economic stimulus

The Kansas City Star has a cool piece that shows off how much of the stimulus that young people got I wanted to list here.

• According to an assessment of the Department of Labor's jobs-for-youth program -- part of the Recovery Act effort last year -- 313,812 young people between the ages of 14 and 24 were employed in summer jobs nationwide.
• About 45,407 were placed in jobs outside the summer months.
• The report said $717 million of the $1.2 billion allocated by the Recovery Act was actually spent on the program.
• Participants were paid an average of $7.75 an hour, working an average of 28 hours a week and earning an average of about $1,500 for the summer.
• Jobs were in public operations such as parks, community centers and federal offices.
• Citing staffing shortages, the analysis said the department's Employment and Training Administration had difficulty processing applications and determining eligibility for the program that was designed to assist low-income young people.
• The assessment also said there was difficulty recruiting private-sector employers to participate in the program as well as difficulty in knowing whether private-sector placements were appropriate.
• Bottom line: The program was a qualified success and generally deemed to be stimulus money well spent.

The piece goes on to say that they think it made a small dent in the massive youth unemployment problem - I'm not entirely certain that this is true - I haven't seen numbers comparing pre and post stimulus numbers. Additionally, this is kind of like putting a tourniquet on to stop the bleeding. You take it off and you're still going to bleed to death. We need an operation that will stop it long-term.

CNN Money published a story this week on a subject we are familiar with here at Future Majority: youth, jobs, and the economy.

CNN reports that about $1.2 billion of stimulus funding is supporting efforts to train and employ young people over the summer.

The funds are aimed at providing disadvantaged 14-to-24-year-old youth with job training skills and schooling to better prepare them to continue their education or enter the workforce.

States are now implementing summer work programs to put their funding to use. Some are devising brand new efforts to train young adults, while others are expanding existing initiatives. The workers, who must be low income and meet certain at-risk criteria such as being a dropout or disabled, will be paid at least minimum wage.

The youth training program is getting a considerable portion of the $4 billion in stimulus funds set aside for job training. The rest of the funds are going to help unemployed adults get back to work.

"We also have to invest in our young people to make sure they gain work experiences for the future," said a senior Department of Labor official. "Hopefully it can put them on the path to working or returning to school better prepared."

One good thing: with the new Obama administration now making decisions, youth are suddenly important enough to consider while making important decisions. As the excerpt above notes, youth are getting a significant portion of this funding, with a senior Labor official using words like "invest," "young people," and "future." In fact, this funding reverses a long decline in similar funding. Eight years ago, at the end of the Clinton presidency, the amount of funding committed to a similar program was $1.5 billion, not too far off the current line of funding.

One bad thing: "The workers, who must be low income and meet certain at-risk criteria such as being a dropout or disabled, will be paid at least minimum wage." The working poor, who are usually neglected when it comes to these programs, appear to be shut out once more. While the program helps quite a few deserving people, there are also many more that can't catch a break; the resulting lesson is that it might be better to drop out than continue forward, get a degree, and be shut out from any help.

The piece sorts through a few programs supported by the funding, such as the Young Hoosiers Conservation Corps, which will pay participants $8.50 per hour over sixteen weeks to construct trails and restore state park properties.

There seems to be a better recognition of the compounding problems young Americans are facing as a result of the sour economy. More solutions are needed now, though, and those solutions should at least acknowledge the working poor in addition to the youth facing even more challenging obstacles. Lucky for us, 80 Million Strong has stepped in to this void, committing itself to organizing powerful players in the economy in order to create "new jobs for a new economy." If you haven't already read about the organization, do so now. We've been told as Millennials for a long time now that it is going to be our duty to clean up this mess we've inherited. 80MS is a big step toward doing that.

Another set of numbers, this set from a poll by Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, points to a paradigm shift in American politics in 2008. Cue more Republican frustration, as they realize their concoction of race and divisive social issues just doesn't work anymore.

Not surprising, when forced to choose voters says that returning the economy to sound footing and creating quality jobs is Obama’s top goal. But more surprising, given the dominance of the stimulus story, is that voters see through this to other goals – which are seen as somewhat more important to the Obama project – and thus give the presidency definition beyond the recovery. For the public, at the heart of the Obama project is a turn away from greed and the super-rich and toward the middle class and its values, with greater opportunity, security and rising prosperity.

This will come up in my other posts this weekend, but the last sentence of the quote starts to dig at something very important. With people buying into a basic Democratic Party principle of shared wealth and emphasis on a growing middle class, the GOP is holding the hot potato here, caught in a bad place politically. Sure, cable news blowhards and political pundits might have you believe that Obama's mojo is down the drain thanks to the indecisiveness of Sen. Judd Gregg, but the people -- the only ones who count in the end -- say otherwise. From this past Monday:

Sixty-seven percent of the American people approve of how President Obama's handling his efforts to pass an economic stimulus bill, as opposed to 48% for Democrats in Congress and 31% for congressional Republicans.

Congressional Republicans actually have a staggeringly high 58% DISapproval rating for how they're handling the stimulus debate, compared to 42% for Hill Democrats and only 25% for President Obama.

Gallup says that 51% of those polled believe that passing the economic stimulus plan is "critically important" for the economy, with 29% saying it's important. Only 16% say it is "not that important."

