Excerpt from the article:

The problem is, social movements have long been made by people far worse off than our indebted generation, a fact driven home on a recent trip to Tijuana, Mexico. I met a group of women, many in their mid-twenties and most with children, employed by the foreign-owned factories along the border. They work sixty hours a week assembling televisions and other widgets for American consumers, often for as little as six dollars a day. They live in little shacks made of scrap wood, recycled pallets, and old tires. Their homes lack running water. These women have no money and no free time, yet they have organized themselves into a collective and are effectively advocating for environmental justice in their community. Returning to the US from Tijuana, it was as though I could suddenly see clearly: our “necessities” appeared to me as what they really are — luxuries. I have no doubt there is an element of social control built into the massive educational debt imposed on young Americans today. But I also believe social change requires sacrifice — and imagination. We need to reevaluate the supposed “necessity” of higher education (especially people interested in the humanities, the arts, and in social change, who may find the fortune they spend on tuition could be more fruitfully invested elsewhere), envision new standards of “success,” redefine the “good life,” and figure out creative ways to share costs by reinvigorating old ideas (housing, food, and vehicle co-ops come to mind). Above all, we need to remember that our single biggest luxury, our salient self-indulgence, is acquiescence, and that it comes at too high a price.