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Holman Jenkins wonders in his WSJ column today whether we might give some thanks for the economic and political crises in which we find ourselves. The reason? Because demographic realities mean the crises will only get worse in the future. He refers to:
A chart routinely produced by the Social Security Administration, showing the ratio of active workers to retirees falling by 33%, from roughly three-to-one today to two-to-one, over the next five presidential cycles. Given our closely fought elections, that trend is no friend to the young and would-be productive.
He’s right. As time moves on, we may see America shifting away from class warfare to generational warfare.
Our entitlement crisis is central to this demographic divide, and the longer we go without meaningful reform, the more intensive our generational conflict will become.
But there’s another big related crisis in America that we don’t hear as much about, but which will only fan the flames more in the near future: the college bubble.
Via Glenn Reynolds, who has been pointing at the college bubble problem more consistently over time than just about anyone, comes this useful infographic that sheds light on how we’ve been inflating the college bubble to its presently dangerous proportions.
The entire page is worth studying, but I want to draw attention to a single part of it, a bar graph showing the growth:
We’ve learned that college debt is now bigger in America than credit card debt. Some of this is borne by students’ parents, but a good bit of it is also borne by the students themselves.
While the crazies are out in full color at the OWS protests, and while Republicans are justified in pointing out the protestors' confused and even contradictory aims, candidates in 2012 would do well to start sympathizing with young people who are worried about the combination of a debt-soaked future (both their own and the government’s) and too few jobs good enough to help them pay off their loans. Because this problem is going be with us for a long while if we don’t restore growth soon.
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