by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
Look out, Atrios! Chris Dodd (D-CT) just came out with his massive national service plan, which includes "making community service mandatory for all high school students". Outside of that idea, it's a mish-mash of various ideas to increase do-gooderism: doubling the Peace Corps, expanding Americorps from seventy five thousand participants to one million, and tax credits for employers who let their workers take paid time off for volunteering, and grants to senior citizens for doing part-time work at schools.
The details on these service proposals get very thorny—will getting retirees to work in schools make it harder to bring teachers' wages in line with other professionals? Does the country need greater volunteer efforts out of high schoolers, or is it a better idea to bring twentysomethings into the system? Do we need even more back-door social engineering through the tax code than we already have?—which is why they never get too far passed the "ask not what your country can do for you" phase. And it's not clear one way or another that a small army of young people is the best workforce for certain public service jobs. But it seems like it's worth considering.
