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| | Location: Home » Loans » Guides » Generation Debt: How Our Future Was Sold Out for Student Loans, Bad Jobs, NoBenefits, and Tax Cuts for Rich Geezers--And How to Fight Back | November 21, 2008 |
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| Generation Debt: How Our Future Was Sold Out for Student Loans, Bad Jobs, NoBenefits, and Tax Cuts for Rich Geezers--And How to Fight Back | 
 enlarge | Author: Anya Kamenetz
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $0.79
You Save: $13.21 (94%)
Buy New/Used from $0.71
Avg. Customer Rating:  (59 reviews)
Sales Rank: 336576
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 1594482349
Dewey Decimal Number: 650
EAN: 9781594482342
ASIN: 1594482349
Publication Date: December 26, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Generation Debt offers a truly gripping account of how young Americans are being ground down by low wages, high taxes, huge student loans, sky-high housing prices, not to mention the impending retirement of their baby boomer parents. Twenty-four-year-old Anya Kamenetz examines this issue from every angle and provides a riveting, rousing manifesto that will inspire everyone to take care of their financial future.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 54 more reviews...
 Necessary Reading for Adolescent Adults July 3, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is very similar in style, thesis, and layout to "Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead." A notable difference is this book's more journalistic style relying more on neutral testamonials than sensational exercepts from seemingly more original testimonials. The book's thesis is not that younger generations are lazier and solely themselves to blame, but that systematic problems from sources far bigger than individuals are ALSO (but not only) to blame. Avoiding the usual binary (1-or-the-other) logic, the combination of individual and systematic issues creates a more indebted generation. The systems increasing our debt include the new ecnonomy (temp and consultant positions versus actual full-time positions, ever more stingy benefits, companies firing-and-hiring more aggressively to lower payroll expenditures), government (Reaganites' purposeful civic disengagement, conservatives dismantling government to chase free market profit, ever-more eliminating social-related government programs), social (friends use credit cards, consumer culture's "lifestyle" argument, mass media's materialistic bombardment), and financial (speculation, private investments, growing accceptance of debt-for-diploma). This argument against the conventional, conservative "it's your own fault, so get with the program" notion for why we've more debt makes this book a more anti-conventional, firebrand way to think of the problem of the US's negative (that's right, credit is big) national savings rate. The book's using testimonials caused me to have severe doubts about my own secuity: financial, emotional, psychological, and political. Stories of not "them" but "us" create a uniquely personal anxiety few books cause within me. The book's targeting the reader personally relevantly, not just theoretically, makes this book impactual in a way that enhances my savings, planning, and stress-avoidance.
Very interesting ... February 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you are an inmmigrant like me that had no idea how the economy stands out in this country you will find this book very helpful, it covers many areas of financial topics (insurance, depth, retirement, etc.) and it will make you realize how important it is the habit of saving at an early age, and many many things. I'm glad I purchased it.
Informed and important January 29, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book somehow avoids the sticky nether regions of pundit drivel by-gasp-actually staying true to its journalistic center. This is filled with facts and balanced observations that provide fodder for public policy makers and forward-thinking parents alike. Unfortunately, the book also accurately heralds in an age where failed government policy is leading the US economy into shallow waters.
 Thorough and balanced discussion January 23, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Even after I have read all the negative reviews on this book, my girlfriend had decided to pick up this book for me anyways. I usually trust Amazon reviews, but this is one of the exceptions, and I am glad I read it.
Whether the reader agrees with all her points or not, this book is undoubtedly very well written. Kamenetz has a very engaging writing style, without being overly emotional. As a result she got the point across very effectively.
The point of this book needs no reintroduction, but I think, her one sentence sums up the mounting problems that North Americans face in general.
"Americans have accepted a lack of public support under the
guise of more freedom." (p 61)
Though the outlined in this book, we know all too well, but none sum up *all* the additional risks, for instance, debts, lack of health care, devaluation of employment, "work-life" balance, etc, in one setting. The discussion on each topic shows much depth, balance.
Her research was thorough, and her claims are backed up with both statistics and interviews. There are also some facts, such as the military provision on the No Child Left Behind Act, and the replacement of GM as the US's largest employer with Wal Mart, which are, frankly, very disturbing. In addition, some of her conclusions on working conditions and collective behavior, also loosely coincide with the observations of authors like Profs. Al Gini (The Importance of being lazy) and Robert Caldini (Influence). This indicates that her research is, at the very least, not out to lunch.
Her "resolution" section does come across as simplistic, maybe she was pressed to give hope to the reader. While I agree "just-in-time" learning as the alternative to mounting massive student loan debts, the consequence of "deschooling" (p 230) can be quite dangerous. A similar movement happened once in China, under the term Cultural Revolution.
She also applauded the Canadian efforts in maintaining affordable tuition. What she didn't mention, Canada has deregulated university tuitions a few years before this book was written. To add insult to injury, while some universities have agreed to freeze tuition, the revenue shortfall is made up by increasing mandatory service fees. The exchange rate remains the only advantage for US citizens to seek post-secondary education in Canada.
