Cross posted from YDMA’s website
The US economy remains weak at best. The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that job growth in August was at zero. And this while a number of US corporations reported record revenues and profits during the second quarter. It leaves us wondering, where are the jobs? We’ve been told countless times that we need to cut taxes, further, to improve the economy and get people back to work. The reality is tax cuts will have little if any impact on real job growth. And tax cuts fly in the face of all those calling for the US to cut deficit spending and reduce the national debt. Now is the time to invest in the American worker. We need bold plans to invest in our future and support young workers who are disproportionately affected by the current economic crisis. Below we highlight key areas we hope the President addresses in his speech Thursday night.
Youth employment
Unemployment disproportionately affects young Americans. Current data shows that nearly 18.1% of Americans age of 16 to 24 are unemployed. A rate double that of the national average (9.1%). It should also be noted that a disproportionate number of black youth, 31% in this age bracket are unemployed compared to 15.9% of whites.
YDM supports an extension of unemployment benefits until national unemployment levels drop below 7 percent. Temporary extensions only serve to “kick the can” and leave families uncertain of the future. We must not turn our back on American families in their time of need.
Second, we support funding for youth summer jobs programs. Youth jobs programs provide young people with an opportunity to earn money, build character, and gain self-esteem and self-worth. Last year, Senator Kerry proposed an amendment that would have provided summer jobs for seven thousand youth in Massachusetts. Unfortunately Senator Scott Brown voted against the amendment.
Student Loan Debt
Two-thirds of college students incur student-loan debt while at a 4-year college. This should come as no surprise. A recent report on CNN, found tuition at four year colleges has nearly doubled in the past two decades, while median income remained stagnant during the same time period. Federal aid has failed to keep up with rising costs. This leaves families and young people relying more on student loans to help them afford college. Leaving them with an average student loan debt of nearly $25,000.
YDM supports an increase in funding for Pell Grants to reduce the need for loans. We also support protecting tax breaks for student loan interest. Both strategies will help reduce the financial burden of tuition on working families.
Invest in Higher Education
To be a competitive in the 21st century, it is imperative the US invest in education. This includes providing low interest student loans and expanding financial aid through programs like the Pell Grant. In June, President Obama announced a major initiative “Skills for America’s Future”. The purpose is to bring together industry and community colleges to develop a better trained and more competitive work force with a target for training 500,000 workers. However, a recent report by The Project on Student Loan Debt found that nearly 1 million Americans attending community college in 31 states do not have access to Federal student loans. To deal with this unfortunate situation students are forced to borrow from high interest private loan companies and credit cards or work longer hours, take fewer classes, or drop out all together. No matter which solution students choose, without low interest loans from the Federal government we are stacking the odds against their future academic success.
YDM supports a mandate that community colleges in all 50 states provide students at 2 and 4 year colleges access to low interest federal student loans.
Invest in infrastructure
Across the US, infrastructure in the form of road and bridge and water and sewer lines are dated and in need of serious repair and replacement. We in Massachusetts know firsthand what happens when you do not properly invest in infrastructure.
Most everyone in the Greater Boston area remembers the large holes that opened up on I-93 last August. Investments in our local infrastructure led to programs like the Fast 14 project. A historic and successful bridge replacement program that replaced 14 bridge on I-93 in Medford. A project that would normally take years was completed in one summer.
YDM supports a clean extension of the transportation bill. This bill represents thousands of jobs right now. Without it, Massachusetts is estimated to lose more than fourteen thousand jobs. These initiatives will provide thousands of needs jobs across the country. And will support our economic prosperity for decades to come.
Invest in energy
Reports indicate that our energy infrastructure is vulnerable and in need of updating. Any jobs bill should include investments in our energy infrastructure (The grid) in the name of national security. But we shouldn’t stop there. Every year we spend billions on carbon based energy. If we are serious about national security then we must continue to invest aggressively in alternative forms of energy like wind and solar. It will decrease US dollars going overseas, reduce carbon emissions, and put more money back in tax payers’ pockets.
YDM supports investments in updating our energy infrastructure and providing funding for research in renewable energies so that we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil and other carbon based energies.
Extend the payroll tax break
Most workers pay a 6.2% tax to help fund Social Security. This tax is matched by their employers, for a total contribution of 12.4%. As part of the stimulus package, President Obama reduced the workers contribution to 4.2% for one year. This temporary tax break provides the average family with another $1,000 to spend. This tax relief is set to expire on January 1st. President Obama would like to extend this tax break for one more year, while Republicans who are normally for tax breaks oppose the initiative. And yes you are right this is the same party who twice supported the Bush tax cuts.
YDM supports an extension of the payroll tax break so that families in Massachusetts can use the extra money to support themselves in their time of need.
You’ll have an opportunity to hear the President speak about his plan on Thursday night. So set your alarms for 8PM on Thursday September 8th and follow along with us on Facebook and twitter. Use the hashtag #YouthJobs.
