Brookings took a look at some numbers, and showed something quite remarkable:
Not anymore.
These days, it's the ultra-rich, Davos-aspirational class that loads itself up on debt.
My take? These are upper class and upper middle class families that have grown extremely wealth and status envious, and are seeking to leverage themselves to the hilt for a shot at the big time. They are taking on a lot more education than ever before, at more expensive schools than ever before, with less clear career paths than before.
Just think about that, next time the topic of student-debt comes up. We're not helping Richard Wright, we're helping Mitt Romney.
Heh, well I don't deny that this is an interesting and important observation. Thinking about my own conservative counterpart of a family - Uncle an Auto/Life etc. Insurance guy, Aunt an Exxon CPA Executive, so I'm pretty sure they got hit in Obama's last tax increase. Oldest daughter becomes a lawyer into oil&gas, son in an MBA program after trying insurance for a year, and will likely go into Finance, dunno what the youngest daughter is going to do as she's still in college, but.... Meritocracy is quite the name-of-the-game there. All kind of fun to think about. The son cousin was asking me whether or not to take out student loans, I tried to be rational about it but should've really told him what was in my heart (avoid like the plague!). Anyhow..
ReplyDeleteLearning HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, and PHP too.. some pretty tough and time-consuming stuff here, but now I've suddenly got a ton of ideas about making economics + politics phone and web apps, heheheh... just gotta stick with it. It's a good thing the econ blogosphere has been really quiet lately, and political news relatively slow, then.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Congrats! (if I didn't already say so). Hope you had a good time :)
Hopefully those skills pay off. Honestly, while people say "oh, just learn programming," I think it's different learning it, and learning something to actually apply to business (and leveraging your contacts to GET that business. How's that coming along?
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, this graph certainly changes some notions of how student debt works....
Thanks for the congrats. Married life has been okay! So far!
Well, I figured if I wanted to make it a goal doing something like making money, much less a living, off of an internet business, you might as well not half-ass it with just another run of the mill wordpress/wix and start learning the various coding languages... then you learn about so much you can do with the other one, but learning them takes so much time (yet is rewarding)... now i'm imagining creating apps/games, heck even web-based browser games like CN.. it's like, why the heck not?
ReplyDeleteThen, as you say, im coming back down to earth simultaneously, reading a book called "never eat lunch alone" about how to get contacts, create relationships, and leverage them in the future. Intimidating definitely, but interesting.. ugh.. so much! I've been neglecting my intense Joan Robinson readings (and yes, they are intense but very worthwhile).
Anyhow, briefly on subject... I can't tell you how many of my high school friends are off around the US or world sporting masters degrees, law degrees, hell even PhDs! It's insane. I wondered "why do I have so many friends in New York?" And yeah, they were all definitely the (possibly upper) middle class aspiring elite.