I have spent years in Brazil, and assure you, we do not want to be their demographic twin. If you join the upper class, you better bulletproof your car. If you join the lower class, prepare for poverty and violence.
I would like to think that Americans would revolt before it got to that point.
As a younger poster than most of this board, I feel like I have a somewhat unique perspective.
I think the current paradigm that education equals success works great. It is great for lowering unemployment numbers as it reduces the total workforce. It also works great for private companies who saddle students with debts that cannot be discharged. It doesn’t work so well for the students who incur huge debts to attend only to enter a job market that pays less and less each year. (Education bubble?)
I read recently that census data showed that the only educational class who saw increased earnings adjusted for inflation between 200-2007 were the professional class (Doctors/Lawyers). As some may remember, I actually solicited advice from this forum about attending law school, and am currently in the process of applying. However, through my own research, I have found that the increased earnings among lawyers have by no means been distributed evenly.
Young lawyers out of the top 14 or so schools have a great chance of paying down their loans and securing a spot in the upper middle class. The lawyers graduating from the top 50 schools have a decent chance at a middle class lifestyle. 50-100 are kind of a crap shoot. The bottom 100 schools have many graduates working as temps making barely enough to pay their school loan payments. And above and beyond this, the bar association just drafted an opinion that legal work can be outsourced to places like India, no bar passage necessary. Even a school in China is seeking American Bar Association approval.
If a country run by lawyers won’t even seek to protect their own profession/industry, can you expect them to protect any others?
I spend far to much time explaining to in-laws and my own parents that my college education is worth what their high school education was when they bought their first homes at 20-23 years of age. When I told him I was going to law school, my father in law asked me why I didn’t just get a good job and support my family. It’s difficult to explain why that’s IMPOSSIBLE to do so and live a middle class lifestyle on one income with just a bachelors degree, when he did it with a high school education just a few short decades ago.
It seems everyone thinks that everyone else is making more money than they are. Well go to http://www.glassdoor.com . It may shock you to see how low incomes really are.
I have many friends and family around the same age as myself. We were all educated at Top 100 universities like Wake Forest, BYU, KU, UCI, etc. some of us already have advance degrees. We studied diverse subjects including communications, education, business, psychology, economics among others, and we are ALL struggling financially. None of us own homes.
This has turned into quite the rant. I don’t look to complain. I am working on acceptance into a top law school. I will get where I want to go. I just want to add some of my observations from on the ground.
This is THE issue that will determine who I vote for this election cycle.
