“I don’t know about you guys, but I’d much rather be on food stamps than fighting with my parents over getting to borrow the car at age 25.”

Really? Neither of those options sounds particularly desirable, but gun to my head I’d rather have to surrender my dignity and independence to avoid that kind of poverty.

Also, I’m generally a lazy person.

ha. i definitely did think something along the lines of oh no she didn’t. dont we already have a system like that in place? welfare/unemployment? what does she want: government assistance for people who came from backgrounds affluent enough for their parents to support them through college but not after?

Unemployment assistance has a ton of restrictions attached regarding how many consecutive months you need to have worked at one employer etc. before you’re eligible. In the current economy, recent college grads are probably not working the kind of jobs where they’re eligible for unemployment insurance should they lose their jobs. And it’s not a laughing matter that as a society we’re facing a serious, serious crisis in youth unemployment, a situation that leads to a permanent income inequality between our generation and others that came out of school into a better economy. The long-term socio-economic implications of a sky high unemployment rate for people aged 18-25 are staggering and an issue that most people fail to grasp the seriousness of.

@Pat You’re 100% right. I probably won’t be able to grasp the seriousness of it until I graduate, which is a time I’m trying really hard not to think about.

@Josh But an NYU grad could certainly score at least a shift manager job at a supermarket, amirite? Maybe even store manager!

@Pat, I’m not trying to say that it isn’t a serious issue. But general economic climate (for better and worse), isn’t in the full control of the government. Any economist will tell you that. There are good times and bad times, that is how a capitalist economy works. If the government wants to change that system, that’s one thing, but if not, I’m not sure it’s feasible to give people with a certain amount of resources (education, time to find a career/intern, at least semi-supportive/present parents) monetary assistance, while there are people who are severely more disadvantaged and who don’t have the resources who aren’t even being helped properly at this point, and wouldn’t even be able to get a job at a supermarket if they wanted to.

@Samantha, I’m thinking less of monetary assistance and more of job placement programs or financial aid for grad school. I agree that the government could and should be doing more to help those who seem to be permanent members of an unemployed/underemployed underclasss- in NYC the unemployment rate for African-Americans is around 50%, which is a travesty. However, for people our age, parental assistance creates more problems than it solves. Parents end up with less money as they approach retirement, leading to either a greater reliance on government aid than they planned to need or a necessity for them to work past retirement age, further blocking the path to employment for recent college grads. For these graduates, they are impaired for their entire lives. By entering the workforce later in life than their parents’ generation, they end up making significantly less money over the course of their careers, creating a further drain on government resources when they retire, since they will retire with less money saved than the previous generation. These programs will already by on shaky footing as the “lost generation” effect of this generation of people who struggled to find work well past their entry into the ranks of those seeking employment was unable to pay into social programs. It’s a vicious cycle.

My point is, it’s really in the government’s interest to get unemployed 20-somethings out of the labor market by making it easier/more affordable for them to go back to school and gain marketable skills, and/or create job placement programs in which internships/apprenticeships are subsidized in some way so that people can hold such jobs but not need to rely too heavily on economic assistance from parents for basic living expenses.