Editorial: Republican Disdain for the Jobless

One of the first votes the Senate plans to take when it returns Monday is on restoring unemployment benefits to 1.3 million people who lost them on Dec. 28. It's hard to imagine a more important action for those who have been out of work the longest and for the economy.

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And what's at the top of the House's agenda? Yet another vote to undermine the health care reform law. (In this case, a bill to impose unnecessary security requirements on the health care website, though there is not the slightest indication of security problems.)

Nothing could show the priorities of the two chambers — and the slog that lies ahead this year — better than these votes. At one end of the Capitol, lawmakers are actually trying to help people in deep financial distress, continuing a vital Washington practice. The other end is holding a meaningless symbolic vote, designed solely to embarrass the Obama administration and continue its politically motivated attacks on the health law.

The jobless benefits wouldn't even be an issue if Republicans had agreed to extend them last month, at the same time that the budget agreement was being negotiated. The bill proposed by Senate Democrats would extend benefits for three months to those who lost them, at a cost of $6.5 billion. It is not clear that it will get the 60 votes needed to defeat the expected Republican filibuster, and its chances are even worse in the House.

But it is still worth trying. As Gene Sperling, director of the White House's National Economic Council, noted recently, it's been more than 50 years since the government cut off emergency unemployment insurance when the rate of long-term joblessness was even half the current level.

Republicans are insisting the cost be "offset," which means they want some other program cut to pay for the benefits. (They would never consider offsetting it by reducing a tax loophole for the rich.) But with the deficit falling sharply, this benefit does not need to be offset because of the positive effect it would have on the economy. Extending benefits through the end of 2014 would help create 200,000 jobs, the White House estimated — one reason the House would rather change the subject.

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Editorial: Acing the Course at Chapel Hill

Another shameful lesson in the multibillion-dollar entertainment industry euphemistically referred to as collegiate sports is playing out at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A former professor was indicted on fraud charges last month after running dozens of bogus and no-show courses heavily enrolled with student athletes looking for easy academic credits.

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Investigations have found that over almost two decades as many as 200 classes offered little or no actual instruction, with the mere submission of any sort of term paper the only requirement for a passing mark. As many as 560 unauthorized grade changes were made across the years, some in the name of professors who said their signatures had been forged. This at a campus that presents itself as an academics-first institution.

The scandal points to the ever more dominant role in academic life played by revenue-rich intercollegiate athletics, where victories are badges in the booming business of televised sports. Yet Chapel Hill officials have clung to the fiction that the dummy courses were not designed to protect athletes' eligibility. The university says the fact that nonathletes also had access to the courses shows that the scheme was not designed to protect athletes.

But The News & Observer of Raleigh found that counselors were steering athletes to the no-show classes, and that athletes accounted for nearly two-thirds of those in many of the phantom classes. One notorious class in the summer of 2011 was created for an enrollment of 18 football players.

The N.C.A.A. should be alarmed at this scandal, but there is no sign yet of dedicated reform. To the contrary, reports in The News & Observer have detailed how campus and N.C.A.A. officials quietly worked together as the scandal played out.

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Editorial: Another Step Forward on Okinawa

For nearly two decades, Japan and the United States have been mired in a dispute over the American military presence on Okinawa. Late last month, the two sides took an important step toward resolving the issue when the Okinawa governor, Hirokazu Nakaima, approved a landfill permit clearing the way for construction of a new base on a remote coast of the island. There are still hurdles, but the permit was a significant breakthrough.

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The United States has had troops on Okinawa since it occupied the island after World War II. Since 2006, the two governments have entered into two agreements to reduce the burden on Okinawa by relocating the United States Marine Corps Air Station from the city of Ginowan to a less-congested part of the island, and by moving about 8,000 of the 18,000 Marines now on the island to Guam, Hawaii and Australia. The move was triggered by the 1995 gang rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl by American servicemen, but Pentagon officials now say the relocation is also needed to meet security requirements as the United States rebalances its focus toward Asia.

For years, the plans stalled because of political opposition, mostly on Okinawa, with some critics demanding that the base be taken off the island entirely. (Okinawa hosts almost three dozen American military facilities and more than half of the American service members stationed in Japan.) Despite the landfill permit, it is unclear whether local politics could still thwart the project. If the military is to remain for the long term, the United States and Japan must make a more compelling case to Okinawans for why the American presence is still needed. They also must be responsive to Okinawans' concerns about jet crashes, crime, environmental degradation and noise.

Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, worked to make the deal happen by pressing Okinawan officials to approve the permit and offering financial support for the island. America's continued military presence in Japan is important to regional stability, a point driven home by North Korea's warmongering and the increasing face-offs between China and its Asian neighbors, including Japan, over disputed islands in the South China and East China Seas.

But the base deal has been overshadowed by concerns in America and elsewhere about Mr. Abe's aggressive nationalism, which has inflamed tensions with China and South Korea. After Mr. Abe visited Yasukuni, the controversial Shinto shrine honoring Japan's war dead, including World War II war criminals, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel postponed calling the Japanese defense minister about the base deal. When he spoke to the minister on Saturday, he underscored the importance of Japan improving relations with its neighbors, a spokesman said.

Mr. Abe's wrongheaded version of history has a poisonous effect on regional security, and the United States has warned him about this. Perhaps President Obama will have to make this point more firmly.

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Editorial: Zero Tolerance, Reconsidered

Schools across the country are rethinking "zero tolerance" discipline policies under which children have been suspended, even arrested, for minor offenses like cursing, getting into shoving matches and other garden-variety misbehavior that in years past would have been resolved with detention or meetings with a child's parents.

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These reappraisals are long overdue. Studies have shown that suspensions and expulsions do nothing to improve the school climate, while increasing the risk that children will experience long-term social and academic problems. Federal data also indicates that minority students are disproportionately singled out for harsh disciplinary measures.

These policies date back to 1994, when Congress required states receiving federal education money to expel students for bringing guns onto school property. States and local governments broadened and distorted this mandate to expel children for minor infractions. At the same time, schools began stationing police officers in hallways, which also increased arrests for nonviolent behavior.

The scope of the problem became clear three years ago when the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a nonprofit policy group, issued a study of school discipline polices in Texas. It showed that nearly 6 in 10 public school students were suspended or expelled at least once between seventh and 12th grade. But only a tiny fraction of the disciplinary actions taken against students were for serious criminal conduct requiring suspension or expulsion under state law.

Children who are removed from school are at heightened risk for low achievement, being held back, dropping out or becoming permanently entangled in the juvenile justice system. The Texas Legislature has taken steps aimed at keeping minor misconduct cases from reaching the courts. One law recommends that school districts consider less harsh sanctions, like a warning letter or counseling. Another measure prohibits police from ticketing and fining children under the age of 12 on school grounds or on a school bus.

A similar evolution is taking place in California. The Los Angeles school district became the first in the nation to ban suspensions for "willful defiance," a catchall category that accounted for more than 40 percent of the state's suspensions in the 2011-12 school year. A new state law allows suspension for serious offenses, like those involving violence or weapons, but requires schools to try alternative strategies, including parent-teacher conferences, before suspending students for nonviolent infractions.

Change is also afoot in Broward County, Fla., one of the nation's largest school districts. The district has entered into an agreement with civil rights groups and law enforcement to keep troubled children in school, where they can receive counseling and other forms of help. Broward's superintendent said it was wrong to keep saddling students with criminal records that can hurt their chances of getting a job or college financial aid, or of entering the military. School systems across the country should pay attention.

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Opinionator | The Conversation: Happy New Year, Politicians. Seriously.

In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.

Tags:

Cheney, Liz, Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Cruz, Ted, de Blasio, Bill, Obama, Barack, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010), United States Politics and Government

GAIL COLLINS: Happy New Year, David! I'm glad you're back and that we're going to start conversing again. What are you expecting, politically speaking, for 2014? It doesn't really seem possible that things could get much worse.

DAVID BROOKS: It's bound to be much better. I'm thinking that the early days of the Ted Cruz versus Al Franken presidential campaign will be particularly genial. Also I'm pretty sure that the seventh year of the Obamacare debate is going to yield fresh insights.

GAIL: See, this is why I missed you.

DAVID: I'm struck by the way the two parties have embraced the culture of gift exchange. First the Republicans gave Democrats the gift of the government shutdown. Then the Democrats reciprocated by screwing up Obamacare. Nothing so demonstrates the spirit of bipartisanship as the willingness to commit political suicide on behalf of your opponents.

GAIL: In the first column you wrote after you returned, you urged people to spend less time obsessing about politics. I totally agreed with what I took to be your message — that the hysteria driven by right-wing talk radio and blogs and cable TV has created an impossible situation in Washington where even the most mundane functions of government can't be accomplished. Or in other words, that the Tea Party ruined everything.

Am I overinterpreting?

DAVID: I think this might be a case of motivated cognition. I was trying to say that while government is important — just ask people who live in lawless places — very few people have their ultimate happiness and fulfillment shaped by it. It was Samuel Johnson's point: "How small, of all that human hearts endure / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure."

