Obama’s Payback To America’s Youth For Their Devotion
The crash is hard when it comes. Our poor yoot were deceived and ignorant about what/who they were voting for. Perhaps their eyes are slowly opening....
[U]pper-middle-class professionals—are suddenly downwardly mobile. For years, they used rising family wealth to help foot the bill for college, down payments for houses and start-up cash for children’s careers. But pay cuts, layoffs and the decade-long flat-lining of the stock market mean many families can no longer help their children.
This comes as young adults could use a financial helping hand more than ever. The unemployment rate for workers ages 16 to 29 was 15.2% in March, the highest rate since 1948, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In general, highly trained and educated workers are faring better than those without degrees in this labor market. The unemployment rate for college graduates is 5%, compared with 9.7% overall. In general, the employment picture is improving, with employers adding 162,000 jobs in March, the biggest monthly gain in three years.
Even so, the average length of unemployment, 31 weeks, is at its highest level since 1948. There were a total of 2.3 million unemployed college graduates in March 2010, 1.45 million more than in March 2007, with heavy layoffs in white-collar sectors such as finance.
![[DOWNWARD]](http://sg.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-AU589B_DOWNW_NS_20100404193206.gif)
So the young are being penalized by Obama’s economic policies and healthcare mandate. And those making over $250,000 (who voted for Obama by a majority) are now having to pay for the rest of the President’s welfare policies.
I think I’ve figured out Obama’s principles: Use them, throw them under the bus, move on to next target. No wonder he hearts Castro & Chavez.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
19 Comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
So tweens and their parents are unemployed, at the same time college and health insurance costs alike continue to skyrocket.
The untold story of youth unemployment is: the minimum wage. It’s a proven job-killer.
The untold story of skyrocketing education costs is: student loans and other government “aid”. They are subsidies to the education industry, and subsidies are a proven way to make costs skyrocket.
The more you increase student “aid”, the more you worsen the cost problem. Lefties generally aren’t smart enough to grasp it, but it’s true. Eliminate all student loan programs, and education costs will drop like a rock, down to 1960s levels.
Same is true with everything the government subsidizes: Health care. Home ownership. All the government programs to “help” home buyers don’t help them at all. They help home *sellers*, by artificially inflating home prices.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — April 5, 2010 @ 12:03 pm - April 5, 2010
The problem with this analysis is that the youth will never realize that it is the administration’s policies that are to blame. They will blame capitalism, Republicans, wall street greed, or the Fox News network.
They will continue to support him no matter how bad it gets, because it’s not his fault.
Comment by John — April 5, 2010 @ 1:06 pm - April 5, 2010
Free tickets to Dave Mathews concerts, elect the person who gives them to you without knowing anything and then you are UNEMPLOYED.
Well, take heart you can live in your parents basement and be on their healthcare until you are 26.
Comment by PatriotMom — April 5, 2010 @ 1:17 pm - April 5, 2010
ILC – I can understand your point about the minimum wage but I don’t think it’s the job-killer it’s made out to be. The problem isn’t loss of minimum wage jobs; the problem is the loss of “career” jobs.
I would add that a labor market without a minimum wage is not compatible with our (de facto) open-borders policy.
Comment by SoCalRobert — April 5, 2010 @ 2:24 pm - April 5, 2010
Please note that I said, “The untold story of -youth- unemployment…”
Not sure what you mean, perhaps you could explain. Abolishing the minimum wage would increase hiring at the low end (example – entry-level retail) over what it is now, which would eat up some of the youth unemployment as well as presently-unemployed immigrants.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — April 5, 2010 @ 2:46 pm - April 5, 2010
I would add that a labor market without a minimum wage is not compatible with our (de facto) open-borders policy.
