Khazei was on WBUR on Monday talking about the Senate race — and specifically, as he said, “jobs, jobs, jobs.” But he may have created a bit of a sticky wicket for himself. He was asked about his strong opposition to casinos in Massachusetts this morning, and here’s part of what he had to say about the argument that casinos mean new jobs:
These jobs pay $6.50 an hour — that’s below minimum wage. They aren’t even good jobs. [paraphrase]
The exact figure, according to data posted on Khazei’s website, is $6.34 an hour; Khazei says there that “Casino workers are among the worst-paid in the U.S.,” and he’s made similar comments elsewhere.
But when asked about the relevance of his work at City Year, he said something like this on the radio:
I have created 15,000 jobs…. [and we should] fully fund the Kennedy Serve America Act to create 250,000 jobs. [paraphrase]
And that’s similar to the claim in his TV ad, in which he says “I started City Year, and we created 15,000 jobs…. Ted Kennedy Serve America Act: 250,000 jobs.” Similarly, point 5 of his “6-point plan to create good paying jobs in Massachusetts and across America” (posted here at BMG) is
fully fund the new Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. The Act will provide 175,000 annual full and part-time service jobs in the first year and a total of 250,000 positions in the second year.
All well and good — but, as Bob has pointed out, these jobs are not going to put anyone’s kids through college. According to “Erin” in the video Bob posted, the City Year stipend in D.C. is $200 a week, which (assuming a 40-hour work week) is $5 an hour. City Year participants also apparently can qualify for food stamps, one of the federal goverment’s anti-poverty programs. And that’s consistent with Khazei’s website, which reports that the Serve America Act will incur average costs of $10,000 per year per member, which equates to $5 an hour, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks.
Now, I’m no math genius, but if I recall my high school calculus class correctly … let’s see, f'(g(x))*g'(x), carry the 3, … yup, $6.34 an hour is a higher wage than $5 an hour. It seems to follow that, by Khazei’s definition, the service jobs that Khazei has created, and says he wants to create more of, are not “good jobs,” and that in fact they must be “among the worst-paid in the U.S.” Now there’s a bumper sticker.
Khazei would do very well indeed to heed the advice of long-time BMGer FrankSkeffington, who has declared his support for Khazei in the Dec. 8 primary, but who questions Khazei’s ad emphasizing job creation:
I think it’s a mistake to spin the jobs angle for a couple of reasons. First, it exposes the claim to legitimate critiques like Bob’s and the bad karma that goes along with it. Secondly, and more importantly, because “jobs” is the issue de jour, Alan’s message is now pretty much the same as the other three and he fails to break through the clutter of the field.
Everyone understands that Alan is the long shot in this short campaign cycle and the only way…THE ONLY WAY…he has a chance of winning is to show he is different from the career politicians and self-funded vanity candidates that we always choose from. The reality is: Alan and his approaches are different and original. Yet this ad is just another blah, blah, jobs, blah, Sen. Kennedy, blah, blah, jobs, blah, blah, blah. Play to your strengths and lose on your own terms, instead of losing based on what the polls indicate people want to hear.
some good jobs- just not 15,000. I know a fellow who makes somewhere in the $30K range at the HQ on Columbus Ave, for instance. The number of full-time benefited positions is probably somewhere in the hundreds, nationally.
…Mitt Romney running on a promise to use his Bain connections and bring companies and jobs to MA? Funny how THAT worked out.
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p>I’m not a huge Jesse Ventura fan, but I have fond memories of him being asked about Romney during his tenure at Harvard and saying (from memory):
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p>“I’ve always felt that if government could create jobs, communism would have worked. It’s not fair to rate the success of a politician based on job creation. However, this guy actually ran on a promise to create jobs. Have at it.”
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p>Which is to say, I’m skeptical of any politician who makes that kind of claim. Especially here and in this economy.
if that rings a bell from some of our older posters. Government/non profits don’t create jobs. Growing economies create jobs. Just look at the Globe today about the stimulus sham “jobs created” figures (the Globe, not the Herald, not Drudge, not WorldNetDaily).
