Solving Long Term Unemployment Act (Debating)

[TNF]

My assumption is that this is, more or less, a 'blank slate' for us to come up with something workable, because at present it is quite vague and in dear need of fleshing out.

Why are we giving preference to one group of unemployed persons over another? Why should only the long-term unemployed be given the opportunity to gain new skills, as opposed to the whole of the unemployed? I understand giving preference in terms of classes to persons who have been unemployed longer, but I don't get why we would necessarily leave out persons who haven't been unemployed for x amount of weeks, or months, or years, or whatever.

I don't think the emphasis on college is worthwhile in this instance. Simply going to college isn't going to give the unemployed a job, as millions of recent graduates who can't find a job can attest. I do think that the emphasis this bill places on reducing the cost of education is great, but I really don't think we can tie that into unemployment reduction, because education alone isn't going to reduce unemployment unless that education leads directly into someone getting a job. Perhaps the solution might be to offer full scholarships for specific degrees and then work with industry to find placements for graduates where they are needed.

As far as those who don't want to go to college goes, I think it might be better to emphasize cooperation with the trade unions, rather than with industry. There are a lot of trades that require apprenticeship trainings in vital areas where the state would be able to direct unemployed people into said trainings and help build up our labor movement.

[TNF]

Could we possibly be more specific? Not to nitpick, but the skills that we need to develop are fairly specific ones that go along with the shift toward a more service-oriented economic model. So perhaps we should place an emphasis on those fields we know we need explicitly: nursing and health care workers, all kinds of infrastructure workers, etc.

[TNF]

As far as I can tell, the kinds of jobs that are growing are ones that you don't necessarily need a college degree for. Manual labor directly employed in shipping and warehousing is the fastest growing occupation (IIRC) and that honestly doesn't require any kind of specific training whatsoever. IRL this is a low-paid, non-union sector, but I would assume (with stronger unions and labor protections) that this is not the case in Atlasia. We could modify this bill so that the unemployed are put directly to work where needed, as part of a tripartite council of the state, labor, and business.

Personally I would prefer that the 'business' component of that trifecta is limited to cooperatives. This would encourage the growth of cooperatives, a process that we have already started by the TNF-Yankee Cooperative Development Act. We could offer tax credits to coops looking to expand production and take on the unemployed, in effect subsidizing the growth of the democratic sector of our economy and striking a blow at unemployment at the same time. It's a win-win in my book.

[TNF]

I'm preparing an amendment for this as well.

[TNF]

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[TNF]

Could Senator TNF please provide a definition of 'cooperative enterprises'?

As defined in the Cooperative Development Act of 2014:

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I'm not going to let this bill only apply to cooperatives, because there simply aren't enough of them for this bill to put a dent in the problem. If you want to add them in tandem, that's fine. If not, then for this reason, then the amendment is unfriendly.

...That's the point. Limiting aid to cooperatives would encourage the formation of more of them.

[TNF]

Aye

[TNF]

Aye