I wonder if Newt knows why there’s an appeal of doing “illegal” work: the potential–however remote–of rising up the organization. When you have that dream in your head, freezing out on the corner at night and dodging the police.
If there’s going to be a successful “get-the-poor-kids-to-work” type program, it has to emphasize not just the value of work, but the value of ambition. Just putting a mop in a kid’s hand is not going to do anything but tell that kid, “This is your lot in life. Deal with it.” You’ve got to couple mentoring with that mop. There has to be some incentive besides money.
It’s not that poor kids don’t see people working. They see plenty of working. They just don’t see hope.
I don’t know why people are even mentioning race in this thread. Most poor people in this country are white. And always have been.
What I don’t get is why Newt thinks lowering the minimum worker age is a realistic solution to the problem he’s identified. (Disclaimer: I only skimmed what he said.)
If poor teens who are currently eligible to work aren’t clamoring to be janitors now, what would be the incentive for their little brothers and sisters to suddenly pick up the mops?
And what are the adults who are doing those jobs now supposed to do when the horde of job-hungry children flood in and start outcompeting them for work?
Let’s put aside the validity of his observation regarding poor youth in this country. I’m more concerned about a politician’s ability to solve problems without creating eleventy hundred more.
This is what is known as priceless economics. Why are there no jobs for poor people? There are still burgers that need to be flipped, dishes that need to be washed, and floors that need to be swept. Regulations such as the minimum wage have driven the price for labor up above the market clearing price and have effectively banned the jobs from being created. This teen unemployment creates a cycle where wages are depressed for all of their working lives, trapping hard working people in poverty. Liberals are always bleating about their concern for the poor and this is a concrete step that could help improve the lives of thousands of poor young people at no cost to the taxpayers. Poor people can not feed their families with empty rhetoric they need jobs.
Why are we so worried about putting teens to work when there are plenty of unemployed adults who need them a lot more? Last time I checked, more adults than kids have bills to pay.
All abolishing the minimum wage is going to do is depress wages for workers who already earn less than it takes to support a household. If kids take those jobs instead of adults, that means someone’s parent will be out of a job. No different than what we see when illegal immigrants compete against citizens for low-wage jobs. Are Conservatives now of the belief that this is a good thing? Help me yall, I can’t keep up.
Newt seems to be operating under the impression that undoing Child Labor Laws means new jobs will spring out of ether. But more likely than not, creating “new jobs” without raising overhead costs is only attainable by depressing wages for the existing workers.
Second, not all sectors are subject to minimum wage.
Third, as you said, even with minimum wage applying to McD, burgers still need to be flipped. They might cut down from 4 to 3 employees, or raise the prices, or both. But they won’t close down shop just because of minimum wage law.
Fourth, you have ignored the Ford effect: Ford, an arch-capitalist, paid his workers higher wage than usual because he realized that his workers would buy his products if they could afford them. If minimum wage allows the workers to afford a Big Mac, they will buy, and may even buy enough to open a new McD.
Or do you have statistics comparing states with minimum wage laws to those without, or comparing statistics before and after introduction of minimum wage laws in the same state, factoring out other influences on the job market?
What the hell has teen unemployment got to do with wages being depressed for the whole working life? And if you’re complaining about minimum wage, you can’t complain about wages being depressed = too low. Either wages are too high for the poor business owners, or they are too low for the poor workers.
Moreover, ostentatiously the whole (dumb) reasoning for Newt and fellow consies repeating this slur against poor people is that they need to learn job skills as teens in order to get better paying jobs as adults to escape poverty.
How exactly do you get from “minimum wage and not enough jobs at McD for teens” to “jobs for adults have too low wages” without seeing the contradiction?
Ah, you are attacking liberals, I assume you are a conservative then? Therefore you know everything already and don’t need those inconvenient facts, right?
I also see that you completly ignored that part of my post where I said that learning job skills as teen is useless if that same adult can’t get a job. How exactly would getting rid of minimum wage laws change that? Jobs aren’t created just because consies repeat that the rich would if the laws were relaxed. We look at the facts of how regulations that were loosened and see that all the rich did was making out like bandits, but no new job creation.
They can’t feed them empty rhetoric from conservatives who know nothing about the real world, agreed.
Poor people also can’t feed their families if minimum wage laws are done away with because then the jobs available can’t support the family. Have you ever heard of the working poor? People working two full-time jobs because the wages are not high enough? Are you going to claim that having a job is better than not having one, even if it’s only a fraction of the minimum expenses?
