Exploiting The Nation's Youth

Health insurance premiums for NC college students rise 51% under ObamaCare.

The Terrifying New Normal

Victor David Hanson:

Unemployment rates of those 16-24 are now officially over 50%. Even the cohort between 16 and 29 suffers from 45% unemployment. In short, in four years we have become Europeanized: young people with no jobs who are living at home and putting off marriage and child raising — a “lost” generation in “limbo,” etc. etc. They may have a car, borrow their parents’ nicer car for special occasions, watch their parents’ big screen TV, and have pocket change for a cell phone and laptop by enjoying free rent, food, and laundry, but beneath that thinning technological veneer there is really little hope that they will ever be able to maintain that lifestyle on their own in this present day and age. Meanwhile, just like some Middle East tribal society, “contacts,” “networking,” and “pull” are the new gospel, as parents rely on quid pro quos to offer their indebted, unemployed (and aging) children some sort of inside one-upmanship in the cutthroat job market . . . .

In other words, we are seeing the proverbial chickens coming home to roost in an economy that has run up $16 trillion in debt, regulated its way into paralysis, hounded the private sector, and demonized profit-making. The strange thing about the 2008 disaster was not just that hand-in-glove with Wall Street banks Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae created a huge real estate bubble and then watched it pop (one inflated through private speculation and government-backed sub-prime loans), but that the blame went not to the intrusive, incompetent federal government or even to a Goldman-Sachs-like bundler (a firm from whom Obama got more campaign money than did any other prior presidential candidate), but to the vague “private sector” — as if the well-driller or timber man had somehow collapsed the economy. The result was that Obama’s medicine from 2009 onward was worse than the original disease.

From Paul Ryan's Speech

"College graduates should not have to live out their twenties in their childhood bedrooms, staring at fading Obama posters, and wondering when they can move out and get going with life."

Plus:  "Sometimes even Presidents need reminding: our rights come from nature and god and not from government . . . . We will not replace our founding principles, we will reapply our founding principles."

There Is No War on Women

But there is a War on Children.

The Real Class Warfare is Between Baby Boomers and Younger Americans

Nick Gillespie: 

Hey kids, wake up! . . .You're not getting screwed by billionaires and plutocrats. You're getting screwed by Mom and Dad.

Systematically and in all sorts of ways. Old people are doing everything possible to rob you of your money, your future, your dignity, and your freedom.

Here's the irony, too (in a sort of Alanis Morissette sense): You're getting hosed by the very same group that 45 years ago was bitching and moaning about "the generation gap" and how their parents just didn't understand what really mattered in life.

Plus:

One of the primary ways that President Obama (born 1961) is making the so-called Affordable Care Act affordable is by having you foot more than your share of the bill.

Think it through for a moment, especially given that younger voters seem to really dig him. The younger you are, the less likely you are to need health care, much less insurance (there is a difference). The smart move for most generally healthy younger people is to take out a catastrophic coverage plan that would cover you in the event of a big accident. Thanks to Obamacare, you've got to get covered, either by your parents' plan or otherwise. The predictable result is that plans for younger people are getting more expensive precisely at the moment they are required by law (finally, a case where correlation meets causation!). That all plans are going to have to conform to higher-than-before benefit schedules ain't helping things either. Some colleges are dropping student plans as a result. 

Change

Gateway Pundit:  Youth unemployment rate soars to 16.8%.

The CBO Is Going to Need a Bigger Chart

Zerohedge:  "[W]hen it comes to the most recent forecast of US public debt . . . the CBO has officially run out of charting space. As can be seen on the graphic below, sometime in 2042 the CBO will need a bigger chart to represent US public debt as per the Extended Alternative Fiscal Scenario, which the CBO itself admits "is more representative of the fiscal policies that are now (or have recently been) in effect than is the extended baseline scenario."



Of course, the entire system will collapse long before then, unless we dramatically change the current trajectory.  Doing so starts by changing the President in November.

Change

The number of high-school students with jobs has hit a 20 year low:

The American job market is no place for students as the number of employed high schoolers has hit its lowest level in more than 20 years, according to new figures from the National Center for Education Statistics.

In 1990, 32 percent of high school students held jobs, versus just 16 percent now. Blame their elders.

Sectors that traditionally have offered teens their first paying gig — fast-food chains, movie theaters, malls and big-box retailers — have now become the last resorts for out-of-work college graduates or older Americans forced back into the labor force out of sheer financial necessity. The resulting squeeze has left students on the outside looking in.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

One in Three Young U.S. Workers Are Underemployed

"Gallup's unemployment measures show that April has . . . brought gloomy job news for young Americans and underscores that this group has been struggling disproportionately for some time. Those aged 18 to 29 are more than twice as likely as those in any other age group to be underemployed."

War Against the Young

 Past Obama supporter Walter Russell Mead

An analysis of recent jobs figures at Investor.com reveals a disturbing development: the biggest beneficiaries from the economic recovery are Boomers, while everyone else is getting the shaft.

Since the Obama administration took office, there has been an epochal shift. Young workers have continued to lose jobs and incomes, while older workers have actually gained ground.

