As a regular consumer of this stuff, opinion piece or otherwise, I like to see data. Not data that is abstractly connected to an opinion like “parents with 1.6

As a regular consumer of this stuff, opinion piece or otherwise, I like to see data. Not data that is abstractly connected to an opinion like “parents with 1.6 trillion dollars,” but real data: how many quitters, what percentage of the age group, where and how were the data collected, does quitting mean “temporary unemployment” or “going back to school”, etc. ? Because if you are writing an opinion piece to change people’s minds, you need to be credible. If this were written by a well known sociologist, then maybe the author gets a pass. But just anyone who can press keys on a keyboard? Nah. They need to back it up with data or forget about writing it. This particular opinion piece has no relevant supporting data, so it’s useless except to portray one group of people in a potentially false light and appeal to another group of people who eat that up. And that’s just sad. So, I guess this is where we are with a newspaper that used to stand for so much more. What a shame.