There’s a charter school in Harlem, I think…maybe Newark that when grammar school kids come to the class they have to sit on the floor. They have to pay for the privilege of sitting at a desk. If they want to sit in the front, or near the window, the “rent” for those desks is higher. Kids can go as far as to buy a particular desk and rent it out to others. This is in an area of poor blacks children, with a single-parent rate of 99%. Now, these kids have zero money, so they earn “money” (credits) by doing things in the classroom. Things like raising one’s hand and waiting to be called on before speaking, handing in homework on time, doing it neatly, walking to the lunch room in an orderly fashion, etc. Note that none of these things have to do with the academics themselves, so all kids have an equal shot of sitting in the most desirable seats.
The people who run the school realized that the kids in this area weren’t being taught basic life skills that will help them in the world, so they expanded their mission from simply teaching them the three Rs.
This is the kind of thing that can be done, that should be done, and thankfully, is being done.
Your statement is true, but race comes up whenever repubs talk about the poor because “the poor” and “urban” are republican code words for “black/hispanic” and they use that racist imagery to promote a fake agenda of welfare abuse so that they can dismantle social services and funnel more money to the richest segments of society.
It is all a part of their “starve the beast” strategy that they have admitted publicly. By convincing the working class that social services and govt don’t work, they can dismantle govt after eroding public confidence, and then point to the dismantled govt and say “See? TOLD YOU it doesn’t work!”
It’s ingenious and shows amazing foresight. Evil and disgusting, but brilliant.
Your view is not supported by historic facts. The New Deal under FDR lessened the depression and was govt. getting involved in helping the unemployed and poor people.
That your food is reasonable safe: FDA. Govt. laws and regulations and control of them.
That your water and air is better than in 1890: EPA. Govt. laws and regs and control.
And so on.
And for the third time now, you’ve completly ignored the hundreds of thousands of jobs in infrastructure and power production that need to be done here by the govt. Or do you prefer pipes to burst, bridges to collapse, roads to have potholes and to suffer from brown-outs because of your shoddy power net instead of spending money to improve both infrastructure and create jobs? You do know that infrastructure breaking down is not only a nuisance for the normal people, but also a big cost factor for businesses, do you?
First, consumers everywhere, not only American ones, have started to buy cheapest stuff because the companies changed their method. The difference between the cheap generic and the expensive brand is no longer quality - in the 70s already, they often came from the same factory, just with different labels, and brand spent money on marketing, while generic didn’t.
And in the 50s and 60s, companies realized that making products durable, high-quality meant that soon the market would be saturated and sales would plummet, and their solution was to limit the lifecycle of their products by making them shoddier and less durable.
Third, the labels “Made in America” is a big lie to the customers, anyway. If 30 components are made in China, but assembled in the US, the label reads “Made in the USA”, even though only one worker was employeed here.
So what is this one anecdote supposed to prove? Did you misunderstand the example I gave?
The problem is not that production of cheap plastic toys is outsourced to China, or computer parts to Taiwan or telephone service to India.
The problem is one, that the govt. is willing to impose drastic tariffs on some goods to protect the market, but not on others. The problem is that cities and states pay money for companies to build new factories and then, when the company has milked all the special benefits, let them get away with closing the factory down again, instead of holding the companies to their promises. (In other words, the govt. regulates half-heartedly and thus messes things up). Or the govt. not enforcing better labelling laws than "Made in … " which can be scammed two dozen ways.
And of course unions in the US are a strange way of doing things wrong again: either you don’t have any, and workers are at the mercy of the employer, or you have unions and workers must join, and things are done bureaucratically.
Here we do things differently: unions and representatives from different sectors agree on contracts which then apply for all companies in that sector. Nobody is forced to be in the union (though that is hard for the unions themselves, not enough membership dues), and things are done efficiently.
But a lot of jobs, and many of them high-paying, can’t be outsourced. You’re putting up a straw man, because factories are long gone, not only because of China, but because of automazation starting in the 70s. Today, robots do a lot of work that previously unskilled workers did.
But a plumber still needs to live 50 miles nearby. And a person with a good education at university can do R&D, which is where the US could take a lead, if they were interested in the real capital.
This is the change that all western countries have gone through, from first sector (agriculture) to second sector (manufacture) to third sector (Service industry).
Today, the only niches left in manufacture are specialist. Which need not only special expensive machines, but also skilled workers with good education and training - not 2-weeks training, but 2 years.
No, the choice is not to “buy American” if most production is still in China. The choice is to “work American” with infrastructure and brains.
