[Vision2020] Newt's work plan for poor kids

Fri Dec 2 11:26:01 PST 2011

Rose,

Thank you for your comments.  It's hard to know where to start without upsetting everyone.

I think most of us would agree that individuals and the entire country could benefit from vastly improved work ethics at all age levels except the very elderly of the population.  A timely OP/ED piece on this matter appeared today [see below].  But it is not just some of the poor that lack healthy work ethics:  One example: Observe the City of Moscow's outside public works employees -- could they work any slower?

As you point out, the object of using work experience to build/improve work ethic is to inspire, not to inhibit/degrade aspirations to career goals, but to promulgate a healthy attitude towards working effectively and at a reasonable pace.  There is nothing wrong with hard work, including cleaning toilets, something I did as a service station attendant when I was 12 years old.  But, there are many other jobs that could be done, and to suggest limiting jobs for poor or any other students to the shit jobs is counterproductive and degrading.

Increasing work ethic means making working a positive experience.  That is not an easy task.  It means rewarding work well done and correcting mistakes and sloth in a manner that does not degrade or discourage the individual --  skills not universally found among management/supervision.

Newt's idea is certainly not a new one.  Programs with these goals have been around a long time; they grew during The Great Society era.  Such programs have met with various levels of success from almost none to almost spectacular.  When I was the Boundary County Planning and Zoning Coordinator, I had two young people assigned to me for a summer in such a program.  I think we all benefited.

I believe the improvement of work ethic nationally is a very important goal; it is worth spending tax dollars on well designed programs to achieve this.  The problem is to get well designed programs out of an inept, private agenda laden congress.

Saundra brings up an important point:  Where is the money to come from to fund these jobs?  In the current legislative/political mood, we won't even fund treatment for seriously mentally ill veterans returning from Iran and Afghanistan who are a threat to themselves and to the community.   Or is Newt suggesting that these student jobs be not be recompensed, but the reward is only the privilege of doing the work?  Get real!

One should not discourage the expression of ideas that are proposals to solve problems, but one would hope that those ideas from president wanna-bes would be much better thought out, and not reflect prejudices and half-truths about the poor or anyone else, nor about current political reality.

w.
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a.. 

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December 1, 2011
The Spirit of Enterprise
By DAVID BROOKS
Why are nations like Germany and the U.S. rich? It's not primarily because they possess natural resources - many nations have those. It's primarily because of habits, values and social capital. 

It's because many people in these countries, as Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute has noted, believe in a simple moral formula: effort should lead to reward as often as possible. 

People who work hard and play by the rules should have a fair shot at prosperity. Money should go to people on the basis of merit and enterprise. Self-control should be rewarded while laziness and self-indulgence should not. Community institutions should nurture responsibility and fairness. 

This ethos is not an immutable genetic property, which can blithely be taken for granted. It's a precious social construct, which can be undermined and degraded. 

Right now, this ethos is being undermined from all directions. People see lobbyists diverting money on the basis of connections; they see traders making millions off of short-term manipulations; they see governments stealing money from future generations to reward current voters. 

The result is a crisis of legitimacy. The game is rigged. Social trust shrivels. Effort is no longer worth it. The prosperity machine winds down. 

Yet the assault on these values continues, especially in Europe. 

Over the past few decades, several European nations, like Germany and the Netherlands, have played by the rules and practiced good governance. They have lived within their means, undertaken painful reforms, enhanced their competitiveness and reinforced good values. Now they are being brutally browbeaten for not wanting to bail out nations like Greece, Italy and Spain, which did not do these things, which instead borrowed huge amounts of money that they are choosing not to repay. 

The estimated costs of these bailouts vary enormously and may end up being greater than the cost of German reparations after World War I. Germans are being browbeaten for not wanting to bail out Greece, where even today many people are still not willing to pay their taxes. They are being browbeaten for not wanting to bail out Italy, where future growth prospects are uncertain. 

They are being asked to bail out nations with vast public sectors and horrible demographics. They are being asked to paper over fundamental economic problems with a mountain of currency. 

