The City Council’s special committee of social justice warriors apparently is going to “invest” money in another round of job training programs.
The Northside Coalition asked the committee to assign them to run the new program, and promised transparency.
We looked on the organization’s Web site and couldn’t even find any information concerning their revenue and expenses. Wouldn’t someone devoted to transparency post such information for the public?
Several years ago, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that there are 47 different federal employment and training programs, with substantial overlap among them.
More importantly, the report said that “little is known about the effectiveness of employment and training programs we identified.”
Taxpayers have been funding such programs since the heady days of the Great Society, yet federal auditors still aren’t sure whether or not they actually work. Studies over the years have found that some programs may provide modest benefits, but others show no positive effects.
How much it would cost taxpayers is uncertain. How it would differ from the myriad of job training programs already in existence also is unclear.
Historically, people have obtained employment after getting an education and then learned the details of job performance on the job. “Training” them to work is a relatively new concept that, to say the least, is unproven but expensive.
With the new Congress busy killing jobs right and left, the question is where these newly trained workers are going to work.
