And you know their names. Start with Mitch McConnell and read carefully, or not so carefully, anything he has ever said about Obama.
We have visited the problems of jobs for young people before. Here is Paul Krugman explaining the problem quite clearly in the New York Times today.
Wasting Our Minds
By PAUL KRUGMAN
In Spain, the unemployment rate among workers under 25 is more than 50
percent. In Ireland almost a third of the young are unemployed. Here in
America, youth unemployment is “only” 16.5 percent, which is still
terrible — but things could be worse.
And sure enough, many politicians are doing all they can to guarantee
that things will, in fact, get worse. We’ve been hearing a lot about the
war on women, which is real enough. But there’s also a war on the
young, which is just as real even if it’s better disguised. And it’s
doing immense harm, not just to the young, but to the nation’s future.
Let’s start with some advice Mitt Romney gave to college students during
an appearance last week. After denouncing President Obama’s
“divisiveness,” the candidate told his audience, “Take a shot, go for
it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from
your parents, start a business.”
The first thing you notice here is, of course, the Romney touch — the
distinctive lack of empathy for those who weren’t born into affluent
families, who can’t rely on the Bank of Mom and Dad to finance their
ambitions. But the rest of the remark is just as bad in its own way.
I mean, “get the education”? And pay for it how? Tuition at public
colleges and universities has soared, in part thanks to sharp reductions
in state aid. Mr. Romney isn’t proposing anything that would fix that;
he is, however, a strong supporter of the Ryan budget plan, which would
drastically cut federal student aid, causing roughly a million students
to lose their Pell grants.
So how, exactly, are young people from cash-strapped families supposed
to “get the education”? Back in March Mr. Romney had the answer: Find
the college “that has a little lower price where you can get a good
education.” Good luck with that. But I guess it’s divisive to point out
that Mr. Romney’s prescriptions are useless for Americans who weren’t
born with his advantages.
There is, however, a larger issue: even if students do manage, somehow,
to “get the education,” which they do all too often by incurring a lot
of debt, they’ll be graduating into an economy that doesn’t seem to want
them.
You’ve probably heard lots about how workers with college degrees are
faring better in this slump than those with only a high school
education, which is true. But the story is far less encouraging if you
focus not on middle-aged Americans with degrees but on recent graduates.
Unemployment among recent graduates
has soared; so has part-time work, presumably reflecting the inability
of graduates to find full-time jobs. Perhaps most telling, earnings have
plunged even among those graduates working full time — a sign that many
have been forced to take jobs that make no use of their education.
College graduates, then, are taking it on the chin thanks to the weak
economy. And research tells us that the price isn’t temporary: students
who graduate into a bad economy never recover the lost ground. Instead,
their earnings are depressed for life.
What the young need most of all, then, is a better job market. People
like Mr. Romney claim that they have the recipe for job creation: slash
taxes on corporations and the rich, slash spending on public services
and the poor. But we now have plenty of evidence on how these policies
actually work in a depressed economy — and they clearly destroy jobs
rather than create them.
For as you look at the economic devastation in Europe, you should bear
in mind that some of the countries experiencing the worst devastation
have been doing everything American conservatives say we should do here.
Not long ago, conservatives gushed over Ireland’s economic policies,
especially its low corporate tax rate; the Heritage Foundation used to
give it higher marks for “economic freedom” than any other Western
nation. When things went bad, Ireland once again received lavish praise,
this time for its harsh spending cuts, which were supposed to inspire
confidence and lead to quick recovery.
And now, as I said, almost a third of Ireland’s young can’t find jobs.
What should we do to help America’s young? Basically, the opposite of
what Mr. Romney and his friends want. We should be expanding student
aid, not slashing it. And we should reverse the de facto austerity
policies that are holding back the U.S. economy — the unprecedented
cutbacks at the state and local level, which have been hitting education
especially hard.
Yes, such a policy reversal would cost money. But refusing to spend that
money is foolish and shortsighted even in purely fiscal terms.
Remember, the young aren’t just America’s future; they’re the future of
the tax base, too.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste; wasting the minds of a whole generation is even more terrible. Let’s stop doing it.
P.S. In the Sunday (April 29, 2012) New York Times Magazine, Krugman takes Ben Bernacke to the wood shed.
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