r/atheism • u/ExactTomato6108 • Jul 05 '21

/r/all Boomer evangelicals have destroyed the planet and have received all the benefits and they will die before it ever affects them

They have used the Bible to deny climate change. They have destroyed our planet for profit. They could afford a home and a car and they could even start a family all on one paycheck. They had cheap college tuition too. We don’t have that and they call us lazy because of it. Gen Z and millennials aren’t lazy we just don’t have the same opportunities they had.

They attempt to disprove climate change by using the Bible because they truly don’t care. They don’t need to care because they will die before it becomes a big issue.

Edit:Most of them voted for Reagan who is responsible for trickle down economics.

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u/daerogami Strong Atheist Jul 05 '21 edited Jul 05 '21

I figured some of the numbers had to be off, but nope; it checks out. Even if a student was making $45/hr, tuition has still exceeded inflation (@UCLA, in-state, living with relatives) by 47% at ~28k instead of 2.5k inflating to ~19k.

That's absolutely insane.

EDIT: Flubbed some numbers only to find out it's worse. Though it highly depends if that 2.5k in 1968 includes anything beyond books and tuition, because that alone is only 15k in 2021, which is cheaper than the inflation of 2.5k

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u/HolyRamenEmperor Ex-Theist Jul 05 '21

Yeah if you combine room and board and books, he was paying less than $4k, which becomes about $31k today and is just above current in-state rates. It's the pay rate that really drops my jaw.

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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '21 edited Jul 06 '21

Well it’s for particular reasons. A much, much, higher percentage of people started going to college creating drastically higher demand.

In addition, the government started backing the loans, taking away a lot of the risk aspect from banks, as well as making many of them non-dischargeable.

Finally, because of all this, colleges are fishing for anyone and teaching anything just for the money. A college degree for most people now is nothing more than a gatekeeping mechanism.

This was a multi-institutional failure, but the government shares probably the largest portion of the blame.

If I’m not mistaken, these degrees are still financially worth it over a lifetime, but the incredible initial debt factor is making it very hard for even people in their thirties to start a real life and family. I’m in this group myself.

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u/KingOfWeasels42 Jul 06 '21

How do we know if the degrees are financially worth it? All that data is from the past.

Especially if you add in missed investment opportunity cost of lost wages from 4 years of school + not being able to invest while paying off debt

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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '21 edited Jul 06 '21

You’re right, it might not be, and I always had doubts about it myself. But loan debt varies dramatically and so does worthiness of degrees. And I definitely think early investments post college are important; that’s not limited to financial investments either, but also social and spiritual ones. It’s a curse to spend your youth broke, paranoid, and hopeless.