poverty and move into the middle class. I can lie and say I did it all myself through my own hard work in high school but even my K-12 education was financed by taxes. Tea partiers need to get a grip on reality.
- paulagladys said on October 27, 2011 at 8:10 pm
  
  Perhaps you failed to note the line in the article which said that if you graduated more than 10 years ago — you were living in a different world. If you are 40 — yes, your reality was different.
  
  My uncle remembers when tuition was $600 a quarter at his state school, and a BS meant you were pretty much guaranteed employment with medical and retirement benefits. This year, more than 80 percent of college graduates moved home after graduation. Nobody would choose that fate. But this is the world we live in.
  - shehasmoxy said on October 27, 2011 at 9:28 pm
    
    I graduated 10 years ago from a ‘moderately priced public school” and i can tell you my debt is still substantial. Its only gotten worse.
getbackbarack said on October 26, 2011 at 10:32 pm

Removed because no one read it anyway. The ones who glanced at it long enough to see that it represented a point of view that varied from theirs immediately started spewing liberal vomit. These are the same people that say they are open minded.
- Jane Dizzle said on October 27, 2011 at 12:32 am
  
  No one’s talking about you. It’s a bit baffling that you’d think that the bootstraps dialogue is directed at you, someone who admits you didn’t get where you are “by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” but rather, acknowledges that your family putting you through college gave you an exceptionally good start. You acknowledge this when you say: “Did I get where I am on my own? No. I had a father that paid for me to get through college.” It’s good that you acknowledge that advantage; the person who wrote the sign above, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to acknowledge these kinds of advantages when she suggests that whether a person gets through college without debt is entirely up to the individual. It’s up to a lot of different factors, many of which are beyond the student’s own control.
  
  The people here who are annoyed with the so-called bootstrappers, are annoyed b/c a person who had their parents put them through college but then expects those less fortunate than they to do it all on their own are being self-centered hypocrite grubs. Not everyone has had the advantage of parents who could pay their way through school – that’s the point. And that’s also where I think you go astray when you say, “From there I took it upon myself to make it on my own.” In reality, from there you did something with what you were given. You were able to do good things because of what others (like your dad putting you through college) did for you that allowed you to succeed. You say, “ I don’t expect the government or anyone else to help me.” But the fact of the matter is, you did get help, from your dad in the way of a college education, and from your father again in the way of loans. A loan is not a gift, but it is help. And again, because you had a creditor who was willing to lend you money, hopefully (since it was your dad) at a reasonable interest rate, you were able to make it in those tough early post-college years. Many, many students don’t have that advantage, many of them have put groceries (not flat screen TVs) on credit cards.
  
  And because you went to college, I’m guessing 25+ years ago, just based on you saying you’ve been married 25 years and have adult kids, or somewhere in that neighborhood, the costs that your dad incurred to pay for your college are a fraction of what students (and parents, for those who can afford it) pay today. Your story’s not representative of a modern student’s story.
  
  You then say, “responsibility for everything that happens to you is yours.” That’s just patently false. To choose an extreme example, rape victims, aren’t responsible for being raped. Cancer sufferers who got cancer from water that’s poisoned by companiess that dump toxins into rivers, aren’t responsible for their cancer. If another driver slams into my car on my way to work tomorrow, I’m not responsible for the fact that he slammed into my car. Assuming that your entire destiny is within your control (when in reality there are countless factors, including the existence of very bad people out there who are motivated by greed and self-promotion who have a lot of power over you and your life), is not an assumption that’s based in reality.
  
  The people who are annoyed by that handwritten poster are annoyed because people who were born into advantages (like getting their college paid for by parents or by grants that aren’t widely available) have no right to tell people who don’t have those same advantages what they ought to be doing to succeed.
  
  Your last comment, “I think it is time you got your shit together.” Well, that’s just plain out of line. You don’t know any of these people. And I doubt you’d like it much if someone who didn’t know you told you that you need to get *your* shit together. I, for one, have my shit very much together. But that’s in part, however, because I was born into certain advantages like caring parents who paid for my college and have helped me in a number of ways that many of my friends weren’t able to be helped. I realize that. And I make dang sure I don’t walk around feeling self-satisfied at how much I’ve accomplished on my own, when I know full well I didn’t do it on my own. And for others to achieve what I’ve been allowed to achieve because of the grace and support of others, they’ll need my help, and probably your help to, if you’d be willing to give it.
  
  Think about the good gifts you got from your dad, now thing about where you’d be without them. A little compassion would go a long way.
  
  To whom much has been given, much will be expected.
  - getbackbarack said on October 27, 2011 at 7:26 am
    
    See above reason for removal.
    - Nowords said on October 27, 2011 at 7:16 pm
      
      I can’t believe you are basically blaming a murder/rape victim for being murdered/raped. That is insensitive, offensive, and just blows my mind. Do you also think if a woman wears a low-cut top or a short skirt that she is just asking for it? Unbelievable.
    - [E] Michelle Miller said on October 27, 2011 at 7:27 pm
      
      No one forces someone to rape or murder them. No one makes a person make that sort of choice.
      
      The responsibility is entirely the rapist or murderer’s.
      
      Christ. I pity any woman in your life who gets sexually assaulted, and chances are good one of them will be. Will you blame them, too, instead of their attacker? Or maybe you’ll change your tune…
      - getbackbarack said on October 27, 2011 at 8:09 pm
        
        See above.
        
        [E] Michelle Miller said on October 27, 2011 at 8:40 pm
        
        Are you seriously suggesting that there has ever been a rape victim who coerced or forced the attacker into raping her/him?
        
        Because unless that rape victim straight-up forced that attacker to rape, then the fault is entirely on the rapist.
        
        Look, clothing is not coercive. Neither is walking alone at night. Neither is walking to the car without having my keys in my hand. The list of things “women should not do” to tempt or coerce a man to rape her is enormous, and often contradictory. Some men tell me not to wear jogging shorts while others tell me not to wear jeans while others tell me never to go out alone at night while still others tell me not to bend over when I stretch in the park after a jog. A woman lives with a perpetual awareness of the possibility of rape. We’re inculcated from a young age with all the ways we can prevent rape happening to us. Meanwhile, a (shocking) number of men our age and older cannot even properly define rape. And even worse, the majority of girls and women who get raped are victimized by their trusted family members and friends.
        
        If a man decides he’s going to rape me, none of my “prevention strategies” are going to do me any good. This is why women in burkhas get raped. This is why women in modest clothing who carry their keys in their hands when they walk to their cars at night still get raped.
        
        How about instead of coming up with all the scenarios in which a woman deserved, “asked for,” or brought this horrible crime upon herself, we focus on the fact that SHE is the victim. Nothing lets a rapist off the hook for committing the crime. The rapist chose to rape someone; the rapist is wholly responsible.
        
        Unless you mean to tell me that men are such baseless animals that they cannot help themselves but rape anything that jiggles in fishnet when it walks? I happen to think better of men. I happen to think they’re intelligent adults in full control of their actions. Do you?
        
        getbackbarack said on October 27, 2011 at 9:34 pm
        
        See above.
        
        Jane Dizzle said on October 27, 2011 at 9:40 pm
        
        I’m laughing too hard to respond…wait, wait, let me get my composure. Ok, better now.
        
        I wonder how often you even interact with people who don’t think just like you. Based on your reaction to being challenged on bases that are for better thought out and reasoned then what you’ve presented, I’m guessing not often.
        
        [E] Michelle Miller said on October 27, 2011 at 10:29 pm
        
        I’m not a liberal.
        
        I’m a moderate, from an ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Christian background.
        
        See, people sometimes feel that anyone who is a little further right or left of themselves must be an extremist on the other side, but that is not the case. Might just be you’re on the extreme and the person with whom you’re speaking who disagrees (like me) is, well, just slightly to the right or left of you. Sometimes perspective is hard to have when you’re wayyyyyyyyyyyy out there on the edge of the political spectrum.
        
        See what I did there? I made an assumption about your political beliefs and then implied that they blind you to reason. That isn’t a very productive approach, is it?
        
        As for liberals being feelers and conservatives being thinkers, that is just silly. Plenty of evidence shows that people think and don’t think on either side because, regardless of political affiliation, stupid people still exist (as do diligent thinkers). I can’t believe that even requires explanation, but something tells me you’re not aiming to be sensible but to cast barbs.
      - Jane Dizzle said on October 27, 2011 at 9:36 pm
        
        I wouldn’t bother, Nowords and Michelle, getbackbarack is too far gone to be reasoned with; I wish this person were a troll, then I wouldn’t have to feel so sad about the fact that there are actually people who believe the scheiße getbackbarack has written.
        
        [E] Michelle Miller said on October 27, 2011 at 10:30 pm
        
        You’re probably right.
        
        But the men “brosplaining” how women should handle/feel about rape always sucker me into their pits of blind privilege.
        
        Nowords said on October 27, 2011 at 11:23 pm
        
        Too true. I don’t normally comment on these kinds of things because the people are usually too far gone to listen to reason, but his ridiculousness sucked me in and I felt compelled to say something.
    - paulagladys said on October 27, 2011 at 8:22 pm
      
      Private comment.
    - moo.moo said on November 2, 2011 at 11:48 pm
      
      I would just like to say that I am twelve, and the more comments in these discussions that I read, the more horrified I am at the anything but open-minded comments that are being posted.
      
      Rape victims do not put themselves in that position. Women do not choose to be raped. How dare you say something so blatantly untrue? Even if a women does get into the sex trade, the likely answer is that it wasn’t there choice to be put in such a vulnerable position. The reason is most likely that the woman comes from a lower class. Often they could have grown up in the inner-city area where the schools, to be frank, suck and the teachers are often in the deal waiting for their then-year (not the case where I’m from, but certainly the case in many places in America). That’s just the beginning… often drugs and alcohol come into play and… people’s entire lives go downhill. One bad decision… or even none at all, can make horrible things happen to you and your life. We have to sop dwelling on the whole “bad decision” thing because everyone makes them, but the rich (or middle class, or whatever the heck you want to cal it) can cover it up because their families have the money to cover it up.
      
      Just a not on the whole drugs and alcohol thing: this is also a disadvantage that comes with lower class families. While it is possible in higher classes it is far less likely given the family circumstances.
      
      I am extremely lucky. My family will have the money to help me through university and has already moved me to a private school this year because I wasn’t getting challenged. I am *extremely* lucky and I recognize that fact. I know (heck, I see that on my walk to school) that not everybody is.
- Jane Dizzle said on November 7, 2011 at 4:38 pm
  
  Read: “I didn’t like that people were pointing out that my comment was obscene and I wanted to have the last word but since I couldn’t successfully defend my points using solid argument I just deleted the comment.”
  
  I bet when you had an argument with the neighbor as a kid you picked up your toys and went home.
ThurmanHart said on October 26, 2011 at 9:30 pm

I have two parts of this response. The first part is my personal story. The second part is about what I see as a Lecturer at area colleges and universities.

First: I started off at a community college. I then transferred to a Texas state university. Then I moved to Florida and had to go back to community college. Then I went to the University of Central Floria. When I got my BA, I had zero college debt. How? I worked 40 hours per week (nights and weekends mostly) and I used my VA benefits.

I worked at being a college student. I read every book and wrote every assignment. But, without trying to brag, I’m a much better student than most. My SAT scores were in the upper 10% and I graduated Navy Nuclear Power School. College was easy for me. I never – not once – ever – in my life – studied for a test. And I had a 3.43 GPA (the C’s in Spanish killed me). Very few people could accomplish what I did.

I worked because I had a family and I had to provide. It sucked. It nearly killed me. There are years of my kids’ lives that I was only a ghostly figure moving in and out of the front door on my way to either school or work. But I was gifted with a strong body and I could take the physical labor I had to do. Very few people can accomplish what I did.

I gave up SIX YEARS of my life to get my VA benefits, with nearly four years of that being on board a sea-going ship. I earned every stinking penny of it, with my sweat, my blood, and my mental health. If anyone thinks the military will take just anyone who comes along – they’re wrong. And being able to stick it out for six years – well, I saw a guy cut off his own finger so the Navy would be forced to discharge him. One guy on a ship deployed with us fell overboard and we never even found the body. I saw guys get their bodies and minds mangled. Not everyone can do it.

No one should HAVE to. I was lucky. I had the brains, I had the brawn, and I had the wherewithal to stick with it. But I gave up years of my life, and years of my kids’ lives, too.

I got my MA with about $5K worth of debt. The rest of the tuition I paid for with a fellowship (grad students DO get more money). Books and living expenses were paid out of my pocket.

I now have paid down to $50K towards a PhD that I have not completed. Due to life being what it is, I have no idea when I can go back. If I do, I’ll lose credits because a PhD has to be finished within 7-10 years. My full payment is over $800 a month (mortgage for a 600 sq ft condo in Jersey City, by comparison, is just over $900 a month). I’m currently paying interest only – at $270 a month.

Now, on to the second part. I currently have a full-time, temporary appointment at a community college. I teach six courses per semester. I make $35K a year. I’ve spent the last six or seven years working as an adjunct, teaching as many as six classes in up to three different schools in two different states (hit with income tax in both of them!) and the best I did as an adjunct was $28K.

I’ve talked with my students about their debt. I know what they are facing. Tuition at a 4-year school in New Jersey is just under $8K per year – plus books, fees, and living expenses. Montclair State University pegs the cost of one year of school at a bit over $25K. That’s $100K to get a bachelor’s degree. There’s no way my VA bill plus working 40 hours a week would cover that.

Community colleges ARE a bargain. An in-county resident pays $124.60 per credit hour at my school. That works out to around $1,500 per 12-credit semester. The cost of an AA, then, is about $6,000 – if a student is not found to need remedial assistance in core proficiencies. Then there are fees, books, and living expenses. For general knowledge, a two-bedroom dump in this area starts at $1200 per month. Plus utilities.

Most of my students work. Some work full-time. I always ask for a show of hands as to how many are taking out loans. If I see more than two students per semester (35 students times 6 classes is 210 students per semester) who AREN’T going into debt, I consider it noteworthy.

