The reason a summer at KFC could pay for a year of UW med school in 1981 isn’t that we were so hardworking and industrious. It’s that taxpayers back then picked up 90 percent of the tab. We weren’t Horatio Algers. We were socialists.

Today, the public picks up only 30 percent of UW tuition, and dropping.

How we milked the public university system in this state and then starved it will go down as the great badge of shame of my generation and the one before mine, the baby boomers. Affordable college made us. Once made, we wouldn’t pay even a two-cent per can soda-pop tax to give that same gift to anybody else.

So, kids, the unbelievable tales of yore are true. Except the part about rugged individualism — that is baloney. Due to the allure of this myth, however, you’ll get no help from us. You’re on your own.

Not just true for UW. True for the UC system, too.

The Greediest Generation 

Who have proven that if you truly want to steal the resources of the next generation, make sure they're as poorly educated as possible.

Don't just raise the university rates so that they go deep in debt if they want a college education.

Also promote a culture of celebrity where it seems like uneducated people can still make it big.

Why the richest of the baby boomers decided to systematically rob the next generation is beyond me.