Stevieslaw: Teach your toddlers well
Christopher Rugaber, writing for The Associated Press, reported that younger Americans, saddled with student debt, are not stepping up to buy homes. The total amount owed by students is roughly 1.2 trillion dollars. Yes. Trillion.
That is not what is bothering, Dr. Yule Owme, spokesperson for the Student Loan Consortium. What is bothering Dr. Owme is the future of his industry. “It’s hard to plan for the future, he said, when the current financial considerations of young people are colored by the accumulated wealth of parents and grandparents.” “The older generation benefited from unions, pensions and savings in a way that will not be repeated for their offspring” he continued. “For example,” he went on, “When cash strapped young marrieds with enormous student loan burdens are faced with pre-school costs for their youngsters, they can currently turn to their parents or grandparents for financial help.”
“The coming generations will arrive at retirement dead broke,” he said with a smile. “Any money left them by their parents will be quickly squandered on cruises and coffees,” he chuckled.
“But listen carefully,” he said in a whisper, “Except for a group of Republicans in the House and Senate who believe that the only reason for taxes is to support yet another war, we all agree on the importance of preschool education.” “That is our industry’s new frontier. And since we will not be able to extract money from cash-starved young parents for much longer, we will need to offer pre-school loans to credit-worthy toddlers directly.”
“We all accept that there can be no greater civic duty than borrowing heavily and repaying with interest.” “With our government’s help, we believe we can instill this principle in toddlers before they have even mastered the art of crawling,” he concluded.