Grand Island youths express concerns about the country's economic future

The economic mess the country is in not only has a lot of people apprehensive about the future, but angry that the people they have elected to govern the country allowed it to happen.

That includes young people, who are preparing to start their life journey and are now concerned about paying for that next tank of gas or getting loans to attend college, let alone having their generation struck with how to pay the nation's huge financial debt.

A number of young people from Grand Island Senior High School sat down with The Grand Island Independent last week to discuss their views on the economy and how the financial crisis impacts their lives.

Alan Taylor, 11th grade

Alan Taylor said the current economic crisis, including higher gas prices, has limited what a lot of his generation can do.

"I'm a wrestler and I would like to make more weight, but with our family having hard times with gas prices and with living in Wood River, it's hard for me to get to all the practices," he said. "I can't do a lot of what I wish I could do."

Taylor also said he believes the current economic crisis will impact his future as he wants to improve his wrestling skills to earn a scholarship for college.

"I want to work hard, but I can't be there," he said. "It's going to have an impact on my results in wrestling and how I do and that could impact my future going to college and stuff."

He is frustrated with the lack of leadership coming out of Washington, D.C., when it comes to managing the economy.

"I don't think we have leaders that are really putting the economy first," Taylor said. "They say they do, but what they say and what they do are two different things."


Andrew Fitzke, 12 grade

Andrew Fitzke said there are a number of factors that have combined to cause the current economic meltdown, such as the ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have cost the American taxpayer more than $600 billion during the last six years of U.S. involvement.

He said one of the lessons to be learned about future conflicts, is "not to go to war if you don't absolutely have to."

One of the root causes of the current economic meltdown is that many people overextended themselves with their borrowing and now can't handle the debt they have created.

"That impacts me because I'm not going to be able to have the abilities or advantages that I could have had if they had not borrowed that money," Fitzke said.

He doesn't expect the economy to improve anytime soon as he prepares for college and a future career.

"It will probably start to improve when I'm about ready to retire, and that isn't good," Fitzke said.


D.J. Bartlett, 11th grader

D.J. Bartlett said the $700 billion Wall Street bailout package will impact him and other members of his generation.

"It will be our generation and our sons and daughters paying that off during our whole lifetime," he said. "That's just going to put this country in bigger debt than it is now."

The national debt is at $10 trillion and rising.

Bartlett is also concerned about how he's going to secure student loans to go to college with access to credit becoming tighter and banks unable to make those loans available.

But the current economic crisis also provides many lessons for the younger generation that a lot of people have forgotten.

"If I need a loan, I know I will have to have the money to pay it back," Bartlett said.

Tom Cravey, 11th grade

Tom Cravey said the nation has had a spell of bad luck that plunged it into a debt that it's now struggling to get a handle on.

"Since 2000, we really have had an amazing track record of bad luck in dealing with terrorism, a couple of wars, hurricanes and all of that, along with the past problems from other presidents," Cravey said.

He said he expects a "difficult transition" as he prepares to go to college.

"I don't think colleges will be accepting as many people because they will not have enough money to give out scholarships and such," Cravey said.

He said America is living beyond its means and that has contributed greatly to the current economic crisis.

"We have been living off credit for way to long," Cravey said. "We are spending money that we don't have. If you need stuff, you buy it. If you want stuff, you buy it when you can."

Joe Weber, 11th grade

While Joe Weber said the current financial crisis hasn't impacted him a lot, he knows it has consequences for a lot of other people and could impact him when seeking student loans to attend college.

Weber said he is angry that his generation will have to inherit the economic mess of their elders as they enter the work force.

"I always try to buy stuff with cash," he said. "But people are buying all these big cars and things that they don't really need."

And their inability to pay back the loans they borrowed to buy those things will hurt him down the line, he said.

Weber said a lot of this financial crisis boils down to individual decisions and people assuming the responsibility for their decisions.

"If people believe they can spend all this money and pay it off eventually or let their family pay it off, that's not being very responsible," he said. "We, as a country, just continue to borrow, borrow, borrow, and amazingly, people continue lending them money, even though they don't pay it back."


Audie Aguilar, 11th grade

Audie Aguilar is concerned how the current economic crisis will impact her as she grows older and starts to invest in her future.

But she still has confidence in the U.S. economic system.

"I think it will come through in the end if we can come up with a plan to get us out of this like what we did during the Great Depression," Aguilar said. "This isn't a depression yet or will get to one because we will get through in the end."

She said she believes the first rule of keeping this country strong economically starts with the individual keeping their house strong.

"I think if everybody would just manage their money well and buy stuff that they can afford, then this would probably not have happened," she said.

An important lesson from this current economic mess that the country is finding itself in is to not live beyond one's means, Aguilar said.

"People are buying fancy cars and huge houses and like, ’Why do we need this?'" she said. "We just need the basics. It's frustrating because my generation hasn't been involved in it, but we are going to have to live with it the rest of our lives."


Rodolfo Orozco, 12th grade

Rodolfo Orozco is a big fan of English soccer. But when purchasing a jersey of his favorite team, he found what it costs in Euros translated into a lot more in U.S. dollars than he expected because of the dramatic decline in the dollar's value on international markets.

"We really need to do something about this economy because it's getting bad," he said. "If other countries' currencies are worth a lot more compared to ours, what is that going to mean for the United States?"

Orozco said he, too, believes that one of the root causes of the country's economic woes is individuals living beyond their means.

"Banks are giving out bad loans and not seeing who they are giving them to because a lot of people are out there buying houses and buying cars but not able to pay for them," he said. "Just look at the foreclosure rates."

Just like what young people are taught about saying no to drugs, Orozco said that can be applied when a person is offered credit that they are not able to pay back.

Once he enters the work force, he said he hopes the economy will be better, but he's not too optimistic about how fast that improvement is going to happen.

And with this economy tied closely to the fortunes of the world, he thinks goods and services will get a lot more expensive before they get cheaper.

"It's just going to make everything that much harder to do," Orozco said. "We are not going to be exporting many things and our stuff isn't going to be worth that much to other countries. We are going to pay a lot for what they have and very little for what we have."