Now, if you have to go into debt to get through a community college that costs $1500 for tuition, what’s going to happen when you move up to the 4-year school where it’s $8K per year?

Yeah, I have several doubts about the authenticity of the photo in question. BUT, even if it IS true, it is such an outlier for the modern college experience as to have no bearing whatsoever on the discussion at all.
- Jane Dizzle said on October 27, 2011 at 12:38 am
  
  Thanks for your input, Thurman! Your info on community college realities are especially helpful. I wish you the best in completing your PhD.
JLWC said on October 26, 2011 at 1:46 pm

Further to rah29′s post, what the 1% don’t realize is that thousands if not millions of people are smart and work hard, it’s getting “in the door” in the first place that’s difficult. I think this apocryphal true story says it all:

“I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.

“The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle’s chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics.

“Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon’s domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.

“With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. ’I oppose it,’ Irving replied. ‘It subverts meritocracy.’”

I can’t figure out how to link to the original article, but it’s here: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/jan/28/campos-to-the-manner-born/

…and Anderson Cooper is Gloria Vanderbilt’s son…
bob said on October 26, 2011 at 12:01 pm

Private comment.
- Stephanie said on October 26, 2011 at 5:15 pm
  
  How interesting, I am a doctoral student at your university, so let’s talk shop. One, tuition at FSU is $5,825 a semester, which is closer to $6,000 than $5,000, which means it is a little over $11,500 a year. So stop being misleading.
  
  Not every student gets their education paid for by grants; are you aware how much money that would cost to send 50,000 students to school at that rate? 90% of your tuition is covered via grants… well, having looked at the financial aid information myself (as I’ve said, I am a student here), you’d have to qualify at the lowest limit to get that sort of money, meaning you’d have to be really poor. I know you’ve had a statistics class; you’re aware of the normal curve, right? There are very few people who could receive grants that are worth enough to cover nearly a year’s worth of tuition, because there aren’t that many at that level of need. Also, getting the government to subsidize your education through grants does not count as doing it on your own. You’re doing it on the taxpayer’s dollar, and there would be more money available to students if the top 1% would pay their taxes. Tuition would also be lower, because there would be more money available for universities.
  
  I live in this city, so I know exactly what utilities cost and how much rent is. Electricity averages at $100 a month, more or less depending on the season, plus the sewage and garbage is included in that bill, making it about $120 a month. Do you actually pay this bill? You can come to my office and look at mine; I keep my thermostat at 80 degrees, don’t have a TV, and don’t use the lights unless it’s dark because I have a large window, and my apartment is only 500 sq ft, and my bill was still over $100 for September. Do you have Internet? The local companies charge about $30 a month. Half of your rent plus half of those expenses… doesn’t add up.
  
  Your mother pays your phone bill? Oh yes, you are totally doing this on your own.
  
  There is absolutely no way you do not have health insurance, because FSU requires you to have it to enroll. So you’re obviously paying the $1400. You know what would be cheaper if the top 1% paid their taxes? Your government-subsidized health insurance.
  
  Yes, working would be hard with your major, but if you really want to say you’re doing this on your own, you’d be working 20 hours a week for eight dollars an hour rather than using government-subsidized loans (as in, taxpayer dollars! Which there would be more of if the top 1% paid their taxes!). I’ve seen people do it, and keep their scholarships. Don’t tell me I don’t know what the courseload is like for a civil engineer; my roommate from undergrad is in Civil, so I know exactly what you’re going through, and I feel for you, because it’s tough as hell. Junior year is the worst of it, though.
  
  I also feel for you because you believe you can pay your loans off in a year. Do you know what $8,000 times four is? Do you understand how much you’d have to make in a year to pay for that and still live? Are you also aware there are very few Engineering jobs to be had in this state? I am; my boyfriend is an engineer, and he’s been searching for jobs here since February. He thought he could pay off his loans in a year, too, except he can’t get a job. Don’t place your eggs in the basket of getting a job within six months after graduating. It is unlikely.
  
  All parents are expected to pay for some of college? Hah! You’re funny. Parents are expected to pay for their children until they are 18 or graduate high school, whichever comes later. Parents are not expected to pay for anything. I’m so glad you have parents to fall back on, but not everyone does.
  
  If FSU students are the ones doing all the work in this town, I must be shopping at all the wrong places, as that’s not what I’m seeing.
  
  You are part of the 99%, and your life is really fucking tough. But if the top 1% would pay their fair share of taxes, your tuition would be cheaper, you could have more grant money, your subsidized health insurance would be cheaper… your life would be so much better. If they’d just pay their fair share.
  
  And it goddamn grates me that you, so young, can only eat rice for dinner because you can’t afford anything more. Is that not wrong to you? Your education should be a right.
rah29 said on October 26, 2011 at 6:33 am

The problem isn’t that people want an easy ride. It’s that the current system – the tax code, the corporate domination of politics, the rising costs of education and healthcare – allows the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer (relative to one another). That’s been the economic reality since the 1970s and to deny it is to deny empirical fact – the Economist, hardly a bleeding-heart left-wing publication, actually ran a special article on this as far back as 2004, and revisited the subject again last year. Add to that the fact that the government spent tax money rescuing the bankers who caused the recession in the first place while slashing services that help the very poorest, and what you have is a massive redistribution of wealth from poorest to richest.

However, lot of commenters seem determined to bring this down to the level of the individual, rather than to look at the system as a whole. So, fine, let’s consider Sarah. Sarah is exactly like Sally in every way, except Sarah is a child of the 1%. She’s just as hard-working as Sally, in fact they work the same number of hours per day. She doesn’t party, not because she can’t afford to, but because she’s so ambitious and dedicated. But here are just a few of the unearned privileges Sarah has that Sally probably doesn’t:

- Sarah could apply to as many colleges as she wanted; she’s not constrained by high application costs.

- Sarah has a brand new laptop, which makes her work easier, and excellent health insurance, so she doesn’t need to worry about getting sick. She can buy new editions of textbooks and doesn’t need to rely on out-of-date second hand ones.

- Sarah almost certainly goes to a very prestigious institution, because she has always been expected to do so and groomed for it. If her dad went to Yale you bet your ass there’s a photo, somewhere in the family album, of Baby Sarah in a Yale onesie.

- Sarah has been impeccably prepared for college level work. She doesn’t need to spend time on tutoring or remedial/entry-level classes. She can dive right into the curriculum at relatively advanced levels, and go further with it than Sally can.

- Sarah doesn’t need to pick a major carefully so as to maximise her earning potential. She can do whatever she loves. Sally has to be more practical, because she needs to make money.

- Sarah can take as long as she wants to finish; she doesn’t need to overload herself with courses just to get out of college quickly. She has much more time to dedicate to each class.

- Sarah doesn’t have to work for a living. Instead she spends that time doing an internship, or volunteering, or studying even more. When she and Sally apply to jobs, she’ll have a much better and more career-relevant resume than Sally.

- Sarah studies abroad and as a result has excellent language skills.

- Sarah can go to graduate school easily and does not have to worry about incurring debt.

- Sarah knows everyone. It’s not as if she decided to start collecting business cards aged 7. But to Sarah, that Fortune 500 CEO is just her mom’s grad school buddy; that Ambassador is just her friend’s mum; that politician just her dad’s golfing partner. Let’s say all these people are morally unimpeachable (ha) and won’t give her freebies. But she can still get interviews where Sally’s resume gets thrown away or forgotten. People know her name, or her parents’ names. Powerful family friends say things like, ‘Oh, you want to work in my industry? Send me your resume, maybe I can help you, or I know someone who might love to hire a girl like you.’ Sarah is also extremely confident around these people and comports herself with ease. In the future, most of the kids she went to school with will become very successful, and she’ll have good relationships with them.

- If Sarah is still struggling to find a job given the crappy economy, she doesn’t have to take something unrelated to her career just to get by. She can continue unpaid internships, or she can freelance; she can volunteer, travel, go to grad school, pursue other interests. She can keep padding her resume, while for Sally it feels like a step backwards.

Who is more likely to reach or stay in the 1%? All the little advantages add up; Sarah is already miles in front before the race even begins. She earns her 4.0 GPA with hard work and grit, studying around the clock, but she has the luxury of dedicating herself to it completely, and doors open for her where Sally can’t even get in the building. This is what it means to be a child of the 1%: to have the luxury of doing absolutely anything you want to do in life, knowing that you don’t even need a high income because you have the wealth to generate more wealth.

There will always be inequality; there’s never been a political system that could eliminate it. The top people are always going to have advantages over the rest. But in the last 40 years, the gap between the top and the bottom has become much wider, to the point where even the brightest and most talented people on the bottom haven’t a hope in hell of getting to the top. The 1% of today aren’t just the top 1/100th in a linear progression – they are exponentially better-off than anyone else. And as such, it’s not outrageous to suggest that maybe, if Sarah paid a little bit more tax on her trust fund, or on the investments that were made in her name when she was born – wealth that she didn’t earn, but perpetuates itself – then deserving kids like Sally might be able to get more access to scholarships and other financial aid for college. If you don’t agree with that for ideological reasons, fine. But don’t pretend that people who do want life to be made easy. They just think that society would be better if it actually was a meritocracy, so that talented and hardworking people from anywhere on the social ladder could have real opportunities to succeed.
- wannabemusicologist said on October 26, 2011 at 9:06 am
  
  Thank you for posting this, it’s amazing! I just wanted to get in and say something supportive before someone came along and attacked you. The thing that amazes me, is not only do these bootstrappers want to not help people with less opportunities, but they have the absolute audacity to turn around and call them lazy.
- KainAnderson said on October 26, 2011 at 11:55 am
  
  The problem with your reply is that it doesn’t match tax figures. For instance every decade, 50% of the tax population moves UP a quintile and that number is fairly static. Even more striking, during the 80′s, you had MORE of a chance of moving from the bottom quintile to the top quintile than you did in staying in the bottom quintile. All of this bunk about the “rich get rich” and the “poor get poorer” doesn’t match reality at all. America always has had and still has profound class mobility (even if it’s been stymied in the “Hope & Change” years).
  
  Tax figures also show that the faces of the “uber rich” change each decade. You have a 70% chance of NOT being in the uber rich every 10 years, so while the income of the uber rich person this year is certainly higher than it was 10 years ago, odds are that person is somebody different unless you’re one of the ones like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates who have a knack for ensuring they do the things to stay on top.
  
  Finally, wealth isn’t finite. There is no “pie” that everyone has to share. Wealth is created daily by ideas, work, etc. What a person at the top makes has no…ABSOLUTELY NO…bearing on the person on the bottom. It’s also stupid to make a deal about the gap getting wider. It’s not because of something unfair in the system, but rather simple math. If poor man Bob makes 10K a year and rich woman Madonna makes 1 mil a year and they both see a 4% increase in their incomes because of inflation, the gap is gonna get bigger because 4% of 1 mil is a lot more than 4% of 10K. When inflation happens it doesn’t mean that the poor and rich incomes go up the exact same static number. You also have to take into account compound interest. The “rich” generally have investments and those investments grow over time with compound interest. The poor generally buy things they can’t afford on credit and have compound interest working against them. For instance…if you had a single guy aged 21 that worked construction making 20K a year. If that individual worked 2 shifts upping his income to 30K a year for 4 years instead of going to college and invested that 10K for 4 years in mutual funds and never saved another penny in his life he’d be a millionaire by age 49 and retire at age 65 with over $6.5 million dollars all without ever stepping foot in a university. Income obviously helps a person in life, but ultimately it’s returns on investments over decades of time that makes a difference.
  
  http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/incomemobilitystudy03-08revise.pdf
  - Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 1:24 pm
    
    Nicely said KainAndersen . . . but you will never convince the sum-zero minded people because they are too busy complaining that the world isn’t fair and they want the government to make “perfect” the enemy of the most egalitarian wealth creating society in the history of the world.
    - Synthetic Descartes said on October 27, 2011 at 10:34 pm
      
      I don’t wan the government to make it perfect, I want it to enforce the rules we say the game is plaid. What has got the 99% upset is that it is obvious from the results that something is wrong in the system and it needs to be fixed. Fixing the rules is what the government is for.
  - JLWC said on October 26, 2011 at 2:24 pm
    
    Not, of course, that earning an extra $10,000 per year working a second shift would mean that our hypothetical construction worker would actually have an additional $10,000 to invest after mandatory payroll deductions, including taxes, Social Security, etc.
    
    Even disregarding the fact that $10,000 earned would result in something like $7-8,000 after-tax income available to invest, I can’t make your numbers work.
    
    The best current yield I can find on bond-based mutual funds is 5% (most mutual funds are at a loss YTD). According to my calculations — and assuming a 10% return per year (good luck with that), $10,000 saved per year for four years results in just over $500,000 at 49 and $2.3M at 65.
    
    Investing the after-tax $7,500 at an optimistic but real-world 5% yields about $110,000 at 49 and $240,000 at 65. Hardly enough to retire on.
    
    I followed your link, but couldn’t find the $10,000 reference in the Treasury publication….
    - KainAnderson said on October 26, 2011 at 3:55 pm
      
      I used 12% as my rate of return as that’s the S&P history for the last 80 years (http://www.daveramsey.com/article/the-12-reality/lifeandmoney_investing/) and we’re investing long term over a 40+ year period.
      
      The link was for the income mobility, not the $10,000 number. I used 10,000 as a good round number so the math was easy so of course there’s taxes and such, but then again I doubt the person is actually making $20K even and then $10K even for his 2nd job. The point is investing 10K for 4 years in a diverse portfolio that matches the S&P history for 40 years makes you a millionaire vs. going in debt 10K per year for 4 years of college and blaming the banks and capitalism for your woes. BTW…why is everyone down on the banks instead of blaming the universities charging the insane rates and the progressive government that has created coercive monopolies in education through regulation (what universities are or are not accredited) or unions that control professor salaries and tenure, etc. Seems we should be working to get college costs down and not blaming the people lending money.
      - JLWC said on October 26, 2011 at 4:28 pm
        
        Even at 10K and 12% annual return, the number is $800K at 49, and less than $5M at 65 — but I don’t think 12% is realistic anymore (and yes, I read the article you linked to).
        
