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Big government spending is suffocating the next generation with debt

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Youth unemployment by ethnicity (5/13)
Youth unemployment by ethnicity (5/13)

Libertarian economist Veronique de Rugy writes about it in Reason magazine.

Excerpt:

A word of caution for kids heading off to college this year: Your degree may be worth less and cost more than you think. Your job prospects will likely be grim, whether or not you get that sheepskin. Oh, and you’re on the hook for trillions in federal debt racked up by your parents and grandparents.

Washington has willfully ignored the looming crisis of entitlement spending, knowingly consigning young Americans to a future of crushing debt, persistent underemployment, and burdensome regulation. Politicians on both sides of the aisle share the blame.

This summer, Congress made a big bipartisan show of cutting student loan rates to 3.4 percent from an already artificially low 6.8 percent. But even that seemingly helpful gesture will wind up hurting the Americans it claims to help. Federal student aid, whether in the form of grants or loans, is the main factor behind the runaway cost of higher education. Subsidies raise prices, leading to higher subsidies, which raise prices even more. This higher education bubble, like the housing bubble before it, will eventually pop. Meanwhile, large numbers of students will graduate with more debt than they would have in an unsubsidized market.

And when those new, debt-laden graduates head out into the labor market with their overpriced diplomas, they may not be able to find a job. According to data provided to me by my Mercatus Center colleague, former Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner Keith Hall, fewer than half of Americans today between the ages of 18 and 25 are employed. For those in that cohort actively on the job market, the unemployment rate is 16 percent, versus 6 percent for job-seekers aged 25 and above.

These young folks are also more likely to be long-term unemployed: While accounting for just 14 percent of the labor force, they make up 19 percent of the long-term unemployed, defined by the BLS as 27 weeks or longer.

The lucky few young’uns with jobs of some kind also suffer from rampant underemployment. In a recent blog post, Diana Carew of the Progressive Policy Institute wrote: “In July 2013, just 36 percent of Americans age 16-24 not enrolled in school worked full-time, 10 percent less than in July 2007.” In other words, of these 17 million young Americans, 5.6 million were working part-time, 3.2 million were unemployed, and 8.4 million were out of the labor force altogether.

I really recommend you read the rest of the article, especially if you aren’t following what Obama’s policies are doing to our economy. Special attention is given to the effects of Obamacare on job creation.

Just as a community service, I want to post for you young people (and your parents) a list of the majors that lead to higher paying jobs:

Top 10 highest-paid college majors

  1. Petroleum Engineering: $120,000
  2. Pharmacy Pharmaceutical Sciences and Administration: $105,000
  3. Mathematics and Computer Science: $98,000
  4. Aerospace Engineering: $87,000
  5. Chemical Engineering: $86,000
  6. Electrical Engineering: $85,000
  7. Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering: $82,000
  8. Mechanical Engineering: $80,000
  9. Metallurgical Engineering: $80,000
  10.  Mining and Mineral Engineering: $80,000

And here are some majors that you should avoid at all costs:

  1. Counseling Psychology: $29,000
  2. Early Childhood Education: $36,000
  3. Theology and Religious Vocations: $38,000
  4. Human Services and Community Organization: $38,000
  5. Social Work: $39,000
  6. Drama and Theater Arts: $40,000
  7. Studio Arts: $40,000
  8. Communication Disorders Sciences and Service: $40,000
  9. Visual and Performing Arts: $40,000
  10. Health and Medical Preparatory Programs: $40,000

So young people need to be careful what they study in order to get a job that will allow them to pay off all the government debts that their teachers were busy running up. Their teachers taught them that government spending was good, but their teachers aren’t going to be paying for the government spending. They are the beneficiaries of the increased government spending. The pupils are the ones who will have to work to pay for the spending on the social programs enjoyed by their teachers.

It’s very important for young Christians to understand that degrees are getting more expensive, and it’s important to choose a field that is going to produce a return on your investment. Not only do STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) degrees get you a job that pays, but it has other benefits. For example STEM degrees grind out every last bit of impracticality and entitlement-feeling out of you – because in a STEM program, no one cares about your “specialness”. You solve problems or you fail the class. It’s not a situation where you can just repeat what the professor says in order to get good grades, as is often (but not always) the case in the humanities. 

