Term Paper on "Macroeconomics Sixty Percent of the Youth"

Term Paper 4 pages (1649 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Macroeconomics

Sixty Percent of the youth between eighteen and thirty in Detroit are unemployed, have not completed high school, are at various levels of functional illiteracy, without job skills, and are living on welfare or through illegal activity. This "negative human capital" could be put to better use and made a positive force for society. If we consider the financial cost of this group upon society, changing behavior to transform them into "positive human capital" could have a tremendous affect upon the region.

In the 1930s, during the depression, President Roosevelt initiated several programs designed to help the people of the United States (U.S.) to deal with the financial crisis. One of these was the Civilian Conservation Corps, signed into law on March 31, 1933. It became one of the most successful programs of the 1930s, despite the strong opposition from organized labor. "Its leaders feared a loss of jobs that could be filled with union members. They also looked with alarm at the involvement of the Army believing it might lead to regimentation of labor." The CCC was an interdepartmental work and relief program that sent young, unemployed men from the cities to work on conservation projects in rural areas at a dollar a day. It is credited with constructing many buildings and trails in state and national parks still treasured today, and other work related to land conservation, etc. The first enrollee entered the CCC on April 7, 1933, just 37 days after President Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration. In a short time there were 250,000 young enrollees working in CCC camps all around the country. Enrollment peaked in September 1935 at about 502,000. One of the most successful and well-received New Deal programs, by the time the CCC disbanded in 1942, several million young men had participated.

A similar program could be resurrected today. It could be used in both pre-judicial and post-judicial situations. The enrollees would be paid minimum wage and could even earn financial aid for future college attendance, such as is done in the military. These workers could be used in a similar fashion as during the 1930s, by improving our infrastructure, installation of telephone and power lines, construction of logging and fire roads, fence construction, erosion control and tree planting. They could help in maintaining public buildings and building and maintaining roads. Congress is currently debating a spending bill that would allocate funds to rebuild our highways. This program could assist in that effort. Wages could be paid to these workers from funds in that legislation. The net affect of this program would be to take a negative situation and turn it into a positive, even providing life-long job skills for individuals who might not otherwise receive them.

Millions of America's children do not have access to prepaid basic health care and when treated are being treated at hospital emergency rooms which by law must serve them at very high public cost. Part of the problem is that our emergency rooms are overloaded with people who have no other access to health care and use the ER as their family doctor. Many of these people are in this country illegally. "Sixty percent of the county's uninsured patients are not U.S. citizens. More than half are here illegally. About 2 million undocumented aliens in Los Angeles County alone are crowding emergency rooms because they can't afford to see a doctor." Visits to ERs have increased 26% in the last decade, predominantly among those without insurance. Compounding this problem is the fact that the number of facilities has decreased over that period.

Over forty million people in this country have no regular access to health care. Most of these are people who earn too little to pay premiums on individual health insurance policies or are not employed by companies that offer health insurance benefits. In spite of this, we continue to treat illegal immigrants and their dependents the same as legal residents. Over the last several decades, and despite the severe fiscal crises faced by local and state governments, political leaders continued to promote policies that grant costly benefits to people who violate immigration laws. One out of every four uninsured people in the United States is an illegal immigrant. Almost half of these immigrants have either no insurance or have it provided to them at taxpayers' expense. In some hospitals, as much as two-thirds of total operating costs are for uncompensated care for illegal aliens. Border hospitals reported losses of almost $190 million in unreimbursed costs for treating illegal aliens in 2000, with another $113 million in ambulance fees and follow-up services.

Recent appropriations of $1 billion were included in the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act providing funds to help hospitals in border states pay for emergency care for illegal immigrants. Hospitals are required to ask uninsured patients whether they are U.S. citizens or valid visa holders. They will also have to photocopy and file all available identification papers of the uninsured that show up for treatment. The problem is "that illegality becomes the criteria for aid. There is something lopsided about giving illegals aid that is not available to legal immigrants and other Americans." The way to solve this is to enforce the immigration laws and control our borders. Allow workers from other countries to immigrate legally, but control the process. "Opening such avenues will make it easier for them to qualify for employer health care plans or existing government programs...special aid for illegals doesn't give them meaningful help and shortchanges everyone else."

America spends more on each student in public education, kindergarten through twelve, than any other developed nation, yet performs at the bottom of every international student achievement test. One response to this is that the comparison is flawed. Standardized test scores may be an inadequate measure of our children's learning, and one reason is that they reflect a student's performance on a limited kind of task, on a particular day, in a stressful time-limited situation. Using standardized test scores to measure our students' learning is like using a still photograph rather than a videotape. But since standardized test scores are commonly used to measure and compare students' achievement, it is important to examine such scores in order to address the widespread myth that our students are not doing as well as they used to. We need to look deeper than the superficial data usually reported in the media.

International comparisons can be made on several factors, but they must be made cautiously because of the various factors involved. In 1989, the U.S. had the fourth highest high school completion rate of 20 major countries. The U.S.'s college graduation rate is also about double that of most other countries. We spend much more than most nations on higher education, but we are about average among industrialized nations in what we spend on K-12 education. Rank orderings of countries can be very misleading. For example, in the first IAEP study of reading, U.S. nine-year-olds finished second in the world among 31 nations, while our fourteen-year-olds finished eighth. However, the actual scores of the fourteen-year-olds were almost as close to first place as those of the nine-year-olds. International comparisons of test scores have not typically presented U.S. students in a favorable light, but national differences need to be reinterpreted in light of factors such as these.

Schools from around the world have expressed an interest in Alberta, Canada's education curriculum. On national tests, Alberta's thirteen-year-old and sixteen-year-old students consistently perform as well as students across Canada in reading and writing, and better than Canadian students overall in mathematics and science. Alberta offers students a comprehensive, well-rounded education with a variety of core and optional programs available throughout their learning. Having both core and optional programs ensures students have a balanced and high quality… READ MORE

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