        College tuitions go up every time student loan caps are increased.
        
        KainAnderson said on October 26, 2011 at 5:07 pm
        
        I’m off by a hair because I originally ran the numbers as working 2 x $20K jobs for 2 years and investing 20K for 2 years. The math for $10K for 4 years would be:
        
        Age 21-25 final balance 51018.63 (stop investing)
        
        Age 25-50 final balance 1,009,580
        
        Age 65 final balance 6,053,244
        
        Even if I go with 8% ROI that’s still a millionaire at age 65 from a “loser” who never made more than $20K in his life and never invested more than $40K. Certainly enough to change his family tree and get his kids further along.
reverendcaptain said on October 26, 2011 at 3:20 am

I got a degree while working 2 jobs, selling plasma twice a week, living in a tiny, one room hole and living off of ramen. And I also managed to be able to have the occasional beer. When I graduated I owed $15,000. But I worked my ass off and paid that off.

And there are people that did a hell of a lot more and with a lot less than me. I’m not special.

So I don’t know if this particular case is legitimate but there is nothing on the sign that proves it isn’t. It is totally feasible and has been matched time and again. Sure whiney tittie babies can’t believe that people actually make their own way but it still happens.

I didn’t support the wall street bailouts either but that doesn’t mean I want the government to cancel my debt. Or wait a minute, why not? Why is my credit card debt any less deserving than your student loan? Maybe I was using it to feed blind orphans?

And enough with the crap about how people who graduated in the 90s can’t relate to the realities of today. God, you are such a spoiled generation.
- soitgoes said on October 26, 2011 at 5:01 am
  
  I think the author may have gone too far; I think everyone can grasp that just because something is possible for lots of people doesn’t mean that it’s possible for everyone. That shouldn’t be a directive or a condemnation of those who can’t achieve what others can with similar resources.
  - Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 1:36 pm
    
    Then there should also not be condemnation for those that do succeed.
    - JLWC said on October 26, 2011 at 4:21 pm
      
      I haven’t seen any comments where people are condemning those who do succeed.
      
      What I have seen is people pointing out that hard work and a good work ethic do not guarantee success, and that “entitlement” comes in many forms, not all of them obvious. It should be obvious by now that everyone thinks s/he worked for what s/he has today and “did it on their own,” but that mindset is generally not the whole truth. Donald Trump thinks he’s a self-made man, but he inherited millions in real estate from his father. Nicholas Cage thinks he made it on his own, but he is the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola and Talia Shire. Bill Gates thinks he made it on his own, but as The Tipping Point reveals, he went to a school for rich kids and had unprecedented computer access before the age of computers because of his extraordinary connections with elites. My cousin thinks he made it on his own, but I got him his first job at a law firm that never would have interviewed him but for my recommendation. I think I made it on my own because I worked two jobs and in the summer and had a scholarship, but my parents paid for most of my college tuition, room and board.
      
      None of us made it on our own.
      - Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 4:50 pm
        
        JLwC I appreciate your thoughtful remarks. I have seen and experienced alot of that venom. I do understand your point of where a personal connection or even serendipity plays a role in peoples success. But it is impossible to remove all of those connections and factors short of removing all babies from families and raising them in some government baby raising factory. But surely some inequities would blossom there too. (They tried everything but that in communist Europe and there was still a separate system for those in power) For every story of someone who turned a connection into success, there is a story of someone who turned a connection into utter failure. Have you see a Nicholas Cage movie lately? :-) And there are also stories of people who had no connections and are moderately and even wildly successful . . . look at Oprah. She met people along the way who believed in her and helped her believe in herself. I think she deserves all the success she has achieved. I say we should all aspire to be those supportive, inspirational types that help as many people that you can along their journey! Some people fail miserably which leads to their next venture succeeding. I’m just not sure how to legislate it and I haven’t heard anyone from OWS articulate how to enforce success. I predict that the class warfare route is going to fail miserably because it ultimately will alienate far more people than it will bring into the movement. We actually do have the right to fail. The question is . . . who should bear the cost of that? I hope this post hasn’t strayed too off-topic for you. (I’ve been accused)
        
        reverendcaptain said on October 26, 2011 at 6:21 pm
        
        Yes people do have advantages such as family or friends or other connections that give them a foot up in their career. This is what’s known as “life”.
        
        It is widely known that life is “unfair”.
        
        This is a concept that is difficult to grasp by “children”.
        
        When I was starting out, I was frustrated time and again by others that walked through doors that were unopened to me but I had to work harder to get in. I tried being angry but that didn’t really do me any good.
        
        So right now the OWS people are venting the same kind of anger at life to no end except to provide political opportunities to those that are able to co-opt them. For instance, the president that presides over this terribly economy is giddily embracing their rhetoric in order to gain his own reelection. Way to go suckers!
        
        Jane Dizzle said on October 27, 2011 at 1:03 am
        
        Life’s not fair. And some of that unfairness cannot be changed, like the fact that my best friend has a family history of breast cancer, while I don’t have a family history of breast cancer. This is terrible for her, and lucky for me, and there’s nothing we can do about it (at least not at this time).
        
        But there is also unfairness that CAN be changed, like where our tax dollars go, and who pays what portion of them, and whether the d-bags who run multi-national corporations get to act like wild-west outlaws at the expense of most of the American public.
        
        So this whole “life’s not fair” and people who can’t grasp that are “children” seems to me like the words of someone who’s giving up and bending over to accept the status quo.
        
        Well, not everyone is happy to do that. So maybe you’re the sucker.
        
        reverendcaptain said on October 27, 2011 at 3:18 am
        
        Which one is it jane? Bending over or being the sucker?
        
        Jane Dizzle said on October 27, 2011 at 9:43 pm
        
        You seem to be managing both, so, bravo!
- Jane Dizzle said on October 27, 2011 at 12:54 am
  
  Wow. You don’t even know how old half these people are and you’re ready to start lobbing insults at them as one “spoiled generation.” That’s so obnoxiously Gen-X (pretend I’m a Baby Boomer calling you names, it wasn’t that long ago that everyone hated *you* b/c you were under 30; it was lame to do it then, and it’s lame to do it now).
  
  People who graduated from college in the 90s (which I did) paid way less in tuition then what students pay today. So, no, we can’t exactly relate to the realities of today. Nobody watches Winona Ryder movies anymore either, the world has changed, many of us Gen-Xers seem to be able to accept that. For example, even though I graduated from college in the 90s, when tuition at my school was $3400 a year (it’s now over $10,000), I can still recongize the basic reality that tuition has risen at a much, much, much, much higher rate than income.
  
  If you graduated from college in the 90s you’re old enough to stop acting like a punk to people who are having a hard time and suffering a big chunk of the consequences of an economic disaster that someone else created.
  - reverendcaptain said on October 27, 2011 at 2:20 am
    
    This entire thread is in reaction to a post that attacks a statement in a picture that the writer took offense to and claims to prove that it is a lie.
    
    And anybody who dares claim to believe it is true or feasible is attacked as well.
    
    Don’t get your panties in a wad because somebody dared to push back. This whole feigned outrage and simultaneous insulting wears thin very quickly.
    
    If you graduated in the 90s then you’re old enough to stop acting like you haven’t learned anything about life in the intervening years.
    - [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 27, 2011 at 3:10 am
      
      I think you’ve confused the words “attacked” and “debated.”
      - reverendcaptain said on October 27, 2011 at 3:15 am
        
        Oh great Selena, I’m ready to see your debating points. Please proceed.
        
        Chicagato said on October 27, 2011 at 3:43 am
        
        Reverend Captain . . . if you keep pushing Selena . . . she will lose her cool and finally admit that “this is a debate and open forum and all opinions are welcome” stance is just a silly canard! Then she will change your avatar to “I Love Selena” ( check out mine) lose her cool again but not have the balls to stand by her words so she will hide the part of the thread that she doesn’t want anyone else to see and her work cohort will also pile on and tell you they don’t like your opinion and “you are free to leave”!
        
        reverendcaptain said on October 27, 2011 at 3:50 am
        
        I’ve been amused by the alternating insults and then the same people having vapors because somebody dared to say something that wasn’t dripping with sweetness.
        
        This is what happens when you live in a bubble of likeminded people surrounding you. You don’t know how to react to differing opinions.
        
        It’s called diversity people.
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 27, 2011 at 4:25 am
        
        You left fifty comments in twelve hours and you ignored my three separate requests to stay on topic. I didn’t hide anything, threaded comments only go ten deep. I’ve allowed you to say whatever the hell you want to say, no matter how aggressive, bratty or completely unrelated to the topic at hand it was. Act like you did in just about any comment thread on the internet and you’ll get a lot worse than a little sarcastic banter and a new avatar.
        
        And, might I remind you, you’re the one who called me a bitch because I questioned the veracity of one of your statements.
        
        But you’re correct, I am very tired of your passive aggressive antics and yes, if you hate it here it’s really easy to click away. I’ve never banned or censored anyone, but I would not lose a lick of sleep if you were the first.
        
        Chicagato said on October 27, 2011 at 10:51 am
        
        Selena you live in an alternate reality so I am posting this purely for the entertainment of referendcaptain. Here is the exchange Selena says I was off topic and referndcaptain, you were part of the exchange (I didn’t address your point because I had made the exact same point on a different string) and it is hysterical that she never finds infinitemonkey or herself to be off topic! But no one is being attacked and Selena loves debate and the free flow of ideas. Hahahhahahahhaha! (Sorry it is a little long but there is a satisfying payoff in the end)
        
        Selena you are everything you hate!
        
        Michael C. says:
        
        October 26, 2011 at 12:43 am
        
        Agreed, college is expensive. But if a high school graduate decides it’s in his best interests to go to college, even an expensive one, why should the rest of us be obligated to pay his way (beyond the taxes that already subsidize state colleges)?
        
        The prevailing argument here seems to be that we owe this sort of support as our social debt. According to this doctrine, is there any limit to other people’s claim on my financial support? I want to go to grad school, but I can’t afford it. Are all the people who benefit from the work of PhD’s obligated to support grad students like me?
        
        soitgoes says:  October 26, 2011 at 12:50 am  It’s not that people think college should be totally free. It’s that, with grad school added in there, you’ll eventually start getting bills for upwards of $1,000 a month from your loan company, and you’ll have a really hard time living on your own, keeping yourself fed, and paying your loan bills. SOMETHING has to give (the cost of living is insane when you look at what most of us are actually earning), and for most people, it’s the loan bill that makes or breaks our ability to move out of our mom’s house before we’re 30. I agree that people are misplacing the issue at hand…we can’t make college cheaper unless we raise taxes, and we can’t afford to fork over more in taxes until we either raise minimum wage or mandate a decrease in housing costs.
        
        reverendcaptain says:  October 26, 2011 at 8:05 am   I agree that people are misplacing the issue at hand…we can’t make college cheaper unless we raise taxes  That’s just wrong. You don’t make college cheaper by raising taxes, in fact you make it more expensive. With government funds in the mix, colleges are able to raise fees even greater because the customers aren’t having to carry the full freight. Look at every market where there is a direct payment between customer and provider and the costs are lower over time. Then look at everything that the government is involved in and the costs skyrocket. This isn’t a political issue, it’s just measurable stats. Why have college tuitions outpaced inflation for all these years? It certainly isn’t because the education got better.
        
        finiteMonkeys says:  October 26, 2011 at 8:52 am  This is an article of faith, not of fact. Quick examples: I can send a letter from Seattle to Alabama, door to door, in 2 days for 48 cents. Private companies might get it there faster, but they sure as heck won’t do it cheaper. Power has typically become MORE expensive when it is privatized. Health care costs in Canada are literally half those of the US for the same procedure, because the Canadian system is far more government run. Competition can often bring down prices, true, but it certainly doesn’t always do so. Public institutions can successfully use cultures of professionalism to deliver high quality results at lower prices (doesn’t always happen, but it sometimes does). Private companies can increase prices to increase their profit margins, particularly when they have market power through an industry that limits entrants through legal, economic, or physical barriers. Or sometimes they’ll reduce costs dramatically but also cut the quality of service significantly in ways that we’re not willing to live with (e.g., restaurants could get you food cheaper if there weren’t those pesky public health inspectors ensuring that they don’t poison anyone – and don’t tell me that people would just stop going to restaurants with dirty kitchens, because how would you KNOW a restaurant’s kitchen wasn’t up to spec? Even if they let me in to go look at it, I’d only spot the most obvious signs (rats, cooks hawking in the food), but have no idea about other important things like whether their utensils were washed to a high enough standard, whether their work surfaces were sufficiently non-porous to bacteria, whether they had a drain that might back up and flood their walk-in fridge, etc. The idea that private competition is always and in every case more efficient than public service is bogus. It doesn’t stand up to logical or empirical scrutiny. But it’s repeated like a religious mantra on the right these days.
        
        Chicagato says:  October 26, 2011 at 1:18 pm  Private companies do it cheaper because you were able to post to this blog ( a modern day “letter” for free) and because the Post Office a government granted monopoly you don’t know how cheaply a private enterprise could provide this service. Because you OWS are so fond of statistics . . . 50 years ago it cost 4 cents to send a letter . .. now its 48 cents (and the PO is bleeding red ink) so that is more than a 1000% increase . . . . can’t name too many things that have increase that much over time.
        
        Selena MacIntosh says:  October 26, 2011 at 1:53 pm  Seriously, Chicagato, if you go off topic one more time I’m changing your avatar to one that reads “I <3 Selena!”
        
        1. This blog is free to you, it is not free. We don’t pay the server bill in fairy dust.
        
        2. If only there were other ways to send packages and letters than the post office! Like FedEx, UPS or local delivery services.
        
