We old guys have it made
Bensblurb #581 12/02/10
We old guys have it made
Fortunate citizens born in the Great Depression have had lots of luck, provided they survived the major wars that ensued.
I feel lucky to be in that age “cohort,” as the demographers call it. It was a time when folks had fewer children. And our population was less than half today’s. Thus as we matured, we faced little competition in the education and job markets.
After high school, I entered Texas A&M, then an admittedly poor-boys’ school. My tuition, if I recall correctly, amounted to about $300 per semester. That included dorm room and board, plus a free uniform for us ROTC cadets.
The other day, I read with disgust about a finding by the Chronicle of Higher Education. There are 100 or more colleges charging $50,000 or more for tuition, fees, room, and board in 2010-11. “Only” five had charged that much two years previously.
Parents of today’s new college grads will thus see them start out at a huge financial disadvantage before even starting their first post-grad careers. And getting hired will be tough because there are so many more grads than in my day, and not so many more jobs because of the recession we’re not nearly done with.
Moreover, they’ll have to contend with an increasingly gigantic nanny government that is putting them ever deeper in debt. I refer to “them” and not us Depression children who benefited from fewer constraints. We were able to put away money for savings while benefiting from generally robust economic growth, unlike now.
True, we had to contend with our own share of distractions like communism and racial prejudice.
But those are now dwarfed by rising foreign competitors and...(you guessed it) environmentalism--a daily hassle. It ranges from helmets for bikers and packages for your groceries to global warming, er, change.
I love what George Will wrote recently, the environmentalist movement truly despises abundant energy which, “...horrifies people who relish scarcity because it requires...government to ration what is scarce and to generally boss people to mend their behavior …Today, there is a name for the political doctrine that rejoices in scarcity of everything except government:...environmentalism.”
For us older folks, though, we must credit something that has greatly benefited us in particular. Medical progress has been phenomenal, permitting us to live longer and better. Examples abound. Years ago my wife had a root canal job on a tooth that kept her in bed for weeks. More recently I had one that I hardly felt.
Several years ago, I had terrific chest pains, but within a few days the doctors had inserted four heart stents, developed only in the past two decades, and I walked out pain-free
Other advances in microsurgery include the closing of a macular hole in my left eye, something unheard of until the recent past. Again, a painless procedure.
Again, we Depression kids--who have gone from DC 3’s to jumbo jets, from radio’s Jack Benny to Dancing with the Stars, from typewriters to pc’s, from newspapers to the internet--have had all the luck, and fully appreciate it.
Sorry, unlucky Baby Boomers.
Ben Blankenship
###########
We old guys have it made
Fortunate citizens born in the Great Depression have had lots of luck, provided they survived the major wars that ensued.
I feel lucky to be in that age “cohort,” as the demographers call it. It was a time when folks had fewer children. And our population was less than half today’s. Thus as we matured, we faced little competition in the education and job markets.
After high school, I entered Texas A&M, then an admittedly poor-boys’ school. My tuition, if I recall correctly, amounted to about $300 per semester. That included dorm room and board, plus a free uniform for us ROTC cadets.
The other day, I read with disgust about a finding by the Chronicle of Higher Education. There are 100 or more colleges charging $50,000 or more for tuition, fees, room, and board in 2010-11. “Only” five had charged that much two years previously.
Parents of today’s new college grads will thus see them start out at a huge financial disadvantage before even starting their first post-grad careers. And getting hired will be tough because there are so many more grads than in my day, and not so many more jobs because of the recession we’re not nearly done with.
Moreover, they’ll have to contend with an increasingly gigantic nanny government that is putting them ever deeper in debt. I refer to “them” and not us Depression children who benefited from fewer constraints. We were able to put away money for savings while benefiting from generally robust economic growth, unlike now.
True, we had to contend with our own share of distractions like communism and racial prejudice.
But those are now dwarfed by rising foreign competitors and...(you guessed it) environmentalism--a daily hassle. It ranges from helmets for bikers and packages for your groceries to global warming, er, change.
I love what George Will wrote recently, the environmentalist movement truly despises abundant energy which, “...horrifies people who relish scarcity because it requires...government to ration what is scarce and to generally boss people to mend their behavior …Today, there is a name for the political doctrine that rejoices in scarcity of everything except government:...environmentalism.”
For us older folks, though, we must credit something that has greatly benefited us in particular. Medical progress has been phenomenal, permitting us to live longer and better. Examples abound. Years ago my wife had a root canal job on a tooth that kept her in bed for weeks. More recently I had one that I hardly felt.
Several years ago, I had terrific chest pains, but within a few days the doctors had inserted four heart stents, developed only in the past two decades, and I walked out pain-free
Other advances in microsurgery include the closing of a macular hole in my left eye, something unheard of until the recent past. Again, a painless procedure.
Again, we Depression kids--who have gone from DC 3’s to jumbo jets, from radio’s Jack Benny to Dancing with the Stars, from typewriters to pc’s, from newspapers to the internet--have had all the luck, and fully appreciate it.
Sorry, unlucky Baby Boomers.
Ben Blankenship
###########
posted by Ben Blankenship at
7:13 PM
