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Page added on April 9, 2012
Kunstler: Strange Jubilee
Is there a Baby Boomer so dim in this land of rackets and swindles who thinks that he or she will escape the wrath of the Millennials rising? The developing story is so obvious that only an academic economist could fail to notice. Here’s how it will go: some months from now, as the financial unwind worsens, and the mirage of gainful employment shimmers away to nothing, and the technocrats of Europe meet nervously by some Swiss lakeside (and are seen glumly shaking their heads), and Romney and Obama try to out-do each other peddling miracle cures for the tanking national self-esteem – a dangerous meme will go forth across the internet, and this meme will say: Millennials, renounce your college loans and set yourselves free!
And then something truly marvelous will happen. They will at once disempower the swindling generation of their fathers, teachers, loan officers, and overlords and quite possibly bring on, at long last, the epochal collision of pervasive American control fraud with the hard hand of reality.
I think this will happen, and I would venture even to set the meme loose here and now and watch it go viral. The college loan racket has been an even more cynical enterprise than the mortgage racket was because so many people who ought to have known better, people of supposed intelligence such as college deans, cabinet secretaries, and think-tank Yodas, all colluded to support the false promise that the gigantic cargo cult of higher ed would keep churning out fresh careers forever – when the truth was that the entire groaning vessel of hopes and dreams was already under water and sinking into the eternal darkness.
And is there a Millennial so dim who believes that the promised package of lifetime goodies once called “a job with benefits” waits like a liveried servant to conduct them without friction through the ceremonies of career and family according to premises and promises of an obsolete American Dream? Dreams do die hard. As dreams go it was a pretty good one while it lasted, but like all dreams, it has vanished in the mists of a new morning leaving the dreamers half-sick, anxious, and drained. They have nothing to lose but their fears of the re-po man and the simulated dudgeon of telephone robot debt-collectors.
This idea should catch on as the election season heats up. Like the anti-war youth of August, 1968, burning their draft cards in the streets of Chicago, the Millennials should flock to Charlotte and Tampa this summer and fill the parking lots (there are no streets in these places) with the smoke of their burning loan contracts – and then proceed with the loud repudiation of party politics in its two current useless, lying, craven, feckless factions. The effrontery of these rogues, promising a hundred years of shale gas, and jobs, jobs, jobs, and a personal relationship with Jesus! Send them packing into the bowels of history, then go home and make it work locally, where it will have to happen in any case because the arc of events has a velocity of its own now and that is our certain destination.
The colleges themselves will, of course, implode shortly, along with everything else currently organized on the super-gigantic scale. They are no more prepared for what is about to happen to them than the chiselers in government, banking, medicine, and global corporate enterprise. We will wonder in retrospect how they ever managed to winkle 50-grand a year for their absurd promises, and how we permitted young people with undeveloped powers of judgment to sign their financial lives away on terms even more stringent than their parents’ mortgages. When the universities do go down, tossing their employees overboard in the process, it will be interesting to see the former faculty chairpersons and distinguished professors of econometric modeling learn how to plant kale and care for chickens side-by-side with their formerly-indentured students. I can imagine a period of turmoil in America even harsher than, say, the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s in China where officials, professors, and authorities of all kinds were paraded through the angry mobs wearing dunce caps. Weird things happen history.
The college loan money will not be paid back anyway, so Millennial youth ought to seize the golden opportunity to make the deliberate point that the years of swindling are officially over now. This strange jubilee could, and should, change everything.
11 Comments on "Kunstler: Strange Jubilee"
Plantagenet on Mon, 9th Apr 2012 10:30 pm
The college loan program is one of the great triumphs of American liberalism—-Its one of the proudest legacies of LBJ’s “great society’ program.
Surely something so beloved of liberals everywhere couldn’t be a bad thing!
Arthur on Tue, 10th Apr 2012 12:28 am
College will be outdated. If you as a youngster want to assure yourself a modest future for yourself and your family in a catastropich resource depleted economic environment, the last thing you want to be is a college level expert in economics, MBA, sociologists or expert in lesbian fingerpainting and the college debt that comes with it. Instead prepare for a future as horsetrader, sailmaker, blacksmith, woodchopper, farmer. If you have brains become an energy-consultant.
