(08/04/04)
I am 21 years old. This November will mark the first time I am eligible to vote in a presidential election. I sit right in the middle of the 18-24 age range, coveted by marketers and advertisers but ignored by politicians.
What issues affect young people? We work part-time jobs for pretax pay ranging from $5.15 to $20 an hour. Social Security and Medicare take a big chunk out of each paycheck, without the possibility of a refund at the beginning of the next year. Many of us are in credit card debt and student loan debt. We'd benefit from more federal and state spending on higher education, but budget constraints have caused the out of pocket costs of higher education to skyrocket in the last decade. We want to find work and decent salaries when we graduate. If we're already working, we want to be able to afford basic stuff like health care and housing. We generally don't own real estate or support children, so most "middle class tax breaks" don't apply to us. Some of us are dying in the Middle Eastern desert. Most of us know people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as South Korea, Cuba, Japan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.
- Cut our taxes.
- I don't mean federal income tax, because we get fat refunds every January. I'm talking about Social Security and Medicare. I don't understand why nobody seems to consider these to be taxes. Hell, 16-year-olds have to pay these taxes, too. That's clearly a case of taxation without representation. The screwed up thing is that we are paying money into a system that gives benefits to PEOPLE WHO ARE RICHER THAN US. And don't give me your ignorant opinion about how we pay less in taxes than the rest of the developed nations. We are a country founded on the principles of tax evasion. The stamp act is nothing compared to Notary Public fees, court filing fees, sales taxes, or a thousand other fees we have to pay just for doing regular stuff.
- Increase funding for college.
- Make financial aid easily available, because only the richest parents can afford to send their kids to college without help. State governments should stop cutting funding to state colleges to make up for their own screwed up budgets. With a college degree being worth less and less (since so many people have them), it doesn't make sense for the cost of college to rise so much faster than inflation.
- Don't leave us YOUR ticking time bombs.
- Social Security, Medicare, National debt, trade deficit, environmental issues, and Nuclear proliferation are more likely to produce catastrophic events later rather than sooner. AIDS, if left unchecked, will continue to mess up Africa, then Asia, South America, and eventually North America and Europe. FIX THIS ASAP. I'd prefer that the United States keeps some of its economic power over the next few decades, and I don't think the debt and trade deficit are helping too much. Don't cut taxes and increase spending; at least pretend to care about the deficit. I'd rather not have to worry about WMDs and ICBMs in the hands of poor, unstable countries. I know the Kyoto Protocols are totally terrible (another essay/article about this soon), but at least acknowledge the POSSIBILITY that the climate is changing and that industry may play a role. Oh, you'd better keep spending money on researching alternative energy sources, and stop subsidizing dead-end "solutions" like ethanol and wind power.
- Vote.
- You don't have to vote to actually choose your representatives. Vote also to tell the polls that your demographic is worth listening to. Since young voters don't turn out in large numbers, we get shafted on policy. If you don't care about your government, your government will not care about you. Politicians don't care about non-voters for the same reason why convenience store owners don't care about homeless loiterers in the parking lot. And vote in primaries and state and local elections, too. They affect more than you'd think.
- At least have SOME idea of what's going on in the world.
- The news is free online. Jon Stewart is hilarious. Blogs give a lot of analysis (in the loosest sense of the world) of politics and current events. I have a feeling that if more people my age had any idea what happens in Washington and elsewhere, we'd turn out in greater numbers to vote. Once we realize that our government's policies run counter to so many of our interests, we can better address the problem and protect our pocketbooks, our rights, and our safety.
I'm going to go ahead and make changes to how young people view politics and to how politicians view young people. I think this will be my new goal in life.
