{"id":160,"date":"2014-11-27T18:35:13","date_gmt":"2014-11-27T18:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?page_id=160"},"modified":"2015-08-20T03:37:42","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T03:37:42","slug":"my-brothers-keepers-message-to-poorer-youth-youre-not-important","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?page_id=160","title":{"rendered":"“My Brother\u2019s Keeper\u2019s” Message to Poorer Youth: You\u2019re Not Important"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

“My Brother\u2019s Keeper\u2019s” Message to Poorer Youth: You\u2019re Not Important<\/h3>\n

March 26, 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

In impoverished Richmond, California, population 110,000, the teenaged youth population has suffered scores of gun murders<\/a> since 1995\u2014as has Richmond\u2019s middle-aged population. A few miles away, Marin County, with 250,000 people, has had ZERO teenaged youths murdered by guns since 1995.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the strategy behind this fantastic “Marin miracle?” It\u2019s called “a low youth poverty rate”\u2014under 10%, the level older Americans and Western European teenagers take for granted.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t force millions of young people to endure crushing poverty. That\u2019s “what works.”<\/p>\n

Now, imagine that a political leader proposed cutting the $600-billion Social Security<\/a> budget by 90%, returning senior citizens to the 25%-in-poverty destitution of 1960, and substituting a “My Grandparents’ Keeper” initiative funded with a few hundred million dollars in private foundation funds (most earmarked for consultants and CEOs) along with lectures on the “personal responsibility” of aging Americans to make “good choices” to fund their retirements with their own savings. That leader would be excoriated left to right, and no longer in power.<\/p>\n

Yet, that’s the situation, and the “solution,” proposed for America’s poorer children and youth. Across America, 7 million children and teenagers suffer utter destitution<\/a>, another 9 million live in serious poverty<\/a>, and 16 million more are in low-income households<\/a> struggling just above poverty. The risks of poverty are staggering. In California as elsewhere, three-fourths of youthful violent crime arrests<\/a> and 90% of teenage gun homicides occur in populations where youth poverty levels top 20%.<\/p>\n

Given this White House\u2019s emotional rhetoric deploring gun violence and young people, you\u2019d think confronting youth poverty would be the highest priority. You\u2019d be wrong. President Obama set a dismissive tone in launching the My Brother\u2019s Keeper<\/a> initiative to boost poorer young people out of poverty: “It doesn\u2019t take all that much.”<\/p>\n

“Not much” drastically overstates the Obama presidency\u2019s commitment to America\u2019s 32 million poorer children and youth<\/a>. Not one federal dime is budgeted for the initiative.<\/p>\n

Instead, My Brother\u2019s Keeper will raise $7.5 million from 10 major foundations<\/a> to pay “consultants and firms,” and perhaps $200 million in “private investments” over the next five years. This larger sum (if ever raised) is a whopping $1.25 per year per low-income youth.<\/p>\n

What does government do to prevent poverty among important constituencies? It spends what\u2019s necessary: for example, $650 billion on Social Security<\/a> for the nation\u2019s 43 million elderly in 2012, $15,000 per recipient. Government works! Poverty rates among senior citizens fell to a record low 9%, the best of any age.<\/p>\n

What does government do when a population isn\u2019t important? “Not much.” It spent just $31 billion on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families<\/a> in 2012 for poorer American children and youth\u2014just $970 per young recipient\u2014leaving 22% in poverty, the worst of any age. The morals of the government President Obama heads are expressed in a budget whose tax and benefits structure<\/a> expends vastly more to support grandparents than grandkids.<\/p>\n

My Brother\u2019s Keeper is just a rehash of President Bill Clinton\u2019s youth-targeted “personal responsibility” crusade (which Clinton also boasted “won\u2019t cost much”) and cloned past initiatives relying on the usual consultants, volunteers, churches, programs, morals lectures, etc.\u2014all vowing to “do what works,” all promising new breakthroughs from the same old failed model.<\/p>\n

MBK foundations and interests would accomplish far more by uniting to tell presidents that private tokenism is woefully inadequate to make up for ongoing administration failures to forcefully redress youth poverty.<\/p>\n

What young people need is a comprehensive government social insurance plan, prioritized as the president and liberals do for elder welfare. Including young people in social insurance, as every other Western nation does, would cost far less than Social Security but much more than now is spent on “temporary assistance.”<\/p>\n

Sure, conservatives like Fox News\u2019 and MBK celebrity Bill O\u2019Reilly and much of Congress would rail against expanding public assistance for young people. But does President Obama want a legacy of not even trying?<\/p>\n

Maybe so. When it comes to reducing unemployment among the young, the president pointlessly distanced himself from teenaged minimum-wage workers and signed legislation perpetuating arbitrary job discrimination against young employees. The First Lady stereotypes young people<\/a> as drunken, accident-happy “knuckleheads.” The president<\/a> misses no opportunity to label as the young as violent and prone to “mess up.”<\/p>\n

Why this baseless, gratuitous name-calling and finger-pointing from a presidency that should be fostering introspection and integration? If any age is knuckleheaded, it\u2019s Michelle Obama\u2019s own self-destructive, drug-overdosing, gun-lethal middle-agers. This administration\u2019s monumentally bad decisions regarding young people\u2019s well-being disqualifies the Obamas from lecturing the Western world\u2019s poorest, most abused youth to “make better decisions<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

But the shameful fact remains: Expanding direct social insurance payments is obviously, hugely in the best interests of young people\u2014but does not serve the interests of interests claiming to “advocate for youth,” who profit from the indirect “consultants and firms” and remedial interventions My Brother\u2019s Keeper funds. When will America evolve political and institutional leadership that recognizes young people as valued citizens meriting investment instead of dehumanized objects of stigma, neglect, and profit?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“My Brother\u2019s Keeper\u2019s” Message to Poorer Youth: You\u2019re Not Important March 26, 2014 In impoverished Richmond, California, population 110,000, the teenaged youth population has suffered scores of gun murders since 1995\u2014as has Richmond\u2019s middle-aged population. A few miles away, Marin County, with 250,000 people, has had ZERO teenaged youths murdered by guns since 1995. What\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-160","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87079,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/160\/revisions\/87079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}