GAIL: I always feel at a disadvantage when you start quoting Samuel Johnson.

Politics is basically who gets what, and how much. Which does sound unprofound. But really, those are the questions at the root of life: How do we organize ourselves? When do we share? What goals do we hold in common? It can dwindle down to hysteria over polls and strategy, but even then, when you look underneath the spinning, it's about very, very important stuff. Plus, I'd argue that it's more fun than watching Texas beat Duke in the Chick-fil-A Bowl.

DAVID: Not to be pedantic, but that was Texas A&M over Duke. And if you would rather watch Jack Lew than Johnny Manziel, I think you are in the smallest minority in statistical history.

I do remain mystified by why cable TV is so politics obsessed. When I write a political column, it gets, let's say, an average reaction of 7 on the response scale. When I write something about values or culture, it gets a reaction of 14. Yet on cable TV hardly anyone is talking about values and culture.

GAIL: I am going to refrain from saying something snooty about cable TV's strong dedication to exploring our cultural values as expressed through sex-murder trials. Instead, give me your quick take on Obamacare. You see it as a perfect example of government overreach.

DAVID: I see it as an example of central planners trying to corral a dynamic, complex system, and making a mess out of it. Either you have a truly centralized single-payer system or you have a truly decentralized market-based system. This hybrid of semi-centralized, semi-market-based may magically combine the disadvantages of each approach.

Campaign finance reform is like that, too. We should either have straight up public funding of elections, or complete transparency in political giving.

GAIL: I'm with you on the single-payer option. If only the president had not taken the path that was touted by several generations of Republican deep thinkers.

DAVID: To be fair, the Republican plans never had the centralized decision making of Obamacare. And by the way, I don't think the country will accept single payer. Voters, even Democratic voters, aren't going to be comfortable with a system that revolves around Washington.

GAIL: I'd certainly like to have a serious national conversation about it. Which we never did. Do you remember during the 2008 campaign, when Obama kept saying that the negotiations between the administration and the insurance companies over health care ought to be put on C-Span? Makes me sad to think about it.

You've written that Obamacare's fatal flaw is its requirement that young people buy insurance, even though the odds are they won't need it. Can you run that by me again? It seems totally fair — and totally conservative — to say that young adults should buy catastrophic insurance so if some disaster does happen, they won't become a long-term burden on their parents or their government.

DAVID: I'm all for people buying catastrophic insurance. I'm not for forcing young, poorer people to purchase products that are not in their best interest just so we can invisibly subsidize other people. If we want to redistribute, we should do it openly.

GAIL: Well, I'm for forcing older people to subsidize younger people's higher education by paying more taxes to reduce the cost of public colleges. Sometimes you pay more than your share, but you get to be part of a community that's healthy and smart. In a way, life is one big insurance pool.

DAVID: Well, yes, but the public seems to have a problem with coercion in any form. Government programs have to be built around the paradigm of individual choice, even if they nudge those choices one way or another. Other paradigms are just not culturally acceptable anymore.

GAIL: Please, let's talk about politics for a little bit. New York has a new mayor, Bill de Blasio, who won by talking about reducing the gap between the rich and the poor. In one way, he's an excellent example of all the things you've been telling me you dislike. On the other hand, he's talking about values and morality.

DAVID: Yup. I'd say there's a natural inequality debate to be had. One side would say the economic system is fundamentally broken and government needs to aggressively redistribute wealth. The other side would say that the economic system is not fundamentally broken and we mainly need to invest in human capital so more people can have access to it. Unfortunately for the Republicans, the partisans on both sides of that debate are now part of the Democratic Party.

GAIL: As a political junkie I love the idea of having a real conversation about the two Americas. As a student of New York City politics, I'm having trouble imagining how de Blasio will get where he wants to go.

But what about the rest of the country? Can the Republicans take control of the Senate this fall? And now that we're only two years away from the Iowa caucuses, we no longer have the moral authority to put our fingers in our ears and howl when somebody starts talking about the presidential race.

DAVID: I think Republicans have a decent chance of taking control of the Senate. Then the party will nominate Rand Paul in 2016, and the Paul-Rubio ticket will carry several important counties in Alabama and Mississippi and the Republicans will lose Congress again.

You think I'm kidding with this prediction. But I'm not, at least not entirely.

GAIL: Poor David. No wonder you've sounded so anti-political.

You recently urged readers to look at government as a "mundane and limited thing." What candidates are you looking at who seem best adapted to the task?

DAVID: If voters were daft enough to give me sole power to pick the president, I'd choose Bob Gates, the former defense secretary.

