By Bill Blum of truthdig.com on Jun 22, 2011
More than 1.7 million graduating college students are entering “a sorry excuse for a job market.”
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According to a study conducted by Northeastern University labor economist Andrew Sum, a mere 74.4 percent of college graduates under the age of 25 had jobs from October 2010 to March 2011. Of this same demographic, only 45.9 percent held positions that required a college degree, down from 80 percent a decade ago.
The country my generation is passing on to Sam [Blum’s son] and his peers is a mean-spirited place of global warming, class warfare and diminishing expectations, where the top 1 percent of households own nearly 35 percent of all privately held wealth and the “bottom” 80 percent lays claim to less than half that. It’s a place where that same top 1 percent receives 23 percent of the nation’s income, three-quarters of which stems from thinly taxed capital gains, and giant corporations like General Electric and Exxon receive billions in federal tax subsidies.
Read full op ed here.