        3. Here’s something that’s gone up at the same rate as stamps: gas. Who uses a lot of gas? The post office.
        
        Chicagato says:  October 26, 2011 at 2:24 pm  Seriously Selena . . . why are you only calling me off topic . . . is it because I don’t appear to agree with you? I was addressing finitemonkey’s anecdote regarding the wonders of government efficiency citing the post office as her example. Am I not allowed to address that topic? If you had called her out for being off topic then I wouldn’t have commented so maybe this is your fault.
        
        1. Regarding the blog being free to me . . .you are right . . .everyone loves to push to cost off to someone else . . .I assume that you find a way with advertisers to pay for the cost of your enterprise or perhaps you get donations from investors to provide this service . . .
        
        2. I remember when FedEx was created in the 80′s. . . their advertising slogan was “when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”. You see, Fedex was a brilliant private company that created a service that never existed before because it was impossible to get something someplace overnight thru the post office. They used a brilliant strategy of using a single hub (centrally located in Memphis) to route all of these letters and packages and used to charge about the same as they do today for those services. Years later, the post office created that service to compete with Fedex.
        
        3. Around 1979 when I was in high school . . . a gallon of gas was around $4.50 a gallon. It has fluctuated between there and $2.80 over the last 30 years so that is not exactly close to the 1000% increase of a first class letter.
        
        Or was it too off topic for me to address the accuracy of your points?
        
        Chicagato says:  October 26, 2011 at 2:26 pm  PS I love my new icon . . . or perhaps it is a “misuse” of your power . . . either way . . . I can’t wait for you to change yours to I heart Chicagato!
        
        Selena MacIntosh says:  October 26, 2011 at 2:43 pm  In the course of your comments here you’ve talked about teacher’s unions, the government monopoly of the post office, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, the bunk solar company, teabagger oppression, healthcare reform (that may have been someone else, to be fair) and how hard you worked to be part of the almost 1% by walking both ways uphill in a snowstorm. The last one is on topic, the rest of them are not. But since we’re here…  1. So you agree with me, the blog isn’t free. Somebody’s paying the bills. 2. You also agree that the post office isn’t a monopoly, because there are several companies who compete with it, free from government or post office intervention. 3. When I was in high school in 1989, gas was 99 cents a gallon. The 1979 oil crisis was pretty brief, especially if you’re going to use it to imply gas costs the same thing now as it did in the 70′s. What did a gallon of gas cost in 1950? 18 cents.  Reply
        
        Chicagato says:  October 26, 2011 at 3:07 pm  Well why start being fair now? I am only addressing the topics discussed in each of the postings at hand. . . like everyone else . . . if you go back and chronicle everyone’s posts . . . it goes all the way to discussing the post office (I didn’t introduce that subject) and Fedex ( I believe you were the first person to introduce that topic) the Donald(someone else introduced), healthcare(not me), and whether Sally went to school in Seattle or Texas, to diabetes, to rats in restaurants, to the South after the Civil War, European & Nordic economies and the current Canadian conservative regime and even Trotsky. . . but somehow, you only seem to pick on me? I wonder why that is? You are correct about gas and stamp prices. .So to do apples to apples . . . for the last 30 years. . . gas prices have remained fairly stable while the cost of a first class stamp has increased 380%. I am still waiting for you to change your avatar.
        
        Chicagato says:  October 26, 2011 at 3:29 pm  Well lets just call it what it is . . . isn’t it a form of bullying? It seems to go hand in hand with your utter dismissal and belittling of my success as “walking uphill both ways in a snowstorm”
        
        Selena MacIntosh says:  October 26, 2011 at 3:27 pm  It’s because you’re an easy mark. You keep refreshing and commenting, all the hits make my advertisers happy. I’m using you to pull my blog up by its bootstraps. It’s not my fault you’re new to the internet, you could have worked harder to be more aware of when you’re being played.
        
        Whining about it not being fair sort of makes you a hypocrite, doesn’t it?
        
        Chicagato says:  October 26, 2011 at 3:35 pm  Awe . . .where is the reply button below? Here is what I thought I was participating in:
        
        “Persephone Magazine is a daily blog focused on topics of interest for modern, intelligent, clever women. We strive to give a voice to more women from a variety of backgrounds and with diverse interests. We feature articles not only from our talented staff of writers, but from our incredible readership as well; readers who give voice to their opinions and viewpoints out of a desire to educate, entertain, or engage with our community. We encourage thoughtful discussion and respectful debate. We are an environment that welcomes all perspectives that come from a place of respect and consideration for fellow community members. ”
        
        It is so sad that you have already perverted your sites stated mission. Who is the hypocrite now?
        
        Selena MacIntosh says:  October 26, 2011 at 4:07 pm  The person who thinks everyone else should suck it up in an unfair system while demanding fairness for herself xfafafabulous says:  October 26, 2011 at 4:20 pm  If you’re not getting what you thought you were, you are free to leave
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 27, 2011 at 12:34 pm
        
        Before you accuse me of hiding this in the cellar, it had too many links so it got stuck in our spam filter.
        
        And I hadn’t previously warned finitemonkeys to stay on topic, b/c he/she hadn’t made forty-some-odd off topic comments previous to this one, like you did.
        
        Lo and behold, you’re still not talking about the article, you’ve used your last several comments to bitch about me and playing the victim. What are you, a communist?
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 27, 2011 at 4:11 am
        
        Where has anyone who disagrees with Buster Blonde been attacked? I’ve seen the people who agree with her being called lazy, whiny babies, communists, un-American, freeloaders, spoiled, greedy and stupid.
        
        Show me one place in this entire thread where someone on your side of the discussion has been attacked. You’re acting like this comment thread is a pit of snakes, when nearly everyone in it has been polite, friendly and willing to listen to what those who disagree have to say. Nearly everyone on both sides has been able to argue ideas without resorting to personal attacks and sweeping party insults.
        
        If you truly feel attacked and oppressed and your feelings are hurt because the people you argued with argued back, there’s a really easy solution. I’m not holding a gun to anyone’s head to stay here and keep churning out the comments.
        
        reverendcaptain said on October 27, 2011 at 4:18 am
        
        and this would be the part where you get the vapors.
        
        Thank you for making my point.
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 27, 2011 at 4:30 am
        
        So no examples then?
        
        Thanks for making mine.
        
        reverendcaptain said on October 27, 2011 at 6:51 am
        
        Oh come on Selena. You seem to be reading all of the comments here. I’m sure you’re bright enough to have seen the examples you’re speaking of. Plus I’m just a commentator. I’m not here to do research for you.
        
        If by chance you haven’t seen any of the many examples then there’s nothing I can do to help.
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 27, 2011 at 12:22 pm
        
        Aw, Rev. You’re the one who was complaining, it’s not out of line for me to ask you to back up your complaints.
        
        Chicagato said on October 27, 2011 at 11:13 am
        
        You attacked me on my very first posting to the original story . . .you had nothing to say about my content (you rarely do) but was snarky, condesending and insinuated that I was either lying or stupid cause I didn’t fully understand my tax situation. When I replied back in a similar tone and called you “honey” and said you didn’t need to be such a bitch, (technically not calling you a bitch) your ladyblogger editors went nuts so I apologized to which no one responded except you who said you didn’t give a rats ass if i did. I told you I could rescind the apology and you called me a manx. If you don’t give rats ass then maybe your cohorts shouldn’t be so overly sensitvive on your behalf because you certainly aren’t subtle or sensitive. But I don’t think you are dumb so why don’t you just be intellectually honest and admit there is attacking and you are a perp! I’d respect you more in the morning!
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 27, 2011 at 1:09 pm
        
        Saying I didn’t think you were paying 50% federal income tax isn’t an attack. If I said “Chicagato is a lying taint worm,” that would be an attack. But I didn’t, did I? And I’m oversensitive?
        
        You didn’t join our blog to discuss, you joined to start a fight. You came in here loaded for bear, and then got angry and defensive when you found some. While we’re on the topic, I am confused. You say you make more money than 99% of Americans, yet you have plenty of time to post all day and all night on my little ladyblog in the middle of the week? The 1%ers I know are much too busy working on continuing their success to do that. Not calling you a liar, just wondering how you have time to post nearly 24 hours a day and make all that money?
        
        I’m not going to play your reindeer games (not calling you a reindeer!) any more, we’ve published 45 articles since this one, and we still have 30 more in the hopper for this week. I’ve got a business to run. If you want to keep complaining in this thread, let your freak flag fly. (That’s a saying, not calling you a freak.) It’s obvious you’re incapable of staying on topic, unlike everyone else (red and blue) in this thread has been able to do.
        
        Also, it’s “minx” I called you a wily minx, not a tailless cat.
- paulagladys said on October 27, 2011 at 8:31 pm
  
  Do you have an argument besides “Spoiled babies!” Have you run the numbers — what tuition ran in the 90′s, what it runs now — and would you at least concede that if things have changed, perhaps there might be a difference?
  
  I’m old enough to remember when tuition at a state school was $600/quarter. And yes, it made a difference.)
  
  Let’s start a movement, let’s ask for the guy/gal behind the poster to step up with his/her story, and we’ll all take a look!
  - reverendcaptain said on October 27, 2011 at 9:10 pm
    
    No I haven’t run the numbers but I’ll be sure to get started on that spreadsheet right away. First I need to start my research on insults in the comments section in response to another request here. Hopefully I’ll be finished and come back to everybody with a full report in about 6 months.
    - [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 27, 2011 at 9:46 pm
      
      I think you might be over-thinking things, Rev.
      
      Let’s solve for x.
      Cost of tuition in 2011 – Cost of tuition in 1990 = x.
      Let’s use University of Iowa, a state school in a red state.
      In 1990, the cost was $940 per semester for an in-state student.
      In 2011, it’s $13,781, for an in-state student living at home.
      So, $13,781 – $940 = $12,841.
      See! No spreadsheet required.
      Six months to do a single subtraction problem and find one comment where you’ve been attacked? I know I’m distracted by my acute case of the vapors and my panties being in a wad, plus my poor ladybrain is addled by thoughts of shoes and communism, but it doesn’t add up, Rev.
      - reverendcaptain said on October 28, 2011 at 5:14 am
        
        Excellent work Selena. My congratulations to you and your ladybrain.
        
        I’m so excited to see you working on this. Now you have time to find the other data we’ve talked about.
        
        But, just to be clear, I don’t think I made any complaint about attacks on me but on others that happen to disagree with the original post. I don’t really care to go through all the comments here and provide a rundown but it’s easy enough to look just below and see this
        
        Literally the first comment listed underneath this article when I read it was some conservative prick (DCRealEstate)
        
        Now I understand that this blog expects civil conversation here and I support that completely. Call me crazy but calling somebody a “prick” falls outside that expectation. And I’m sorry to have to repeat that DCRealEstate, whoever you are.
        
        Always a pleasure Selena.
serataru said on October 26, 2011 at 1:24 am

Literally the first comment listed underneath this article when I read it was some conservative prick (DCRealEstate) who immediately did what conservative pricks do (ridicule the person who wrote the article) instead of actually addressing the facts presented. This is because the common conservative cannot argue worth a shit, but that isn’t their fault entirely. You can’t argue effectively when all you have to back up your argument is a conglomeration of Fox News/Conservative media-fueled propaganda that you learned from Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. They’re not ARMED properly, and when you don’t have your facts straight, you basically have to rely on being smart enough to make your argument work without being factually supported… and well, you can see how well that is working for most of them.

The person who made the comment about how “Sally” is an arrogant jerk for not recognizing that her scholarships were born of the kindness and selflessness of others: good on you, well said. It’s about time someone pointed out that scholarships are GIFTS, not wages. Unless you were on the clock for every bit of that 90% tuition ride, you had that shit GIVEN to you. That’s right, a handout. A gift. Someone GAVE you their money. So shut up. Welfare from private contributors is still welfare. Suck on that for a while, Sally.

I also agree with the author’s statement regarding folks who went to college a decade ago. The climate isn’t the same now. You know nothing. I am so glad you scraped by with your BS in Computer Science in the early 90s. Now that your dot com job that paid you 250k a year dried up and you’re working in IT for shit pay at a corporate crap heap, how’s that degree working out for you? Probably okay, considering you had a chance to get paid a quarter of a mil for a few years before people realized that folks like you were a dime a dozen, and so were the businesses you ran. You people need to shut up as well.

The author’s correct: the tougher you middle aged/baby boomers make it for the young folks to go to college, the tougher it will be for you guys: people are living longer than ever, which means you’re going to need someone to wipe your butt for at least the last 15 years of your life. Ever thought that maybe the nurse who is doing it would like to be able to go out to eat once in a while and not be 150k upside down in her home, while paying back 55k in student loans for her BSN? The theme here is pay it forward, people. Not every selfish little prick baby boomer had 5 kids to put through college, or even ONE kid for that matter, but SOMEONE’s kid is going to be keeping your rear end from being chafed by your own poop while you wait to die because medical science is making you guys live too damn long. Why not help THAT kid get through college so that when he or she has to do that for you, they don’t have to hate their life while they do it? It is not going to hurt you or harm your quality of life to pay a LITTLE more in taxes so that a less fortunate person can get their foot in a door.

Stop PROTECTING the upper class. You will NEVER truly be a part of it, and NONE of them care about you or your rotting behind. They will be swimming in their dollar bills until the day they die, LAUGHING hysterically at your silly, misguided middle class behind that actually sympathized with them. Stop protecting the rich while secretly thinking that one day, you’ll miraculously be one of them. No amount of hard work at a minimum wage job ever made anyone rich. Most of the rich people you see made their millions by taking advantage of those who were less fortunate in some form or fashion: whether it be by using marketing to make you feel like you CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT an item, forcing you to pay more for a prescription you truly need in order to live a healthy life, charging you more at the grocery store because you’re intolerant or sensitive to a type of food, or a more sinister method like lending money or market manipulation.

Pay it forward. Take care of our own. The classes above take care of the classes below. Trickle down is a lie. The rich live off steak while the rest eat scraps. It’s time for a revolution. If you think we’re not living in a heavily class based society now, you’re a fool. Upper needs to take over the heavy lifting, because they have the muscle in their wallets to handle it. Middle class needs to take care of middle class and below. THAT is how all of us become middle class or higher. That is how we ALL get ahead. Maybe one day, that sunny faced doctor/nurse/whatever that helps you when you’re down, will be someone who was helped when they were down by your generosity. A lower class kid with a single parent who became a doctor because of society’s collective generosity and acknowledgment of responsibility, and saved your life.

