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Honest question: Have we, as a society, looked into possibly supplying people with short-term loans, with a guaranteed open position for someone at a place in more rural parts of America? Originally, I was born in Fresno, CA. We didn't have the most healthy job rate when times were good, let alone once the recession hit. I spent five years looking for a job- and didn't find one until I got the help of a friend online…
Minimum wage law.
I'll give you my take on this.
What creates employment is consumption and people earning next to nothing don’t consume.
So if you cut the minimum wage all you'll end up doing is reduce the overall consumption, which in turn will drive up unemployment.
The truth might in fact be the reason the USA economy is so stuffed is because the minimum wage has not gone up in decades leading to greatly reduced levels of consumption.
Minimum wage law.
We have programs for this:
* http://www.jobcorps.gov/home.aspx -- This provides room, board, a stipend suitable for a teenager with no expenses, and vocational training for those under 25 years old (i.e, teens)
* http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/ -- There's really no disputing this one. Any one of them can hoof it over to the nearest community college and get some skills and a paid work-study job.
* http://www.army.mil/ -- Many of you probably don't like this, but it's probably the most successful organization at turning lazy teens into productive citizens, however, it carries the risk of death or dismemberment. My point, is there are many options.
To split hairs over the minimum wage because 95% of 1% of kids (the approximate dropout rate) don't have jobs is nonsense. So, because these kids who did not do their civic duty are unemployed means we should lower labor standards for everyone else, including those who have to feed families, such as the parents of these very children? It can only worsen the situation.
Min wage is already so low that it is not the driver to whether someone is getting hired or not. The big corporations that run most of the "small" businesses now, can pay. They just need to know they're indeed getting a valuable worker.
The other thing is, a lot of that 95% can be accounted for by kids who don't want a job. They'd rather play x-box, or work as a foot soldier in the local gang.
We have programs for this. Job corps, seriously. There's nothing stopping young people from working here. The jobs exist. The skills do not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Shouldn't this be used as incentive for parents and families within those communities to promote school attendance and encourage academic performance?
Or shouldn't it be used to promote alternative methods of education that are accepted by many employers? STEM fields by and large are the most friendly towards alternative (or complete lack of) education. A well-manicured GitHub, a decent resume, and not looking like an idiot in an interview trumps most college degrees for mid-level developer jobs that aren't Facebook/Google/etc.
What jobs are you going to give them? Cashiers these days have Bachelors degrees in Communications. It's the inflation in the system. America is not producing as many factories as it used to, manual labor jobs in construction are hard enough to get. If you drop out, it's going to be tough to get a job.
Minimum wage law.
If minimum wage law was such a determining factor why is it countries with a higher minimum wages than the USA have lower (including youth) unemployment rates. I'll give you my take on this. What creates employment is consumption and people earning next to nothing don’t consume. So if you cut the minimum wage all you'll end up doing is reduce the overall consumption, which in turn will drive up unemployment. The trut…
Minimum wage law.
If minimum wage law was such a determining factor why is it countries with a higher minimum wages than the USA have lower (including youth) unemployment rates. I'll give you my take on this. What creates employment is consumption and people earning next to nothing don’t consume. So if you cut the minimum wage all you'll end up doing is reduce the overall consumption, which in turn will drive up unemployment. The trut…
If you raised minimum wage, you would just drive McDonalds to automate away more of its menial jobs and make Walmart replace all the cashiers with self checkouts, which I think is good (eliminate the useless wastes of peoples time) but it doesn't mean more people are employed for labor.
The real issue is that the distribution of economic resources has been direly concentrated in very few for 30 years, and they are now the predominant drivers of economic activity because nobody else has any prosperity anymore. It is a compound effect that the people with the money to hire and employ others have nothing to hire or employ them for, and thus they don't, instead they push their money into avenues that make profit off of regulatory exploitation rather than productivity (big banks & the fed, fortune 500 investments, lobbying for monopolies to get artificial markets).
Everything mentioned in this article rings to true me. The transition traditional low-end jobs to middle-aged people and closed-circle of internships and job programs in particular.
That said, the first step towards mitigating this would seem obvious - stay in school. Unfortunately, anecdotal experience says the particularly bad situation for young black teens starts with a general de-valuing of education and victim mentality at home.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A minimum wage job?
An unconditional basic income is probably a better way to go than a guaranteed minimum wage job. (Of course you could set the basic income at whatever a minimum wage job would provide.)
What jobs are you going to give them? Cashiers these days have Bachelors degrees in Communications. It's the inflation in the system. America is not producing as many factories as it used to, manual labor jobs in construction are hard enough to get. If you drop out, it's going to be tough to get a job.