The Good Old Days 5/12

By: BEN BLANKENSHIP | For the Stafford County Sun

“In the middle of May, I met a gal named June…

And they were married, in the middle of May.”

But things are sadly different today. Admittedly, one tends to generalize from the specific. My generation, the Depression babies, will often use our own experiences to essentially look down our noses at those who arrived later. For ours were the good old days.

“They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” we grumble. But that’s generally a good thing. Folks my age are living proof that our longer life spans have benefited from great advances in medicine and science.

Another real and lifelong benefit for us, however, is often overlooked. We Depression babies got a wonderful favor. Most adults at the time had few of us. Thus, our age cohort has benefited greatly.

We then entered our working years during an era of rising prosperity. It was easy to find a job. Not only that, but unlike today, we males had little competition for employment from the girls. They stayed at home. We worked. It was a nice combination, especially for us males and our families.

True, we hear complaints today that working women are at a real disadvantage, that they are paid less than males. However, it’s not often pointed out that they also work, in general, fewer hours per week — a major factor.

We old guys also got good educations on the cheap, unlike today. So we started work with a clean slate.

Today, it’s said that college graduates face the world with huge loan burdens, owing thousands of dollars that even possible future bankruptcies can’t erase from their liabilities. For some 37 million adults owing student loans nowadays, most of them aren’t paying down balances.

My goodness. Fees for a semester for us guys at Texas A&M totaled Less than $400. That included room, board, and uniform for all us fortunate all-male, military students.

Financial burdens? The first house I bought and signed a mortgage for cost $16,500. And from then until recently, the booming home market has been instrumental in building elders’ estates. But today’s homeowners with mortgages are in a fix, with the housing market continuing its long slog. Owners now financially under water on their home loans may not see relief from a real estate recovery anytime soon (although North Stafford seems to be reviving lately).

And seldom have we citizens ever faced such an unsettling, bewildering political future. Yes the Clinton years were unsettling, but the economy soon bounced back. Now a nervous President Obama presides over a mess. It’s said he has already had more campaign fundraisers than the previous five presidents combined. Two huge Supreme Court decisions, due shortly, could smack down his one major accomplishment, Obamacare, plus his Attorney General’s veto of Arizona’s border-control law.

Meanwhile, Congress can’t get anything done and we soon face a federal financial disaster as a consequence.

Such matters are of little real moment for me and my wife. But we do worry about what our heirs face — an uncertain, troubling future.