Not true. All states have to pay more than federal minimum wage which is $7.35/hr. States are free to have minimum wage laws of their own but they must be HIGHER than federal minimum wage. My state (WA) pays $8.67/hr minimum.
True but are there any jobs that legally pay less than minimum wage where a significant source of income doesn’t come from tipping? I don’t think there are a significant number of legal jobs in the U.S. where a person in actuality regularly works X hours and takes home less than $7.25 before taxes.
So that’s the issue I think he’s getting at. In some neighborhoods, like Mosier said, there’s more money flowing on the, er, black market (crime) than otherwise. That’s true with some of the families I work with when I teach. And others, well, they have single moms working their asses off and can barely pay rent. So I’d say it’s a bad generalization to apply to everyone, but in some places it really is true.
Newt is an old man, right? He grew up during the baby-boomers in the 60s or earlier, correct?
Because any time a consie or other white old man who grew up in the 50s or 60s opens his mouth to talk about how the poor just need to work, they are wrong because they are talking about a different world. Literally.
They are going by memories of a time when the whole circumstances about the work world were different:
the work force was smaller because women stayed at home and blacks didn’t get high-skilled jobs.
college was cheap and people got govt. help with things like the GI bill.
health care was lower
the proportion of wage to expenses was such that one income could feed a middle-class family.
if you worked diligent and were not dumb or otherwise flaky, you had good chances of getting ahead and getting raises, accumulating a modest wealth. (relative speaking). You could also expect to work for the same company for decades, and for your job not to change much.
unskilled workers also had opportunities in many factory jobs.
Today, every item has changed:
wages have effectivly fallen because the annual raises are lower than inflation, so even with two incomes, families struggle
health care has skyrocketed in the US (because the premiums are absolute, and not percentage-based)
college costs have skyrocketed, while at the same time a BA is required for many more jobs than before
most unskilled jobs have been eliminated either by robots or by transfer to China
more people are in the workforce, at the same time many jobs have been eliminated and not enough new jobs have been created
companies fire people just to raise their quarterly balance sheets; you can no longer rely on doing a job you learned for 10 years straight, let alone working at the same company
So neither hard work nor being smart gives you any security in keeping in middle class. One health problem can send you in debt and poverty; your spouse loosing their job means your house is gone (or the bank falsifying the records and repossessing it, as many are currently doing); you move to another city to get a job, but can’t find one…
It’s very easy today to end up poor, and any advice based on the rules of the old game is a lie and contempt. (It’s not ignorance because they don’t bother to get facts, it’s easier to blame others than admit that the system has been broken since the 80s).
Witness my wife’s mom and her mom’s church friends informing her that since she knows how to use a computer she ought to be able to get a job wherever she wants.
What does PC have to do with it? Pointing out that not everybody poor has a job is a fact. Facts are neither PC nor un-PC.
Interpreting that the reason for that is laziness or crime - that is an opinion, and that opinion is both un-PC and factually wrong, because facts tell us that there are many other reasons besides laziness or crime that people don’t work.
On the one hand, teaching social behaviors (I call it “civilizing the savages,” and it applies to all children from all socioeconomic sectors) is done in the classroom of every competent teacher on the planet (and, for that matter, by every competent parent: all kids are born savages). If you don’t do that, your classroom is a total mess. It is one of the primary jobs of kindergarten teachers, and I know it continues through third grade, and I’m almost certain that twelfth-grade teachers have to do it as well, albeit with diferent social norms.
On the other hand, making people pay for the privilege of a desk is obnoxious, IMO. I expect respect to be given me as a human being, and I give it to my students. That’s one of the social norms I teach. My students–and all students, to the extent possible–should receive the basic tools necessary to do their work with dignity and comfort, by default. If they choose not to do their work, or if they choose not to follow social norms, then sure, they might lose such privileges as socializing at lunch and recess, and they might have extra homework. But even then I won’t force them to work under uncomfortable, humiliating circumstances.
I’d be interested in seeing some rigorous evidence for this school’s humiliation-based disciplinary approach.
It sounds controversial, sure, and can go quickly wrong if done unprofessional.
But based on the quote, where it’s a whole concept and credits are earned not with money, I don’t want to call it automatically “humiliating”, because the other side is the psychological mechanism that people don’t value what they get for free, they take it for granted, but what people work for, they value.
So if all kids actually earn the credits for their desks, and feel that they are buying an education for themselves (instead of being forced to go to school by somebody to sit in a kind of prison, as many kids perceive bad schools), then I think this is a good approach. Esp. since in the US, students have to pay heavily for college later.