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Undercover video: Obamacare navigators tell applicants to lie and defraud taxpayers

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Secret agent James O’Keefe is once again doing the work that the liberal media won’t do.

The Heritage Foundation reports.

Excerpt:

Lie and defraud taxpayers – that’s what Obamacare “navigators” are telling some Americans trying to sign up for health insurance.

James O’Keefe, whose Project Veritas helped expose ACORN with an undercover investigation, has a new video focusing on Obamacare “navigators” in Texas, who received grants to provide in-person assistance to Americans signing up for Obamacare.

For example, a navigator told an undercover Project Veritas Investigator that he did not have to quit smoking to lower his health insurance premiums—she said that all he had to do was lie.

“You lie because your premiums will be higher,” said an Obamacare navigator assistant at the NUL Irving Community Center. She also admitted that she always lies on her forms.

A Project Veritas investigator also posed as a college student asking for help filling out his insurance forms. He told the navigator that he is employed by his university but also performs side jobs like cutting hair and cleaning houses. He admitted that he never included his income from side jobs when filing taxes.

“Mrs. Dorothy,” an Obamacare navigator at the National Urban League, told him that he is supposed to file a percentage of that income, but she added, “Don’t get yourself in trouble by declaring it now.”

She told him to file only what the government can see.

“Because if you show more than that then you open yourself up to an audit,” she said. “Because the IRS will be – has access to this information. Because that’s how they determine what your eligibility is for the [HHS] grants.”

Lakisha Williams, a navigator in Dorothy’s office listening in on the conversation, said to act as though it never happened. “Never report it,” she said.

These examples show that Obamacare navigators are encouraging applicants to lie and defraud the government to get access to more taxpayer money. As if that weren’t bad enough, Heritage’s Chris Jacobs has warned that navigators could pose a security risk.

Jacobs wrote, “Because their job involves helping Americans figure out their insurance options, navigators will often have access to sensitive personal information—bank accounts, Social Security numbers, insurance identification, and more. Yet navigators will not be required to undergo background checks, and the process for filing complaints about unscrupulous navigators remains unclear at best.”

In fact, even convicted felons are eligible to be Obamacare “navigators”. I think that this is just Obama paying off all of the “community organizers” who helped get him elected. Recall that Obama has connections to the radical leftist ACORN organization, and they were exposed for voter fraud. So this isn’t surprising at all. Obama is also connected to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the nation, and they have also been exposed for urging people to commit crimes. This is not even to get started on Obama’s campaign fundraisers who got rewarded with tax dollars for green energy companies that later went bankrupt.

UPDATE: Republicans move fast to call for a halt to these Obamacare “navigators”, based on the video above.

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Three evidential reasons why you should promote and support traditional marriage

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People often question me about my strict rules of courting, according to which a man explains his plan for the marriage to the woman, and then evaluates her for the role over some period of time. The goal being to see if the woman will listen to the man’s plan, grow her skills to work that plan, and then take steps to work on that plan. I advocate for no physical contact during that evaluation period so that the man is able to avoid being influenced by non-rational factors.

So why do I have this system? Well many reasons, but one the reasons is to do no harm to women or children. I have never had sex with a woman who regretted it. I have never murdered an unborn child. I have never divorced a woman. I have never been the cause of a fatherless child. It doesn’t really matter to me if women pretend to be OK with premarital sex, breakups and divorce. My view is that it’s not good for them and for children (unborn and born) and I am not going to inflict harm on women and children.

So that’s one reason why I have this system. I would say that people who reject a rigorous, disciplined, structured view of relationships are vastly more likely cause harm to women and children (and men, in the case of no-fault divorce or false accusations of rape or false paternity claims). I guess I am open to any other system that causes less harm (although I have other reasons for choosing chastity/courting as my approach to relationships). But I don’t find that my detractors want to prevent harm to others. So, I stick with what I have.

