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Word of the Day: Bane
I heard it on the BBC.
The bane of the great United States of America is not drugs, guns or climate change – it’s student debt.
When something is described as a bane, it’s the source of pain, suffering and perhaps the ruin of the person involved.
High levels of student debt with unbelievable interest rates are slowly strangling the youth of America.
I’m nearly forty-five years old now, and I’m grateful for two things: relatively good health and I never got a student loan.
Of course, back in Canada, we have student loans and student loan problems, but they’re nothing near the scale of the disaster that’s going on in the States right now.
At UBC, I paid something like $3,500 per semester, and that’s Canadian dollars too.
Then there was rent, food, transportation, books, miscellaneous school supplies and beer.
I’m trying to make light of the matter when I say beer.
Yes, I was a good boy, but I wasn’t a teetotaler.
I mean, what’s university without a few brews, right?
They say the average American student loan is $30,000, and the average monthly payment is roughly $400.
If you think about it, that’s about the cost of a nice car.
If you think again about it, you realize that these kids have to pay $400 a month before you add on rent, food, clothing, job search costs, transportation, etc.
In the BBC story, I listened to a woman who owes more now on her student loan than she did when she graduated.
Her loan is the bane of her existence.
Can you believe that?
How is someone supposed to get ahead when they’re drowning in debt?
You have no answer to that, do you? Neither do I.
It seems as if the American dream is slipping away from an entire generation of Americans.
The land of the free is not so free after all.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 74.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.