Youth Unemployment is Too High

On Saturday afternoon I saw a report on youth unemployment in America.  Currently, 16.1% or 6.54 million of our young people are unemployed.  This is very bad.  I remember when I was part of this group, and I was always able to find summer jobs in high school and college.

I worked in a shoe factory first making minimum wage.  I did alright considering that I worked 10-15 hours of overtime every week, and the cost of living wasn't nearly as high as it is today.  My second job was working in a freezer/refrigerator factory.  I didn't make much more than minimum wage, but I worked a lot of hours.  While I was in college, I worked as a tutor during the school year and did drafting in an engineering department in the summer.  I gained valuable experience as to how an engineering department operates during those summers.

With these jobs, I made enough money to pay my college tuition and buy a used Ford Pinto to get back and forth to college and to work.  My dad helped me out a little my freshman year, but after that, I was able to pay for everything.  That includes tuition, books, room and board.  My dad did give me a gasoline credit card to pay for gas to get home every 3 or 4 weeks.  My bill for each semester that included everything except books was only around $1,100-$1,200.  The books were only about $125/semester.

Today, the kids have jobs working in retail or in restaurants.  They seldom work 40 hours/week.  The tuition bills are almost $5,000/semester, not including room and board or books.  Single books can cost as much as the five books I would buy each semester.  The kids today can't earn enough in an entire summer to pay for more than 10%-15% of their college expenses for one semester.  If their parents can't come up with the rest, they take out student loans.  Graduating from a state university with $50,000 dollars in debt is not uncommon.  Then, these college graduates are lucky to find a job in their chosen field.  If they do find a job, salaries are down.  The prospects of buying a car or home anytime in the near future are bleak.  They have enough debt to own a house, but they have no house.

So why do the youth vote for liberals like Barack Obama that have brought them this amazing level of poverty and financial stress?  I just don't understand it.  Somehow Barack Obama has been in office for more than one term, but so many people don't see the connection between his policies and the sluggish economy.  I want to tell all of you, and especially the youth, that this MessAPolitico is a direct result of taking all of the wrong actions to get the economy restarted.

Barack Obama and the liberal left believe that government stimulus is what makes the economy go.  Government spending can somehow end the recession or lessen its effect on us.  That is 100% wrong.  They are taxing rich people and their businesses more to pay for all of the government spending.  The liberals are telling you that all of the benefits they are delivering are paid for by someone else that can afford it.  First of all, they aren't collecting more taxes today, because unemployment, underemployment, and low corporate profits are reducing the taxable income.  They are borrowing money or, more specifically, they are printing money to pay the bills.  If our economy ever recovers, we are looking at an undervalued dollar and high inflation.  We already have high inflation in the oil sector.  We are about to have high inflation in electricity as well.

When rich people are spending more on taxes and energy, they don't have as much to invest in their businesses.  Buying new, bigger buildings and filling them with machines creates jobs.  Paying more to the federal government does not.  Paying twice as much for energy diverts consumer money from buying other things.  That reduces sales revenue which prevents manufacturing expansion or even shrinks manufacturing.  That is where our unemployment is coming from.  Until manufacturing begins to expand again in America, we must learn to accept high unemployment.  I'm absolutely not willing to accept this!

We could bring manufacturing back tomorrow if the MessAPolitico would stop the policies of purposefully driving energy prices higher.  Did you read what I just wrote?  Did it sink in?  Yes, the Obama administration is hoping to drive gasoline prices so high that electric cars and hybrids look like a good deal.  Then, they want to close down coal-fired power plants to drive the price of electricity higher until windmills and solar power look competitive.  The problem is very simply that driving prices of gasoline and electricity that high is strangling the economy.  Not only do we have too little money for discretionary spending after we pay the energy bills, but manufacturing is moving out of America at an alarming pace.  Why is illegal immigration down under Barack Obama?  Because the jobs they came here to get are not here anymore.  They're in Mexico or China or somewhere with cheaper costs of doing business.

There is another issue that affects youth unemployment.  Many older Americans are finding it difficult to retire.  They are worried about the future of Social Security, and their 401k is just now back up to where it was years ago.  The stock market situation is tenuous at best.  It is common for people to continue working as long as their health will allow.  Some of these people never retire.  Others retire and immediately start a part-time job that would normally be held by a kid in the summer or after school.  Of course, those people that don't retire don't open up a hole to be filled by a new college graduate either.

Youth of America, please wake up and smell the coffee.  Just because Barack Obama likes to tweet doesn't mean he is doing the right things for you or anyone else.  Please help up stop this MessAPolitico, starting with the mid-term elections next year.  Take the Senate back from the Democrats.