Tony Brewer

I think that college is too expensive. By that I mean that I think that students should be able to attend community college for free. It’s pretty well proven that people with only a high school diploma earn far less than people with a college degree. I think that the public school system should include college for free. Don’t get me wrong, there would still be room for private colleges, charging tuition and all that, just like there are private elementary and private high schools.

 But I think it is unfair that so many students and their families are too poor to be able to send the kids to college without getting student loans. If a student chose to go to a private college, then by all means he should be able to get a private student loan in addition to subsidized college loans, but I think that college should be free.  I think it is a hardship to families to have to obtain loans and then pay them back just to get a decent education that they need to survive in this world.

I wish that stores would go back to offering consumers paper bags as an option for their purchases. Plastic is made from oil, which is not a renewable resource, and oil is expensive. The cheap plastic bags that we get from Wal-Mart to bring our groceries home are flimsy; the handles hurt my hands; and they rip open before I get the groceries home. Plastic bags have no insulating qualities, they do not help to keep cold things cold or hot things hot. Plastic bags have got to be increasing in price; which in turn is increasing prices to the consumer. Plastic bags do not decompose; they have to be recycled. Lots of people don’t recycle them, they just throw them away, filling up our landfills with plastic bags! The only time I like plastic bags is when I have to take something wet somewhere, like a wet bathing suit from the beach back to the house, or when I’m disposing of something stinky like used cat litter.

Paper bags, on the other hand, will decompose (or burn in the fireplace) and they are made from a renewable resource: wood. If you use two paper bags, one inside the other, they will help to insulate the groceries, keeping ice cream from melting before you get it home. You can make masks and kid’s costumes from brown paper bags! You can make Christmas decorations and other crafts from brown paper bags! I like paper bags much better than plastic bags!

I think Internet website shopping engines are great. They certainly make it a lot easier to find a product than it used to be! I can remember when my parents wanted to buy something that they basically had to “let their fingers do the walking through the yellow pages” or shop around by physically going from store to store to store. Yes, there were catlogs, but if you didn’t know a product existed, it was tough finding it!

With the Internet shopping engines, you can find almost anything from around the world, and order it shipped right to your door! You can do advanced searches, locale searches, and view the price history of an item! All within seconds! It must truly seem like magic to my parents and grandparents, how easy it is to find things on the Internet!