You may think of the progression of an individual from childhood to senior citizen status in many different ways. The path can be thought of as progress up a ladder or staircase that leads to a certain result such as parenting, business, sports, education and many others. The individual person can be thought of as climbing or descending all of the possible paths at once.

On every ladder or staircase the average person must spend some time on each step or rung preparing to transition to the next step. The progress is not always positive, the path to the next step may be blocked by conditions that are not under the control of the climber, the climber may not do the necessary things to climb to the next step or the climber may decide to ignore the next step as undesirable or unreachable.

If you accept the concept of a staircase or ladder of success; the basic steps that a child finds in the family and the early grades of school can be found at the bottom of all of the ladders and staircases regardless of whether they lead to sports, business or any other goal. The steps of learning will be present and a challenge even if the child does not attend school. A person with talent, initiative and purpose can climb the ladder without formal education; however the same steps must be conquered.

There are many discouraging influences and barriers to everyone’s progress up the ladder or staircase that leads to their goal. Competition between climbers, lack of innate ability, lack of drive to succeed, and perhaps most of all Government interference prevents many from reaching their goal.

The minimum wage legislation effectively prevents some people, such as teenagers, from even starting on the first step of the path to success. The initial steps are vital to the climber to experience being punctual, taking orders, learning how to work and helping to support the family.

Government programs that encourage employers to hire teenagers are unnecessary. All that is needed is to exempt teenagers from the minimum wage law. Not all teens, but teens under 18 years old. And do not begin taxing their wages until they are 18 years old. This would open up entry level jobs to millions of teens and everybody would be better off.

Compare the well being of a family has four kids that do not work with a family with four kids that all have part time jobs.

Congress has fallen asleep and we have seen a lack of leadership from the executive branch on this issue.

If I had to guess, the ‘real’ Black unemployment rate could be as high as 25% nationwide.

Also, if you want to explore the accuracy of Dr. Watkins data, visit the Bureau of Labor and Statistics at http://www.bls.gov.

In short the unemployment rate is calculated by those unemployed (individuals actually seeking work) divided by the total labor force (those seeking work and those who have a job).

It is a pretty straightforward calculation.

Black Unity means financial independence and happiness

And the reference to the 99% is obviously about the 99% of the population that earns less that 400k a year (do you see the occupywallst.org down), so yes, he is in that 99%.