But how might we specifically characterize neoliberal social policies and their relation to the plight of a diverse cohort of perhaps 50 million American youth between the ages of 18 and 30? To use concrete and descriptive terms: our children are told (mendaciously) that they must compete with those in other country for technological skills; schools are standardized and marketized, but remain highly unequal; there are winners and losers in the competition for higher educational opportunity, largely determined by their parents’ backgrounds and incomes; all students are told that more “higher” education is the key to their futures, at whatever level, and by (highly profitable for lenders) debt if necessary—more loans and less outright government support are available; fewer entry-level jobs are available to graduates, and at stagnant wages; the most common options for the less privileged are unemployment, underemployment, minimum wage jobs, prison, and the military; children of the middle class compete for service jobs while well-paid manufacturing jobs are outsourced or eliminated—and not on the basis of workers’ comparative skills; during their undergraduate and graduate student years, the relatively privileged are encouraged—for the sake of career advancement—to provide cheap semi-professional labor in the form of assistantships, internships, and other “volunteer” exercises, such as the elitist Teach for America; and of course, the absence of public healthcare and the shortage of good jobs with benefits mean that in spite of recent legislation that allows parents to insure their children until age 26, many are without decent health coverage.