Bernie Sanders has been making waves within the 2016 Presidential election and is quickly gaining a reputation throughout the country for his advocacy against income inequality and student debt. In a profound speech made in Congress, Bernie Sanders made a proposal to provide 1 million jobs for America’s youth within the next 2 years.

In doing so, Sanders expressed his shock that a nation as rich as the United States is finding it so difficult to sustain reliable employment for its youth.

“It is beyond belief that in the richest country in the history of the world, millions of young people are unable to find work and begin their careers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, unbelievably, youth unemployment for high school graduates and dropouts is 33 percent for white youth, 36 percent for Hispanic youth and 51 percent for African-American young people.”

According to Trading Economic, the youth unemployment rate in the United States currently stands at 12.1 percent. A rate steadily declining since 2010. In fact, the lowest it has been since 2008.

Compared to the European Union, the United States are still doing better than most nations such as France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Sweden. However, the United States still lags behind Germany, which is currently at 7.1 percent.

“It is not a coincidence that we have outrageously high youth unemployment rates while at the same time we have more people in jail than any other country on earth. Maybe, just maybe, we should be providing jobs and education to our young people rather than spending more and more money on jails and incarceration.”

“While we give tax breaks to billionaires, we continue to have, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth,” Sanders said.

A statement which Politifact declared mostly false due to different surveys measuring the United States hîgher than several others in the developed world.

However, given the different metrics used to analyze childhood poverty a conclusion is a highly murky one. According to the Senator Sanders’ press secretary, Jeff Franks, Sanders referred to a report on childhood poverty published by UNICEF in 2012.

The report stated that the United States ranked 34th out of 35 nations within the report, however, that the report is now succeeded by another published by UNICEF in 2014 which ranks the U.S. higher.

“Our childcare system is a disaster with working families desperately searching for affordable, quality child care, which is almost impossible to find. This country faces an enormous crisis in how we treat our young people. It is time to bring this issue out of the dark and to start addressing it. If this country is to succeed in the future, we cannot continue to turn our backs on an entire generation of young people.”

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