A school in Berlin in an area with many underprivileged and immigrant children also experimented with how to make parents and children better committed to actually learning and not just showing up and sitting around, and offered a contract to sign to parents, that the parents would make sure that the kids go to school and enable them doing their homework, and in turn, the school will provide good education. I think they said they had better success than before, where they needed 4 invitations to just get the parents to speak with the teachers, and some parents didn’t answer at all, but I don’t know how it worked out long-term.
It’s not a discipline plan. I also don’t think it’s humiliation based, but merit based. And just to be clear. I got the idea from the excerpt in the book that the kids all wind up in desks fairly quickly.
The problem is that the basic RR&R isn’t enough for some kids. So, the school realizes that and tries to teach them some basic things that kids growing up in bad situation might not learn at home. The book it was in was “no Excuses”, by Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom. I just checked the book and I had the location wrong; it was the Hobart Boulevard Elementary School in central LA. And I’m not sure if the whole school operated this way, or if it was just the classroom of of one teacher, Rafe Esquith. It’s unclear in the book if that is the only class that does this or if that is the only classroom they actually visited.
I stand corrected. I’m lucky in not knowing much about the intricacies of the system. Mostly I was trying to distinguish these two cases.
Government can indeed create jobs, and does - the post office, the military, NSF, students who have assistantships paid for by NSF. And don’t forget WPA. We’ve got lots of work to do, and it is far better for the government to pay people for productive tasks than just to pay unemployment.
Totally agree. In our district, test scores are directly related to family income which has a lot to do with the love of education. It really bugs me that teachers are blamed for kids not learning when their parent never ask about school or about homework and often give a negative impression of the value of knowledge. But since we can’t march into kids homes to make their parents care, we need to do what we can. Giving them a place to go after school where there is peer pressure to do your homework, versus giving them nothing to do but hang out, can do nothing but help. Sure plenty of kids will hang out anyway, but we might turn some lives around.
My father grew up in the Depression. His father died when he was young, and his mother lost all their money, so he spend much of his life terribly poor. He didn’t go to college either - though it was free in New York, he need the money he got from working. He worked himself up to a good management job after the war, and I got lots of support for college. I’m Jewish, so I got that I was a dropout if I did not go to college. My kids I think think they’re dropouts without Ph.Ds. It also helps quite a lot when parents know the ropes. My mother went to Brooklyn College, which was free and non-residential, so my parents didn’t help me a lot in college planning, though I bumbled around to good places. We can give our kids pointers on how college and grad school work, which I’m sure made things easier for them.
In California they are making it harder and harder for kids to go to college, raising tuition and cutting programs, all to make sure the rich don’t pay more in taxes.
I still think (and this may be the difference between us pinkos and y’all reactionaries ) that there’s a different baseline. Kids in my class earn privileges, too–but they’re privileges, not baseline. Desks and paper and pens and a quiet environment and the other things they need in order to learn are given, no matter whether you’re the kid who’s always polite and hardworking and respectful, or the kid who’s always looking for a new way to show defiance and messing with other kids and slacking off. What’s earned are things like visits to other classes, lunch dates with other kids, tiny cheap tchotchkes from the “treasure chest,” homework passes, recess lessons for a new magic trick that no other kid gets to learn, etc.
I’m saying that a desk is a right for a child getting an education. But at this point maybe I’m picking nits.
And this I agree with. There are certain kids who come to school ready to learn. They know what to do when I give instructions, they follow them the first time, they work hard, they take criticism well. A classroom full of these kids would be the easiest job in the world. There are other kids who are tremendously difficult to motivate, even when they want to learn. They have never learned how to delay gratification, and their survival techniques for their neighborhood are completely different from the techniques that will get them a good education.
I think this is a pretty common situation. (My school is weird, because it’s in a very wealthy neighborhood but isn’t exclusively a neighborhood school, and ~50% of our population is free/reduced lunch; we’ve got, economically and in other ways, a bathtub curve, not a bell curve). All us teacher teach social norms in addition to teaching RRRSSS.
) that there’s a different baseline. Kids in my class earn privileges, too–but they’re privileges, not baseline. Desks and paper and pens and a quiet environment and the other things they need in order to learn are given, no matter whether you’re the kid who’s always polite and hardworking and respectful, or the kid who’s always looking for a new way to show defiance and messing with other kids and slacking off. What’s earned are things like visits to other classes, lunch dates with other kids, tiny cheap tchotchkes from the “treasure chest,” homework passes, recess lessons for a new magic trick that no other kid gets to learn, etc.