I disagree. To me, that requires the logic that people who are already breaking the law by hiring people who aren’t legally able to work in this country are following the ones about how they’re paid. Furthermore, even if they were following it, a minimum-wage law exacerbates the open-borders issues by artificially distorting the cost of labor upward in the United States, creating a vacuum that is then filled from other countries in which the market rate for labor is much lower. Why work in Mexico for $2 per hour if you can demand $8 per hour in the States?
As it stands now, the minimum wage requirement is a huge disincentive to verify employment and hire US citizens.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — April 5, 2010 @ 3:11 pm - April 5, 2010
Much as I’d like, it’s a tad premature to attribute high youth unemployment and the end of the Mommy and Daddy serving as a perpetual ATM on ObamaCare. I’m not saying that ObamaCare won’t kill the economy, I’m just saying it’s not responsible for the current bad economy.
Comment by Rhodium Heart — April 5, 2010 @ 3:50 pm - April 5, 2010
Every time raising the minimum wage is discussed and debated the experts predict 100,000- 300,000 jobs lost for teenagers. The pols dont’ care because of their ties to the unions.
The last minimum wage increase happened in the middle of a deep recession. Duhhh record unemployument amongst the young…..people shouldn’t act surprised. I remember the debate and the predictions.
Like voting for Obama, I wasn’t one of the millions fooled.
Comment by Gene in Pennsylvania — April 5, 2010 @ 4:48 pm - April 5, 2010
And btw, don’t let America’s youth see the video of Barack Obama throwing the first pitch at the Nationals game….
he throws an awful lot like a girl.
He was HIGH and WAY LEFT……surprised??
http://dailypostal.com/2010/04/05/obama-first-pitch-video-nationals-season-opener/
Comment by Gene in Pennsylvania — April 5, 2010 @ 5:22 pm - April 5, 2010
When I wrote “(de facto) open borders”, I was not making any distinction between legal and illegal immigration. It’s supply vs. demand. If you increase the supply of labor to exceed demand, the price will fall (see Grapes of Wrath).
As far as youth unemployment, from what I’ve seen over the last few years, I don’t know if this is due to the fact that a lot of kids don’t need to work or the fact they’ve been replaced by low-skill immigrants.
Whether here in California, or in Kansas or Missouri, the vast majority of people working at McDonald’s or the local car wash are immigrants. Ditto for lawn service and summertime construction work. These are no longer entry-level jobs for Americans kids.
Comment by SoCalRobert — April 5, 2010 @ 8:12 pm - April 5, 2010
Immigrants working for… less than the mandated minimum wage?
Note that “kids [who] don’t need to work” would not be counted in the unemployment statistics. Just as housewives aren’t counted. You are only counted if you want a job enough to actually look for one. I’ve taken it as a starting point that we are talking about the subset of kids who do need and want jobs. Here is the intro to a BLS report on youth unemployment in summer 2009:
So let’s see. A significant percentage of the youth labor force was so discouraged in summer 2009 that they didn’t even bother to look. Undoubtedly, some number of them also “don’t need to work” as you put it. And I don’t know what that number is. But surely, in the summer of 2009 of all times, that number would have had to be a little lower than normal, rather than normal or higher. And then, among the ones who *did* feel hopeful and/or desperate enough to look for work, unemployment was a record 48.6%. And, as if by coincidence, the minimum wage had been increased in summer 2009 to $7.25, from the previous year’s $6.55.
So, was all that unemployment caused by minimum wage laws, immigrants or both? Well, why can’t it be both?
- To the extent immigrants (or native-born youth for that matter) are working at mandated, high minimum wage: their employers are able to create fewer jobs.
- Or to the extent that immigrants (or native-born youth) are working below the minimum wage: it illustrates the point that when we’re talking about unskilled, rock-bottom-entry jobs, employers can create more such jobs if they don’t have to pay an artificially inflated wage.
