Dear Future President of the United States,

I would like to congratulate you on your victory in obtaining one of the highest honors our country can bestow, and I wish you a successful term. I would like to bring to your attention the issue over the unemployment rates and declining labor participation that have plagued our great nation for years now. I have yet to see any solid plan to resolve this issue permanently. This letter will explain what I believe should happen so that this country can bounce back from this ongoing recession. It will also point out how this issue is negatively affecting the economy negatively. I would also like to ask how you, the President of the United States, will combat this issue.

Let me give you the statistics about today’s current situation. Out of the 318.9 million people that are in the U.S. today, 16,750,000 (approximately 5% of population) are unemployed; out of that number, 25% of them have been out of work for more than 27 weeks which comes out to 5,100,000 million. Furthermore, total labor participation has dropped from 67.7% in 1990 to about 62.9% today. Why are these numbers so high? Well come to find out, 21.2% of the total U.S. population or 67,891,000 people are on welfare. The average welfare check provides you with about $43,330, which is equivalent to working a job that pays you $20.83 per hour. Moreover, a recent poll has discovered that out of the the 50 states in the United States 39 of those have welfare programs that provide more than a $8 per hour job, while 6 of those 39 have programs that provide you more income than a $12 per hour job. To top it off, 8 states out of the 50 have programs that provides more money than the average salary of a U.S. teacher which is $43,458. What has the government done to combat this national crisis? To put it bluntly, they have continued to pay for these welfare programs which is a total of $158,200,000,000 this year alone.

So how is all of this affecting the economy today? Well unemployment rates of a country are a common indicator on whether an economy is healthy or not. But all of this is pretty simple, if there continues to be fewer and fewer people with jobs that means there is a decrease in the amount of disposable funds that could be invested back into the economy for example: the stock market. To put into simpler terms, if one person loses their job, that means that is one less person who is contributing to state and federal income taxes, therein lies the problem. Because if less and less people pay state and federal income taxes, that means that paying off our national debt of nineteen trillion dollars will become increasingly more difficult than it already is. With people losing jobs and signing on to welfare programs has proven to be counter-intuitive, because it continues to suck tax dollars that the government receives from the people who are actually working, which means less money would be going towards job creating programs that would increase employment rates.

In order to solve this issue it will require us to cut down on our welfare spending and use that money to create job programs that will motivate people who have been unemployed for a long period of time to finally get a standard job. The next step would be in regulating how long one recipient can be on welfare. This would mean that people on welfare would only be allowed one year of financial aid or until they get a job within the allotted time. If they aren’t able to find employment within the one year allotted it is unfortunate but they will no longer receive assistance from the government. Of course single mothers/fathers, and physically and mentally disabled people would be allowed to stay on it for longer periods of time due to the amount of dependants living with them and the amount of liabilities that the recipient has as long as they continue to meet the qualified job applications and continue to demonstrate a desire to obtain a job. This plan will cut down on the amount of cash that welfare provides, which would motivate more and more people to go out and pursue a stable career. All of this will help the U.S. apply those funds towards job creation programs that would help better the economy. Doing so would cut down on our national debt however miniscule that would be.

To conclude, I would like to state that if we continue on the path that we have been on for the past decade, we will be in an irreversible situation, which would put the U.S. in a further compromising situation. And the American people won’t care enough to do anything because they would become so dependant on the government providing for them that they will settle and become comfortable with this “welfare” style of living. If we do continue to spend more on welfare programs at the cost of taxpayers money, pretty soon there won’t be enough people who are actually working and paying taxes that allows people who actually need unemployment benefits to get them. So that everybody else who is on welfare could get taxpayers hard earned cash. So in closing, I hope you as the President of the United States will do everything in your power to create a superb domestic policy program that will get people off welfare and back into the job market, becoming a productive, tax paying member of society.

Sincerely,

Donovan Beck

High School Senior

Guthrie High School