Anya Kamenetz is an attractive, hard-working, 24-year-old freelance journalist and is one of the youngest columnists ever in New York's renowned Village Voice.
But it sucks to be her. She doesn't have a job, at least, not one with a regular salary and benefits. She's among the 30% of Americans classified as "contingent workers," a "permatemp" still waiting for her big break.
Her peers, among millions of yuppie puppies born to comfortable Baby Boomers, are smothered in outstanding college loans and suffering the lingering effects of melted plastic.
Kamenetz spoke to experts in economics, labour and education, as well as dozens of Baby Bouncers battling on the front lines, for a feature series called Generation Debt.
The author is well-braced for the impact she's expecting from her book even as she asks her over-35 readers to consider the evidence that the deck today is stacked against the young. Book shelves are already filled with how-to guides for parents trying to evict their twenty- or even thirty-something "adultolescents" from the nest and getting them to face up to their responsibilities as grown-ups.
But for the first generation without reasonable expectations to meet or exceed their parents' standard of living, it's a cold, cruel world for the downwardly mobile.
"Our parents, who have been used to hogging the cultural spotlight since they themselves were young adults, continue to dominate the conversation, naming and categorizing young people as they choose," Kamenetz writes.
"While the poor kid sits at home, seeking electronic distraction from the bleakness of his emasculated, dependent existence, Dad is rattling down the highway in a brand-new $40,000 SUV that gets 12 miles to the gallon and has a bumper sticker on the back that says, RETIRED -- SPENDING MY CHILDREN'S INHERITANCE!"
You can almost hear the violin section warming up. Or at least harken to that Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen one-downsmanship sketch. "The average American student today carries $20,000 in college loans? Luxury! Why when I graduated I owed $50,000 and had to live in a septic tank!"
But while the subtitle of the book is a stretch -- is it EVER a terrible time to be young? -- the inescapable truth is that the party is over and there is the inevitable reckoning for another generation's exuberant spending.
"It's not too dramatic to say that the nation is abandoning its children. In everything from national budget deficits to the rise of household debt to cuts in student aid and public funds for education, Americans are living in the present at the expense of the future," Kamenetz writes.
The irony is that a coddled generation that has been told to shoot for the moon, follow your bliss and obey your thirst is now faced with a sobering imperative: Pay your bills.
The examples cited here are American. Chapters on medical insurance can be read for interest but safely ignored by Canadians (for now). But the lengthy dissertation on the high cost of getting overeducated rings true on both sides of the border.
College tuition has grown faster than inflation for three decades and faster than family income for the past 15 years. And while my generation could count on a few bucks from Mom and Dad -- in addition to swiping toilet paper and cans of beans when we came home from college -- today's undergrads are more likely to get hit up for a loan.
Household debt in both Canada and the U.S. has risen from 70% of disposable income in the mid-80s to more than 120% today, an unsustainable pace faster than GDP growth.
And it's not just lower income kids caught in the cash bind. The author notes that an astonishing 44% of dependent students from families making over $100,000 US a year borrowed money for school in 2002.
Worse, even if the cash is eventually found, there's no guarantee of car, kids or house with white picket fence. But while she rails against high tuitions, Kamenetz is clear-eyed enough to understand that more college placements isn't the answer in the New Economy.
"It's time to admit freely that a traditional four-year college education is neither available, nor suited, to everybody. The college-for-all ideal doesn't serve young people and it doesn't serve the truth," she writes, citing Stuart Tannock's 2001 study that shows that no more than 30% of American jobs require a college education.
Even if education grants were doubled, in an economy creating McJobs "we'd only be creating more overeducated baristas and housecleaners." The number of jobs requiring degrees is expected to rise by just 1% between 2002 and 2012.
"So what we have now is essentially a lottery system," says Tannock. "A lot of people are going into debt for college, and the promise is illusory."
"They can bother me all they want, but I can't pull $10,000 out of my ass, as much as I try," she tells Kamenetz, when what she really needs is a well-placed boot in the same area.
"In a short 10 or 15 years' time, our whole generation, haves and have-nots, will take our place as the smallest group of workers staggering under the largest proportion of retirees our nation has ever seen," Kamenetz writes.
This is cache, read story here