And if you are in the area join us for a special watch party at Boston Beer Works located at 110 Canal St. starting at 7PM until the end of the speech. Get all the details and RSVP on Facebook!
Best,
John H Kleschinsky
Vice-chair of Programming & Policy
Young Democrats of Massachusetts
All income should be taxed w/social security tax – if the “cap” were removed, and those earning $500k a year were taxed the 6% ON THE WHOLE $500k, not just the first $110k – my read is that takes care of social security just fine.
And my “where is Harry Hopkins, the WPA and the CCP when you need them” type posts go back to 2008.
An economy needs to have jobs for all the different types of people – learning styles vary, personality types vary, inherent skill sets vary (visual strengths/verbal strengths/brawn – etc)
Failure to support community college and technical education has led to 4.7 million unfillable jobs. You read me right. 4.7 million.
That is not opinion, but a collected, hard wired statistic.
And no, opinions don’t become facts Judy. Lies become believed when repeated often enough – that is Law One of the bible of PR.
Could you link your technical ed statistic? I’d love to read that research.
Here’s the executive summary of the report.
This should put even more pressure on the President and Congress to increase funding (grants and loans) for two and four year colleges. I couldn’t believe it when I found out that community colleges in 31 states do not offer federal student loans.
I got that statistic from the Massachusetts Area Planing Council (MPAC) trainings that I attended. Their website is a goldmine of information, actually, not just as to this: http://www.mapc.org/
Construction jobs from repairing and expanding our public information infrastructure are far more wholesome than for building gambling palaces so that rapacious outsiders can truck their profits out of Massachusetts and create minimum wage jobs.
Those 85,000 jobs would be “living wage jobs” and average at least 30k – 45k. A whole lot better than 12k in a supermarket or burger palace, though any job is better than none to be sure.
anyway, thanks again JK. Letting the elite private schools suck the “oxygen” and funding out of higher education in this state so that we are – last check – 47th in per capita funding for public higher education among the 50 states is both shameful and stupid. See http://phenomonline.org/
The current tax is 6.2% for employee, 6.2% for employer.
What would happen if it were increased to 6.25%? 6.3%? I mean, that’s a pretty small fraction. On a $52,000 salary, the 0.05% increase is fifty cents a week. How much more ‘solvent’ would it make SS? I agree that we should raise the cap [though maybe not eliminate it], but I wonder why simply raising the contribution a smidge is out of the question.
Here’s another idea, and stay with me folks. You raise the retirement age to 67, BUT for every year you work a blue collar job, the retirement age is reduced one month. Work 36 years in blue collar job, and you retire at 64 instead of 65. Work behind a desk in an AC office, you’re likely to have two more years of work left in you. I’m not married to the numbers — they’re illustrative. I do like the idea of letting blue collar workers retire sooner. Their bodies wear out sooner, and they die sooner. Seems fair to me. Yes, defining ‘blue collar’ is tricky. Of course, all of this is effective for people 15 or younger… I don’t ever like the idea of changing any working person’s retirement plan; it seems unfair that they’ve planned for one thing and are getting something else.
In 1983 it was raised 1 month for every year after 1938 to when you were born.
I’m an education guy. Love it. Believe in it. I’ve attended public, private, parochial, and international schools. Pre-school, K-12, undergrad, masters, and PhD. I even went to academic summer camps.
Here’s the thing — if you increase Pell Grants, you end up with higher tuition. When schools are embarrassed by the size of their tuition, they increase the price of dorms and meal plans. When those get so high that it’s cheaper to live off campus, they increase book store fees. When kids discover Amazon or usedbookz.com or whatever, they increase lab fees, community fees, technology fees, etc. I’d much rather see the US Gov’t drive the price of tuition down than help students pay a higher tuition.
How to do that? Here’s a few ideas:
1. For gov’t grants, provide a lower overhead number. Force universities to drive down their costs — energy, staffing, building costs, etc. Classrooms should be getting 50 hours of use a week, and for more weeks each year. Labs should be energy efficient. Etc. Note: this has a much bigger impact on a research university than it does on a college.
2. Develop a DOE program modeled after Harvard’s energy efficiency program [or another]. The idea: you invest the university’s endowment on energy efficiency upgrades, measure and verify the upgrades, and they repay the endowment [plus interest] from the operations budget. It becomes a safe and stable investment for the endowment and drives down operations cost long run.
3. Simplify and consolidate scholarships and grants, and reduce risk by making the requirements to hold on to them for four years clear. This applies both to the university and to outside groups. Within the university, you show up with $15k and you can set up a scholarship… that pays out $500/yr. The administrative hassle of dealing with such a small scholarship with its own requirements and application process isn’t worth it. Figure out how to roll it in to a department/college/university’s general scholarship fund. Same goes for Rotary, Lion’s Club, 7th Baptist Church of Leesville. Asking kids to spend hours their senior year of college applying for your one time $100 or $500 or even $1000 scholarship is crazy. In the end, it doesn’t help kids go to college, because it’s such a small amount that it doesn’t substantially change their student loan outlook. Group together, merge ’em, make the application less convoluted, and pay out for each of the next four years.
