U-Talk: How would you describe the current state of Utah and the country?
-
- Brooke Weiler
-
- Zack Dearing
-
- Todd Blackbuln
-
- Nathan Prescott
-
- Jessica Gurney
Tiana Lao, Special to the Daily Herald
Brooke Weiler
“I personally feel like Utah is going in the very wrong direction right now, especially with stuff with handling our water and our air. I think it’s been very greedy and selfish of them to approve using, like, water runoff that would normally go into the Great Salt Lake, and giving it to these companies like Facebook to keep their servers cool. Why are we giving water away when we don’t even have enough for the people moving here, let alone the fact that the Great Salt Lake’s drying up, we have all this arsenic dust blowing around — it’s ridiculous, so I feel like they’ve become very greedy, and they’re just lining their own pockets.” — Brooke Weiler, Lehi
“From my ignorant perspective, I think things are going well. I think I would like to see more unity across the board when it comes to, like, political views, and what’s going on in the world. It’s hard, obviously, everyone has such strong opinions on both ends. … I feel like things are okay, but it could be better financially. It’s bizarre how wild the economy has spiked. My property taxes has raised, my mortgages has raised, every single bill that I pay has raised, including, obviously, groceries, gas, the obvious things. But my income hasn’t really raised. I don’t want to put any blame on one single person, but at the end of the day, they’re elected to run our country and our states, you know?” — Zack Dearing, Orem
“It’s bad. I mean, you know, he’s not done anything about immigration, wages haven’t went up, cost of living is just out of control, and they’re rich, so they don’t care. They get paid whether they do their job or not. I don’t get paid if I don’t do my job, but they get paid. That’s why everything is running bad in my mind. That’s how I see it, you know, and I understand that people that immigrate, they’re looking for a better life, but the problem is where they live they don’t make any money. Wages are never going to go up if more immigrants come here and want to work for less, and they work for a lot less.” — Todd Blackbuln, Provo
“Well, all I see are prices going up ever since (Joe Biden has) taken presidency, and I wish there’s something he could do about that because while prices are going up, my actual paycheck isn’t going up, so it makes things a lot more difficult. I would say that, from my experience and talking to other people, that’s the same thing. … I just feel like Utah is doing better than — I would say — other parts of the nation, but things in Utah are still starting to price out those with normal incomes, rather than tech incomes. It seems like the Tech industry has come here, and driven prices up that a normal Utahn can’t afford to buy a house.” — Nathan Prescott, Orem
“As a school teacher, I feel like I want to create the ability for students to disagree in a way. I just feel like it’s hard to watch our leaders act worse than my high school students. That they have less manners, not necessarily Joe Biden, but as I watched the State of the Union, our representatives shouting. I wouldn’t tolerate the behavior that happened in the House, in the Senate, as I watched them interact with each other, I wouldn’t tolerate that behavior from my students. The lack of respect that I see that they have for each other, I wish that I could sit them down and say this is how we talk to each other, and this is how we disagree, but sadly, I feel like a lot of the country is in the same space.” — Jessica Gurney, Lindon
Tiana Lao, Special to the Daily Herald
Zack Dearing
Photos and interviews by Tiana Lao, Special to the Daily Herald.
Have a suggestion for a question you’d like us to ask? Send it to hepstein@standard.net.
Todd Blackbuln
Nathan Prescott
Jessica Gurney