Despite some radical (and possibly not well thought-out) resolutions, Kamentz did, however, give some not so subtle hints about making drastic changes to expectations and life choices (a la Matrix) if one is determined to survive and succeed through Generation Debt. This is a not-so-sunny but necessary step towards financial and social independence, in my opinion.
Finally, I would like to respond to some of the negative reviews. Browsing through them, I got the jest that most of them came one of the following three flavors, and I comment directly below each of them.
1) "This book is written for a bunch lazy whiners who prefer to live their lives on mum-and-dad and plastic. They should grow up and man up."
This is no evidence of this kind of anywhere in the book. The interviewees display more maturity than the stereotype, and they are in debt (or are very slowly on their way out) to make ends meet.
2) "Anya Kamentz blames all the problems to the Boomers, and she thinks spending money on them is counter-productive."
Her concerns of the soon-be-retiring Boomer is genuine. While the Boomers are while well represented in many national institutions, the generations that follow do not. The real issue is not to tell the Boomers that they have done wrong to the newer generations -- this is rather stupid, but how the Boomers have shaped the social and political landscape as we see it, what the newer generations must do to adopt (and change) it to their advantage. And it is arguments like these which demonstrates the misunderstandings between the generations.
3) "I am disciplined enough to not let this happen to me so the people she mentions on this book are really a bunch of losers."
You've been there, so you know these problems are not made up. Others, however, are not so fortunate to have their problems solved, whether be it they have not enough resolve or (more likely) support.
I think, overall, this is a very well written book, and summarizes very well the problems that is faced everyday by the people she collectively terms "Generation Debt". Though I think her resolution needs more critical thinking, her research is very thorough and well balanced.
Disconcerting, but deserves our attention. December 21, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I recently stopped to talk with a merchant in downtown Globe, Arizona - an impoverished copper town trying to revitalize itself. Somehow our discussion turned to Anya Kamenetz' recent book, Generation Debt (ISBN: 1-59448-907-6). When I mentioned how impressed I was with the book the merchant told me about an interview he had heard on NPR, where the interviewer had asked Amy why she thought she should be able to work in New York City and live with a view of Central Park when she was only 27; did graduation from Yale just entitle her to that? I didn't respond because I hadn't heard the interview, but my impressions were certainly different.
(First, however, a major criticism of the book. While the bibliography is comprehensive, some 14 pages with probably 200 references, the Notes area is sadly deficient, particularly considering the wealth of statistics cited in the text. The notes published in the book are only 6 pages - but with a small reference to finding complete endnotes at www.anyakamenetz.blogspot.com. I didn't find them there, but did find some at http://gendebtthebook.com/notes. They could be written better, and if they are to only be available on the net, they should have hyperlinks.)
Ms.Kamenetz is a 2002 Yale graduate and, even more important, she didn't incur student loan debt - her parents were willing and able to pay for her education (and she only took 4 years to graduate). That certainly puts her in a position of privilege, and she acknowledges it early in her Preface: "Through research, I have realized just how lucky I am. Not only am I one of just a quarter of the young population with a bachelor's degree, I am part of the one-third of four-year college graduates without loan debt." And, after acknowledging the importance of her parents' guidance, she then embarks upon a survey of her own financial insecurities (the lack of a permanent, full-time job) and, even more so, those of her friends and acquaintenances. Her list is short, but decisive: crushing student loan debt in many cases, crap jobs with no benefits, usurious credit cards made available to those who can't afford the debt, and over-whelming government debt - not only Social Security (barely fixable) and Medicare (just not-fixable) but the entire federal budget. Addressing the fact that the future of Social Security is funded with government bonds, she reminds us that they're "just like the ones issued when we borrow money from foreign governments." Not reassuring.
She is refreshingly honest sometimes - addressing Medicare, and her own grandparents, she states "Medicare, like health care in general, is a whole other mess. ... I don't have any bright ideas."
Crap jobs - in 1970 the largest single employer in the US was GM, with starting wages (available to high-school graduates) of $17.50 per hour. Today? Wal-Mart, at $8.00 per hour. No inflation adjustment reflected. Benefits? None today, compared to pension, health insurance, paid vacations. (So why doesn't Anya have a job? She never quite says it clearly, but it's obvious that she thinks she can do better as a free-lance journalist than some comparatively crap job, and she enjoys what she does. Even so, she recognizes "I can't afford pre-school fees or a mortgage anywhere near the city where I live and work." While it's easy to react with "some of us are smart enough not to try to live in New York or the Bay Area," she then reminds us that the hotel maids and sanitation workers of those areas do need to live there.)
The book is not reassuring and is, in fact, disconcerting. All the more so because it gathers together, in an intelligent and well-written manner, a comprehensive litany of how the Boomers are "going into deeper debt than any generation before them," and how, as Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote in 2005, the Boomers will "be remembered mostly for grabbing resources for [them]selves, in such a way that the big losers will be America's children."
Generation Debt deserves our attention.
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