Dearest Reader,
Few, it sometimes seems, are the issues of this fine publication making their way to the stands without trace of that complaint most central in a student’s life. I write, of course, of the general and common concerns of financial instability in the lives of the city’s young populace, the instability that allegedly threatens the future of their education, their home-owning potential, and their very lives.
To live from one cheque to another, enduring the rigours of full-time employment and juggling this responsibility against that of homework and exams, is doubtless an agonizing life to lead, and I heartily recommend against it. As an upper-class male of European descent, I myself have suffered few of these pains, and cannot conceive why others might choose to do so. Listening to my elders, whom I have been taught to heed, I can only surmise that it has something to do with the youth’s laziness, an obsession with avocado-based health trends, or possibly both. Then again, the concern may be the Millennial’s refusal to “just rent a house, like I did in 1977.”
I have been informed by very knowing gentlemen of some experience that a minimum-wage salary was then quite sufficient to provide habitation for a young man or woman living alone. Surely that has not changed, for if it had, few would now be able to move from their parents’ houses, the living wage would have all but vanished, and our city’s society would be on the verge of financial collapse. Fortunately, from where I sit, this does not appear to be an imminent threat.
It is a glad thing, dearest reader, to want for little as one works one’s way through an education, confident of a future both financially sound and lacking in threats from society at large. And we may sleep soundly in knowing that the finances of students are managed by those who, like myself, understand the importance of the good and sensible allocation of funds.