While the coronavirus itself might be indiscriminate, its economic impact has certainly hit young people the hardest.

Youth unemployment has risen to 16.4%, more than double the headline rate, with government forecasts pointing to more pain ahead.

As Treasury presented its budget update inside Parliament House on Thursday, young Australians marched outside to demand genuine reform.

Young people all over the country are being left behind. We need an approach to recovering from this crisis that puts people first and creates good jobs and a society that works for all of us, protest organiser Bella Himmelreich said.

The demonstration is part of the Tomorrow Movement, a relatively new national grassroots group led by volunteers rallying for major economic and climate reforms.

With Australia headed for its first recession in three decades, they are urging policymakers to look for new economic solutions rather than returning to policies that the group say have failed time and time again.

Young people were already suffering before the coronavirus crisis [with] high unemployment, unaffordable housing and a climate crisis. We refuse to go back to a world that didnt work for all of us, Himmelreich said. Thats why well keep fighting for a recovery that puts people first.

To put the country back to work and kickstart a genuine recovery, the group proposes policymakers adopt whats known as a job guarantee. It would essentially see the government unconditionally hire all Australians who are looking for work in full-time minimum wage positions.

If we want to get people back into jobs, theres no shortage of meaningful work to be done in public housing, public health, aged care, climate, the arts and so many other areas, communications lead James Clark told Business Insider Australia. Why not put the country to work to meet the shortages we know we have?

We have to rebuild the economy but theres no point rebuilding it the way it was before because it simply wasnt working for most people, and it was especially failing the young, he said.

The idea, while extreme for a Coalition government, has been endorsed by union groups including the United Workers Union as well as GetUp.

These arent radical ideas. In a country as wealthy as Australia, theyre common sense and basic decency, GetUp organisers said, outlining the policy as part of their proposed economic blueprint.

While the policy has been floating around for some time, progressive campaigners see the current coronavirus crisis as the perfect opportunity to be bold. Take Spain, which this month embarked on the worlds largest experiment with a universal basic income for 850,000 of its citizens. Even Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the idea that governments like Australia can essentially print money without restraint, has become a mainstay of the news cycle.

However, while there might be growing public appetite for progressive solutions, the Morrison government is going in the other direction. It revealed it will take a knife to wage subsidies and welfare in September, a move Himmelreich and others naturally oppose.

Pushing people into poverty doesnt create jobs, it just makes it harder for hundreds of thousands of people to survive. The government must keep the rate of all social security payments above the poverty line, Himmelreich said.

The government will cut $300 from the fortnightly payment in September, with most of the 1.6 million recipients to be reduced to $815. Modelling from the Australia Institute shows the move will push 375,000 Australians, including 80,000 children, below the poverty line.

With the current coronavirus supplement due to end entirely in December, unemployed Australians will then have to make do with just $282 a week.

The Morrison government justifies the cuts on the premise that heightened welfare discourages Australians from finding work. From August, recipients will again be required to meet mutual obligations, requiring them to apply for a determined number of positions in order to qualify for payments.

However, with hundreds of thousands more Australians expected to lose their jobs over the next six months, the activists at the Tomorrow Movement arent buying it.

Young people are looking around and they know there are no jobs. Now theyre being told they need to go and apply for jobs that dont exist, Clark said. If youre in Melbourne and all of your experience is in hospitality or retail, how on earth are you meant to find a job at the moment?

Part of registered charity Young Campaigns, the Tomorrow Movement is planning a series of protests against the cuts. Itll see young people take action on 18 September to warn theres no turning back.

The group is rallying for something akin to Americas Green New Deal, promoting the idea that twin economic and climate crises can be addressed collectively, through targeted public spending and the rapid growth of sustainable industries. Its this idea that forms the very core of the movement.

A lot of young people dont really see much point in getting through the pandemic only for climate change to ruin their lives in 20 years anyway, Clark said.

Our mission is to help them find their voices and mobilise to fight for the future.

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'A recovery that puts people first': A group of young Australians is demanding a government job guarantee to fight both soaring unemployment and...

In the long list of unexpected news stories from 2020, theres this: A fight over funding Idaho public schools has reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

But lets take a break from writing about the legal maneuvers in the Reclaim Idaho K-12 voter initiative lawsuit.

Its big picture time. It comes down to two fundamental questions: How much should Idaho spend on public schools, and who ought to dig into their pockets to pay? This is a fight we all could have seen coming. Because its a fight weve been having for years.

