Toronto G20 meetings

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By Charlie Smith

The news footage of the G20 protests in Toronto made me think about a book I read a couple of years ago.
It’s called Generation Debt: How Our Future Was Sold Out for Student Loans, Credit Cards, Bad Jobs, No Benefits, and Tax Cuts for Rich Geezers—and How to Fight Back (Riverhead Books).

As the title suggests, author Anya Kamenetz delivers a comprehensive rundown of why Americans in their 20s are getting a raw deal in the globalized economy.
She demonstrates that this economic discrimination is systemic and pervasive. Moreover, the book contains a message that young people shouldn’t be too hard on themselves if they’re drowning in credit card debt.

Kamenetz also reveals how the media have failed to acknowledge the extent of the unfairness being meted out to young people.
Instead, some baby-boom journalists prefer taking cheap shots by calling people in their 20s “adultescents” or “twixters”—and then complaining about how these debt-soaked young adults “with a sense of entitlement” return to live with their parents.
Here in B.C., university tuition hikes have vastly exceeded the inflation rate since the B.C. Liberals took power in 2001.

In a submission to the House of Commons finance committee last August, the Canadian Federation of Students stated that average student debt for a four-year program averages between $21,000 to $28,000, depending on the province and the area of study.
In Canada, people cannot be discharged from bankruptcy on a student loan until at least seven years after they have completed their education.

Meanwhile, the minimum wage has not increased in B.C. since 2001. The eight-dollar minimum, which is the lowest in the country, has taken an even harder toll on young people who don’t make it to college or university because they’re more apt to take those jobs.

Vancouver housing costs are sky-high, magnifying the challenge for college- and university-age students in this region. Many juggle work and school while living in substandard housing.
Kamenetz points out in her book that as baby boomers entered the workforce in 1970, the largest private employer was General Motors. It paid an average $17.50 per hour in today’s dollars.

“The largest employer in the postindustrial economy is Wal-Mart,” Kamenetz notes in the paperback edition of her book, which was published in 2007. “Their average wage? Eight dollars an hour. The service-driven economy is also a youth-driven economy, burning young people’s energy and potential over a deep-fat fryer.”

In Toronto this weekend, we witnessed the rage of some young people during the protests against the G20 meetings. These marches had a dramatically different tone than more peaceful antiglobalization demonstrations of the 1990s.
Nowadays, the black-clad anarchists are taking matters into their own hands. We witnessed this in Vancouver last February during the 2010 Winter Games.

For anyone who has read Kamenetz’s book, the root causes are fairly obvious.
“Eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-olds may be one-quarter of the electorate, but after years of scandal and cynicism, we vote less often than any generation alive,” Kamenetz writes. “And just as we have turned our back on politics, the nation has turned its back on us.”
Provincial and national politicians know that old people are more likely to vote, which is why health care, tax cuts, and pensions usually get far more attention than postsecondary education and student debt.

Until systemic political and economic discrimination against young people is meaningfully addressed, we can expect to see more of these window-smashing, G20-style demonstrations in the future.
That’s because some members of Generation Debt have clearly concluded that they no longer have anything to lose by being arrested.

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