In fact, the Obama administration has seen a boom in the prospects of the 55+ crowd; their (I should say ‘our’) employment stands at a 42 year high. Net, there are 3.9 new jobs for people over 55 since the recession began in December 2007, but there are 8.1 million fewer jobs for the young folks since that time.

Generational Theft

Senator Bob Corker: "As he appeals to college students, his Administration is robbing those same young people of their American inheritance, spending their money on my generation and engaging in nothing short of generational theft."

It's good to see Republicans starting to address this issue directly.  The trillions Obama has borrowed will have to be paid back eventually and that burden is going to fall disproportionately on America's younger generations.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Obama Is Now Posing As Mr. Fixit For Student Loans.

He's not.

I Am Not Prepared to Concede Obama is cool. . .

but, even if he is, it hasn't made him any less of a failure as President.

The New Lost Generation?

In the Obama economy, things continue to look grim for my generation, the millenials (at least that's what we were called before Obama determined to rename us after himself).  The latest reports show more than half of new college graduates are jobless or underemployed.

Horrifying.

Mark Steyn looks at the numbers and observes:

At this point, it's traditional for pundits to warn that if we don't change course we're going to wind up like Greece. Presumably they mean that, right now, our national debt, which crossed the Rubicon of 100 percent of GDP just before Christmas, is not as bad as that of Athens, although it's worse than Britain, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, and every other European nation except Portugal, Ireland and Italy. Or perhaps they mean that America's current deficit-to-GDP ratio is not quite as bad as Greece's, although it's worse than that of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and every other European nation except Ireland. 

But these comparisons tend to understate the insolvency of America, failing as they do to take into account state and municipal debts and public pension liabilities. When Morgan Stanley ran those numbers in 2009, the debt-to-revenue ratio in Greece was 312 percent; in the United States it was 358 percent. If Greece has been knocking back the ouzo, we're facedown in the vat. Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute calculates that, if you take into account unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare versus their European equivalents, Greece owes 875 percent of GDP; the United States owes 911 percent – or getting on for twice as much as the second-most insolvent Continental: France at 549 percent. 

And if you're thinking, wow, all these percentages are making my head hurt, forget 'em: When you're spending on the scale Washington does, what matters is the hard dollar numbers. Greece's total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of Treasury bonds every month – or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India – every year.

 With no apparent Plan B.

Hat tip to Vodkapundit.

America's Government has Placed a Greater Debt Burden on Its Citizens Than Any Other

It seems Americans owe, per capita, more than the citizens of any other country in the world, including Greece.


"But don’t worry, you say. Surely our fearless leader, BHO, and the many geniuses employed in his administration have a plan to address the debt crisis. Right? Well, no, actually, they don’t. The administration’s hope, as expressed in Obama’s FY 2013 budget, is that by 2022, if all goes according to plan and every assumption embedded in the budget comes true, the average American’s debt will rise by 70%, to $75,000.

The American ship of state is beginning to resemble the Costa Concordia as it approached the rocks off Giglio Island. One question that will someday be answered by history is: which ship had the more irresponsible captain at the helm?"

Obama's "Budget"

Gay Patriot looks at Obama's proposed joke of a budget and Timothy "TurboTax" Geithner's testimony before the House earlier this week and comes away with three key points:

1. The budget fails to address the long-term solvency of Medicare and Medicaid.  As Geithner himself said, “Even if Congress were to enact this budget we would still be left with–in the outer decades as millions of Americans retire–what are still unsustainable commitments in Medicare and Medicaid.”
2. The administration doesn’t like the Ryan plan, but has no plan of its own to deal with the nation’s long-term debt problem.  Geithner again, “We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.”
3. “President Obama’s FY 2013 budget does increase federal spending, not only above current levels (from $3.796 trillion in FY 2012 to $5.537 trillion in FY 2021, a 46% increase) but also above the levels approved by current law” (i.e., the August 2011 debt deal).  Geithner could not answer with “Yes” or “No” when asked whether  the budget increased federal spending above those levels set by that deal.

You Don't Rein in Out-of-Control Spending by Increasing It - Seems obvious, no?

David Boaz of Cato:  It’s being reported that in his 2013 budget President Obama will propose to increase spending now and reduce the deficit some day.  Isn’t that what every budget promises these days? As I noted last summer during the debt ceiling fight at the Britannica Blog, fiscal conservatives should be very skeptical of plans and proposals that  promise to cut spending some day—not this year, not next year, but swear to God some time in the next ten years:

As the White Queen said to Alice, “Jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.” Cuts tomorrow and cuts in the out-years—but never cuts today.

We’ve become so used to these unfathomable levels of deficits and debt—and to the once-rare concept of trillions of dollars—that we forget how new all this debt is. In 1981, after 190 years of federal spending, the national debt was “only” $1 trillion. Now, just 30 years later, it’s past $15 trillion.

The Debt Generation

This video, which I first spotted on Gateway Pundit, is definitely worth a minute of your time.  It does a nice job of illustrating one of the sad ironies of the Obama presidency.  Obama could have never become president without the overwhelming support of the millennials, my generation, but no generation will be hurt more by Obama's policies.  Not only is the youth unemployment rate sky high; Obama has also borrowed more than $5 trillion that we will eventually have to repay.  It is generational theft and we are the victims.