I wish it were as easy for those of us who paid TONS in student loans to fix your aches and pains and diseases and diabetes that plagues your fat, stingy, overfed asses to decline giving care to people who were too stingy to help a kid get through school so they could take all that money they saved on paying a few percent more in taxes and BUY themselves a Hummer, a mansion and more cake (like my Marie Antoinette reference?) as it was for you to turn your back on the less fortunate who ONLY wanted to become more educated so they could be something in this world, maybe help a person or two. I hope that mansion helps you live longer, because if I had a choice, I wouldn’t raise a finger to take care of your stingy, self serving behind. I’d let you get JUST what your selfish tail deserves.

To the people who are willing to give more so that future generations can have more and BE more, and to the person who pays into scholarship funds: You’re awesome. You are the greatest type of person. Thank you.
Michael C. said on October 26, 2011 at 12:43 am

Agreed, college is expensive. But if a high school graduate decides it’s in his best interests to go to college, even an expensive one, why should the rest of us be obligated to pay his way (beyond the taxes that already subsidize state colleges)?

The prevailing argument here seems to be that we owe this sort of support as our social debt. According to this doctrine, is there any limit to other people’s claim on my financial support? I want to go to grad school, but I can’t afford it. Are all the people who benefit from the work of PhD’s obligated to support grad students like me?
- soitgoes said on October 26, 2011 at 12:50 am
  
  It’s not that people think college should be totally free. It’s that, with grad school added in there, you’ll eventually start getting bills for upwards of $1,000 a month from your loan company, and you’ll have a really hard time living on your own, keeping yourself fed, and paying your loan bills. SOMETHING has to give (the cost of living is insane when you look at what most of us are actually earning), and for most people, it’s the loan bill that makes or breaks our ability to move out of our mom’s house before we’re 30. I agree that people are misplacing the issue at hand…we can’t make college cheaper unless we raise taxes, and we can’t afford to fork over more in taxes until we either raise minimum wage or mandate a decrease in housing costs.
  - reverendcaptain said on October 26, 2011 at 8:05 am
    
    I agree that people are misplacing the issue at hand…we can’t make college cheaper unless we raise taxes
    
    That’s just wrong. You don’t make college cheaper by raising taxes, in fact you make it more expensive. With government funds in the mix, colleges are able to raise fees even greater because the customers aren’t having to carry the full freight. Look at every market where there is a direct payment between customer and provider and the costs are lower over time. Then look at everything that the government is involved in and the costs skyrocket.
    
    This isn’t a political issue, it’s just measurable stats. Why have college tuitions outpaced inflation for all these years? It certainly isn’t because the education got better.
    - finiteMonkeys said on October 26, 2011 at 8:52 am
      
      This is an article of faith, not of fact. Quick examples: I can send a letter from Seattle to Alabama, door to door, in 2 days for 48 cents. Private companies might get it there faster, but they sure as heck won’t do it cheaper. Power has typically become MORE expensive when it is privatized. Health care costs in Canada are literally half those of the US for the same procedure, because the Canadian system is far more government run.
      
      Competition can often bring down prices, true, but it certainly doesn’t always do so. Public institutions can successfully use cultures of professionalism to deliver high quality results at lower prices (doesn’t always happen, but it sometimes does). Private companies can increase prices to increase their profit margins, particularly when they have market power through an industry that limits entrants through legal, economic, or physical barriers. Or sometimes they’ll reduce costs dramatically but also cut the quality of service significantly in ways that we’re not willing to live with (e.g., restaurants could get you food cheaper if there weren’t those pesky public health inspectors ensuring that they don’t poison anyone – and don’t tell me that people would just stop going to restaurants with dirty kitchens, because how would you KNOW a restaurant’s kitchen wasn’t up to spec? Even if they let me in to go look at it, I’d only spot the most obvious signs (rats, cooks hawking in the food), but have no idea about other important things like whether their utensils were washed to a high enough standard, whether their work surfaces were sufficiently non-porous to bacteria, whether they had a drain that might back up and flood their walk-in fridge, etc.
      
      The idea that private competition is always and in every case more efficient than public service is bogus. It doesn’t stand up to logical or empirical scrutiny. But it’s repeated like a religious mantra on the right these days.
      - Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 1:18 pm
        
        Private companies do it cheaper because you were able to post to this blog ( a modern day “letter” for free) and because the Post Office a government granted monopoly you don’t know how cheaply a private enterprise could provide this service. Because you OWS are so fond of statistics . . . 50 years ago it cost 4 cents to send a letter . .. now its 48 cents (and the PO is bleeding red ink) so that is more than a 1000% increase . . . . can’t name too many things that have increase that much over time.
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 26, 2011 at 1:53 pm
        
        Seriously, Chicagato, if you go off topic one more time I’m changing your avatar to one that reads “I <3 Selena!"
        
        1. This blog is free to you, it is not free. We don’t pay the server bill in fairy dust.
        2. If only there were other ways to send packages and letters than the post office! Like FedEx, UPS or local delivery services.
        3. Here’s something that’s gone up at the same rate as stamps: gas. Who uses a lot of gas? The post office.
        
        Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 2:24 pm
        
        Seriously Selena . . . why are you only calling me off topic . . . is it because I don’t appear to agree with you? I was addressing finitemonkey’s anecdote regarding the wonders of government efficiency citing the post office as her example. Am I not allowed to address that topic? If you had called her out for being off topic then I wouldn’t have commented so maybe this is your fault.
        
        1. Regarding the blog being free to me . . .you are right . . .everyone loves to push to cost off to someone else . . .I assume that you find a way with advertisers to pay for the cost of your enterprise or perhaps you get donations from investors to provide this service . . .
        
        2. I remember when FedEx was created in the 80′s. . . their advertising slogan was “when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”. You see, Fedex was a brilliant private company that created a service that never existed before because it was impossible to get something someplace overnight thru the post office. They used a brilliant strategy of using a single hub (centrally located in Memphis) to route all of these letters and packages and used to charge about the same as they do today for those services. Years later, the post office created that service to compete with Fedex.
        
        3. Around 1979 when I was in high school . . . a gallon of gas was around $4.50 a gallon. It has fluctuated between there and $2.80 over the last 30 years so that is not exactly close to the 1000% increase of a first class letter.
        
        Or was it too off topic for me to address the accuracy of your points?
        
        Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 2:26 pm
        
        PS I love my new icon . . . or perhaps it is a “misuse” of your power . . . either way . . . I can’t wait for you to change yours to I heart Chicagato!
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 26, 2011 at 3:14 pm
        
        I think of it as less “misuse of power,” more “exercising my rugged individuality.”
        
        Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 3:29 pm
        
        Well lets just call it what it is . . . isn’t it a form of bullying? It seems to go hand in hand with your utter dismissal and belittling of my success as “walking uphill both ways in a snowstorm”.
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 26, 2011 at 2:43 pm
        
        In the course of your comments here you’ve talked about teacher’s unions, the government monopoly of the post office, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, the bunk solar company, teabagger oppression, healthcare reform (that may have been someone else, to be fair) and how hard you worked to be part of the almost 1% by walking both ways uphill in a snowstorm. The last one is on topic, the rest of them are not. But since we’re here…
        
        1. So you agree with me, the blog isn’t free. Somebody’s paying the bills.
        2. You also agree that the post office isn’t a monopoly, because there are several companies who compete with it, free from government or post office intervention.
        3. When I was in high school in 1989, gas was 99 cents a gallon. The 1979 oil crisis was pretty brief, especially if you’re going to use it to imply gas costs the same thing now as it did in the 70′s. What did a gallon of gas cost in 1950? 18 cents.
        
        Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 3:07 pm
        
        Well why start being fair now? I am only addressing the topics discussed in each of the postings at hand. . . like everyone else . . . if you go back and chronicle everyone’s posts . . . it goes all the way to discussing the post office (I didn’t introduce that subject) and Fedex ( I believe you were the first person to introduce that topic) the Donald(someone else introduced), healthcare(not me), and whether Sally went to school in Seattle or Texas, to diabetes, to rats in restaurants, to the South after the Civil War, European & Nordic economies and the current Canadian conservative regime and even Trotsky. . . but somehow, you only seem to pick on me? I wonder why that is?
        
        You are correct about gas and stamp prices. .So to do apples to apples . . . for the last 30 years. . . gas prices have remained fairly stable while the cost of a first class stamp has increased 380%.
        
        I am still waiting for you to change your avatar.
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 26, 2011 at 3:27 pm
        
        It’s because you’re an easy mark. You keep refreshing and commenting, all the hits make my advertisers happy. I’m using you to pull my blog up by its bootstraps. It’s not my fault you’re new to the internet, you could have worked harder to be more aware of when you’re being played. Whining about it not being fair sort of makes you a hypocrite, doesn’t it?
        
        Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 3:35 pm
        
        Awe . . .where is the reply button below?
        
        Here is what I thought I was participating in:
        
        About
        
        Persephone Magazine is a daily blog focused on topics of interest for modern, intelligent, clever women. We strive to give a voice to more women from a variety of backgrounds and with diverse interests. We feature articles not only from our talented staff of writers, but from our incredible readership as well; readers who give voice to their opinions and viewpoints out of a desire to educate, entertain, or engage with our community. We encourage thoughtful discussion and respectful debate. We are an environment that welcomes all perspectives that come from a place of respect and consideration for fellow community members.
        
        Editor in Chief: Ophelia Payne
        
        Editors: Sara B, Sally J. Freedman, Luci Furious, Selena MacIntosh, Hattie McDoogal, Coco Papy
        
        Copy Editors: PileofMonkeys, xfafafabulous, Michelle Miller, SallySassyPants
        
        Interns: Ruby Bruiseday
        
        It is so sad that you have already perverted your sites stated mission. Who is the hypocrite now?
        
        So what you are saying that because I disagree with your point of view that I deserve some consequence meted out by you, the arbitor of what is right . . . but you work for a blog who’s stated mission is to respectfully facilitate different points of view? I got to be honest . . . you aren’t very good at it.
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 26, 2011 at 4:07 pm
        
        The person who thinks everyone else should suck it up in an unfair system while demanding fairness for herself.
        
        Stephanie said on October 26, 2011 at 4:20 pm
        
        If you’re not getting what you thought you were, you are free to leave :)
        
        finiteMonkeys said on October 26, 2011 at 3:44 pm
        
        Yes, it’s called “inflation”. If you go to the inflation calculator found here and enter “0.48″ dollars in 2011, and ask it what would have been worth in 1960 (i.e., 50 years ago), it tells you 6 cents. So if you want to know what else went up about a thousand percent in the last 50 years, the answer is “pretty much everything”… at least if we’re talking in nominal dollars, which apparently we are.
        
        The post office is, indeed, as you say, currently losing money. The reason for this is that congress has required them to pre-fund retirement for all of their employees, which is a standard that no other company is held to, and a bit silly given that a bunch of their employees are likely to leave long before the retire, and so not get a post office pension. Take that away and they’re about breaking even… which is what they’re supposed to do – provide an excellent service very cheaply on a non-profit basis.
        
        And as Selena has already pointed out, the post office is not a government granted monopoly, and hasn’t been in decades. So we DO in fact know how the private sector would handle the same duties, and the answer is very well, but at a price premium. I have used Fed Ex, I have used UPS, and they’ve both worked great for me. But so has the USPS. Oh, and true story, if you pay Fed Ex to deliver a letter to a really remote location in the US, or to most non-first world international destinations, you know how it gets there? They take it to the end of their network, and then hand it over to the USPS to deliver it the rest of the way. You know why? Because it’s cheaper that way. That’s private sector efficiency for you.
        
        BTW, I think it’s pretty funny that you think that accusing someone of liking statistics is somehow a put down. “oh you crazy liberals with your all your ‘facts’ and your ‘reality’, har har har.” Weak sauce, dude. Weak.
        
        Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 3:55 pm
        
        Didn’t mean the stats comment as a put down . . . I hadn’t used any yet and it was more of a segway. Everyone uses and finds the statistics that back up their claim. HAR HAR HAR . . . I love the weaksauce comment … hysterical . . . I am gonna borrow that one from you!
        
        finiteMonkeys said on October 26, 2011 at 4:14 pm
        
        Ah well I’m relieved to hear that, and glad you like it. That line would only have been worth a “heh indeedy” forty years ago, so I’m sure that also proves the government can’t do anything right ;)
      - reverendcaptain said on October 26, 2011 at 6:35 pm
        
        The idea that private competition is always and in every case more efficient than public service is bogus.
        
        I would be interested to hear of one easily comparable instance of Government services being more efficient. God, using the Post office as an example is ridiculous considering the troubles they are going through right now.
        
        finiteMonkeys said on October 26, 2011 at 8:44 pm
        
        Define “efficient”? In terms of dollars in, service out, the post office is efficient. By the normal rules of accounting it’s breaking even. For less than half of a buck it very reliably picks stuff up from your front door and delivers it to any other front door in the country in 2 days. And it’s a biiig country. Show me the private organization with that capacity? UPS, FedEx, none of them could offer the same thing for 1 dollar, let alone half that.
        
        The long term problems with the post office’s prospects is a technology shift from mail to emails, but that’s nothing to do with who runs the post service, or how it’s run, and everything today with technology just moving on. This happens all the time, just ask the private sector guys who made horse carriages and fax paper.
        
        If you define efficient as “profitable”, then no it isn’t, but it wasn’t BUILT to be. If the post office was running at any real profit for any long stretch of time it would be doing its job badly, overcharging the American people, and their boss would be fired.
        