It's true that Germans benefited enormously from the euro zone and the southern European bubble, and that German and French banks are far from blameless. It's true that the consequences for the world would be calamitous if the euro zone cracked up. It's true that, in a crisis, you do things you wouldn't otherwise do; you do things that violate your everyday values. 

But our sympathy should be with the German people. They are not behaving selfishly by insisting on structural reforms in exchange for bailouts. They are not imprisoned by some rigid ideology. They are not besotted with some semi-senile Weimar superstition about rampant inflation. They are defending the values, habits and social contract upon which the entire prosperity of the West is based. 

The scariest thing is that many of the people browbeating the Germans seem to have very little commitment to the effort-reward formula that undergirds capitalism. On the one hand, there are the technicians who are oblivious to values. For them anything that can't be counted and modeled is a primitive irrelevancy. On the other hand, there are people who see the European crisis through the prism of some cosmic class war. What matters is not how people conduct themselves, but whether they are a have or a have-not. The burden of proof is against the haves. The benefit of the doubt is with the have-nots. Any resistance to redistribution is greeted with outrage. 

The real lesson from financial crises is that, at the pit of the crisis, you do what you have to do. You bail out the banks. You bail out the weak European governments. But, at the same time, you lock in policies that reinforce the fundamental link between effort and reward. And, as soon as the crisis passes, you move to repair the legitimacy of the system. 

That didn't happen after the American financial crisis of 2008. The people who caused the crisis were never held responsible. There never was an exit strategy to unwind the gigantic debt buildup. The structural problems plaguing the economy remain unaddressed. As a result, the United States suffers from a horrible crisis of trust that is slowing growth, restricting government action and sending our politics off in strange directions. 

Europe's challenge is not only to avert a financial meltdown but to do it in a way that doesn't poison the seedbed of prosperity. Which values will be rewarded and reinforced? Will it be effort, productivity and self-discipline? Or will it be bad governance, now and forever? 

From: Rosemary Huskey 
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2011 9:02 PM
To: 'Gary Crabtree' ; Vision2020 at moscow.com 
Subject: [Vision2020] Newt's work plan for poor kids

Maybe not a heartless bastard, just a pompous, self-entitled jackass.  What makes Newt think that poor kids can't learn office skills or be trained to be assistance librarians?    Let me help you to understand, Gary.  That pathetic serial adulterer, hypocritical, ethically challenged little twerp's message decoded (i.e. translated for those who have never lived in the South) simply means black kids are great with mops, buckets, and toilet bowl brushes, but office work, not so much.  That said, I have two other observations to make about Newt.  The first is courtesy of Paul Klugman "he's (Newt) a stupid man's idea of what a smart person sounds like."  And the second, which probably reflects the positions of many Progressive voters, if the Republicans are silly enough to "overlook" the baggage Newt brings to the party, Democrats will be dancing in the streets.

And, by the way, I am a great believer in the notion that kids rich or poor (from their middle teens on) should be happy to pick up some part-time work, which will help them gain a sense of purpose and responsibility, financial management skills, and a boost in deservedly earned self-esteem.  I worked 30 hours a week from my 16th birthday until I graduated from high school.  But, guess what, nobody ever suggested that the only skill I might have, or the only work I might be fit to do was clean the bathrooms at Moscow High School.

Rose Huskey

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com] On Behalf Of Gary Crabtree
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2011 7:51 PM
To: Tom Hansen; Moscow Vision 2020
Cc: Penni Cyr
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Say What?

Sounds as though the man is putting forward the radical conservative concept of "the part time, after school job." What a heartless bastard.

g

From: Tom Hansen 

Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2011 6:07 PM

To: Moscow Vision 2020 

Cc: Penni Cyr 

Subject: [Vision2020] Say What?

"A very poor neighborhood. You have kids that who are under law required to go to school. They have no money. They have no habit of work. What if you paid them part-time in the afternoon to sit in the clerical office, and greet people when they came in? What if you paid them to work as an assistant librarian?  

Let me get down to the janitor thing, and these letters are written that janitorial work is really hard and really dangerous and this and that.  Fine.  So what if they became assistant janitors and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom. And you pay them."

- Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (December 1, 2011)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gsc9ElmJEs

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen

Moscow, Idaho

"If not us, who?

If not now, when?"

- Unknown

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