BillT on Tue, 10th Apr 2012 1:04 am
College is good if you want to be a medical doctor, engineer, or scientist. All else is a waste of money. With the internet, you can learn about anything else that you are interested in, for free. (or just the cost of the PC and electric.)
I tell my grand kids to learn a skill or two. Plumbing, electrician, carpenter, cabinet maker, farmer, blacksmith, baker, cook, candlestick maker…etc. THEY will be the education in demand in the future.
DMyers on Tue, 10th Apr 2012 3:46 am
Amen to all the above. I have a terminal degree and it ain’t worth sheet. But where do you get on and where do you get off? That is the seduction. “This thing seems to be working for now, so if I don’t jump on and it keeps working, I’ll miss out.”
Success is a moving target. I can remember when computer programmers were being kidnapped out of the Associate of Applied Science Degree programs and a couple of years later couldn’t find a job selling software at Best Buy. And even in so-called intellectual fields, job exportation is commonplace.
Good luck, young grad!
JohnRM on Tue, 10th Apr 2012 8:49 am
I’ve hedged my bets. If the old system chugs along for a while longer, I’ll have a Bachelor’s in Information Systems and Technology (paid for, mind you, mostly by my employer). If the rollover into the new world continues, I will also have assembled a myriad of useful skills and tangible assets in-hand, to carry me through.
Stephen on Tue, 10th Apr 2012 9:50 am
If this is true, it seems as if it is time to increase the budget for hands-on classes in middle school and high school that teach how to make simple things and repair things again. How many middle schools and high schools still have industrial arts classes or home economics classes these days in this era of extreme austerity in education funding? In many area, not many with all the teacher layoffs. Even the elementary schools are struggling to keep art, music, and PE.
If we want to save college for the next generation, we need to reduce its energy consumption and reduce the debt required for the average person to go there.
To fix these two problems, we need to rethink extreme austerity and INCREASE TAX REVENUE, not decrease it. Part of the reason for this debt bubble is that the state percentage of support for the colleges used to be around 60% or more years ago, now it is around 12%. This shift is what is leading to higher tuition and more debt. We need to reverse this.
BillT on Tue, 10th Apr 2012 10:17 am
And just why should I pay for college for others? I went to Dickinson in Carlisle for a year and paid it all myself. Then realized I was not getting my money’s worth. I did fine and was an average middle class employee for all of my career. I started out as a laborer and ended up as an Estimator/Project Manager of multi-million dollar projects.
along the way. I learned a lot of skill that are useful to me even today. I designed and built my last 3,200 sf home by myself. It sole for over $250k in 2002.
If you look at who the billionaires are today, most are not rich because of what they studied in college, but what they did with their lives. Then look at the number of people with great educations that turned out to be worthless.
A necessary skill will be worth a lot more than a Phd. in the new century unless you want to be a medical doctor or engineer.
Beery on Tue, 10th Apr 2012 1:20 pm
An advanced degree, in no matter what subject, shows you can learn. This is essential for getting a higher paid job. So the idea that college is useless is a myopic view. Your degree might not be put into practical use, but the fact that you got a degree is crucial.
John Andersen on Tue, 10th Apr 2012 3:02 pm
How about a degree in history, four years of Spanish classes to the point of fluency, and four years of participation on the cross country and track teams?
I was guessing even in the post carbon world critical thinking, Spanish, and physical fitness, not to mention coaching of the youth, could have some relevance.
Or would I be wrong?
BillT on Tue, 10th Apr 2012 4:10 pm
Beery, a degree only means you had the money or credit to go to college, and not much more. It means you endured not exceeded. It now takes, on average 5 years to get a 4 year degree, and a degree in economics or basket weaving or psychology or anything but medicine and engineering is a waste of time and money. You assume that there are going to be millions of new jobs requiring a degree. BS! Ask the millions with a degree now that are unemployed hoe many ‘opportunities’ there are that a degree opens the doors to. Few to none! Who you know opens more doors than a degree ever did. If you were not born with connections, you can have a PhD and flip burgers.
Windmills on Tue, 10th Apr 2012 7:23 pm
A degree in anything is valuable if there’s someone somewhere willing to pay you for having it. It’s silly to make blanket statements about the value of a degree otherwise. It has the value the market assigns it. Part of the problem is that not enough information is provided up front to students about the job prospects for their degrees.