“Toon and text by John Auchter
My first instinct was to draw the weighty Student Loan Debt object as an anvil. You guys know what an anvil is, right?
An anvil is a block with a hard surface on which another object is struck. The block is as massive as it is practical, because the higher the inertia of the anvil, the more efficiently it causes the energy of the striking tool to be transferred to the work piece.
Yeah, that’s not very helpful for me, either. How about this:
An anvil is the very heavy hunk of metal that falls from the sky onto the head of guys like Wile E. Coyote and Yosemite Sam in Warner Bros. cartoons.
Better? Because I grew up watching those cartoons and apparently anvils are actually used for blacksmithing, which I was not aware of till much later. But then, most millennials probably have not seen those cartoons, so I went with the big boulder.
In a similar way, young people today are having a difficult time imagining starting off their adult life without significant debt. Earlier this week a study was released by the Michigan League for Public Policy that showed Michigan college students who graduated in 2014 had $29,450 in student loan debt on average. It’s a complicated issue, and there is plenty of blame to go around. I didn’t want to go down that road. I simply wanted to point out that crushing student debt has specific consequences for us Michiganders and our dependency on the auto industry.
Another report came out this week showing that Americans are borrowing more than ever for new and used vehicles.The total balance of all outstanding auto loans reached $1.027 trillion betweenApril 1 and June 30, with 30- and 60-day delinquency rates rising.
Hmmm… More young people need to watch those old cartoons — I’ll definitely be wanting to use that “anvils falling from the sky” metaphor.
John Auchter draws cartoons. Lots and lots of them. You can find them at his incredibly popular website auchtoon.com.
From the Math Police…
A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly stated that over 50% of Americans could not come up with $500 on short notice…wow.
They haven’t appeared for a while, but when I see credit card company advertising on our campus bulletin boards (which, I suspect, they hire people to post without campus approval), I have no qualms about removing it. Do people not get what compound interest is? Or what it means to live within one’s means?
That said, I will ask, is a $30K debt on a fundamental investment in one’s future that bad?
I was not that long ago… An American could buy a very nice 4-bedroom house in a good neighborhood in a good city for $29,450. Oy.
Being that it’s Michigan and there is water and boating everywhere, I think you should’ve gone with an anchor and students drowning in debt. Either way, it’s not a laughing matter. I’m glad my daughter went to college when she did (1994-1998) when it was more affordable. As a single mom raising two kids totally on my own, I was thankful for the grants we were eligible for, but even with that my daughter took out student loans and I took out parent loans. It took a long time for both of us to pay them off, and I would’ve liked to put the money I paid into my retirement, but I looked at it as an investment in my daughter’s future. Thankfully, that investment has paid off very well–my daughter is fortunate to have a very good job that she loves and in the field she studied. Nowadays I think it’s more difficult because it’s more expensive to go to college, good-paying jobs are not quite as abundant, and the cost of living is much higher.
Very interesting, the idea that an anvil is a dead metaphor. Most Americans, probably, never have seem an anvil. It is a thing of the past. My dad had an anvil. I myself used to have one. But now, no.
Just in case you Millennials want to know about anvils: They are heavy steel or iron things that people use in their workshops. Anvils provide a place for pounding and shaping metal parts. Usually, anvils have one pointy end and one square end.