Good evening ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chair. Good evening, friends and family- wish me luck.

My name is Micah Germano, and America needs jobs. Such is the question that I, my fellow students, and we as a people need to be able to answer- in the past, today, and tomorrow. How do we create and keep jobs in America? Well, I feel that its my job here to give you the truth. Where others may try to persuade, the truth is that I dont presume to have all of the answers. Theyve already been given to us, after all. The solution to this challenge, the answer to the question of sustaining jobs in America lies within the question itself. If we should want jobs, then we should work. If we wish to work in America, then we must work for America. Now before I present, it is crucial that we address the problem through the lens of economics. The availability of jobs is directly tied to the state of our countrys economy; therefore, we must turn to the fundamental principles of economics for our answers. In order to sustain a healthy economy, in order to create and keep jobs, we must make skilled use of our labor, our resources, and our entrepreneurship. These are the factors of production that have propelled our nation forward in the past, and continue to draw it forward into the future. These are the factors that will allow us to create jobs for America. While it is important to understand what we need to do in order to achieve this, it is imperative that we know why we answer as we do, and why we ask ourselves. The nature of the question is distinctly American, therefore, we must answer the question according to the ideals upon which this nation was founded. We create and keep jobs because this is a nation conceived that we should enjoy a place of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We create and keep jobs to sustain our lives, and those of future generations. We create and keep jobs that we should earn our liberty. We create and keep jobs in America because this is a country where we are not merely able to pursue happiness, but find it too. These are reasons why we will be able keep jobs in America. Much like a job well done, we have to start at the beginning. This means that well have to address our factors of production, labor, resources, and entrepreneurship. Today, Id like to thoroughly examine how well find work by working for it. I want to examine how we will able to create jobs through effort and earning. I want to examine how the fruit of our labor will be labor itself, and just how sweet it could be. In order to determine our future course, lets take a look at what America has done in the past. As a people, we are picking ourselves up from a Great Recession. After the fall of the Soviet Union, our economy was booming, America the worlds only superpower. We were rich, and we were great, and while it can be agreed that we are still a great nation, it is because of past mistakes and a failure of effort in a time of wealth that some of us arent so rich anymore.

I address some of our senior citizens or anybody who actually paid attention in history class; does any of this sound familiar? In 1929, the stock market crashed. There was the highest amount of unemployment and poverty this nation had ever seen, and together we saw just how large we could live while leaving so little. But do you remember what we did? What our parents and grandparents did? America worked. America labored. Weve already gotten through the Great Depression. We worked and strove and struggled and became great once again. And once again, in 2008, the stock market crashed. Because of human mistakes and lack of effort in a time of wealth, the American people see poverty and unemployment. Unlike our forebears, our fate doesnt seem so certain; many are unsure whether we are strong enough to weather this. I believe that we can. Our success has not gone down in history only because we havent written it yet. Our future, ladies and gentlemen, is a blank check just waiting to be cashed. But we are going to have to earn the future we want. To pull this country out of the Great Depression, previous generations of Americans were forced to produce as much as possible by war. Necessity dictated that the country pull together to make ends meet, and for the soldiers, and the citizens, and the workers- none can say that their ends werent met well. Today it is no less necessary to work, no less necessary to work as hard they had to in order to survive their adversities. Like those who came before us, we face adversity now. Though my voice is small and young, I say that if we must face adversity, then let us too meet it well. Our circumstances dictate that we have a choice to make. Now is the time for us to put forth our own tremendous effort, now is the time to choose our own greatness. For that it what it means to earn, what it means to truly own. Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are willing to choose wisely. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said those words to a country that was reeling from war and economic collapse. These evils go hand in hand, and his words of caution are no less applicable to todays America than they were decades ago. With our liberty, with our right to pursue happiness comes an awesome responsibility. This land, with all the freedoms to which it was dedicated, comes with the trust that we will leave it better for those who succeed us. We will succeed. We will do this by educating ourselves, by learning about the world around us. As a nation, we have to begin to save our money, live well within our means, and guard our promises jealously. Despite our best intentions, there are people out there who would take advantage of others. There are those in this world who would lie, cheat, steal, and stand idle in the face of even greater crimes. By greed and apathy and short-sightedness, we cheat our country of the honor to which its heir. We cheapen the sacrifice

that our loved ones now passed made to pass on their ideals to us. We must make our choices wisely. We must pay the price our freedom brings. WE WILL SUCCEED. We are going to succeed through effort. We will make the effort to learn, not simply to obtain a degree, but to earn a better understanding of how our choices affect the world around us. We will make the effort to save, to personally determine what can and cannot be afforded, and have the strength of character to let the latter go. We will make the effort to earn everything that we have, not to accept the gilded promises of those who would profit from ignorance. And in the face of all that we must do, all the effort that we must exert, we must also do something that will sound counterintuitive. We must make the effort to enjoy what is rightfully ours. Cycles of economic bust are just that- cycles. People make poor financial decisions, which cause the collapse of a major sector of the economy. Once the system has been staggered, investments are withdrawn out of panic. This in turn causes companies to cut costs by firing workers, giving the public less money to buy, which causes business to fire even more. Wealth drains from a nation of people too scared to make wise choices, their confidence too weak to enable them to take the risks that could free them. But here is where we can reverse that vicious cycle of poverty. In order to restore balance to the system, we also have to spend. We must also enjoy what is ours, and use the money that we earn wisely. If we make educated financial decisions, the economy will heal itself, and companies will create jobs. We can enjoy what is rightfully ours because we paid for it, and did so gladly. We can enjoy the fruits of our labor for no other reason than the fact that it honestly belongs to us. If we make the right decisions- if we exert effort, save what is ours, and spend wisely- we will succeed in creating and keeping jobs in America.