A Tarnished Dream
Remember when they used to feed us the line about retirement being the “Golden Tears?” We took those words as our guiding principle when we were young and idealistic. They served as an incentive for us to hit the bricks every morning, clock in, and put in a hard day’s (or night’s) work? We even joked about it: “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go,” Our weekends and vacation days were precious times for re-generating the weary body, getting re-acquainted with our kids and our lawns, maybe even giving the wife a day to herself, or dinner out, after her own week of non-stop homemaking.
We paid the bills on time, mostly, and managed to put aside a little every week in anticipation of our reward at age 65 or so: Retirement. Those post-career years when you and the wife would begin to actualize all those travel plans. You’d be taking mini-courses in Egyptian archeology or origins of the Fiji Islanders. You’d be visiting all those fine restaurants that were beyond your budget as a working parent. The kids would now be independent and self-supporting, and you’d be spending lots of time spoiling grandchildren and making holiday plans for joyous celebration of this wonderful life. You’d be a happy man or woman, having fulfilled the Life’s Plan that you’d followed faithfully all those years. Life would be a dream. Your faith was strong and your conscience clean.
But “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglee,” as Wee Bobby Burns once put it. While you weren’t looking, the government came to help us by generously providing a student loan program. It was the next best thing to free money: register for a degree plan of your choice, regardless of whether or not the subject matter prepared bright young students for any type of useful (or relevant) employment. Universities immediately saw this bonanza as a license to raise tuitions rates
accordingly. Where it was once expected that your bright-eyed scholar (read: the parents) could get by with about $500 per semester in tuition and materials, it miraculously bloomed overnight into ten or twenty times that much. Higher education was now big business, and they took full advantage of their government-provided bird’s nest on the ground. New stadiums were built all over the country, to benefit our student athletes earn their degrees in finger painting, basket weaving, sports dynamics, and a host of other important and useful fields of higher learning. As an added incentive, about five percent of the more gifted student-athlete were able to secure positions in professional sports. Now there is a return on investment to envy. Coaches could often command salaries of a million or more. Those of professors of education, at the same time, remained lower than those of entry-level elementary teachers. Just saying.
But how did the student loan phenomenon interfere with the retirement dreams of Joe Average? Of course, inflation, and all its attendant evils, has burst our dream-balloon of later life comfort. In this piece, I offer just one example of how “government assistance” is bringing us to our financial knees. But it’s a real-time, insidious problem that has only begun to bite us. Here’s how I assess the “lose-lose” proposition that has been thrust upon us. Like buying a new car on credit, the time inconveniently arrives when the debt must be satisfied. In the case of student loans, we know that many graduates, especially those in the medical fields, have amassed loans in the range of hundreds of thousands.
As the piper is being paid in monthly installments, the now-employed graduate faces the prospect of dealing with a monthly “nut” that would be intolerable for the average person. Not only are the regular payments onerous by themselves, but they prevent the debtor from beginning any kind of savings program, which we all know has always been the bedrock of this country’s wealth creation.
But wait! that same generous federal government which served the main course at this orgy of spending, is now trying to inaugurate a program of student loan forgiveness. What could be better than a win-win situation like this? Billions in unrealized debt payment would now be erased from the books, while the liberated former student gets on with his life with a clean slate. And what happens to the Federal Government, which we assume is the guarantor of all this paper? Well, what better way to make men free than to bury the billions in the national debt? What’s a few more billion when we’re talking about trillions added to the annual deficit? t’s the good old government way: everyone comes out a winner and another giant can has been kicked down the road,
I started this ominous message by talking about our national dream of the Golden Years. I could have mentioned what is becoming obvious to all: that having spectacularly raised the median actuary life span in this country, we are now facing the prospect of running short (not necessarily out) of Social Security and Medicare funds. Our dream of a comfortable old age is threatening to bite us in a very uncomfortable place: the back pocket. And for now I’ll choose only a “teasing” venture into the most sinister specter of all for the elderly: the loss of health. We want to continue to function “normally” well into our golden years, but I can bear witness that it ain’t necessarily so. And that’s all I’d like to say for now on that particular sub-topic. I’ll save the really “good” stuff for another chapter.
Except to mention that my monthly rent has risen 20% this year, and my food costs are up 25%. Maybe the government could come up with a “senior bonus” plan that would forgive all our debts, as we begin the most “productive” periods of our lives. It would be a wise investment on their part, when compared to the rest of the budget that provides no return at all.
George Thatcher
April 2023
George is an American Bad Ass. He grew up in Jersey, flew B-52s in Vietnam, taught English, Spanish and other languages to children around the world, makes his own salsa, has been known to enjoy a beer or two and has called Lubbock home for a few years, just to entertain the locals. Welcome to Raiderland, Major. We are going to feature some of his writings going forward. Some new, some old. Some rhyme, some don’t. When it comes to George, there’s no box. So… enjoy our friend and enjoy his writings! – Hyatt