        You want more things that governments do well that the private sector doesn’t? How about your fire service, your local library, the air traffic controllers that get you around the country, I don’t know, the army (they keep contracting stuff out, and it costs a fortune more almost every time), restaurant health inspections, or making sure your grandma doesn’t starve if some scamster rips off her life savings. I don’t see you complaining about any of those thiings.How about running trains. In England they used to be state run, then they privatized it and now it costs more, and trying to figure out how to get places is a MESS. How about financing medical research that actually saves lives. Drug companies do a lot of research, but it’s almost all for things that fix lifestyle issues that people can buy one of per day (indigestion, allergies, boner pills). That stuffs useful, but if you’ve got a marginally unusual cancer there’s no money in curing it. The only time they want to do life saving stuff is if it’s something that you have to keep taking forever, like hypertension pills or cholesterol ones. But stuff that you take, and it cures you, and your deadly ailment is gone? It would cost millions to develop the drug, and then only a few people would need it, and they take it a few times and they’re cured and then never buy it again. Stick to the migraine drugs, people keep taking that by the truck full. The disease curing drugs are developed at universities, and are paid for by the government.
        
        Look, the government is just DIFFERENT than private sector stuff. It’s good at different things. The government is not that great at figuring out what will be fashionable, and making an array of it available fast in retail outlets all over the country. The private sector is good at that. It’s the right type of organization for that job. But when the private sector tried running fire services (and that was the original arrangement) it was a DISASTER. Your neighbors house would catch fire and they hadn’t bought fire insurance, so the company would stand back and watch it burn, until it got so big that it couldn’t be stopped from setting YOUR house on fire, and the one on the other side too, and all of a sudden your abode is a smoking crater. Fires spread, you can’t have some people with private fire services and others whose houses just burn freely. It doesn’t work. So for that you need a government to do it.
        
        This stuff isn’t rocket science, but there’s been this enormous break down in American’s civics education to the point that apparently a ton of people don’t realize this, and just have these blanket silly beliefs like “the government can’t do anything well, it’s always better to give all tasks over to the private sector”… It sounds great as a slogan, it appeals to our sense that we like to grumble about the government (and everyone loves to grumble about that), and the taxes we pay (again, an easy thing to hate), but it just doesn’t make any sense when you actually look hard at the world and think it through. Governments don’t do everything, and even for those things they are good at, they can be well run or poorly run (the USPS is great, the English post office is much worse) but it is just NOT true that they’re bad at everything, or that there aren’t quite a lot of areas where they’re really the best thing we have.
        
        reverendcaptain said on October 26, 2011 at 9:09 pm
        
        sorry but the post office doesn’t deliver that letter for less than half a buck. If it did then it wouldn’t be in the situation its in.
        
        And maybe it would have anticipated and prepared for the demise of standard letter service (like every person of average intelligence did over 10 years ago) if it was run by people who actually had to run a business that made economic sense.
        
        I use “efficient” to mean how well a service is provide and at what cost. TYPICALLY government provided services are lower quality and are done at a higher cost.
        
        Look, of course there are services that make more sense for the government to handle and it’s a little odd to have these lines drawn about where people stand on such things. But your examples of government efficiencies are odd.
        
        Amtrak is a disaster. It has horrible service, horrible cars, horrible everything. And it only still exists because of government subsidies. The only silver lining to the vast sums of money being thrown at it by the federal government in this new rail initiative is that those lines will probably never actually be completed and we won’t have to endure even more bad rail experience.
        
        Jeez, when’s the last time you went to the DMV? Something simple like that turns into a nightmare.
        
        But the point is, government subsidies have an inflationary effect on goods and services. That’s the main reason why certain narrow areas of services have skyrocketed in price while others have remained stable or even dropped.
        
        20 years ago nobody could afford a cel phone and today everybody is carrying a computer around in their pocket. That’s the free market.
        
        ThurmanHart said on October 26, 2011 at 10:19 pm
        
        The post office is losing money because they have to set aside a fully funded health care plan for 75 years into the future. “Fully funded” means that it doesn’t go through an insurance company, the Post Office pays the full cost of medical bills. And before anyone starts talking about how stupid that is, UPS does the exact same thing…except they don’t have to set up a fund for 75 years in the future, they can simply adjust their rates to stay solvent in the immediate future.
        
        I’d challenge the assertion that “most” government work is inferior and more expensive than private work. I spent six years in the Navy, and the most I ever got paid was just over $1200 a month. But the private contractors who did the exact same repair job made $5-6K per month, easy. The overhead on Social Security is less than $0.01 per dollar paid into it. There is no private fund that gets within ten thousand percent of that low of an overhead.
        
        Amtrak is horrible. No disagreement on that. But the alternative is for every rider to be driving a freaking car. Is Amtrak, as bad as it is, cheaper than having to double the traffic infrastructure in the Northeast? Probably.
        
        I’ve been to the DMV recently. Here in NJ, it is contracted through a private firm. I had better service from the government workers when I lived in Virginia, Texas, Florida, and New Mexico. And there has been zero cost-savings for NJ since they privatized. Not a red penny.
        
        Government subsidies DO distort the market. Obviously. The reason my grandparents could afford a telephone was the RTA. The reason millions of people in the Southeast get affordable electricity is the TRVA. But the area that has seen the single largest inflationary rate has been in health care…without government subsidies. And the government was involved heavily in the advance of cell-phone technology and continues to invest in computer technology. So…your examples just don’t hold up.
        
        reverendcaptain said on October 26, 2011 at 10:41 pm
        
        Assuming your point about the post office is correct, why do they have to fund it for 75 years? The government.
        
        I was in the Air Force for 4 years so I know about the pay for E1-E4. But the same government that is paying servicemen low wages is paying outrageous salaries to private contractors as you say and ridiculous prices for supplies and parts that could be purchased for a fraction of the price if they could buy on the open market. Government inefficiencies don’t just exist in a closed bubble, they are taken advantage of by contractors that naturally are going to get as much as they can. When those same contractors deal with the private sector, they don’t charge the same because they have to be competitive.
        
        There may be a reasonable argument for Amtrack in the northeast corridor although the last time I traveled from NYC to Washington DC, I did so on a bolt bus. Sat in a leather seat with free wifi and was able to enjoy a nice meal at a rest stop. cost me all of $20. Amtrack can’t touch bolt in service or price.
        
        When you get into telephone and electricity then you are getting away from the simple issue of government service but instead government licensing. It’s common for municipalities to require such services to extend beyond the most dense area and provide services to the more outlying areas in order to gain the license. That’s not the government providing a service but a license.
        
        Thank you for bringing up health care. Yes, health care is often a private insurance issue but that is a case of private companies emulating government involvement. When people have health insurance then their connection with health care costs is severed. After they’ve paid their deductible they have no incentive to pressure the provider to reduce prices. And so prices have skyrocketed.
        
        Just look at the price for procedures that are typically not covered by health insurance, laser surgery etc. Those procedures have dropped dramatically in price while everything else goes up. Why? Because they have to cater to the people directly paying for it.
        
        The whole health care insurance model is broken because just like the gov., they’ve distorted the market because “insurance” now is supposed to cover “everyday visits”. That’s just insane. A market economy is regulated by a constant negotiation between buyer and seller. When the buyer no longer cares about the price, the seller will go hog wild.
- ThurmanHart said on October 26, 2011 at 9:38 pm
  
  “But if a high school graduate decides it’s in his best interests to go to college, even an expensive one, why should the rest of us be obligated to pay his way (beyond the taxes that already subsidize state colleges)?”
  
  Firstly, because our taxes do not support education at the rate it did even ten years ago. I teach at a county college that was intended to split the cost of tuition into thirds between the state, the county, and the student. Now the state pays 6% and the county pays 8%…guess who pays the rest?
DCRealEstate said on October 25, 2011 at 11:12 pm

This guy spent an extreme amount of time putting together a “post” to disprove a photo he found on the internet. It must be nice to be an academic who can spend such time playing on the internet. For the rest of us, we have jobs and have to make a living. Good job buddy.
- OddSid said on October 26, 2011 at 12:31 am
  
  What a terrible thing it must be, to be able to post, but not to read. To hear a term like “the 99%”, but not comprehend what it means. And most of all, to completely misunderstand the difference between spending significant personal time composing an informed, motivated, interesting post, and playing on the internet. I guess the latter would be…oh yes, something more like trolling smart and funny editorials because of your personal politics. Good job.
  
  Also, “Bootstrap Sally” is my new favorite term for the fictional 53%.
- JessSayin said on October 26, 2011 at 1:35 am
  
  This respondent took the time to make a flippant remark about the author of this piece without bothering to note that Buster Blonde is a woman (the spelling of “Blonde” and the article about her various trips to the gynecologist’s office may have been good indicators to the careful reader). I’m sure real estate is backbreaking, round-the-clock labor, but if you’re going to just spew your hackneyed prejudices about academics, even a very short post is a waste of your and the readers’ time.
SoCal10 said on October 25, 2011 at 8:45 pm

Please apply the same skepticism and analysis to ObamaCare and tell us all if you think THAT passes the “smell test”.

Thanks!
- [E] pileofmonkeys said on October 26, 2011 at 7:03 am
  
  If only there were something actually called “Obamacare.” I’d be happy to analyze the current issues affecting healthcare for Americans, including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but it’ll have to wait until after I get home from my job, where I pay an exorbitant amount into my health insurance plan for minimal care that doesn’t include my spouse. And I’d be happy to tell you why I’m in support of various parts of that act, even though my employer and I pay for my insurance.
Jeff2012 said on October 25, 2011 at 8:38 pm

Good write up. That being said I’m sure that it is possible to get a 4 year degree without accruing debt. Not easy, but doable. Unfortunately it continues to get more difficult as we send our best jobs off shore and import low cost labor to do the grunt work. When I went to college back in the mid-80s(God am I old or what!) I did grunt work and it paid about $6/hr. Obviously wages have not kept up with costs thus the difficulties many of you are having in the present day. Globalization is a difficult thing to reverse so it is imperative that you youngsters learn how to adapt, adjust and improvise. As difficult as you find it to be to get ahead, it has been much worse in the past. Those generations survived and prospered so will yours.
JessSayin said on October 25, 2011 at 7:29 pm

I too was annoyed beyond my — admittedly limited — ability to keep quiet by Sally’s bootstrap message, but with a particular emphasis on her absurd belief that she expects and has received no “handouts.” A scholarship is a handout. It’s a great thing if she worked hard to get the scholarship, but it wasn’t given to her in exchange for her labor. It was just given to her, probably by some bleeding heart liberal who knew that he or she didn’t make it without handouts who wanted to pay it forward. My spouse and I give thousands of dollars/year to college funds based on similar thinking, and I’d be appalled that any recipient was so arrogant as to not realize that a scholarship is a gift.

In addition, that moderately-priced public school is supported largely by handouts from the taxpayers of her state and nation. Even so-called private colleges and universities are heavily subsidized by the federal government in almost all cases. The handout she has in the form of two scholarships that pay 90% of her tuition and fees would be dwarfed by the handouts she’s receiving in the form of state and federal funding for the college she attends.

If she attended a public college, then chances are she attended a public school for her K-12 education, as well, so here we have a young woman coming off of 17 straight years of handouts and proudly proclaiming she doesn’t believe in them, suspiciously just at the time when she’s about to be asked to pay into the system that fed her — assuming she gets a better job after college and has to start paying income taxes. Unfortunately, that may not be a realistic expectation.
Chicagato said on October 25, 2011 at 6:54 pm

I think Buster Blonde completely missed the point of the FB photo. If they had understood, they could have spared us all the tortured fake numbers analysis they manufactured.

That FB person is rejecting the idea that even if they aren’t in the 1%, that they automatically have to agree with the OWS ideology or that they can’t aspire to work hard to be the 1% one day. Hard work IS how you get there!

The problem with the OWS generation is that they want what their parents achieved after 30 to 40 years of career handed to them right out of college. I grew up in a very average middle class family. Dad was a WWII / Korea Vet with NO college education and my parents workded for 30 years and helped put me thru college along with some college loans(paid off!). After college, I worked my butt off and had to start at the beginning like most everyone else. I didn’t start out with the house my parents worked for decades to own. I shared apartments with roommates and saved my money. 30 years later, I’m closer to the 1% than the 99%. The OWSers want it all now but I worked 30 years for it. Why should they have the fruits of my 30 years of labor? And YES . . . my kids do benefit from the privilege that my hard work has earned. Because that is how it works in our non communist society. OWS wants everyone to believe with them that it is IMPOSSIBLE to get anywhere, but it is possible . . . it just isn’t easy and there isn’t someone’s house you can stand and scream at to get it (sounds like a spoiled 3 year old). And you have to start at the bottom and work your way up.
- alaric said on October 25, 2011 at 7:35 pm
  
  But that’s not what OWS is about. It’s partially its own fault and partially the job of absolutely awful media coverage*. OWS at its base is drawing attention to the fact that A) a very small group of people control an absurd amount of resources. B) Part of what allows that group to do so is direct and indirect aid from our government.
  
  *The Seattle Times, recently covering the Seattle branch of OWS, included an interview with a homeless drifter not from Seattle and pointed out that he was drinking a beer through the interview. It was their main coverage of a Saturday event which had a large crowd, most of whom were groomed and reasonably dressed, and a large amount were above traditional college age.
  - Chicagato said on October 25, 2011 at 8:29 pm
    
    I am so amazed at how selective OWS is about who they complain about “controlling” resources. You rail at ”Wallstreet” but give “Hollywood” a pass . . . Why? I don’t hear anyone from OWS complain that James Cameron, Johnny Depp, Steven Spielberg, Leonardo DiCaprio earn a hundred million dollars for acting, directing movies but the camera men and the extras earn sooo much less . . . And have to work as waiters and coffeehouse baristas to survive. Why don’t they champion that injustice. Why doesn’t this President just decide how much money people are allowed to make? Oh wait, he does when his Admin gives 500 Million to a solar company that goes bankrupt in a year but his donor gets to get his money out before we the taxpayer! Why isn’t OWS camped out at the White House for the 1/2 Billion Dollars that just created not one single job???? I control my own resources that I earned that haven’t already been confiscated by the government at a rate of 50% of what I earn, Thank you! Sounds like you don’t want to live in free society.
    - [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 25, 2011 at 8:47 pm
      
      50% income tax? No you don’t. If you’re a high-earning self-employed (thus paying both individual and employer share) the most you’re going to pay is 40%. If you work for someone else, it doesn’t matter if they pay you in diamonds as big as your head, the maximum income tax is, what, 34%? If you’re as wealthy as you claimed in a previous comment, you should hire a better tax guy.
      
