Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead
Author: Tamara Draut
For the 60 percent of people between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four who find themselves consistently behind the financial eight ball, STRAPPED offers a groundbreaking look at the new obstacle course facing young adults as they try to build careers, buy homes, and start families. As Tamara Draut explains, various economic and social trends over the last thirty years, as well as adverse government policies, have conspired to alter dramatically the process of becoming an adult. The exploding costs of higher education mean that young adults leave college and graduate school with near-crippling student loan debt. A deregulated and predatory financial industry means that they are trapped in debt at usurious interest rates and preyed on by a new breed of legal loan sharks. Depressed wages, rising costs, and inadequate health care increasingly mean that budding families often need two incomes to pay the bills. Soaring property values have made the traditional starter home unattainable. As a result, young adults are starting out their lives way behind; they are literally borrowing their way to adulthood.
Connecting the economic stagnation of today's young adults to broader social and cultural changes in America over the last three decades, STRAPPED will help jumpstart a national conversation about where the country is failing--and how we can make it right again.
Publishers Weekly
It's hard to believe: "Today's college grads are making less than the college grads of thirty years ago." In fact, men aged 25 to 34 with bachelor's degrees are making just $6,000 more than those with high school diplomas did in 1972. This is just one of the many shocking statistics uncovered by Draut, a think-tank adviser and media pundit, in this incisive and revealing look at why today's young adults find financial independence so difficult. With catchy terms such as "debt-for-diploma" and "paycheck paralysis," Draut shows why this age group's ability to accomplish the traditional adult markers of school, career and family is stagnating. Her presentation features the one-two punch of well-sourced data and a series of stories from a diverse group of interview subjects to prove her thesis that depressed wages, inflated educational costs, soaring credit card debt and skyrocketing health and child-care expenses present nearly insurmountable obstacles to young adults' success. While Draut's conclusions take conservative politicians to task, they are hardly polemical, and her analysis and solutions are refreshingly free of glib how-to advice. Her book should be a jarring wake-up call to both the generation affected most by the current economic reality and the policy makers facing the consequences for decades to come. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Student loans, credit card debt, low wages, and the rising cost of living expenses have created the "perfect storm" confronting young adults between the ages of 20 and 30. Draut, who directs the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, headquartered in New York, here paints a sobering picture of how the world has changed for the children of the baby boomer generation who, unlike their parents, are facing staggering amounts of debt. To cope, many are taking jobs they might not want, delaying starting families, or even living with their parents. How did this happen? Draut offers a chronology and carefully documents the causes of these circumstances. While she is cautiously hopeful in outlining various remedies-e.g., college education affordable for anyone who wants one-Draut is also realistic in assessing the lack of political courage required by Washington politicians to provide them. Thus, the outcome is doubtful. Although too many data at times overload her points, the author's thesis that "it is harder and more costly to become an adult" in America today is both inescapable and eloquent. This vital work should be read by anyone who cares about the future of this country. Highly recommended.-Richard Drezen, Washington Post New York Bureau Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
You're not the only one who can barely keep up with the rent, school loans and credit card debt: There's a whole generation out there in exactly the same position. According to Draut, director of the Economic Opportunity Program at liberal think tank Demos, a high proportion of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are caught in an economic crunch with no easy way out. First there's college, the "luxury-priced necessity" that shovels mounds of debt onto young adults before they've even had a chance to get into the job market-which mandates a college degree for anyone who wants to enter it at any semi-professional level. Following graduation comes a one-two punch: the dwindling number of steady, salaried jobs with benefits, combined with the punitive rates on deceptively easy-to-get credit cards. The result: even more debt. The author moves through each element of the crisis, from high-priced homes purchased with huge mortgages to non-subsidized childcare, and she tries to link these factors to young peoples' lack of interest in the news, and non-involvement in politics. Although Draut is a proud member of Generation X and never misses an opportunity to stick it to the Baby Boomers who, she charges, created the situation, she also takes her peers to task for their inattention: "While we weren't keeping tabs on the government, Congress decimated college financial aid, let the minimum wage fall to historic lows, and reengineered the tax code to tax income more than wealth." Alas, this is a rare instance of passionate, accessible prose in a text that more frequently resembles a dust-dry paper. Draut's think-tank day job at least gives her the background to come up with something mostanti-debt screeds lack: a specific plan to fix what's wrong.
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Christianity Versus Fatalistic Religions in the War Against Poverty
Author: Udo Middelmann
Most literature and many aid efforts concerned with poverty relief and development function on mathematical assumptions. Those who have more should share with those who have less, thus creating equality. Some would add a moral component saying that those having more are morally wrong and must have gained their surplus from outright theft or unfair trade.
But on the side of the needy, religious and secular efforts see only a material problem. Both neglect the devastating power of bad ideas based in religion and social customs. Yet what anyone believes about the building blocks of life will have results; their ideas are like eye glasses that either distort or bring into focus an objective reality.
Development work must focus on developing peoples ideas. Cultural change must precede material changes.
Table of Contents:
Ch. 1 Water and Worldviews 17
Ch. 2 Bread, Fish, and a Better Focus 41
Ch. 3 A Community of Character 69
Ch. 4 Servants' Hearts and Skills 95
Ch. 5 Worldviews in Collision 123
Ch. 6 Ethics in the Circle of Life 147
Ch. 7 Gutsy Christians 171
Ch. 8 The Samaritan Appeal 191
Postscript 209
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