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p>That old bromide about a rising tide lifts all boats is true, whether you want to admit it or not. Jobs from City Year, Peace Corps are admirable or whatever, but they aren’t real jobs for real people.
then they must be at least one of the following:
* fake jobs for real people
* real jobs for fake people
* fake jobs for fake people
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p>I don’t think that you’d make the claim that the young people enrolled in CityYear are fake people. Perhaps I’m a little sensitive, since people don’t consider my occupation*, which consists of multiple reviews each year on overall performance, reviews of every single substantial output by others in the field, and the ability to produce measurable, repeatable output in order to get more work in the future to be part of the “real world”.
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p>In any case, the young folks enrolled in CityYear are real people. The jobs themselves aren’t paying a “living wage” which has a somewhat specific definition.
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p>
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p> * academia
Hence the name of the program.
I think that’s also important.
they’re stipends for public service work. A very admirable cause, but don’ confuse the issue.
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p>If you want to generate economic growth to support a state, town, city, whatever, you need to generate real jobs that pay well. No offense intended.
To be sure, jobs which pay more are preferable… and CityYear jobs pay very little.
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p>However, I do feel that all public/community service — be it in education, the environment, health, etc — generates economic growth. You improve the quality of life in MA, people will want to live here… and if you’re in business, you gotta go to where your customers are. Create a more educated population (which CityYear helps to do), you contribute to long term economic growth. Improve overall public health (which CityYear helps to do), you contribute to economic growth. Etc.
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p>that all of this false precision of Dilbert like overview kind of undercuts your time/ability to actually make money/contribute to your actual work.
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p>Reread that Globe article today on the Stimulus jobs bill. Do we want people working or filling out surveys? I’d argue the former myself.
Of course non-profits create jobs. For example, according to a survey conducted by the Johns Hopkins University Nonprofit Listening Post Project, nonprofits have an estimated $166 billion in potential infrastructure projects across the country. 27 percent of those are for new construction projects, all of which need to be designed, built, furnished… and then staffed. The other 73 percent are renovations or expansions.
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p>See:
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p>”Shovel-Ready” but Stalled: Nonprofit Infrastructure Projects Ready for Economic Recovery Support
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p>http://www.ccss.jhu.edu/index….
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p>The only people 17-24 year olds are worried about putting through college are themselves. You did not include in your math the education award of $5,350 that City Year members receive following the completion of their year commitment. As an AmeriCorps Alum, I can tell you this is not trivial. Not only that, but those City Year employees who have federal student loans can have them deferred while with City Year. This is something a 12 dollar an hour job at Starbucks does not do. Deferring student loans allows service members to gain additional skills that will make them more marketable to higher paying jobs or additional scholarships, at least this was my experience.
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p>Also, while not easily quantifiable, City Year programs that increase school attendance, literacy, civic engagement, and leadership skills among at risk populations, ultimately helps people become gainfully employed.
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p>Ask any City Year or AmeriCorps Alumni and they will tell you the positions that Alan Khazie created were most certainly “real jobs.”
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p>I know there is not much for us Democrats to take issue with in this crowd of candidates, but this argument seems especially petty.
First, on the dollars, let’s count the education benefit you mention, so the full value of the job is $15,350. Assuming 40 hour work weeks for 50 weeks, that works out to $7.68 an hour. Better than the casino jobs, I guess, and even barely above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 (though below MA’s minimum of $8). But, still, not what I think Khazei has in mind when he talks about creating “good paying jobs in Massachusetts and across America.”
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p>More broadly, I am not questioning the value of the City Year or AmeriCorps experience to either the individual or the people with whom the individual works. What I am questioning is Khazei’s strategic decision to use City Year and AmeriCorps as a major talking point for job creation as a way of getting the economy back on track. Because they are not particularly relevant to that discussion. They are about citizenship and service — things about which I know Khazei is passionate, and as to which he has unique experience in this field of candidates. Why isn’t he talking more about that, instead of trying to make the case that jobs paying either below or barely above minimum wage (depending on how you count) are somehow going to restart a stalled economy?
On the dollars: While that seems like a small increase, to be fair, that’s a 50% jump on your original estimate.
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p>On the strategy: I’m not sure he is arguing the Kennedy Serve America Act is going to get the “economy back on track,” as much as “it will put 250,000 people to work” almost immediately. As you have pointed out, he is using service jobs as ONE part of a six part plan for “targeting job creation.” Furthermore, that six part “job creation plan” is part of a larger “economic plan.”
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p>As for not pushing the citizenship/service aspect. His ad was full of it: “One person has the power to change things,” “teaching kids,” “rebuilding communities,” “serving millions of kids, seniors and veterans.”
