new deal

Some interesting reads for you as we prepare to move into another week.

• With all the economic strife Millennials are experiencing these days, perhaps we need a National Youth Administration to help dig our way out?
• Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile outlines the extent to which Republicans plan to suppress votes in future elections.
• NPR explores how young people can improve their financial literacy; this article is one of a series of articles on the topic.
• Did you know? The largest number of American hate groups are located in Idaho and Mississippi.
• A Huffington Post piece discusses the importance of young people starting businesses and how we can enhance youth entrepreneurship in the future.
• Montana college students will be hit with a 10 percent tuition increase over two years. Why? State budget cuts.
• Allowing concealed guns on college campuses appeared to be sure to pass in Texas. However, some Democratic tactics appear to have dealt the bill a fatal blow.

The other day I stumbled upon an interesting piece by Ethan Porter and Elon Plotkin at Campus Progress arguing for a new National Youth Administration, a piece of Roosevelt's New Deal in the '30s and '40s.

In 1935, via Executive Order, President Roosevelt created the National Youth Administration to boost their economic prospects. Today, President Obama would be wise to dust off this oft-overlooked item in the New Deal toolbox, and restart the NYA. Under the auspices of the NYA in the 1930s, young people built ballparks and buildings; today, they should build wind turbines and solar panels.

Obviously, much has changed in 70 years, and a reconstituted NYA would have to differ dramatically from Roosevelt’s in order to be successful. But if it incorporated the lessons of the original NYA, and adapted to the contours of the twenty-first century economy, a new NYA could bring youth out of the doldrums and give the whole economy a shot in the arm. Moreover, a new NYA could be the incubator for a life-long productive relationship between government and the youngest generation of workers—who, as part of the “Millennial Generation,” are the largest age cohort in American history.

Porter and Plotkin point out in their introduction that when assessing the economic health of young people today, the situation is no better than it was in the Great Depression. Porter and Plotkin cite Bureau of Labor Statistics and Data from 2008, which shows young workers (16-24 years old) suffered through the largest increase in unemployment when compared with every other age bracket. Furthermore, young people, who make up about fourteen or fifteen percent of the work force, make up one-third of the total number of unemployed Americans -- the same proportion young workers reached during the Depression.

So something absolutely needs to be done. And we're on our way to some improvements. This week President Obama signed the Serve America bill into law, tripling the size of Americorps, and retooling the program to address heretofore unmet needs. By establishing the Healthy Futures Corps, the Veterans Corps, and the Education Corps, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act establishes a new sense of pragmatism in the federal government's service efforts, teaches young Americans new skills, and assists them financially in their college search.

As Porter and Plotkin note though, more is needed. The National Youth Administration would provide more of an economic boon, creating secure jobs for a younger, and therefore more mobile, work force. If a future NYA were to be constructed similar to the way it was seventy years ago, student aid would also be connected to the new jobs. In fact, Porter and Plotkin argue for a program as a part of a new NYA that would "pay the top third of all graduating public high school classes." I'm not sure that this is the most effective way of solving the problem, as I don't trust our education system enough to base such a reward on grades and achievement. Nevertheless, the NYA would provide secure jobs to young people, significantly assist youth in receiving an education, and provide some muscle to spur the construction of important infrastructure, such as T. Boone Pickens' wind corridor in the Midwest, as Porter and Plotkin suggest.

Of course, with such a connection to the New Deal, conservatives would have a fit. This would just be one more sign of socialism seizing American capitalism. (You'd think their passion would prod them to produce their own vision for the country, but of course, they're content saying "no" and offering nothing but pettiness and division.) And so the legislative effort might be difficult. But it would be an opportunity for our organization to shine, and it would give us significant press. It'd serve as an issue that would link young people, the economy, possibly the environment, and education. It'd once again put the GOP on the defensive, forcing them to explain away their inability to support a policy that would be so beneficial to youth. But most importantly, such a program might bring the youth employment numbers out of Great Depression territory, allowing multitudes of young people to get their lives back on track.