      Anyway, I think you missed a turn on your way to the point there. And there’s no need to shout.
      - xhristopherus said on October 25, 2011 at 9:39 pm
        
        Add State income tax, sales taxes when making purchases, property taxes when you pay a mortgage or rent, excise taxes when you fill up the tank, luxury taxes, vice taxes when you buy beer or cigarettes, and you are most assuredly paying much more than 50% of what you earn in taxes. Got a phone? Communications tax, got cable? that’s taxed too.. Fart out of turn> that’s taxed a higher rate than farting when it is your turn.
        
        Wake up people/
      - Jeff2012 said on October 25, 2011 at 9:41 pm
        
        Your wrong, if he lives in California, the top tax rate is 9% then add the top federal rate %35 then add in Social Security and medicare %15 then add in any local tax %2. Total is 61%, but if he makes 212k a year, the social security is taxed on the first 106k so that get us down to around 55%.
      - Chicagato said on October 25, 2011 at 9:52 pm
        
        You are forgetting about State income tax! Which in CA is over 9% plus property taxes and Alternative minimum tax!
        
        How lovely of you to be so condescending and to doubt my story. I didn’t specify precisely how much wealth that I have acquired. I do have an excellent CPA. I wasn’t shouting, I wish someone would pay me in diamonds, I didn’t miss a turn and you needn’t be so condescending Selena.
        
        Thank you to Jeff 2012 and Xchristopher for also helping Selena with the tax information . . . she is uninformed about how overtaxed the taxpayers are in this country.
        
        Meghan Young Krogh said on October 25, 2011 at 10:20 pm
        
        -shouting on the internet is demonstrated by using all caps on words. You were shouting.
        
        -I’m gonna ask you in my calm teacher voice to apologize for coming onto a ladyblog and calling the editor-in-chief “honey,” because that nonsense doesn’t fly around here. We’re all for heated debate, obviously, but condescending misogynistic bullshit can exit to the left.
        
        Chicagato said on October 25, 2011 at 10:44 pm
        
        Thanks for the “CAPS” explanation (sorry . . . . generational faux pas . . .no bad intended) . . . duely noted . .. I edited and de-capped my original post . . . as for misogynistic . . . I am a woman and I felt disrespected in a misogynistic way that she would challenge my original statement about my income level like I am too stupid to know what that actually is . . . so respect is always a two-way street and I was responding to her condescention . . . are you demanding an apology from her?
        
        Meghan Young Krogh said on October 25, 2011 at 10:50 pm
        
        Nope, because she didn’t use a term that, when used in debate, is used generally to condescend to women and make them feel insignificant; nor did she call you a bitch (see, taking letters out of a word and using the word is still calling someone that word). Women are perfectly capable of practicing misogyny against other women, so I don’t really think that lets you off the hook. She criticized your ideas, and may not have had every piece of information correct, but she didn’t use terms that were degrading or offensive. Like I said before, debate = fine. Misogynistic insults = no.
        
        Chicagato said on October 25, 2011 at 11:08 pm
        
        She was offensive to me. I felt put down . . . but I suppose that doesn’t matter to you. You guys are just better at ” the subtle misogyny within your guidelines” better than I. And I thank xhristeropherus for his comment below. At least someone else isn’t drinking the Kool Aide. (see, when I get talked to in your best teacher voice and little side notes like this . . . that is mean and yucky too! but it doesn’t violate your guidelines)
        
        xhristopherus said on October 25, 2011 at 10:51 pm
        
        Misandry is tolerable, but when a woman disagrees with another woman on a left leaning blog, always err on the side of the left leaning poster.
        
        But she is right, you probably should not have called her a bitch.
        
        Meghan Young Krogh said on October 25, 2011 at 10:59 pm
        
        Just trying to stick to the P-Mag commenting guidelines, actually. You can find them here: http://persephonemagazine.com/commenting-guidelines/
        
        Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 12:26 am
        
        By the way Ruby . . . you might want to go use your best teacher voice on Michelle Miller below because she is using her internet yelling voice by typing in boldface . . . oh yeah . . . she agrees with your point of view so I suppose there will be no condescending reproach coming her way!
        
        [E] Michelle Miller said on October 26, 2011 at 12:37 am
        
        I regret using boldface for emphasis and I neglected to remember this violated staff quality standards, though I have no excuse, since I’m accustomed to the web and should have recognized that this comes across as shouting to some people. I’m new here. And I messed up. I recognize, admit, and apologize for that personal oversight.
        
        Since I am a copyeditor and held to a higher standard, I receive stern lectures and warnings directly from the editor-in-chief and the other senior staff and not in a comments thread, which is appropriate. I don’t expect nor desire anyone to show me exceptional treatment because I agree or disagree; our readers can rest assured that violations by any member of the staff (regardless of background or belief) are addressed and taken seriously.
        
        EDIT: I suspect most our readers recognize the difference between all CAPS and bolded text. While the emphasis of bolded text is debatable upon context, exclaiming a point in CAPS is not. Excessive CAPS as “yelling” is pretty standardized at this point. :)
        
        Chicagato said on October 25, 2011 at 11:04 pm
        
        Duely noted and removed and I apologize to Selena and to everyone
        
        Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 12:55 am
        
        You did use some all caps too! I was trying not to pile on!
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 26, 2011 at 1:35 am
        
        I’ve been called worse.
        Damn, I take a break and miss all the fun.
        
        [E] pileofmonkeys said on October 26, 2011 at 7:05 am
        
        There’s no taking breaks in ladyblogging!
    - bruce5 said on October 26, 2011 at 11:20 am
      
      We need to keep in mind how marginal tax rates work. You can’t just look at the top tax rate and say that’s what someone pays as a percentage of income.
      
      True, there are cable taxes, cell phone taxes, etc. but to argue that the wealthy are paying 50% or more of their income neglects the fact that the top rate kicks in only after a high level of income has been achieved–they pay far less than that on the first 25k, the next 50k, etc. Not to mention capital gains–a large source of income for many wealthy.
      
      And then there’s that big black hole called “deductions.” David Kay Johnston has written some very good stuff about how lobbyists and have filled the tax code with special breaks for all kinds of things that the wealthy consume or do. A good tax lawyer will be able to dramatically reduce the taxable income of many individuals and corporations. Now perhaps that sparks a conversation about simplifying the tax code, but that’s a different conversation than simply asserting that some hard working person is being exploited by a greedy government. The middle class gets lots of goodies too-home mortgage interest deduction, to name one biggie. That’s simply politics–homeowners vote, and the home building industry is politically powerful.
      
      In fact, the overall tax system is pretty flat when you look at the big picture of income, sales, capital gains, etc. taxes, state and local taxes, and deductions.
      
      The central question is not what the top rate is, but rather what percentage of income/earnings people are actually paying in taxes. People can disagree whether it’s too much or too little, or just about right, but first we’d be wise to see the entire picture.
    - ThurmanHart said on October 26, 2011 at 10:09 pm
      
      I’m sick of people throwing out “50% tax bracket.” It’s disingenuous to say “the government” is taking 50% of your pay when discussing a specifically federal issue. It is not “the government” but “the governments” – your state, county, municipality, school, special districts (fire, rescue, sewage, etc) also have to get funded. But they are not what this particular discussion is about, are they?
      
      Here’s something to consider: High income taxes are totally voluntary. Why? Because you can always choose to take a lower paying job and cut your taxes. Why don’t you do that? Because even with a higher tax bill, you come out ahead – meaning with more money.
      
      Cameramen working as baristas? Seriously? The union rate for a cameraman in LA is $50 an hour, contracted at four 12-hour shifts per week. Beyond that, don’t you think an actor who gets paid several million dollars is part of the upper 1%?
      
      There is a vast difference in a “free” society – where people are free to pursue their self-interest – and a “free” society where people expect to not have to pay for governmental services. Unfortunately, people opposed to the latter too often make straw-men arguments over those who disagree with them and paint them as being fundamentally opposed to the former.
      
      For a capitalist economy to work, there has to be winners and losers. That’s a simple fact. But the way things are right now, there are damn few opportunities for people who are willing to work hard to be a winner. You made it. Congratulations! (and I seriously mean that) But the fact that you have climbed so far only proves that not everyone CAN. Maybe it’s time you began to realize that YOU are an outstanding example. Maybe it’s time to stop saying, “I’m nothing special!” when the proof that you ARE something special is in your own words.
- valerie_visser said on October 26, 2011 at 12:25 am
  
  For being a “figment of your fudging imagination,” I’m surprising quite alive and well.
  
  That facebook post describes me almost to a “T,” although I’d never do something as unclassy as actually post it. However, after reading this article, I feel a burning urge to speak out, particularly because of the accusatory tone of the article, which I also find unclassy.
  
  I grew up in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, with seven siblings, to parents that farmed 1/2 section of ground and had a small business that made little money. I grew up in hand-me-downs and was used to getting socks and underwear as my only Christmas presents. Not that I would ever begrudge my parents their lack of money. We were rich in love, family, and faith that somehow God would take care of us. My parents only once accepted a “hand-out,” in the form of a government subsidy in times when hog farmers like my dad were losing major bucks because the markets had gotten so bad, and my dad is still ashamed of taking those measley few dollars. We were raised to familiar bible verses like “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord and not for men,” and quotes such as “If you are going to do something, do it right.”
  
  I got good grades in high school, though certainly not because we had good teachers. I attended a 1-A school in the middle of nowhere–good teachers rarely waste their time there. Teachers who have nowhere else to go end up there. We could’ve gottem away with murder with them.  Despite this, I earned a 32 on my ACT, which helped me get scholarships that would end up paying for a large chunk of my college tuition.
  
  During high school, I worked my butt off on the weekends, school breaks, and over the summer. The summer before I left for college, I tutored at the local community college from 7-9 am, then went straight to a local farmer and worked ground or harvested wheat for him until 5, when I went and worked as a waitress until about midnight, give or take–6 days a week, except for Saturdays when I didn’t have to tutor.
  
  Once at college, I worked as a waitress at a local bar 30 to sometimes 70 hours a week (rarely, when I moved up to manager.) I was payed $2.15 (eventually $3.25) an hour plus tips to put up with people who, once they had a drink or two in them, thought they were free to touch my rear and make crude comments that are never appropriate.  I lived in an apartment close enough to campus that I could walk, and payed $300 a month plus utilities.  Nobody paid my bills but me. I rarely ate out, except the occasionaly $1 frozen yogurt from McDonalds. I only went out to “the bars” once, when some old classmates from high school came to visit.
  
  On top of a demanding work schedule, I dealt with a demanding school schedule. I never took fewer than 13 credit hours, and in my final semeser, I took 15 hours of liturature classes. (Why my adviser let me, I’ll never know.) I maintained a 3.8 GPA. (Had to, or I’d lose my scholarships.) I managed this for 3 years at a D-1 school, before I finally decided to quit school and start my own business.
  
  I dropped out in the Spring of 2009. I was then, and am now, debt free.   I’m not trying to brag about what I did, because I never could’ve done it without a lot of help from God. There were times when I was down to absolutely nothing, and bam! God would provide. I’d have a stellar night in tips right before rent was due. The cooks would screw up an order, and rather than throw it away, let me eat it. I would be so exhausted that I’d fall asleep in the middle of reading Ben Franklin’s autobiography, but somehow the answers to the pop quiz would come to me.
  
  I suppose that it is the tone of this article that irks me so much.  The author makes it sound like it is not only impossible to take care of yourself, but ridiculous that anyone would even try or, “Oh my!” claim to do so.   What’s so wrong with working your butt off to pay bills? It was certainly not easy, and I know I missed out on the “college experience” (ei. no partying, no sorority sisters, few friends, and no free time,) but there is absolutely nothing special about me that sets me apart from the crowd, other than my work ethic and my faith, both personal choices that anyone can make.
  
  It’s time that we make work ethic, entrepreneurship, ingenuity, frugality, and faith part of our national character again–rather than make fun of it. These traits should be admired and sought after rather than ridiculed.
  - Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 1:57 am
    
    Valerie. Well said and “well done”. I agree those traits should be admired and I agree that the original article has a ridiculing tone and now . .. they want to call us “bootstrappers” cause they like to call people names when they dissagree with them. Jeez . . .I hope you aren’t a “teabagger ” too cause then they will call you a “teabagging bootstrapper”!
    
    This country isn’t about the equality of outcomes . . . it is about opportunity. People have the right to fail and succeed. And people who have succeeded have also known failure. When someone succeeds, they didn’t cause some else to fail and I think that is where the OWS movement is so wrong. They are in a sense saying that the 1% that succeeded all have done that at someone else’s, everyone else’s expense and I just don’t buy that premise.
    
    I’d wish you great luck for your future but I know that with your attitude and hardwork are going to serve you well. So instead I will say that I wish you more success than failure because I guarantee that you will experience both.
    - Jane Dizzle said on October 26, 2011 at 2:13 am
      
      If you think you get the same opportunities and the same chance to either “fail or succeed” as those in the 1% who run on privilege, nepotism, and connections, then you’re fooling yourself. The point isn’t that people expect equal outcome, it’s that they expect reasonable playing fields. You also don’t explain why you don’t buy the premise that the 1% have succeeded at the expense of others, but you don’t state why. Is that just a hunch on your part? Denial? What? It’s fairly plain to see that the 1% has not suffered the drastic consequences of the financial turmoil of the last three years the way to 99% has — despite the 1% being the ones who did the dirty deeds.
      - Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 3:47 am
        
        First off, your accusatory tone right off the bat assumes that my opinion is a “hunch” or “denial” which says you think you are brilliant and right and I am stupid and wrong. So how do I now engage in an intelligent conversation with you on this subject. And what are the “dirty deeds” that all the 1% have committed. Did they commit a crime . . . then lets do what we do in America and hold them accountable in a court of law with due process.
        
