This thread is about seniors not being keen on giving up publicly funded services, from the OP. It's not about anyone stealing anyone's money...you older folks keep referencing when you were young...it's not the same at all. It's apples and oranges in almost every conceivable metric. Demographics, what more needs to be said about that? You could get a good job with a high school education, we cannot. Manufacturing jobs that could raise a family were plentiful, now they are not. The cost of post-secondary education was much lower. Just since 1981 for instance, in your country the cost of a university degree has risen six fold, while the CPI increased only 2.5 times. Housing prices are astronomical. A twenty-five year old college graduate isn't living at home because they want to...my generation has the same goals, a house, a family, except it looks like years before we'll be able to afford any of that. I think I'm probably the exception in some cases, because I'm a cheap bastard who doesn't own a cell phone, or any iApple gadgets. Hell, I won't even pay the farmer down the road to remove snow from my driveway because I'm such a cheap bastard. I'd rather break my back for 45 minutes every morning than pay money which could be used to invest or pay down more debt.
I'd like to hear from any of those who seem to think my generation wants to steal from you, just exactly what you mean by that. I've paid my way through my degree, financed by loans which I am paying back, with interest. $500 a month, for the next ten years, actually nine years now, it was over ten years when I started making payments. That's half of what Cliffy lives on in one year! How is the job market or the composition of society in any way similar?
I don't want any sympathy from anyone, I'd just like to hear how it is they think that I want to steal their money, or how I'm a lazy bastard not willing to work or make sacrifices to get by. Hell I even advocate a split system in healthcare so that my taxes can finance a public system, and my premiums I pay through my employer can finance my own healthcare...
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I had fine marks when in highschool in the fifties, but there is no way I could ever have gone to university, didn't
even give it a second thought, far too expensive, and not a student loan in sight, no such thing, therefore
I left school and settled for office work, secretarial etc.
If I hadn't decided to marry, then I could have saved and possibly gone to night school.
The point is: university was not available for the average middle class person, and especially me who
was at home with a mother who worked, a divorced mom.
My grandson as we speak is going thru a job shop program, and has been picked to participate in an
apprentice program in the construction trade, and he's hoping to specialize later on and become an
electrician. He graduated last spring, and this opportunity allows him to make the transition from school
into the work force. He is at the genius level with school marks, but very quiet and finds it difficult
to just go out there and do it, this course helps him in that respect.
Just as I couldn't, he can't go to university because of finances not being available, so he is making
this effort to move forward.
When our daughters were growing my husband worked two jobs for some time so that we could afford to
buy a house and also raise our kids 'right'.
We don't owe an opology to anyone ever, for the kind of life we had and are having. 'One should never
generalize' on subjects like this, it is inconsiderate and inaccurate, there are all kinds of people who
are greedy and take take take, and those who manage within their means, and each generation will have
all of the types of humans there is, and life will continue with the gimmie, gimmie, lazy lazy and the
hard workers, and we have no control over anything else, so the whining should be to the government, not
to people like ourselves and most others.
When we pass on, our daughters will divide up our assets from our estate which will help them as they
move thru life. We have never been wealthy, but did work hard to build a house, took a long time, but
we got it done, should we feel guilty because we had a house of our own, give me a break.
We can't do anything about 'how' life was during our lifetime, and neither can anyone else, during theirs.
That is the way the cards are dealt, suck it up and figure it out, just like we had to, and many before
us.