Last Friday I attended the Better Deal Conference, a gathering of young activists to discuss the creation of a new progressive economic policy that addresses the issues facing our nation and our generation.

As Tamara Drout, one of the conference organizers noted in an article in the American Prospect, young Americans today are the first generation that may actually end up with a lower standard of living than their parents. On average, we graduate college with $20k of debt and enter into an outsourced, service-industry dominated economy in which health care has been decoupled from employment. For those of us who don't make it into college, it is becoming near impossible to earn a middle class living with just a high school diploma.

The issue is timely, to say the least.

Andy Stern (SEIU) and Katrina Vanden Heuvel (The Nation) delivered the keynote addresses (morning and afternoon, respectively), and there were some truly informative panels including:

• Paycheck Politics - covering the quality of jobs available to young people in the New Economy
• Getting a Life - affordability barriers to the necessities of a middle class life
• Race, Ethnicity, and Economic Destiny - exploring the intersection of race and class among Millennials.
• I myself sat on a panel entitled "We're Broke and We Vote - about youth GOTV efforts and the economy as an election issue for Millennials.

I won't sum up all the panels. CSpan was filming live all day and you can watch each panel by clicking the links above, or by going here. There were a few big takeaways from the day that I would like to mention:

• There was a lot of talk about recognizing that class is what divides us even more than race - particularly as a movement. Issues like green jobs, which can lift up poor Latinos and African Americans in inner cities, or poor rural whites equally, can create new ties and partnerships between traditionally disparate groups.
• tThe conference was full of college students and recent grads. Young people's debt burden is "pricing them out' of the nonprofit sector and traditional organizing jobs within the movement, but there are a variety of more professional roles that attendees can aspire to that will allow them to do well by doing good. The movement needs lawyers, researchers, economists and more just as much as good organizers. There needs to be a broader understanding of how this work will happen and where we can all fit in.
• Most importantly (at least to me since it came up numerous times during the voting panel), we need to think more about what happens on November 5th. All of our energies seem focused on getting out the vote. This is a good - and as I've noted a very new - thing. But the off year of the cycle (2009) is a very big open question. How will we shift gears from GOTV to policy? How will we make sure that the candidate fulfills their promises to young voters and institutes a Better Deal for "Generation Debt?" I'm not sure what the answer is, but it's pretty clear that we're going to need to have a large conference of some kind in which the issue orgs and the GOTV orgs all get in the same room and work out some kind of plan.

On this last point, I thought that the big elephant in the room that no one was really talking about was the Obama campaign, particularly in light of the recent post by Matt Stoller outlining how Obama is short-circuiting the influence partisan, "outside organizations" on the process and is in a position to rewire the Democratic Party in his own image.

Sen. Obama probably has a bigger "youth" list than all the youth vote and youth policy organizations out there combined. What does he plan to do with it after election day - win or lose? How will he keep his Millennial Movement engaged in effective action beyond his election towards the accomplishment of real progressive policy goals? We have no idea because his campaign won't tell us.

Clearly we need to start planning for "Day One" ourselves, and judging by the energy in the room there are lots of people itching to get started. When that time comes, hopefully Sen. Obama will join us and won't let all that energy and potential activism go to waste once the campaign reaches its end.

One final thought. A few weeks ago I attended a similar conference by the Roosevelt Institution called A New New Deal (again, the economy is the # 1 issue for young voters and reestablishing the kind of social safety net that gave our parents and grandparents a leg up into the middle class weighs heavily on everyone's mind). Despite the similar topics, these were two very different conferences. Roosevelt's conference felt very much an insider event. A number of stars from the Democratic economic policy apparatus were in attendance and the audience was composed of as many policy wonks as young, aspiring policy wonks. It was a networking event for young people to climb into the circles of Democratic public policy. Yesterday's event was a much more hands-on, learning experience for young activists whose constituents face economic hardships. With a 1 hour "Roots Camp" at the end of the day, it was very much a pragmatic conference. I suspect that both are needed if we are to create a leadership pipeline for young policy types and create quality organizing campaigns around the issues. But it is worth noting the difference between the two.