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p>He has one 30 second ad on the air. He has little name recognition and little money, meaning his ad needed to accomplish several things.
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p>1. It needed to be a bio piece, telling us something about the candidate:
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p>He founded a successful service program in Boston.
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p>2. It needed to tell us what he is passionate about:
building community, helping kids, seniors, vets etc.
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p>3. It needed to identify an issue voters care about.
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p>Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.
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p>and,
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p>4. It had to differentiate him from other candidates.
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p>He doesn’t take PAC money.
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p>Throw in a connection to Kennedy, and you have a successful strategy that fits the candidate.
is the ONLY candidate who has come out with a proposal that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Would that be even more impressive? Surely it is not that easy, and I suppose we agree that how much a job pays overall is an important consideration.
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p>The point here, I think, is that it is disingenuous to the point of severely damaging one’s message, such as it may be, to assert that casinos produce crap jobs while simultaneously bragging about the temporary positions one’s own organization has created that are approximately identical as a matter of economics.
You and David both seem to be selectively picking parts of Khazei’s comments and positions and ascribing more meaning to them than I think is reasonable.
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p>You know that Khazie’s opposition to casinos is not strictly a matter of how much their employees make. He mentions several other reasons on his website before stating, “In this economy, people are hurting and need work. We can create good, high-paying jobs in green industries and clean energy, supporting small business and emphasizing health care, education, bio-tech, tourism, and other industries where Massachusetts has a competitive advantage.” He is not suggesting they replace would-be casino jobs with national service jobs.
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p>Even if he was, there is a rather simple argument to be made for creating low paying service jobs over low paying casino jobs. Service jobs don’t cause bankruptcies. Service jobs don’t cause addiction, etc. Casino jobs don’t teach kids to read. Casino jobs don’t prevent crime, etc.
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p>For every dollar you put into service jobs you get 3 back. In contrast, every dollar you put into a casino ends up costing you 3. These are not identical as a matter of economics.
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p>The bottom line is, during Bush’s last term, the federal agency that funds AmeriCorps, the Corporation for National and Community Service, had its budget slashed by over $105 million dollars. President Bush continually signed off on legislation that reduced the number of full-time AmeriCorps members. There are currently more Americans applying to serve than positions are available. These are jobs that people need and want. They provide the basic necessities and a few modest perks. City year has been responsible in creating some of these jobs, and the Kennedy Act will help restore the jobs lost under Bush.
The larger point here is if Khazei’s plan for jobs is thousands or even millions of 17 to 23 year olds getting the equivalent of $8/hour, that’s the WPA, not a jobs program. Talk about the value of a massive public service agency that will employ young people and rebuild our nation’s infrastructure (while undermining unions, but, you know, that’s a conversation for another day). Hell, talk about it in terms of obligatory public service, as a means of helping pay for college, like an alternative to ROTC. But don’t make that 35 year old newly-unemployed guy rush off to the polls thinking he’ll be able to pay his mortgage if he gets one of Khazei’s newly created jobs.
Again,
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p>I’m with you, it would be truly disturbing if Khazei’s whole plan was to employ everyone by putting them into national service jobs, which seems to be what people around here think. Of course that is not his plan and you all know better. This is simply ONE part of a larger jobs plan– a jobs plan that is part of a larger economic recovery plan. He has even written about it right here on this blog.
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p>Also, it is not just 35 year olds who need jobs. The unemployment rate for people 17-24 is double that of 35 year olds.
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p>Alan is a service guy, of course he is advocating that part of a comprehensive jobs plan should include jobs that put young people to work through service. President Obama made the same argument.
name me one other candidate who came out with a plan to create hundreds of thousands of good jobs in Massachusetts, and millions across the country. One other candidate. When you do that, I’ll address your other concerns (probably by linking to my comments that tore them apart in your first diary on this).
“National Service and Youth Unemployment Strategies for Job Creation Amid Economic Recovery”
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p>”By connecting unemployed youth with opportunities to serve our country and our people, investments in national service can fill the needs not only of low-income Americans but also jobless young Americans,” the report says. “This policy solution also helps the economy overall – putting people back to work creates economic demand that will help get the economy back on its feet.”
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p>Read the whole thing:
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p>http://www.americanprogress.or…