So it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about native-born youth or immigrants, the point is identical for both: Mandates that force employers to pay more for an unskilled job (or any other job) than the job is worth, destroy significant numbers of jobs. Come on SCR, this has been proven time and again and is Econ 101 stuff.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — April 5, 2010 @ 8:53 pm - April 5, 2010
ILC – I’m having a tough time making my point in a few words… all I’m trying to say is that a labor market with no set floor on wages makes sense only if external competition is limited in such a way as to benefit the nation as a whole (and a nation of people working at subsistence wages is not a benefit).
As far as employers are concerned (McDonald’s or Microsoft) there are never enough workers willing to work at the wages they would like to pay. That’s why Microsoft agitates for more and more H1Bs while laying off workers and why so many businesses advocate comprehensive immigration “reform” despite persistent high unemployment.
High unemployment among “utes” is due to many factors (including the minimum wage). The legal and regulatory environment impacts employment of minors (safety, limits on hours, the likelihood that the parents will sue if something happens, &c).
There are sociological reasons for unemployed inner-city teens as well – the lack of employers being a big one.
I also believe that, given the large number of adult immigrants, many employers prefer to hire adults over teens (I’m pretty sure I would – being an old fart and all).
Comment by SoCalRobert — April 5, 2010 @ 11:43 pm - April 5, 2010
Back in the late ’70′s Time and Newsweek heralded the switch of our economy from being primarily a production economy to a service economy.
Everything imaginable is manufactured in China and shipped to the US. Welfare in the US far exceeds general wages in China. Shipping is a fixed cost whether it is a container of cat litter or a piece of fancy construction equipment, the transportation costs are negligible. Furthermore, there is no major US shipping fleet, so we do not even make money there.
We still build houses and buildings, but we even import the rotten Chinese wallboard that is causing a minnie crisis. We sell each other stuff. We loan money and collect payments. We design things. We sue each other. We landscape. We promote products and services. We entertain. We soldier. And a few farm or work in manufacturing or cut trees or catch crabs.
When the service economy goes sour, what job do you take? If you are the project manager on a team of developers and there is no project to manage ……
Laying off workers in a service economy means that McDonald’s gets a higher quality employee and the new hire takes a huge pay cut. The former McDonald’s worker goes on the dole.
WWII created a full employment economy and there was a massive growth industry and manufacturing.
What is the stimulus to kick start a stalled service economy? The European Union and England are sinking in service economy and social welfare debt. When you load more and more on the backs of employers to pay for social welfare, you quickly discover that employers shed jobs. Running out of other people’s money is death to both socialism and a service economy.
Comment by heliotrope — April 6, 2010 @ 10:02 am - April 6, 2010
As far as employers are concerned (McDonald’s or Microsoft) there are never enough workers willing to work at the wages they would like to pay. That’s why Microsoft agitates for more and more H1Bs while laying off workers and why so many businesses advocate comprehensive immigration “reform” despite persistent high unemployment.
That is simple economics. Why should you pay more for something if you can get the same thing of equal quality for a cheaper price elsewhere? You can make that choice, but there is no reason that the government should make it for you.
The flip side of that is that, if you are not having to pay as much for basic services, you can afford more expensive or capital-intensive things. So Microsoft isn’t paying as much for basic developers. That gives it more money to plow into R&D, more money to pay its top architects and designers, and more money to spend on other things. Instead of having to spend money to prop up an artificial wage structure, it can put that money to use for other things.
Minimum wage laws are, at their core, redistributionist. The only way you can afford to pay more for less-skilled and less-valuable labor is by either raising your prices, which redistributes from customers to the lower-skilled labor, or by cutting your compensation for more highly-skilled employees.
Social improvement would come from making the workforce’s skills more valuable, not paying them more for less-skilled work. Liberals should be hammered with the fact that, given that they’ve been in control of the American educational establishment for forty years, it is now officially their fault that black and Hispanic children are failing at a much higher rate than whites and that American students have lost their ability to compete in a global economy.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — April 6, 2010 @ 11:48 am - April 6, 2010
NDT – that sounds fine in theory. But the reality can be seen in Charles Murray’s “Bell Curve”. This isn’t Lake Woebegone where all the kids are above average. I don’t know what you do but it’s a sure bet that, somewhere in the world, there is someone willing to do it for a whole lot less.
