'Generation Debt' By Anya Kamenetz

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In "Generation Debt", the author, Anya Kamenetz, highlights the issues facing Americans regarding student debt in 2007. Many students are extending their education, continue living at home, or even moving back in with their parents, because the cost of school that challenges students of this generation. Teenagers back then worked the farms and fought the wars, and supplied an income to their families until they moved out and got married. Teenagers today benefit more from education, but they may be worse off.
"Generation Debt" is the term Anya describes over 68 million Americans, between eighteen and thirty-four, in 2002, who are continually suffocated by their debt. Much like the term "Generation X", the generation of debt is a result of social …show more content…

The amount of federal student loans rose a whopping 249 percent after inflation, to just over $61 billion between 1995 to 2005. The lack of aid has put off aspiring high school graduates, which, as a result, has actually made them less educated than their parents. In 1970, the nation's graduation of high school students peaked, at around 77 percent. In 2004, it declined 10 percent.
Even with school, "Generation Debt" are the backbone of the work society; however, they continue to struggle with loans and debt. Wal-Mart and McDonalds are the nation's top employers; the latter being the largest youth employer. The "youth class", as Kamenetz points out, is one of the reasons why the labor market has downgraded to a point where it can pander to the entry-level workers. And even those who are better-off fair no better. Many young people with bachelor's degrees join those who are underemployed, or even unemployed.
Kamenetz references President Ronald Reagan and how he began to dismantle welfare, which as a result, blamed the poor for their own problems. Today, the same figure, the 'welfare queen' that Reagan essentially created, shadows over the new generation. Public resources are being taken and put it towards the already wealthy, toward building prisons and expanding the military (paragraph 22)—which takes away from education and job

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