Sarah's Scribbles by Sarah Andersen for June 22, 2016

Oh… Oh Ms. Anderson… there are Xers with significant (student) debt as well.

The next generation will get to drag the debt we are building to make life more comfortable for today’s beneficiaries of our loving compassion.Yay!

Depressing, and quite true. Although, it probably precedes, the Generation X. Boomers, took more, and left less.

Everyone is so frothed up about what kind of environment we will leave our children and grandchildren, but ignore the $21 billion dollar debt gorilla in the room.In fact, while trying to “fix” the environment by subsidizing failing industries, they increase the debt.

(The Statue of) Liberty is going to drown in the rising red sea of debt!

Phd in liberal arts likely not such a great investment with job rewards… But hey buy into it anyway. Maybe Bernie will get in and you can get it on the long term tax payment and get those pesky genx’s and your kids to pay for it.

As a Gen Xer — we got reamed by student debt too, and I know better than to brush off the struggles of millennials. Let’s team up and take out the Boomers!

Hey, some of us tail-end baby boomers have it too. Remember midlife crisis? Go back to school and start a new life? That would be me.

Seriously, sometimes I think a sizable chunk of the debt many students (not just today, but of all eras… I am a GenX by the way) acquire is due to the “need” to acquire so many things that are not really necessary during college. I am from a lower-middle class family, and my father became disabled when I was starting college. It caused me to think carefully…. I went to a much more budget friendly 4-year school than I was originally planning to attend because of financial worries. I did not have many if any luxuries during my four years of college, I did have a 17 year old car, however. I worked two part time jobs to support myself, and I worked like hell to get good grades so when I applied to “bigger name” graduate schools…. I ended up getting assistantships that gave me a stipend and a free ride the rest of the way. I obtained my undergraduate degree in 4 years. I would say that a large percentage of a college student’s typical debt can be eliminated by making wise choices to live within your means…. if that means going to a less expensive college, or doing without a smart phone, or a newer car, or all those money eating luxuries. If students were willing to live more frugally during those four years, the debt load most would acquire would be about only 25% of what it typically is.

Im at the tail end of gen X, things haven’t been easy and they still aren’t.

College is not an affordable luxury in the blue collar world. Unless you have a silver spoon with which to dig your debt hole, the hole will be too deep to climb out of. Passing the debt to the whole country, a la Colonel Sanders, doesn’t make it better except that misery loves company.

As a Gen X coming from a low income family, I really have to give my thanks to Bill and Melinda Gates for the generous scholarship.

It’s not like that debt is a surprise. Nobody forces borrowers to sign that agreement. That being said, government student loan programs are just as predatory as sham payday loans. Don’t fall for it.

As a junior ‘baby boomer’, having watched All in the Family in the 70’s, I’m going to pull a quote from that right wing paragon of virtue, Archie Bunker, Who once said “What have future generations ever done for me?”. Fits their view of the debt, environmental policy and, well, whatever.Ironically, Bill O’Reilly of Fox pulled out an uncredited Archie Bunker reference decades later when he advocated arming all the airline passengers to deter terrorists and sundry domestic wingnuts.

We need more trade schools. When I was in high school. (I studied electronics) some people were saying that jobs like welding would become obsolete. We still need welders and people with other skills also.

Cry me a river, Millenials. You do not seem to realize GenX was wiped out TWICE—remember the dot com crash? Come back when you have some REAL problems.

Just give her a participation trophy and she’ll be satisfied.

Gen X say their the best generation, but honestly it’s Gen Z. Gen Z as teens are perfect human beings, including myself.