4. The Feds should help the State Universities. Matching funds with tuition caps or some other complex method. Figure out how to let the Feds contribute but to get tuition reductions in the process.
5. Federal Universities. We have three major ones now — West Point, Naval Academy, and Air Force Academy. Let’s build more, and not have them focused on war. We don’t have enough primary care physicians? Fine. Include a medical school combined with a VA/Medicare/caid hospital, and forgive medical school tuition after X years of being a PCP. We don’t have enough skilled teachers? True. Let’s teach both undergrad & graduate teaching degrees, and same deal… work in a struggling school district for Y years, and tuition is forgiven. Not enough American citizen scientists? Same deal. Think of this as the national “public option.” Lots of other nations have public universities, and we have a clear tradition of both state and federal universities already, so it’s not new territory. Providing more seats where the tuition is low, the frills are few, the degree is solid and respected, and the output helps to reduce shortages of available American labor force are all good things, and worth the investment.
6. Standardized textbooks. Please. Look, chem 101 hasn’t changed much in 30 years [maybe some lab equipment]. Same goes for calculus, econ 101 [despite Governor Perry’s proclamations at the debate], etc. Standardize the textbook, don’t re-version it, and drive down the price to $20 a book, not $100. I recognize that for more specialized classes it’s harder to drive down the price, but start with the freshman classes. There’s no excuse for this nonsense. If just the state universities banded together and agreed on a few books, they could form some monopsony power and drive down the price.
7. Enough with building dorms which rival Las Vegas hotels. The cost per student of new housing is astronomical. No, you’re not entitled to a bathroom per four students. No, you’re not entitled to your own bedroom. No, you’re not entitled to a living room divided up amongst six kids. Two to a room, bathroom down the hall, large building, common spaces with pool tables and couches. It’s cheap, it’s efficient, and it’s been a model that’s been used for 100 or so years.
8. Reduce drop out rates, without reducing standards. I don’t know how. But look, $80,000 of college debt with a BS is a hell of a lot better than $30,000 of college debt with 1.5 years of college and no degree. This is a particular problem with black students, especially black men.
9. Libraries. Universities brag about the size of their libraries like 14 year olds brag about the size of their pricks. I don’t know what the future of libraries are, and I believe that their roles are growing more complex, but what I do know is that undergrads don’t need very many books from the library. They need IT support, they need a place to study individually and in groups, and they need help and mentoring in the process of finding, collecting, sorting through, and thinking critically about data and information. I suspect that universities will be able to drive down the cost of their libraries while offering modern services which are in fact important to students. Other universities won’t do either — they’ll just keep building bigger libraries with larger collections of dead trees which aren’t very useful to anyone.
Just some thoughts. Note that I didn’t mention salaries. I don’t believe that salaries are the problem. Look — to be a professor you’ve got to get a PhD, which has tremendous opportunity costs and a high likelihood of failure [with no door prize]. Then, you finish at 27 or older, land a job at a university in BFE, move your family there, and work your butt off for 7 years, 70+ hours a week, 50 weeks a year… and then maybe you keep your job, or maybe you’re fired. So now you’re 35 and you finally have job security after 15+ years of the exact opposite. You’re an expert in your field, and you’re contributing to society’s knowledge. In many fields, you could make more as a consultant. So yeah, I don’t think that universities can drive down costs and keep quality by cutting wages.
Also, none of these suggestions are silver bullets, and in many cases there is a problem where nobody has an incentive to make these things happen. Still, tuition prices have risen faster than health care prices, which would be fine if wages rose along with — but they haven’t. Many universities are Robin Hood’ing it, charging high tuition but building in many scholarships and grants for poorer kids. The problem is that it creates a barrier — most poorer families are discouraged before even reaching to get in to those good schools [with a tuition break]. They also don’t know that taking on $50,000+ in student loans is a good idea.
Universities need to work together to drive down their costs. The Feds could enact some policies to encourage it, cajole it, or require it.
If they are facing outside competition from used book vendors for example, why wouldn’t they lower their own prices to be competitive?
I have a number of friends who teach at the Community College level and they report that most of their students can barely do the work (they are actually much more harsh).
I guest lecture at the 4 yr college level and the students seem like they have widely varied capabilities.
The problem I think is that the top (Ivy, etc) schools should be smaller, and some of those students should be at public universtities, and some the people at 4 year schools should be at the CC.
For the system as a whole though that is a bad idea for the individual (though maybe a good idea for the country) who knows that getting a degree from the best possible name is important.
In MA in particular we are screwed. We should have the caliber of a Big Ten or CA university in the Boston metro area. Instead everyone local has to go to a private school.