So in this post, I wanted to present a few reasons why we need to be careful to marry well, and select the right person for the job. This just reinforces why I would adopt these rules – because marriage matters, and when it comes to marriage, we don’t rely on our feelings, we rely on facts and we rely on self-control.

Smoking

Here’s a story from the left-leaning Globe and Mail.

Excerpt:

Each year, Canadian taxpayers spend almost four and a half billion dollars on health care for smoking related illnesses. Governments, at all levels, have implemented policies designed to reduce tobacco consumption in the hope of lowering the excess burden placed on the health care system by smokers. So, it should be of interest to note that whether or not a person smokes has a lot to do with whether or not they are married.

New research published this month, finds that Canadian men and women who are married are significantly less likely to smoke than their unmarried counterparts, and consume less alcohol as well. Divorced men and women not only smoke more than married men and women, but they smoke even more than unmarried men and women.

Thirty-eight per cent of divorced men smoke, compared to 30 per cent of single men and 20 per cent of married men.

Thirty-two per cent of divorced women smoke, compared to 26 per cent of single women and 15 per cent of married women.

Husbands and wives, it seems, discourage each other from behaving in a way that is bad for their health suggesting that the more people who are married, and stay that way, the healthier we will be as a population.

You can read the abstract from the study here. It was published in the “Review of Economics of the Household” journal.

Domestic violence

Here’s a publication from the Heritage Foundation think tank that shows that marriage is the safest arrangement for women and children. They use mainstream sources like the U.S. Department of Justice.

Excerpt:

The institution that most strongly protects mothers and children from domestic abuse and violent crime is marriage. Analysis of ten years worth of findings from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has conducted since 1973, demonstrates that mothers who are or ever have been married are far less likely to suffer from violent crime than are mothers who never marry.

Specifically, data from the NCVS survey show that:

  • Married women with children suffer far less abuse than single mothers. In fact, the rate of spousal, boyfriend, or domestic partner abuse is twice as high among mothers who have never been married as it is among mothers who have ever married (including those separated or divorced).
  • Married women with children are far less likely to suffer from violent crime in general or at the hands of intimate acquaintances or strangers. Mothers who have never married–including those who are single and living either alone or with a boyfriend and those who are cohabiting with their child’s father–are more than twice as likely to be victims of violent crime than are mothers who have ever married.

Other social science surveys demonstrate that marriage is the safest place for children as well. For example:

  • Children of divorced or never-married mothers are six to 30 times more likely to suffer from serious child abuse than are children raised by both biological parents in marriage.2

Without question, marriage is the safest place for a mother and her children to live, both at home and in the larger community. Nevertheless, current government policy is either indifferent to or actively hostile to the institution of marriage. The welfare system, for example, can penalize low-income parents who decide to marry. Such hostility toward marriage is poor public policy; government instead should foster healthy and enduring marriages, which would have many benefits for mothers and children, including reducing domestic violence.

Now it’s important to keep in mind that women commit domestic violence at about the same rate as men, but the Heritage Foundation paper doesn’t mention men. However, I think it’s reasonable to think that marriage is safer for men as well.

Poverty

Here’s another publication from the Heritage Foundation that shows that marriage is better for keeping kids out of poverty.

Here’s the abstract:

Child poverty is an ongoing national concern, but few are aware that its principal cause is the absence of married fathers in the home. Marriage remains America’s strongest anti-poverty weapon, yet it continues to decline. As husbands disappear from the home, poverty and welfare dependence will increase, and children and parents will suffer as a result. Since marital decline drives up child poverty and welfare dependence, and since the poor aspire to healthy marriage but lack the norms, understanding, and skills to achieve it, it is reasonable for government to take active steps to strengthen marriage. Just as government discourages youth from dropping out of school, it should provide information that will help people to form and maintain healthy marriages and delay childbearing until they are married and economically stable. In particular, clarifying the severe shortcomings of the “child first, marriage later” philosophy to potential parents in lower-income communities should be a priority.

Again, the paper uses mainstream from neutral sources like the U.S. Census.