How was it that we were intended to react last month, when Massachusetts teens marched to the State House to protest cuts in government-subsidized summer jobs?
On the one hand, we could shrug an indifferent shrug and note that every social service program is marching in the streets, in anticipation of government whacking in the face of a recessionary loss of tax revenue.
On the other hand, we could shed a tear for low-income kids and the future of America and the evils of Big Pharma and the investment bankers and how, just maybe, we could raise the marginal rate on income taxes for all millionaires making more than about $45,000 per year.
Somewhere in the muddy middle of these reactions is the marketing challenge for the adults who act as middlemen for the money that normally flows between government and “subsidized” jobs for teenagers. How could they clarify a reasonable sales pitch in such a way as to bring us all to our knees and open our wallets for subsidized jobs?
In this case, the job-subsidy juggernaut used fear – and just a tiny bit of racism.
You know these kids, they whispered knowingly, with a wink and a nod. If you don’t give them a “job” in the summer, they will wander the mean streets of Boston, shooting people and lowering real estate values.
The kids themselves have learned the game. The Boston Globe published a loving piece on the protests, sprinkled with interviews of young boys who suggested that the only alternative to a subsidized job was gang membership and potential gunplay.
An ‘Or Else’ Gambit
There’s a risk to such a marketing plan. The threat might save the jobs program, but doom another generation of young, poor kids to despair. Would you be inclined to hire a job candidate whose resume suggests that he would, of course, like a job, because the only alternatives are drug dealing and murder? Even candidates for internal audit positions are a bit more subtle than that.
On a more philosophical level, should society muster a collective shudder at the image of youngsters marching in the streets for a government-subsidized job, with the implicit message that there are no other options available? If that is the sensibility of these youngsters when they are 17, what will they be like when they are 25 or 40 or 62?
As with welfare and “public housing” and so much of the social service network, the message in the “old days” was that these were designed as short-term aids, to overcome an emergency.
Somewhere in the curriculum for how to stage a successful youth protest in support of subsidized jobs, the kids should probably be taught that if they get a high school diploma, then a job, and then a spouse, and then have kids, their chances of sinking below the poverty level are about 2 percent.
The alternative: spend the rest of your days begging the government for make-believe employment and forgiveness for all that “gang” stuff.
Is it truly our intent to train a generation that without a marginal job, fed and watered by government subsidy, the only teenage alternative is street violence? The satirical news service, The Onion recently had a make-believe news story about such a notion. The “paper” wrote:
“In a stunning reversal of more than 200 years of conventional wisdom, failure – traditionally believed to be an unacceptable outcome for a wide range of tasks and goals – is now increasingly seen as a viable alternative to success, sources confirmed Tuesday.”
To be sure, an overreaching hostility to aspects of the social service safety net can appear to be (and often is) unnecessarily harsh and unfeeling. As the prominent analyst Daniel Yankelovich put it in his book, “New Rules,” almost 30 years ago: “If people believe that success can be won through hard work, intelligence and effort, then those who fail must somehow or another come to feel that they are personally responsible, and therefore are in some fundamental sense, unworthy.”
Of course, an alternative method that leads to feeling unworthy is to have the adults program you to believe that the only alternative to a subsidized job is to be a criminal.
