Pavlovian, Taking a year off from school is very different from setting aside 5 hours of a 40 hour work week for menial labor. Besides, how did the study control for the possibility that people who take a year off are likely people who don’t really want to go to college/aren’t ready for college/ aren’t college material in the first place?
But, you’re right, people would not stand for it. Hey, I said I was a radical. Besides, you should back Skinner; behaviorism pride or something.
First, we aren’t interested in fluid mobility. That’s just pap to placate, not re-locate. Second, the strategy is to buy them away from us. Bread and circuses we’ll pay for, but actual programs that solve long term problems aren’t anything we’re interested in.
The real solution, assuming meritocracy, would take several decades of disciplined effort.
The solution? Simple but impossible. No one is granted citizenship by birth. Citizenship is earned, and parents bear full responsibility to insure that each of their children learn all required necessities to gain citizenship. That responsibility remains whether the child is eighteen or forty-two.
What are the necessities?
Enough education to acquire and hold a working position capable of supporting themselves.
The ability to balance a checkbook, understand the cost of credit, investment, or any financial information needed for stability.
An understanding of the responsibilities of marraige and parenting.
An understanding of social responsibilities from family through national civic participation.
In short, no one gains citizenship until they are capable of making their way WITHOUT COSTING ME ANY MONEY!
Would there still be welfare? Of course. There are all sorts of unforeseens in everyone’s life, and society should always be ready to help those blind-sided by accidents, health issues, etc. But the test is preparedness and willingness to care for one’s self.
Quite a solution coming from a so-called liberal, huh? 
Would such a ‘meritocracy’ work? Yes. Is it possible? Not a chance in hell.
Probably, but as previously mentioned, too many want bread and circuses without any labor.
My social liberalism pretty much extends only to issues related to kids. I agree that it’ll take generations to solve these problems, but I think the meritocracy concept only goes so far. The lion’s share of our social cost comes from the underclass, not the middle class. And I mean the cost incurred from the time a child is born into this class until he dies in the streets or in prison. It’s a different world from most of ours and it’s my experience that unless you’ve delved into it, you probably don’t really understand the culture. I don’t think there’s much that can shock me anymore, having learned how these people raise (and I use the term loosely) their children. But we have to understand it to properly address it. My view now is that to the extent that we can even upgrade some of the unemployed to the ‘working poor’ and then give them subsidized childcare and health benefits, it’s a step in the right direction. So I like the welfare-to-work programs, because it helps to break that endless cycle of reliance on welfare. At my childcare center, there’s a program for low-income working mothers who get subsidized childcare. While I used to occasionally feel a twinge of resentment that I had to pay full cost at my son’s preschool, it passed once I considered what their children are receiving. I think it’s a positive way to directly benefit children and also to encourage their mothers to get into, and stay, in the work force.
Other stuff that I support:
Continuing to improve and streamline the adoption process. There’s a hardcore section of the underclass out there having babies, but who are basically unemployable due to their drug problems or emotional/mental health issues. Their kids suffer terribly and need to be removed, the younger the better. Also, I’ve discovered that teenagers who come from multi-generation welfare families often don’t have a sense of themselves as having the potential to become productive, working adults, because it’s never been modeled by the adults around them. So young girls with no means of support or family members who can take them should be encouraged to give up their babies and, when they don’t, the more quickly and earlier that the babies can be removed from these toxic environments, the better chance the kids will have of making it. Also, babies are more adoptable, there are huge waiting lists for infants. People are more hesitant about taking older kids.
Make sure statutory rape laws are updated and strictly enforced. The underclass is pretty much defined by households with absentee fathers, which not only impoverishes the children, but also puts the daughters at a much higher risk of being victimized by older men. Of the teen pregnancies that even list a father, two out of three list men over the age of 20. About half of all teen mothers report that their pregnancies were preceded by molestation, rape or attempted rape. One study showed that the mean age of these statutory rape offenders was 27.
Fund more mentoring programs for teenagers, especially fatherless males. Always, organizations that serve kids are hurting for men to become involved, always. If there were more incentives for men to give some time – I really like the company-supported mentoring programs – then more boys would get the male attention that they’re starving for. I think a great program would be to teach teenagers of both sexes some of the stuff that tentative mentioned. There are a few of them out there, but often they’re run by a few people who give their time and money to do it out of a sense of ‘the village’.
Hum, I believe the absentee father complaint is bogus, and reflects on mom being too lazy to discipline, take time out of her social life for her children, and help them with homework.
I like my idea better, put birth control in the water. 
Smiles,
aspacia 
Ingenium and aspacia,
I applaud your proposals and they certainly would help mitigate some of the problems, but until we change the paradigm under which we view personal responsibility we will continue simply sticking our fingers in the holes of a very leaky dike.
I watched this mentality play out during the 1970=80 recession. I am trying to think of a nice way to approach what you have said. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to ask, how many more jobs will a community gain by educating people to do jobs and improving their ability to compete for them? Exactly how does this education and counseling create jobs, except for the burecrats that are paid to promote this idea?
