Young people voted for Obama in overwhelming numbers, but the question is why?
As I explain in this interview for Blaze TV, they are being hurt by his policies.
It’s not just that youth unemployment is high. Obama’s policies also are hurting those who found jobs. Simply stated, these “lucky” folks are getting below-average pay.
I specifically explain that academics have determined that those entering the labor market in a weak economy will suffer a long-run loss of income.
Some of you may think I’m clutching at straws because I don’t like Obama, but perhaps you’ll believe the man who formerly served as the Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Here’s some of what Austin Goolsbee wrote several years ago for the New York Times.
…starting at the bottom is a recipe for being underpaid for a long time to come. Graduates’ first jobs have an inordinate impact on their career path and their “future income stream,” as economists refer to a person’s earnings over a lifetime. The importance of that first job for future success also means that graduates remain highly dependent on the random fluctuations of the economy, which can play a crucial role in the quality of jobs available when they get out of school.
Goolsbee cites some research based on the career paths of Stanford MBAs.
Consider the evidence uncovered by Paul Oyer, a Stanford Business School economist… He found that the performance of the stock market in the two years the students were in business school played a major role in whether they took an investment banking job upon graduating and, because such jobs pay extremely well, upon the average salary of the class. That is no surprise. The startling thing about the data was his finding that the relative income differences among classes remained, even as much as 20 years later.
He also reports on what other scholars found for regular college students.
Dr. Oyer’s findings hold for more than just high-end M.B.A. students on Wall Street. They are also true for college students. A recent study, by the economists Philip Oreopoulos, Till Von Wachter and Andrew Heisz…finds that the setback in earnings for college students who graduate in a recession stays with them for the next 10 years. These data confirm that people essentially cannot close the wage gap by working their way up the company hierarchy. While they may work their way up, the people who started above them do, too. They don’t catch up.
Now think about today’s young people. They’re buried in debt, thanks to government programs that have caused a third-party payer crisis. Yet they are having a hard time finding jobs because Obama’s policies are stunting the economy’s performance.
And even if they do find a job, the research suggests they will get paid less. Not just today, but for the foreseeable future.
Yet they gush over Obama. Go figure.
P.S. Goolsbee’s recent columns have been less impressive, perhaps because he feels the need to defend Obama.
P.P.S. I’m not suggesting that young people should have gushed over McCain or Romney. Just that they should view almost all politicians with disdain.
P.P.P.S. I also say in the interview that the government should get out of the housing business – both on the spending side of the budget and the revenue side of the budget. And it goes without saying that I also explain the need to reduce the burden of government spending.
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I never connected stuff like this till I bought my first house, and the tax bills started coming – city, county, school district, you name it… I became Conservative rapidly after that!!
Obama is media created Pop Culture figure. The WH and the media work overtime to maintain his Pop Culture image. His image may be the mostly tightly controlled and carefully scripted in history.
By constantly campaigning, complaining, and blaming he keeps himself separated from what goes on in Washington (to his supporters) who make absolutely no connection between Obama and his failed policies , they refuse to accept that his policies cause any problems. And Obama has capitalized on that by successfully blaming Bush, and Reagan, for his failures.
And then there is the race card. There are simply very different standards for blacks in America than whites. He tries hard, but everyone & everything else prevents him from succeeding, is pretty much the whole narrative for blacks in America.
Never the less it’s a powerful combination, especially when most of the media is on board, support the myths, and run cover by spinning everything negative away from him. That’s hard to beat as the GOP has found out, even with all his failed policies. Half the voters simply do not connect him with his policies or the state on the economy and the country.
I think it’s about the flow of information… control the ideology and it’s corresponding behavior by promoting it through establishment media channels… Obama is politically correct… and has been promoted for years as an affirmation of just how right and just leftist social policy truly is… kids who have never paid taxes… are very naïve… and too lazy to get the facts… buy into the model… the sad thing is that this president is not just hurting Americans in the near term… he will leave quite a bill for future generations to pay… if we are looking for someone to blame for all of this… we need only look in the mirror…
P.s. the most frightening thing about Golsbee’s remarks is that he thinks rhe fluctuations in the marketplace for these kids are random. He doesn’t even realize the damage bozos like him are causing.
P.p.s. you need to come up with another word instead of “statists”. It’s too benign.
Unfortunately the youth have had their brains poisoned by poor education and leftist professors, meaning they don’t understand they will actually be the ones paying, either through higher taxes or lost opportunities. They think Barry will give them free stuff that the rich are paying for.
They also get easily distracted by things like gay marriage and even the environment. Honestly, I want a clean environment too, I just know that’s not the true goal of environmentalists. And I place gay marriage about 10000th on our list of national priorities.
Keep on writin’, maybe someday enough will see the light. Unfortunately they will have to learn the hard way, through experience.
George
I agree with Zorba. It’s the same reason that the politicians and their Keynesians don’t see themselves as repeating the same mistakes today. They don’t see that what was done by the government is a mistake, It’s the same reason FDR was reelected in ’36 in the middle of the Great Depression after numerous government actions that made the Depression worse. I summarize this type of blind, religious-like thinking as The Government Can Never Be Wrong or the Source of the Problem and the Answer is Always More Government or Money.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Ya got me. Talk about voting against one’s own interest. Click through to see interesting analysis of how entering the job market in a bad economy sets a young person on an underperforming path for a long time to come.
Why are young moths attracted to the Obama light of “we’re all in this together, we need collective management, there’s no room for dissenters”…?
Because collectivism (and its typically inevitable extension, mandatory collectivism) are natural human traits, and those young enough have not had time to realize that it does not work. They have not had time to experience the day to day perverse incentives of socialism. They are, in other words, unaware of the idealism vs reality of the welfare state.
Collectivism is baked into the human DNA because it had served humans well during 99.98% of humanity’s existence, a static world where one is born and dies in the same environment. But that trait has become self-destructive in today’s fast changing world where initiative, and thus motivation towards unique excellence, is the overwhelmingly dominant determinant of total progress.
I would like to remind young people (in a way I am also one, though ObamaCare is already enticing me into retirement) that the difference between a 2% and a 4% growth rate could very well mean, amongst many other things, the difference between the cure for cancer being discovered in say 2070 vs 2050. Today’s twenty year olds should greatly care about that and many similarly monumental effects. There are a heck of a lot of lives under that one small differential alone. Many more than socialist compassion will ever save.
…but a redistribution dollar today is worth five in future free markets, so Obama is elected president and young Americans continue their subpar growth convergence march towards the world average.
Dan, unfortunately we raised a generation of idiots they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. With the exception of a few home-schooled kids the ‘college grads’ know less than a 10th grader from the ’60’s! They don’t get it, they’ll never get it, because they’re disconnected from humanity and their own history and incapable of thinking for themselves. . .