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“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Home, Home on the... aw, crap.

Speaking of the housing bubble, Forbes has a brief look at ten things that could cause the bubble to burst. Some seem kinda silly--I don't see war or Taiwan declaring independence as putting a hold on the housing market here. Bird flu, if it becomes a pandemic, at least has some history to back it up. Oil becoming scarce certainly is dangerous. At any rate, read it yourself.

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Let Them Eat Cheetos

There are a couple of new books out about how difficult it is for young people (like me) to get a hold on the adult world. Specifically:

• We're in an amazing amount of debt. It isn't just kids misusing credit cards (ugh--I've done that). No, it's the cost of college. From one article:

  the burden of education debt more than tripled in real terms for young, college-educated households, going from $5,420 in 1995 to $17,000 in 2004 [both in 2004 dollars].

  Reason? Not only has tuition tripled since 1980, most aid has also shifted from grants to loans. Very expensive and extensive loans. My fiance owes $9,000 in student loans, and that's comparatively light.

• We can't find decent-paying jobs--thank you, outsourcing!
• The high cost of buying a home--frankly, I expect to always be an apartment dweller.
• The future sucks: when you hear about how companies are gutting pension plans, Social Security is falling apart, and don't even think about what your company might be doing to your 401k, you realize that there is no such thing as retirement anymore. And when there's also no such thing as job security, well, you get the idea.

The only thing I see changing is maybe the home-owning issue. That bubble's gonna burst, and I'll be the first one in line to snatch up a nice, cheap home in Ambler--or maybe Glenside or something.

I'll be honest--I'm very bitter. I graduated summa cum laude, and I'm a fucking clerk. And it's not like I haven't been looking for a new job--I have. But to be honest, I've got a lot of competition for lower and even lower-paying jobs. Which makes it that much harder to pay off debt. Which means you can't build up a savings. Which means it only takes one crisis--illness, unemployment--to ruin everything. And it's not like you can declare bankruptcy anymore.

So am I scared? Yeah. Am I angry? Hell yeah. Is there anything I or people like me can do about it? Not really.

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Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Sorry 'Bout the Silence

But work's been horribly busy, and I haven't had a good night's sleep in four days. Sadly, not because of insomnia, or at least the type of insomnia that can make you productive (which I've had in the past). So hopefully tomorrow will be better.

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Monday, March 20, 2006

More From the Anti-Sex League

Salon has an article about that fringiest of fringe anti-abortion groups, those who oppose all contraception.

Here's the money shot:

"When you peel back the layers of the anti-choice motivation, it always comes back to two things: What is the nature and purpose of human sexuality? And second, what is the role of women in the world?" Sex and the role of women are inextricably linked, because "if you can separate sex from procreation, you have given women the ability to participate in society on an equal basis with men."

As a majority of Americans believe that birth control should be legal, I don't see these folks as a challenge on the national level. The problem is that they introduce legislation arguing that pharmacists shouldn't have to dispense birth control prescriptions, making it harder for women to obtain their own medications.

It's a war on women, folks--'cause you know you'll never find condoms hard to get.

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