        So I’ll pic a 1%er and you tell me what evil they did .. .how did they screw over the 99%
        
        I pick Steve Jobs . . . your turn.
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 26, 2011 at 4:07 am
        
        Steve Jobs used production facilities in China that rely on unsafe working conditions, primarily. So not only did he contribute to human rights violations, he shunned the American workers who could have assembled his gadgets here. Plus he made turtlenecks popular and that didn’t do anyone any favors.
        
        This is fun! Now you do Rupert Murdoch.
        
        Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 4:48 am
        
        Steve Jobs changed the world and negates your sum-zero world view because he in large part created something that gave birth to an entire industry of personal computing, employing millions of people here in America in high paying engineering, marketing, sales, finance and manufacturing jobs and yes all over the world too. (Those Chinese workers are enjoying a huge increase in their earning potential and quality of life by the way). This world of personal computing gave birth to the internet age (which i believe has been credited with causing the Arab Spring so you should love that) as well as the digital music industry, and cell phone industry and need I go on. I just saw a news piece on how families and educators are using iPads to help severely mute autistic children learn and communicate thru the device. And Apple Inc is hiring like mad so I think the OWSers should be banging on Apple’s door for a job. . . or maybe they don’t want to work that hard . . . Speaking of Jobs, I think he looked smashing in black mock turtlenecks.
        
        Now, You do Bill Gates.
        
        [E] Selena MacIntosh said on October 26, 2011 at 5:20 am
        
        You didn’t do Murdoch.
    - rah29 said on October 26, 2011 at 8:07 am
      
      With respect, you bring up two issues here that don’t hold up to much scrutiny:
      
      1. Equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity. I don’t think anyone would disagree with you on that – no one realistically wants or believes in equality of outcomes. But if you think that equality of opportunity exists, you’re living in a dream world. Even just on an individual level, the 1% have opportunities that the rest of us can’t even imagine. I wrote above about some opportunities that a very wealthy college student might have, for example, that others don’t. The current arrangement of the fiscal, political and broader economic systems in America (not alone, btw – some other developed countries, like the UK, have similar issues) reduces equality of opportunity by making it ever easier for the wealthiest to hang onto what they’ve got, and making it more and more difficult for the poorest to get their feet in the door. By most measures, we’ve seen social mobility decline since the 1970s, and we’ve seen income inequality grow at the same time. See an article about it here. Inequality is a fact of life, but there’s no need for the gap to be this wide, and indeed it hasn’t been since the Gilded Age.
      
      2. I agree that some of the OWS’ agenda is a little simplistic, but they’re reacting to a clear recent example of the rich getting richer (or at least, staying rich) at the expense of the poor: the bank bailouts. The banks caused the financial crisis and subsequent recession, but due to their economic importance they were not allowed to collapse. Those individuals who have been fired for their roles in causing the crisis have, on the whole, walked away with plenty of wealth and huge severance packages. At the same time, the cost of the bailouts has caused the government to cut spending on things like education and welfare – in effect, taking from the poorest, already suffering disproportionately from the recession, to give to the rich. It’s obviously a bit more complicated than that, but one can very much see why people are so angry about it. Similarly, more indirectly, the influence of corporate money on politics ensures that the interests of the wealthy are very well represented in the corridors of power, while the poor have no say whatsoever.
      - Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 11:01 am
        
        I completely disagree with you:
        
        First off . . . there is no constitutional right to having every person constantly on equal footing. That would be the most oppressive communist society that even Marx couldn’t dream of. How are you going to create that? I am from the same generation of John John Kennedy. I didn’t and nor did my contemporaries spend one second even worrying about how much more of an opportunity he had than I. I didn’t/couldn’t go to Harvard, didn’t have all his wealth and yet, I was able to go out on my own and succeed. And there in lies the differences in our generations. Should the government have stepped in on my behalf and confiscated John John’s grandfather’s millions and pay for my in life? I didn’t want to live in a county like that then and I don’t want to live in a place like that now. Your comment of the wealthiest wanting to ”hang on to what they’ve got” is ludicrous. Of course they want to hang on to what they’ve got, its theirs , they’ve earned it . . . you make that sound like it is a crime. And you are incorrect about welfare and education. We are spending more on those two line items than ever before. I was in complete opposition to bailing out Wallstreet and with regards to the golden parachute payouts, the companies were legally obligated to pay those individuals per the contracts that they entered into with them. We are a country of rules and laws and contracts. If you are so angry about corporate money in politics than you should hate the Millions and millions of dollars that the teacher’s unions confiscate from teachers to pay to politicians every year but wait . . . 99% of that money goes to the Democratic Party like all the other union donations so you should be happy about that. You only rail against the system where is disaggrees with you and that is intellectually lazy and dishonest.
        
        rah29 said on October 26, 2011 at 11:18 am
        
        I’m not really sure why your tone is so aggressive, or where you get off calling me intellectually lazy or dishonest. You have no idea who I vote for, how I feel about unions, or what my broader political position is, so I’d appreciate if you refrain from putting words in my mouth.
        
        I explicitly said that it would be impossible and undesirable to have everyone be on equal footing at all times. I was agreeing with your point about equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity; all I tried to suggest was that equality of opportunity – the chance for people with talent and drive to work hard and succeed, no matter where they start out – has been steadily eroded since the 1970s. That’s supported by empirical research. No one – certainly not me – is talking about ‘confiscating’ anyone’s money. It’s about trying to ensure that the government system, from which we all benefit in various ways, doesn’t take more from the poor, proportionately, than it does from the rich. You mention JFK – when he was alive, his family paid far more in taxes (proportionately) than they would today, and were very successful and wealthy despite their relatively higher tax burden. I don’t think it’s crazy to think that maybe we should aspire to go back to that.
        
        Edited to add: Nor, by the way, did I at any point say the rich shouldn’t want to hang on to their wealth. That would be absurd. I don’t like paying taxes either (especially since I have to pay twice, in the US and abroad). But I do believe that society as a whole would be better off if talented, driven kids from all backgrounds – kids who didn’t have all the advantages I’ve had – could be offered real opportunities to succeed.
        
        Chicagato said on October 26, 2011 at 1:50 pm
        
        Then of course you will join me in my opposition to the teacher’s unions funneling millions away from these deserving teachers to join in the influence peddling game.
        
        rah29 said on October 27, 2011 at 4:38 am
        
        I think the influence of big money on both US political parties is absurd, and distorts the political process beyond recognition.
        
        Chicagato said on October 27, 2011 at 6:43 pm
        
        Rah I agree with you on that . . .
        
        ThurmanHart said on October 26, 2011 at 10:36 pm
        
        Should the government have stepped in on my behalf and confiscated John John’s grandfather’s millions and pay for my in life?
        
        Considering that he made his fortune in the stock market through insider trading and was involved in illegal alcohol sales during Prohibition…I think there’s a good reason why that money should have been taken away. That’s just me, though…I’m for law and order for everyone.
        
        Do you realize that the percentage share of education picked up for YOUR generation is nearly three times what it pays for THIS generation? So you barely made it when you had three times the assistance behind the scenes…what’s the chances you would have made it three years in today’s school?
        
        It is correct that the total amount spent on education is greater, but the percentage of the total cost is less. Plus the total cost is higher. Montclair State University in NJ charges roughly $8K a year for tuition now. In the 1970s, it was approximately $2K. But state government paid about 40% of the cost then, and only about 8% of the cost now. Still think it’s a good comparison between the deal you had and the deal my students have today?
        
        As for the money given by unions – or by any PAC – it is determined democratically (small d) through a committee that is elected by members. Beyond that, donations to the PAC are purely voluntary. Dues are held in a separate fund and cannot be used for political purposes. I personally don’t think ANYONE should be able to buy elections – not unions, not parties, not anyone. But I’m silly that way.
  - finiteMonkeys said on October 26, 2011 at 9:28 am
    
    So basically what you are saying Valerie, is that you started out with nothing, and by making enormous sacrifices (zero social life, etc), putting up with a lot of degrading crap from people (the touchy feely patrons, etc) and a little luck (big tips coming up at the right time, etc), and finding a college in the middle of nowhere with rock-bottom cost of living, you still didn’t make it through 4 years of college debt free. From your description I’m quite willing to believe that you literally could not have tried harder or given up more, and that you have exemplary drive, grit, and determination. If you even you can’t make it work, how is everyone else supposed to?
    
    Me, I got through college and then grad school debt free and by working only a handful of jobs, mostly in the summer. Now it’s paid off with a professional level job that I would never have received without this level of educational achievement. You know what the difference between us is? I can’t claim near the level of personal virtue you can, but I won the parental lottery. My upper-middle class parents were able to pay my tuition at a good school and help me out with modest living expenses (I’d take the odd evening out with friends, but I lived at home in undergrad) until I got the bigger scholarships from grad school.
    
    Imagine where you’d be now if you had access to the resources I did. Now imagine where you’d be with all your drive and determination if you had parents who could have got you in to an ivy league school on a legacy scholarship, in which you’d spent 4 paid-for years mixing and mingling with the people who were going to be making the hiring and firing decisions at the jobs that pay > 150K a year? Now tell me again about how we have equality of opportunity.
    
    Clearly hard work and talent do and should matter. Clearly the richer will always be able to give advantages to their children that the poorer can’t afford. But the balance between those is now totally out of whack. The advantages richer children start off with are so large that the game is essentially rigged beyond the point of being humane. And at that point we should start to ask ourselves some sharp questions about our priorities and what we want for ourselves and for each other.
    - valerie_visser said on October 26, 2011 at 3:50 pm
      
      I could’ve finished school without debt, I just knew that I didn’t need a piece of paper to start a business and didn’t want to waste anymore time or money on something that I didn’t need.
      
      I don’t think that it being easier to succeed financially because of wealthy parents is neccessarily something to be desired. There’s nothing wrong with it, naturally, but hardship gives you character and strength that you would never be able to earn otherwise. To quote Paul “…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurence, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope…” It also teaches you what is (and is not) necessary to be happy.
      
      I’m completely happy and content with where I am now, and I am 100% confident that I am exactly where God wants me to be. If however, I had wanted to go to an Ivy League school, and if that’s where I was supposed to be, I have no doubt that it could’ve been achieved. But sometimes doors close for a reason. And I am so thankful for that!
      - finiteMonkeys said on October 26, 2011 at 4:12 pm
        
        Absolutely Valerie. I don’t doubt a think that you wrote in that last message. You’ve chosen a long and hard and difficult road, by all accounts you’ve done spectacularly well on it, and you’ve found peace and well-being where you are. That’s nothing short of exemplary, and I mean that sincerely and with no snark at all. You should hold your head up and be proud… and I rather suspect that you do. Good on you!
        
        Where we start parting company is where we start talking about everyone else. While you are absolutely right that challenge makes us into better people, and that a world which hands everything to us on a silver plate tends to turn us into entitled and spoiled people, that doesn’t mean that we should want to be pushing people to the absolute limit, just to have them get a minimal standard of living. Would you want to force the crap and abuse you went through onto your kid? Your cousins? The kids of strangers you meet?
        
        Right now we’re getting into a world where a small percent of the population essentially get the keys to success and wealth pretty much handed to them. Everyone else is being told “run as hard as you can, and you might just tread water, and if you slip up and lose health insurance and your income, and your roof, then hey, sucks to be you.”
        
        Challenge is a wonderful thing, and kudos to those who successfully take on a lot of it. Really and truly, but the world is still a better place when the challenge that normal regular people have to face to improve their lot in life isn’t quite such a steep climb, and when the entitled merely get a leg up, and not a golden escalator up.
katabatic said on October 25, 2011 at 6:04 pm

“Decent” grades in high school getting you a huge scholarship? Pfft. Assuming that the photo isn’t astroturf from an anti-OWS group…

Does anyone else see the irony in proclaiming self-reliance while citing attendance at a public university as evidence? The reason that Sally’s schooling is (relatively) affordable is due to, gasp, subsidies from the federal and state government. I attended public universities in Texas for both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and at least for the big two schools (A&M and Texas), a large portion of their funding comes from a fund that is codified in the state constitution. These subsidies were given to Sally on a silver platter, and she had no qualms in accepting them to attend her public university.
- xhristopherus said on October 25, 2011 at 9:02 pm
  
  Even “IF” you get a full ride scholarship at a state university, have your books paid for, and get a great job making tons of cash, or even just upper middle class professional work. You will always be paying for that education through Property taxes, excise taxes and any other tax you can think of. if you play the lotto, buy cigarettes etc. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Renter you say? you think you don’t pay property taxes? That landlord isn’t just paying it out of pocket, he is including it in your rent.
  - finiteMonkeys said on October 26, 2011 at 9:34 am
    
    Sure, yep, it gets paid for. But the cost is spread across lots of people and over their entire lives, scaling up as they earn and make more money. That’s a fair bit more humane than piling $200k of debt on a 21 year old’s shoulders, and telling them to pay the price for sinking or swimming. Some 21 year olds will pull that off, a lot will sink and default (guess who gets the bill for that) and then have terrible credit which won’t let them, say, buy a house… That sure sounds like the type of society I’d want to live in, and great for the economy to boot (after all, it’s not like all of these people are the customers for all the products and services that the rest of us want to sell).
NamelessFool said on October 25, 2011 at 5:54 pm

Sad to think that these people think that hard work or lack thereof makes up their quality of life. Bootstrappers think that hard work makes up 99 to 100% (To throw out a number, this is just an ballpark number, not necessarily the real number) of your life’s quality, when in reality, the hard work makes up about 10% at best, with luck and outside factors make up the rest of the percentage.

Many of these people ARE busting their asses off, at great personal cost, and still get screwed over. Those that get lucky and get free or relatively free college educations are likely to get spoiled on that fact and don’t see the reality most other people have to suffer through. I’m one of those that got through college with a small amount of debt (2.1K) but I am not naive enough to believe everyone got an easy ride like I did.

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