The Reclaim Idaho Invest in Idaho initiative is, in essence, a reassignment of the education investment. If Reclaim Idaho succeeds in getting the initiative on the November ballot, if it passes, and if the 2021 Legislature enacts it more or less intact three separate and big ifs the K-12 funding picture changes significantly.

Corporations and wealthy Idahoans would pay directly into a fund for K-12, to the tune of $170 million to $200 million annually. The higher income taxes would affect only Idahoans making more than $250,000 or couples making more than $500,000 so Reclaim Idaho argues that it is proposing a tax increase for just 5 percent of the population.

The income taxes are somewhat but not exactly aligned with Idahos ever-growing supplemental property tax levy bill. Idahoans have a proven history of voting for taxes for schools, and the supplemental levies prove it. In 2019-20, Idahoans paid $214 million in voter-passed supplemental levies, nearly twice as much as they paid a decade ago.

So, will the new income taxes replace these property taxes, reducing the reliance on a tax Idahoans have long reviled? Not necessarily.

Its possible that property taxes will go down in some districts and that some districts may decide not to run supplemental levies, Reclaim Idaho says on its own website. However, there is no guarantee. Districts may decide to continue to raise local levy dollars in order to supplement new state dollars.

Of course, theres no way to guarantee what will happen with supplementals, which are on the books in 92 of Idahos 115 school districts. Theres no guarantee that the long list of possible uses for the new income taxes everything from teacher salaries and full-day kindergarten to special education services and art, music and drama programs would line up with what districts say they need, and what local voters are willing to finance.

And, of course, Reclaim Idaho cannot (and does not) promote its initiative as both a tax shift and a K-12 funding boost. In its Supreme Court filing Tuesday, Reclaim Idaho cited a recent National Education Association report that found Idaho dead last in the nation in per-pupil funding. As Reclaim Idaho Bonner County volunteer leader Linda Larson said in a June 6 court statement, My team of volunteers understood that the current level of funding for education in Idaho is a crisis.

And that message was resonating, Reclaim Idaho leaders say.

Before mid-March, and before the group suspended face-to-face petitioning, Reclaim Idaho said it was tapping into a growing cadre of volunteers. The group started in October with 143 volunteers. By March 10, the number had swelled to 546 volunteers, field director Ashley Prince said in a June 5 court statement.

From the middle of February to March 12, Reclaim Idahos signature count doubled from 15,000 to more than 30,000, co-founder Luke Mayville said in a June 5 court filing. That left the group more than halfway toward its goal, with an April 30 deadline. As Reclaim Idaho describes it, the only thing that halted the initiative was a global pandemic, which put an end to the signature drive and started a legal battle that has unfolded across three levels of the federal judiciary.

Maybe, indeed, momentum was on Reclaim Idahos side. The states lawyers have spent some of their time castigating Reclaim Idaho saying the groups own procrastination led to the initiatives demise. But Reclaim Idaho has already shown it knows how to get an initiative on the ballot, as it did with its successful 2018 Medicaid expansion drive. If group leaders say they were right on schedule, whos to say theyre wrong?

And maybe, once again, Reclaim Idaho had managed to tap into a reservoir of public frustration. After seven years of waiting for the Legislature to move on Medicaid expansion, Idaho voters were more than ready to do it themselves. Are voters just as frustrated about how much Idaho pays for schools and who pays the taxes that support K-12?

The Reclaim Idaho initiative challenges some very basic notions the Legislature holds about school funding and tax policy. While the Legislature has steadily increased K-12 funding in recent years, lawmakers have turned a blind eye to the increasing reliance on supplemental levies. And many lawmakers including House Majority Leader Mike Moyle, perhaps the Legislatures most powerful voice on tax policy contendthat the states corporate and personal income tax rates should be lower, not higher.

Right now, the state and Reclaim Idaho are arguing about the mechanics of online signature gathering, and the First Amendment implications of suspending an initiative during a public health crisis.

But lets not lose sight of the big-picture issue. The Reclaim Idaho initiative wont settle the debate over how we pay for schools. But it could put the question into sharper focus.

Each week, Kevin Richert writes an analysis on education policy and education politics. Look for it every Thursday.

Senior reporter and blogger Kevin Richert specializes in education politics and education policy. He has more than 30 years of experience in Idaho journalism. He is a frequent guest on KIVI 6 On Your Side; "Idaho Reports" on Idaho Public Television; and "Idaho Matters" on Boise State Public Radio. Follow Kevin on Twitter: @KevinRichert. He can be reached at [emailprotected]

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Analysis: Behind the legal maneuvering in the Reclaim Idaho initiative - Idaho EdNews