GAIL: I don't know of any politician who likes wrestling with the mundane and limited more than Hillary Clinton. If she'd won the presidency in 2008, I don't think she'd ever have forced the health care act into law. I don't say that as a compliment, exactly.

DAVID: Let's not whitewash the Ira Magaziner/Hillarycare episode.

GAIL: Ah, the Clinton health care proposal. Back in the days of yore, when giants roamed the earth and senators still engaged in bipartisan drinking sessions.

DAVID: If she can prove that she now understands that dumb, simple laws are better than smart, complex ones, I could definitely feel some comfort with her. I do think she is hardheaded and practical. If she runs against Ted Cruz, I'm going to be in an awful pickle.

GAIL: Hey, I was planning to denounce Ted Cruz! Then I figured you would suggest some Republican governor who I don't know enough about to criticize. I have always been in awe of your governor repertoire. Anybody you like running Iowa or Indiana this time around?

DAVID: I do like Indiana Governor Mike Pence. But it's almost time to unfurl my quadrennial John Thune column. He's nice, conservative, good-looking and tall.

GAIL: Well, our new mayor in New York is really tall. He's green, but he looms.

Which Senate race are you going to watch closely? I'm eyeing West Virginia. The Democrats look as if they'll have a better candidate than they expected originally. More important, West Virginia is one of the six states I've never visited.

DAVID: You've never been to West Virginia? It's like 90 minutes from Washington! I am definitely organizing a rafting trip for all the Op-Ed columnists down the New River. I see us beginning the trip arguing about who gets to steer, and then ending up either in a state of blissful comradeship or else having committed acts of cannibalism.

GAIL: A really great potential movie script. What are your states to watch?

DAVID: I'll be watching Wyoming, where I'm guessing Mike Enzi and the Republican establishment will beat Liz Cheney. In the fall, I'll watch Georgia, where Sam Nunn's daughter Michelle Nunn is probably going to be the Democratic candidate. If a Democrat takes Georgia, then it's panic time for the G.O.P.

GAIL: The first time I ever went to Georgia was for a presidential-nominating convention. I was young and callow and working for a tabloid. I wrote a column making fun of Atlanta, and a stupendously nice guy from one of the local utilities called and volunteered to show me the best parts of the city. We wound up at a mall that he said was America's first shopping center. Still have warm feelings about Georgia from that trip.

DAVID: Have you noticed that every city in the country has America's first shopping center? That's what I love about this country.

GAIL: But one last question — how's your book going? I'm presuming you didn't finish it — actually finishing a book while you're on book leave is against the columnist code. But since it's about living a more profound inner life, I'm hoping you can share a couple of tips.

DAVID: Nope, didn't finish. Turns out I can write only two or three hours a day, no matter how many hours I clear out for it. My brain gets tired. Plus there were certain inhibitions built into the subject matter. One of the heroes of the book is Dorothy Day. She led this morally strenuous life all of her life, self-criticizing and writing and praying over her sins. But at the end of her life, she had achieved an impressive fullness, a centeredness and an overwhelming sense of gratitude.

One day she sat down to write a memoir. She told Robert Coles what happened next: "I wrote down the words, 'a life remembered,' and I was going to try to make a summary for myself, write what mattered most — but I couldn't do it. I just sat there and thought of our Lord, and His visit to us all those centuries ago, and I said to myself that my great luck was to have had Him on my mind for so long in my life!"

In other words, one of my heroes achieves the apotheosis of peace and self-surrender when she realizes she no longer needs to write anything. Kind of put a crimp in my work ethic.

A version of this article appears in print on 01/05/2014, on page SR9 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Happy New Year, Politicians. Seriously..

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Editorial: Stopping Mentally Ill Gun Buyers

Rebuffed by Congress on stronger gun safety laws, President Obama is wisely using use his executive powers in a more focused attempt to bar mentally ill people from eluding federal watch lists and purchasing firearms. Two sensible changes proposed for the background check system would allow states and mental health providers more discretion than they have now in reporting information about potentially violent people.

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The first would deal with longstanding complaints from law enforcement authorities about the narrow scope of a rule stipulating that a person cannot be denied the purchase of a firearm unless he or she has been "committed to a mental institution" in the past. This ignores whole categories of obviously risky citizens.

The proposed change would broaden the rule to include involuntary outpatient as well as inpatient commitments. Some of the shooters in cases of mass gun violence were found to have previously come to the attention of authorities but received psychiatric testing or care that fell short of orders of commitment. Including inpatient and outpatient care broadens the grounds for denying weapons.

