I saw this same article posted on a hateful FB site and I'd like to enlighten, if not change, a few minds on the facts...When I was in high school, a two year degree was a fraction of the cost it is today, and, it allowed you to get a job in some (then) high paying careers. Aerospace, medicine, and mechanics, to name just three. There was also a *very large and diverse* selection of "Blue Collar" jobs that provided careers for everyone in the "starter/unskilled" all the way up to "administration/management/engineering" brackets and all jobs in-between. Most of these jobs were in factories, sales and service industries, infrastructure and public utilities, and real estate. To even *have* an economy, you need to have a large and diverse industrial base to create and sustain it. This was proven *repeatedly* during the S&L scandals and after NAFTA enabled foreign businesses to do to America what American businesses have been doing abroad. No matter which side of the political fence you are standing on or straddling, the fact is we've permanently lost the diversity of *both* skilled and unskilled job sources in the lower and middle income tax brackets. The reasons are many and complex, but the two most devastating impacts came from leaps of technology that have allowed software and robotics to become cheaper and more efficient "employees", and yes, because the manual labor jobs that remained were sent overseas. This last maneuver had the perhaps unforeseen side-effect of lifting the workers in Third World countries out of the very same situation that is impoverishing America's displaced poor and middle classes today. Now, those "Third World" workers want rights, benefits, better pay, and safer working conditions, and local people have scraped enough money together to make their own local economic bases, sans the American interlopers. More and more American industrial businesses are losing money overseas, but they are not able or willing to bring their businesses back to America. When I was in high school, having a job at McDonalds was a sign you were of high school age or part-timing during college enrollment. Now, all the people *permanently* displaced from industries as diverse as press operator, automotive tech, professional welder, social services, government and federal employment sectors, real estate, heavy and light industrial construction, creative and performing arts, journalism and media, and related industries are *all* fighting for that McDonalds job *BECAUSE IT'S ONE OF THE FEW JOBS LEFT!!!* The only jobs that pay a living wage in America today *require* four year degrees *and* yearly or bi-yearly recertifications and college refresher courses. People like me, who are skilled, college educated, and highly motivated, are saddled with college debts that far exceed our career's entire lifetime income to repay, and we are not specialized, young, or rich enough to change and update our careers. The college debts allow various institutions to arbitrarily tack on additional debt by simply dropping your account, selling it to someone else, refinancing it, or allowing it to fall into default, all without notifying you, and, with *no* means for you to pursue recourse or prevention against these actions. My college debt has been inflated by over *one-thousand* percent since 2007 because of these practices. That's not an exaggeration or round-up. It's a provable fact. It's ruined my credit and is crippling my ability to get jobs, get a home, or get a car, among other things. I cannot get enough employment and pay in my working years to earn social security or a nest egg in my elderly years. I am not stupid, lazy, under-educated, or unworthy. I am part of a bullied and displaced economic class that has had every means to support ourselves taken from us, and now we are being told that it's our fault and our doing. Anyone who thinks that's true...Take my diplomas and certificates and debt, and try to get a job with them...Even at McDonalds. Good luck with that. If the only job available to me *is* McDonalds, then yes, pay me a living wage.