Millennials are being added to this rapidly transforming electorate, making it even more progressive. The Millennials, not surprisingly, share the president's economic views represented in the stimulus. Neil Howe and Reena Nadler discuss this in their new report, titled "Yes We Can: The Emergence of Millennials as a Political Generation." (I'll be blogging about this this weekend.)

They favor tax plans and other policies that create a strong middle class—18- to 22-year olds today are more likely than any other age group to favor government action to reduce economic inequality.

It's hard to see how the GOP can be optimistic here. The Democratic Party is increasingly becoming the party that represents the average American's view on the economy. Millennials, having come of age in a period of stratified U.S. income, are reasonably concluding that the Republican way can't be trusted any longer. The United States is not only understanding what its president is doing, but also they understand why he's doing it. And even more importantly, they agree with it.

Jon Chattman has a thought-provoking piece up at The Huffington Post asking why, if the government wants to reinvigorate the economy, it does not rescue the "highly educated poor people" who are living in a student loan hell. Chattman profiles two thirty-somethings who have started mobilizing on the issue, starting by forming Facebook groups and online petitions.

As Congress prepares to spend a trillion bucks (in addition to the $700 billion bailout from last fall), it makes one wonder when the working middle class will get some love. The pending American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (H.R.1) will no doubt help our economy in some form, but it's not nearly enough and it's not aimed at all demographics. If we can save the suits, why can't we save the common man, right?

Robert Applebaum, an attorney from New York, thinks so and has an idea on how to help many in his shoes -- and trust me, there are many -- while stimulating the economy at the same time. The 35 year old started up an online campaign this month to bail out those "hard-working, educated middle class" suffocating in college loan debt on Facebook. He formed the group "Cancel Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy" because he believes forgiving student loan debt for those making under $150,000 annually would help boost the economy from "the bottom up."

"I struggle to pay my rent and bills and have never defaulted on my student loans," he said Feb. 4. But I also don't spend money on consumer goods anymore -- not only because I can't afford them, but because I'm afraid the situation will only get worse..."

He continued, "One-time tax rebates and meager tax cuts do nothing to stimulate the economy. A recession is as much a psychological phenomenon as anything else. Knowing I'd have an extra $500 per month in my pocket will get me spending again. Multiply that across the country and the economy will start to move again."

[...]

Applebaum's not alone in his thought processes. Fellow Facebooker Kevin Bartoy, a 35-year-old archeologist from Old Hickory, TN started up a similar group a few weeks ago because he and his wife have been drowning in student loan debt as well. Applebaum contacted Bartoy, and the two have since banded together, running their respective groups as "sisters." The goal is to gain enough traction it'll grab President Obama's attention. The creation of this petition will surely help.

"This would truly allow the educated lower and middle classes to create a solid foundation for a new economy," Bartoy said. "It is frustrating to be a society in which you need the educational credentials to succeed, but to get them, you have to put yourself in so much debt that you lose your independence in the process."

Economics is not my strong suit (unlike John McCain, I won't be running for president, so I can write that). But why wouldn't this work? Like Applebaum, if I knew that I was saving the $400 a month I shell out in student loans, my mind couldn't even compute the spending that would ensue on my behalf, let alone the spending of millions of former students across the country.

The "Cancel Student Loan Dept to Stimulate the Economy" Facebook group can be found here, while "Stimulate the Economy -- Forgive Student Loans!" can be found here.

Inbox refugees from the last week:

• At Next Gen GOP, Aaron Marks grades the youth outreach plans of the many candidates vying for chairmanship of the Republican Party. Almost all get failing marks.
• Looking for a job in the Obama Administration? Jamal Simmons has some advice.
• MTV will broadcast the official youth inaugural ball. Look for me and Sarah in the crowd.
• The New Yorker covers last week's hack of Soapblox, ending with an important quote from Markos of Daily Kos:
  

  We have built this new progressive movement on a lot of volunteer labor, a shoestring budget, a lot of heart and soul, but not a lot of resources. We’ve got to professionalize our movement, and we can’t rely only on labors of love, like what Paul did."

  Here here.

• At The Nation, Cora Courrier picks up on our coverage of the Belcher memo and the new staff picks at the DNC.
• You should read everything in yesterday's tech/politics round up from Tech President.
• Check out this great interview that Change Congress's Larry Lessig did with Stephen Colbert. I got Remix for Christmas but have not yet read it.

• Network Centric Advocacy surmises that the economic downturn will shrink the nonprofit space. They suggest that this will not necessarily be a Darwinian survival of the fittest, but that by pure luck and stupidity the unfit may survive at the expense of some of the better non profit advocacy groups.
• Speaking of Change Congress, the organization recently launched a donor strike, asking people to pledge not to give money to candidates who don't support public funding of elections. This strikes me as a bad idea. Wouldn't this just result in a large number of decent if not perfect candidates getting handicapped while corrupt GOP competitors continue to rake in the cash?
• Here's an interesting idea that we should perhaps pursue here at FM: Tweetbacks on blog posts.
• Next New Deal has resources for understanding the new economic stimulus package.
• McClatchy offers yet another attempt to compare Obama's youth support to JFK and the 60s, with a caveat that we're all going to become disillusioned.