Not so long ago, like oh say, now, America has gone through an economic meltdown. This meltdown started in 2008 and though it may seem to be forgotten it is still rearing its ugly head at every turn.
You may be thinking, yeah, alright, that’s too bad but what does it matter really? It doesn’t affect me. Sadly, though, we, the children of this economic problem, are the ones affected the most.
In California, colleges are costing more and more every year and more students than ever are applying to college, no big deal right? Wrong. Because of this economic crisis college costs are skyrocketing and because of all the cutbacks they’ve had to make, since they have substantially less funding, they are accepting fewer students than previous years. More students applying, fewer and fewer being accepted; it is harder than ever before to get into college.
The college acceptance rates are not the only thing dwindling from this meltdown, though. Jobs are few and far between, especially for teenagers. With so many unemployed adults they have to take fast food jobs or movie theater jobs, jobs which used to be the typical kind of job teenagers would do. No job means less life experience and credibility for future jobs. No job also less money to pay for the increasingly more expensive college.
Schools, high schools, are also having to readjust to the major cutbacks they are suffering. There are more furlough days than ever, teachers are getting pink slips simply based off of seniority, schools cannot afford the necessary supplies to get through the year.
“We’ve lived through an era of easy money, in which we were allowed and even encouraged to spend without limits; to borrow instead of save,” said President Obama.
Since then we have said we would stop buying the gas guzzling cars, we would stop taking out loans for money we didn’t have to buy things we didn’t need, we would stop maxing out credit cards and getting ourselves into an unforgiving and inescapable debt we have little to no hope no hope of being able to pay off.
We, of course, did not change our actions.
The immediate affects are evident, and what we do not realize is that this meltdown will also come back to haunt us later on in life when we don’t know how to live within our means, or how to buy a house, or how to live without debt, or how to not max out our credit cars, or how to not “supersize” our lives.
“Now it falls to us. Together, we cannot fail. Together, we can overcome the broken policies and divided politics,” said Obama. Now we need to take responsibilities for our actions and change our ways before we lose even more opportunities.