Full employment is bad for the stock market. It forces employers to pay high wages such drives down profits.
Before we all agreed women’s liberation was a good thing, there was a strong effort to prevent it. Some people understood what almost doubling the work force would do to wages. Now it takes two pay checks to support a family, because wages went down and the cost of living went up.
Automation has elemenated many jobs, and so has out sourcing. Ilegal immigrants drive wages down.
We have a high tech., service economy, and are no longer have a labor intense industrial economy, nor do most of us live on farms, or own our businesses. It is time to update what we think.
Well, creating jobs should not be the goal. The goal should be improving the world and society. If all humans could lead happy, healthy lives in perpetuity with 30% employment, what’s the harm? A system that provides high job market fluidity would still ensure that everyone is contributing, because even though at any one time 70% were unemployed, most people would still work for some portion of the year.
Besides, ingenuity and knowledge create jobs. A society which is better educated to solve problems and find niches will fill in social gaps, and efficiently solve problems. Without a base of knowledge, fewer people will be eligible to fill certain social niches, and certain niches will have to be left unfilled. Right now there are many more unskilled laborers than there are unskilled labor roles in society, and that ratio will continue to skew towards the educated as technology becomes ever more ubiquitous.
I appreciate your logic. Not long ago it took at least a few men and 50 women to process the shrimp that is now processed by a machine and 2 men and 3 women. This change in employment need occurred in a small coastal town with no industry other than fishing.
On the other side of this equation, is all the children who need mothers at home. Now what if that machine were purchased by the women, and they all took turns running it?
The man who owned the machine, had such a large income, he had to reinvest the money each year to reduce his taxes. Of course this meant the next year he had more profit and needed to invest even more money.
Terrible problem isn’t it, having to invest one’s money to reduce the income taxes one has to pay.
While on the other side, poverty is living fron one crisis to the next with never money to prevent the small problems from becoming big ones. There is this line, where literally the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Might it be possible to move more people on the upper part of this line. Such as the women owning the shrimp picking plant. If they agreed to wages for the hours they work, they would have money to invest, and each year they would have more money to invest. As long as they made good investments, not only would they have an income, but they would build the economy of their community.
I think what I’m suggesting would would move the line, rather than move the people around the line. If more of peoples necessities were taken care of, and people were able to invest in themselves with little or no financial cost, they could get richer more easily. My proposal might not be the right way to increase fluidity, but can we agree that job market fluidity is a potential solution to the problem?
What do you mean by job market fluidity?
I have noticed when there are jobs designed for retarded people, they are often short hour jobs. These people don’t have any fantasy of getting ahead in the world. They know what they got is what they are going to get. Like for severly physically disabled people, the mentally retarded are going to be happy only if they know how to make themselves happy. That means time for fun. They will work only so long and then it is time for fun.
Their short hours of work often is not enough for their cost of living, so they get supplements, foster care, food stamps, housing assistance. This allows them to have decent lives, and they are doing what they can to “earn their own way”.
Now how less deserving is the single parent working 40 hours a week? Not all jobs can pay high wages, but that doesn’t make the work less necessary, nor the employee, and the employee’s children, less worthy of a decent standard of living. The lucky ones also have adequate assistance, so they have a decent standard of living, and I think this is just just. All these people should have adequate housing, food, heat, etc. because we are civilized people capable of providing a good life for everyone. This would go a long, long ways in preventing social problems, and judging by the attitude of some posters in the US, an improvement in attitude is seriously needed. The citizens in the wealthist nation in the world, should not be so resentful of sharing the benefits they enjoy. It isn’t even economical good sense.
Henry Ford paid wages and set the price of his cars, so all his employees could afford one. This was one of the main drives behind our economy, and remains so today. Image our way of life if only 10% of the people could afford private cars and all the rest were using public transportation.
A major drive in the US has been to keep prices down so the wealth can be shared. A 1940 text book explains how we gather taxes from everyone and spend it for the public good that everyone can share without charge. Meaning the poor could enjoy our parks regardless of the ability to pay an entrance fee, which deprives the poor, who are no less deserving than the well to do.
Our recent mentality of abundance is very different from how we once thought. OUr on war poverty, turned into a war against the less fortunate. We didn’t put down the poor and say insulting things of them, but thanked them for being the back bone of our country. Our national wealth, as in all nations, is built on the backs of cheap labor, and once a nation is wealthy enough to do so, it should assist those who need it. This isn’t just about money, but human relationships as well. Some might even say it is about our spirit and souls, and meaning of being humans as opposed to being animals.
I think if every citizen had a level playing field as far as schooling, we’d be able to have no remorse, and no need for welfare. If you don’t get an education, perhaps you can’t make it in the world, so nobody would feel sorry for a poor person this way (because they decided their fate when it was relatively easy not to).