Issues of importance in contemporary society

¶ … economic downturn which has gripped the United States since 2008 has greatly affected my life as well as the lives of those around me, and does not appear to be improving very soon. To make things worse, the most badly injured Americans in this crisis have been young people ages 18-30, those just entering the workforce. My community has seen its own crisis, with local government unable to sustain itself with so many stores closing and fewer property taxes paid. Despite the joy of finishing high school and moving on to college next year, I often worry about the state of America's economy and I wonder when a sense of stability for my generation will be found.

My family has been my main source of knowledge and wisdom throughout my life, and they too have felt obliged to cut back in their lives due to difficult times. Food has become a lesson in leftovers, and the chance to take any sort of vacation have been vacant from our lives. A loss of a close family member recently has corroded the fabric of the family, and the dust has yet to settle at home, to say the least. Indeed my own college education will require student loans so that I am able to receive the best future possible. My house has been one of the survivors of this crisis in my neighborhood, but I am not so sure my world will ever be the same again as before mid-2008.

The friends I have grown up with, each of whom is competing against me for college entrance, and who is competing against me for jobs to make ends meet in every day struggles, are among those I worry about. Some of my friends have had to forego the college process so that they can help their families at home. Others are going to college, but will surely have difficulty finding employment upon graduation, because it is now to be expected that 10% unemployment is with us for the next ten years. My generation, largest since the baby-boomers born in the 1940s and 50s, will also have the largest share of this unemployment problem, and has kept a black gloomy cloud over the heads of every high school student and college kids graduating in the Obama-years, a difficult predicament to be sure.

The Great Recession, as it is now referred to as, has reached far beyond my life and the lives of those in my household, as I can see in my own community. Stores which I have been a patron of for my entire life have recently been sold or abandoned. Houses on my street have been empty for months with no owners to tend to the lot's summer flora. The President and Congress have been unusually bulwarked against each other in issues of mutual political party concern. In this transforming time in my life, I can see a sickening of the American lifestyle which I have been accustomed to, and this terrible fact troubles me.