I’m not sure why I originally picked up Strapped by Tamara Draut. The cover didn't particularly strike me. But this modern day horror story from the New Books shelf at the library with the subtitle: "Why America’s 20- and 30-somethings can’t get ahead” speaks to a large and ever-growing concern of my own. After all, we have 6 children that fit in that age category and, indeed, they are having trouble making the transition for young married students to middle-class homeowners. The harder they work, the more their goals seem to slip further and further away.
Tamara Draut, a self-identified Generation X-er, spends five chapters of this book explaining just how bad the problem is and identifies specific problems such as the high cost of education, housing, credit and childcare as well as the increasing lack of middle-income jobs. There are young adults who are doing very well, thank you, but that just makes the frustration even greater for those who see their net worth as a negative and getting moreso by the month.
To a large degree, Draut blames this on the young people themselves and shows how they have dropped out of politics and the public arena. They have become convinced that the government is ineffective and wasteful and has no intention of helping them. In fact, they believe more than any previous generation that it is up to them to solve their own problems so they don’t even consider that one purpose for government might be to solve wide ranging economic suffering.
Draut ends her book with some concrete solutions that will sound socialistic to many and certainly liberal to most. But everyone except the hard-core libertarian will usually admit there is a role for government to play when the free market has failed and it is no longer within the power of the individual to reach his or her potential. Draut argues convincingly for more affordable education and housing, more jobs with real earning potential, and wealth redistribution that would reward families. The alternative is a growing lower class and economic instability.
I'm not sure which kid you are talking about when you say that "The harder they work, the more their goals seem to slip further and further away." That has not been true for me, and barring disaster it will not be true for Philip. It would not likely be true for Lee had his marriage been less chaotic (or ended less expensively) and I don't see what politics or hard work has to do with that. I doubt it will be true for Steven and Lisa (unless perhaps rampant spending on electronics gets the better of them?) It is largely only true for Natalie and Richard to the extent that their hearts are bigger than their wallets (well, and maybe they eat out a lot and such like things). So that leaves Ed and Tiff?
ReplyDeleteI guess I am still of the opinion that young people willing to make the kinds of sacrifices previous generations made can achieve a stable, relatively secure financial situation. And I vote Democrat most of the time. Politics has less to do with it than being willing to delay gratification. Or so says my experience.
I certainly hope you're correct. I was thinking specifically of the housing market and education loans which just weren't the same problem for my generation. Single income families were much more prevalent because it was much more possible.
ReplyDeleteWell, I must agree that the housing market has gone nuts, but it is showing signs of softening that should allow those who have been aggressively saving to get into it in the next 5 years. I blame the craziness on speculators (at least in markets like Las Vegas and Phoenix - LA and other California areas just have more people than houses!) As for education loans, I must again go to the notion that a life of voluntary, temporary poverty (and perhaps the willingness to accept a public rather than a private education, or at least forgo the biggest name brand schools) is better than a decade bearing the burden of student loans. This is not possible for all students, of course, but it is for a heckuva lot more of them than are doing it. I guess since I am a working mother I can't say much about two-income families, except to say that I have seen women (at least three, two here and one in Alameda) raising children on their husband's approx. $40,000 income and staying at home. Sure they don't own homes, don't go out, and their kids wear yard sale clothes and get very modest Christmas presents, but if you are willing to put up with the ragged edges of extended voluntary poverty, if it is important enouch to you it can be done. (I think they all have decent health care coverage, though, my one big beef with current economic conditions.) Don't expect me to do it any time soon...
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