Stop Calling Us Slackers
My generation has recently taken a lot of bashing as slackers. But don't tell me that no one my age can know what it is to work hard.
With the release of new employment numbers on Friday March 4th, we at FrumForum decided that it was time to listen to the voices of the young as they face the challenges of this economic crisis. Over the next days, in an exclusive series, we will be featuring a number of their first-person stories in this space. If their experience is yours, we welcome you to join the conversation at Editor@FrumForum.com.
Click here for David Frum’s introduction to this series.
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My generation has recently taken a lot of bashing as slackers. But don't tell me that no one my age can know what it is to work hard.
I was born in 1982 to a comfortably middle-class family in the rural Midwest. My ancestors came to Middle America in the 1800s to work as farmers and miners. My grandparents (all born during the 1910s) had to go to work before even finishing high school. My parents, Baby Boomers, were the first in their immediate families to get college degrees and both worked while I was growing up. They taught my brothers and me that if we studied hard and worked hard that a prosperous middle class lifestyle would be ours as well. And I believed them because there was no reason--or evidence--not to.
My first job was at 15, as a farm laborer. I worked as a detasseler for a large seed company: For a month during the hottest weeks of that summer, I went out to the fields: in rain or shine, from dusk to dawn, seven days a week. I wore long sleeves and pants under a trash bag to shield my clothes from the morning dew, and goggles and a bandanna to keep the pollen out of my eyes, nose and mouth. I was paid $4.75 an hour (the minimum wage for farm labor then despite the actual minimum wage being $5.15). This job no longer exists because a decade ago the seed company discontinued its detasseling operation in my hometown; thus ended a valuable local employer for much needed summer income by students and their teachers alike (the teachers worked as supervisors of the teenage detasselers).
My next job at 16 and for the rest of my high school years was washing dishes and being a delivery driver for minimum wage at a family-owned restaurant on a ribbon of highway located on the remnants of Route 66. This job no longer exists either, because after decades in business, the restaurant had to close just a few weeks ago after the bad economy finally caught up with it and the owners were unable to find a buyer to keep it going.
Maybe I should have realized then that I had a knack for taking jobs that would soon cease to exist--because when I went to college I decided to major in journalism. I went to a large public university with a better-than-average reputation. I had the opportunity to take classes with Pulitzer Prize winners. My introductory journalism class was taught by an award-winning former Washington Post reporter. Yet because of budget cuts, journalism majors who came to my alma mater just two years after I did had their introductory journalism class taught by a local high school teacher. These students also paid thousands of dollars more per year in tuition than I had.
My first internship in journalism was unpaid, like most journalism internships. I was lucky enough to land two paid internships later on. I do not think it a coincidence that both news organizations offering paid internship positions were unionized, although I only joined the union at one of them and my paying of dues was entirely voluntary. However, thanks to budget cuts and corporate consolidations in the journalism industry, both of these paid internships no longer exist.
I got my first real job at a community paper, as a reporter covering local government and the courts in a Midwestern county facing high crime and unemployment. The county had lost some 15 to 20 percent of its population over the last two decades because of all the factory jobs that had left the community in the post-NAFTA economic climate. I stayed at the paper for a few years. During that time, I thought I was being as fiscally responsible as I could possibly be. I paid off every credit card monthly balance (as I always have). I lived frugally, saving the maximum amount in my IRA each year and socking away about 10 percent of my wages into a 401k on sub-$30,000 per year take-home pay. I also bought into my company's stock ownership program (thankfully only for the minimum $600 per year-- later the company was nearly delisted from the New York Stock Exchange after its total collapse in share price).
It began to dawn on me that I would never be able to own my own home on a reporter's salary--and maybe someday soon I wouldn't even have a salary, given the way the print media was going. Sure enough, after I quit, the paper did not fill my old position because of budget constraints. Another job that no longer exists.
I decided to pursue a law degree--yeah, I know, that now looks terribly foolish too. While I applied to graduate school I moved back in with my parents to save money. The only job I could find was through a temp agency, which had an exclusive contract for hiring with the local Fortune 35 company. Thanks to the horrible economy, the Fortune 35 company was desperate to bring in more people in its bank collections operations for auto and home equity loans. But rather than actually hiring these people (most of them college graduates like me) and paying them Fortune 35 company-style wages and benefits, they used us as "contract" workers in order to give us lower pay and junk benefits--even while we did the exact same job as the handful of actual employees we worked alongside.
Even stingier was the news organization I started working for after moving to Chicago to attend law school. This company, bankrupted by horrible mismanagement and over-leveraging, brought me into the fold to provide editing services. The position had no benefits but it was easy part-time work and gave me much needed extra income. Thankfully, I was able to buy a fairly cheap insurance policy through my law school--but I couldn't help wondering how anyone else makes it as an "independent contractor" working for this type of company.
Going to law school put me in the position of taking on debt for the very first time in my life, and massive amounts of debt at that. I do so with my eyes open and I am not asking for any handouts. I still pay bills and rent on time every month. But I've cashed out my 401k and IRA accounts to pay for tuition. I also sold off my car and now rely entirely on public transportation. I don't expect to be able to afford the purchase of a home for 10 to 20 years at least. I was thrilled though when I learned that the student loan provisions of last spring's healthcare reform bill resulted in me being able to obtain student loans directly through the federal government rather than relying on private banks as extortionist middle men between the government and myself. As a result of those reforms, I was able to obtain some direct loans at a whopping 7.9 percent interest rate instead of a whopping 8.5 percent interest rate. It's a small change, but for me it mattered a great deal and felt like a symbol that my government had started to value me and the risk I was taking on to go back to school and better my economic station in life.
Yet now in the new budget being debated by Congress, suddenly I am a target of both Obama and House Republicans, who are going after things like my subsidized Stafford loans (capped at $8,500 per year) that allow me to borrow from the government a small portion of the money I need for tuition without accruing any interest on that debt until after I complete my degree. Frankly, I am baffled by this. How does going after people like me make even a dent in the deficit or grow our economy when this is just crippling me with even more debt--and making it even longer before I can buy a home or a car after I finish my degree?
Give me a break. Forget that the budget cuts currently proposed by House Republicans would cost America 700,000 jobs, according to Moody's, and that they're coming at a time of already devastating unemployment and underemployment. "So be it" that someone like me--who dreamt of getting a decent paying job while still serving the public interest, working as an attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Environmental Protection Agency--now sees that opportunity closed to me by budget cuts.
I know, it's really my fault that I foolishly pursued journalism and law degrees thinking it might lead to a comfortable middle-class life while at the same time allow me to provide some sort of public service to my community. But even when I look at my brothers who made much more sensible career choices than I did by going into scientific fields, I'm left wondering how secure middle-class prosperity is for them. One brother, an engineer, has to compete with cheaper engineers in India and elsewhere around the globe. Every few years he faces the threat that his employer, a manufacturing giant with record profits, won't be able to wring out enough concessions from its union workforce in the next contract and the company will call on engineers like him to head into the shop to try to break the union. The other brother, a pharmacist, has seen his retirement benefits completely slashed in the economic downturn by the retailer that employs him.
“Everyone knows the uncertainly hanging over the economy is caused by the entitlement future of this country," Eric Cantor said recently on Morning Joe. Funny, I thought the uncertainty hanging over the economy had to do with folks like me not knowing whether we'll ever (again) have jobs with health benefits and not whether we'll have Social Security checks and Medicare coverage 35 years from now.
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