If the people in the middle and left side of the curve have to compete with workers in Bangladesh (and workers imported from Bangladesh) then our standard of living will fall until equilibrium is established.
In the STEM sector, being in the upper deviations doesn’t guarantee much of anything anymore.
You are correct that leftist social policy puts us at a huge disadvantage (as does our tax system). I remain pessimistic.
See here for an education horror story: http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_how_i_joined.html
After you read the City Journal piece, read The Onion article and marvel at the creditability of the Onion piece. http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_how_i_joined.html
Comment by SoCalRobert — April 6, 2010 @ 2:50 pm - April 6, 2010
Oops: correct link for Onion story
http://www.theonion.com/articles/teach-for-america-chews-up-spits-out-another-ethni,1293/
Comment by SoCalRobert — April 6, 2010 @ 3:08 pm - April 6, 2010
I don’t know what you do but it’s a sure bet that, somewhere in the world, there is someone willing to do it for a whole lot less.
Possibly. But in my case, proximity, the required knowledge of Federal and California state law, the time difference, and the virtual impossibility of doing my job effectively on a remote basis make it a far better deal to pay me instead.
As someone with a considerable amount of experience in outsourcing, just because someone’s salary is lower doesn’t mean that having them do it is less expensive. If someone costs you half as much but takes twice the amount of time to complete the same task, you aren’t gaining anything by outsourcing.
That brings us to this point.
If the people in the middle and left side of the curve have to compete with workers in Bangladesh (and workers imported from Bangladesh) then our standard of living will fall until equilibrium is established.
Not so. Despite outsourcing a major portion of our industrial and manufacturing base in the past forty years, our economy has continued to grow by leaps and bounds and our standard of living has risen.
A simple explanation of why would be the housekeeper example. Two years ago, my partner and I hired a housekeeping service to come and clean our house twice a month. I balked at the additional $400 per month to our budget — until my partner pointed out that a) we spent three hours each a week cleaning the house, or 24 hours per month between the two of us, b) that that boiled down to us paying someone about $17/per hour to do it for us, and c) that my going consulting rate, or how much I was able to earn per hour, was more than three times that. Net net, between the two of us, we figured that, while we were spending $400 per month for housekeeping, it freed us up to earn an additional $1200 per month in revenue — because we were able to use the additional time for paid and higher-revenue activities instead of wasting it on housekeeping.
Had we just continued to do it ourselves, we’d have saved $400, but we wouldn’t be making anything, and the housekeeping service wouldn’t have the additional $400. From an economic standpoint, we’ve gone from earning nothing for our housework to providing an additional $1600 of economic kick — $1200 for us and $400 paid to the housekeeping service.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — April 6, 2010 @ 3:39 pm - April 6, 2010
[...] Farmers? and Obamacare Support Plunging So Fast You’d Think a Kennedy Was at the Helm GayPatriot: Obama’s Payback To America’s Youth For Their Devotion and On the racial accusations leveled against Tea Parties and Americans’ Negative View of [...]
Pingback by Just Like ACORN, Without the Underage Prostitution Rings… Support Patriotism, Personal Responsibilities, Voting in November, & Tea Party Movement (video) « Frugal Café Blog Zone — April 6, 2010 @ 6:03 pm - April 6, 2010
I have a daughter who voted for Obama in this age group and she’s (Finally!) found good, steady work within the last few months.
She was NOT happy when she found out she’d be paying Federal Income Tax. She thought for sure she’d be receiving a refund.
I cheered her up by reminding her of the 30 million illegal aliens who were depending on her
Comment by Bobbie — April 8, 2010 @ 7:48 pm - April 8, 2010