I am getting tired of Facebook.
Recently I ran across a post supposedly from Bernie Sanders that said, “What would tuition-free, debt-free higher education mean for you and your family?” I responded that I had paid for my own education and that I felt students would appreciate their education more if they did the same thing. Boy oh boy did I get a backlash. And not from anonymous strangers like is common on Facebook but from two of my nieces.
The first niece said I had a backwards mindset. She said that tuition costs are so high today that she would have to spend half of her salary to pay off her student loans. She has a baby and her and her fiancé bought themselves a little house. She said she would not be able to feed the baby or pay for the house. She said she was disappointed in me.
The other niece claims that her loans today are more than $20,000 higher than when she graduated 11 years ago. I explained to her that my son and daughter and their spouses went to school about the same time as her and they have very good jobs and have paid off their student debt. She said she made the choice to postpone her education for 5 years and her loans are accordingly higher. She said that, “Your generation was raised in a different way and you all have to come to terms with that.”
I explained to the first niece that if you want to go to college you have to sacrifice. You postpone having children or getting a house. You do not take vacations. You do not go out to eat. You live at home. I said that this is the way it has always been but that todays youth have this feeling of entitlement that they deserve an education. I said that no one is entitled to anyone else’s money to pay for their education beyond high school. College has always been a privilege and not a right. I believe it still is.
She replied, “There’s SO much wrong with everything you said but I’m not going to waste my time here. Take care.” I asked what was wrong with what I said and asked her to please tell me. But she was done. She would have no more of a discussion that she started.
I said to the second niece that she may have gone into a profession that did not pay well enough to settle her tuition debt. She said this discussion was not about dragging any specific field down.
So there you have it. A simple meme on Facebook that I was stupid enough to comment on and I have offended two nieces one of which is my wife’s goddaughter.
The sad thing is these kids think it is different now. We started out poor too. We struggled to pay for school. I paid for mine. My wife paid for hers. My siblings and hers did the same. My kids mostly paid for theirs. If anything is different it is that Bernie Sanders feeling of entitlement, that mindset that someone else can afford it so let’s take their hard earned money for our benefit.Someone should tell Bernie that even his famous Social Democratic Scandinavian countries have given up many of their social programs because they cannot afford them. Margaret Thatcher was right when she said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money.”
If you want to post photos of your grandchildren on Facebook go ahead. But do not respond to stupid memes asking for your opinion. You never know who is watching.
The Racinian 