Dear Mr. President,
When you gave your state of
the union address last month you talked about taking initiative in
making executive orders to increase pay of Federal contractors and
other actions to improve our economy. It's been two weeks now and I
haven't seen that the orders have been passed. I want to tell you how
your proposals effect me in two ways.
I am currently a Junior in
college studying economics and political science and am fortunate
that my family has been able to make sure I can go to school without
going into serious debt, but many Americans are not so lucky. Other
students' parents have been fired, and they don't have the access to
scholarships, grants, and loans public or private to continue going
to school. The total number of scholarships and grants available to
students is never enough, and this means that people frequently have
to postpone their education or don't go to school at all. When
millions of Americans who are capable of getting a high-quality job
paying $80,000 a year or more but instead work retail at $30,000 a
year or less for a decade it makes a huge dent in their ability to
save for retirement, shrinks our GDP, shrinks demand for goods and
services, and makes it so America under performs year after year.
This is unacceptable. More can and should be done to increase the
skill of America's labor force by increasing access to college. If
the government set aside only another $20 billion to give grants to
students who are attending school full-time, which is not even 1% of
the total Federal budget, it could help more than a million students
get through college in four years and even go to college at all, and
give economic benefits to the students and their surrounding
communities and country for literally the rest of their lives. Paying
for people to get the skills they need today to do high-quality work
makes it so they can be financially independent and will never need
to go to the government for assistance for food or housing,
increasing GDP and decreasing government expenditures in the long-run
as a percent of GDP because the private sector will grow.
I am not only a student but
have a small private investigation agency, mostly on-line research. I
have spent a lot on marketing on-line, and every few months someone
will ask me to do a job. I tell them the price (which is of course
market rate) and people will frequently not respond. I think a large
part of this has to do with how prices over the past 30 years have
risen, but wages have not, partly due to the large decline in union
membership. While I do think that people who work hard should be paid
justly we should also make certain that people who get work are
working a job that pays them enough so they don't have to borrow for
small things or be dependent on government aid such as food stamps
when they work 40 hours a week. It is not just an economic crisis but
also a moral crisis. How could anyone work for 2000 hours a year and
not even be generating enough to afford food and housing? A big step
towards increasing the circulation of money and helping small
businesses find customers to increase opportunity will be to pursue
economic policies that make it so people can be paid enough to live.
For me personally, the American Dream is being able to be
self-sufficient, to live in a country where with hard work and
dedication anyone can be middle class and everyone can be the best
they can be. In order for me to be able to do that with millions of
other entrepreneurs we need to have our neighbors be paid enough so
they can purchase our services and we can have strong local economies
everywhere in this country. Paul Krugman estimates in his book End
This Depression Now that
full recovery for the recession will finish in around 2019 to 2021.
Americans can't wait that long, and the decrease in incomes and
investments will effect people for the rest of their lives. For young
Americans like myself it is very scary that when I graduate from
college with my Bachelor's next year or my Doctorate in 4 years we
will probably still be in recession, all else being equal, when I see
my friends who graduate with college degrees working in retail. Its a
disgusting waste of skill and talent. I hope that you can pass the
executive orders to increase federal compensation so that no one
working for the federal government will need to be on food stamps,
which will help our economy. We need you now Mr. President.
Please do the right thing
and invest in America as much as you can today. Its not just an
economic but also a moral issue. The Republicans don't have the votes
to stop you from issuing the executive orders you can, and if you
work really hard this year showing that you will fight for the
American economy the American people will back you up on election
day.
