A Short Note On Angry People Who Saved for College
I don’t follow politics too closely — a real effort considering. In spite of all that, I did read an article about how a man confronted Elizabeth Warren at one of her recent campaign events.
“I just wanted to ask one question. My daughter’s getting out of school. I’ve saved all of my money. She doesn’t have any student loans. Am I going to get my money back?”
Read that quote again, the brevity is poetic. Better still that it came at the senator’s expense. Of course, it’s wrong. The whole sentiment, the implied argument, contradictory and wrong.
Saving is just a sanctimonious word for investing. When dad works overtime, foregoes family vacations, and uses the earnings to send daughter to college, he is investing in his own daughter’s education. But investing is just a swanky word for betting. When dad invests in daughter’s education, he’s making a bet: in the future, the only way for daughter to get a college degree without going into debt is for dad to pay for her education.
Now dad is worried that he might lose this bet. Of course, to him, it’s not losing, he’s getting “screwed”. He only “did the right thing” so it can’t be his fault. People make losing investments all the time. If your investment loses, it loses.
Nothing really surprises me anymore. It’s boring really, how stupidity can explain pretty much anything. I admire pop’s anger, I really do. How often these scrappy, sweat of thy brow, self-made lower classers will preach hard work and responsibility and then plead and whine about how unfair it is, all in the same breath. I’ll never know how it isn’t obvious to them.
To be fair, dad really ought to try to secure his investment. I’d absolutely do the same. But I doubt the dad’s frustration is just a charade. In any case, I have just as little regard for the senator who is proposing the loan forgiveness, or any senator for that matter.