The second proposal deals with privacy strictures in health insurance laws that states say prevent the passing on of relevant information about potentially violent people. After consultation with mental health professionals, the White House said health insurance organizations would be extended "an express permission" to furnish to federal authorities "the limited information necessary to help keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands."

Neither of these changes can fully solve the nation's gun safety problem, but both offer a promise of relief. Far more is needed, if Congress can ever disenthrall itself from the gun lobby to rein in the carnage.

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Editorial: The Ticking Mideast Clock

Five months into the latest American effort to nudge Israelis and Palestinians toward a peace agreement, the one party clearly committed to a deal is the United States. This week, Secretary of State John Kerry made his 10th trip to the region to get the two sides to stick the timetable he set forth when he started new negotiations last July.

His goal, he said at the time, was a comprehensive peace agreement by the end of April that would lead to an independent Palestinian state. Despite more than 20 official talks, there is no evidence of concrete progress, but there are increasing signs that both sides may be positioning themselves to blame the other if negotiations collapse.

Signs of failure are everywhere. On Thursday, standing beside Mr. Kerry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a harsh assessment of his Palestinian counterpart, President Mahmoud Abbas, and, implicitly, the prospect of a Middle East peace agreement. Days earlier, Israel let it be known that it would build more settlements in the West Bank, further poisoning the political atmosphere while shrinking the territorial space for a deal. Hard-liners in Mr. Netanyahu's government are pushing a bill that would annex settlements in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank, where about 6,000 Israeli settlers and 10 times as many Palestinians live.

There are questions about the Palestinian commitment as well. Palestinian leaders have said that any new settlement activity could lead them to seek membership in the International Criminal Court and sue Israel there, a move they had promised not to take when peace talks started in the summer. An official close to Mr. Abbas has dismissed Mr. Kerry's push for a "framework agreement" as biased toward Israel.

In his remarks on Thursday Mr. Netanyahu claimed that members of the Palestinian security force were involved in a recent attack against Israelis. Mr. Abbas should investigate the claim and, if it is true, bring those responsible to justice. He also needs to crack down on the incitement of hatred against Israel in Palestinian schools, textbooks and government-controlled media.

As part of the negotiating process, Mr. Netanyahu agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails over nine months rather than halt settlement construction. But when Mr. Abbas welcomed the latest group to the West Bank this week, Mr. Netanyahu accused him of embracing terrorists, even though Mr. Abbas never condoned the prisoners' crimes. If Mr. Netanyahu felt so strongly about the prisoner releases, he should have chosen instead to halt settlement construction.

Mr. Kerry is working to intensify the American role by offering ideas to bridge gaps between the two sides. His immediate aim is a framework accord that would define the principles of a comprehensive treaty, addressing borders, security, refugees, Jerusalem, mutual recognition and the end of conflict.

The framework must not become yet another interim agreement that leaves Palestinians with empty promises. To succeed, it will need to be embraced and defended by Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas, who must acknowledge that neither society will be secure until both can learn to compromise and live as states, side by side.

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Editorial: Not Getting Their Money’s Worth

At first glance, two recent crises to hit the White House — the revelations about unlawful surveillance and the botched health care rollout — have nothing in common. But each is a reminder of the increasing extent to which government work has been contracted out to private-sector companies. Currently, Washington spends about $500 billion a year on private-sector contracts, more than twice the amount in 2000.

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It is hard to argue that Americans are getting their money's worth.

The ostensible purpose of using private contractors is to get jobs done cheaper and better. But that aim is often unmet. Companies bidding for federal work have a financial incentive to overpromise. The complex procurement process gives big companies an edge to win large, long-term contracts, even when the needed expertise, especially in technology, can often be found at smaller, more nimble companies. Federal rules intended to reduce conflicts of interest instead leave government officials with little authority to oversee or terminate contracts.

The result is delays, overruns and unmet public needs. Technological failures are not the only problem. A recent Senate report found that federal contractors are among the worst violators of wage-and-safety laws, while a New York Times investigation found that the government buys clothes from sweatshops in foreign countries.

It is legitimate to use contractors when the government does not possess the expertise, especially on specific projects, or for services that are tangential to core government functions. But the current practice of contracting out vast swaths of government work indefinitely — with little or no attempt to develop the needed technical and managerial expertise within the government or to enforce labor standards — has created a bloated federal-contractor sector in which the public good is often subservient to profit.

Several sensible proposals to reform federal contracting have been put forward, including bipartisan legislation to make a single person at each government agency responsible for technology projects. Some good-government groups have suggested that government analysts systematically evaluate whether contractors provide better value than federal employees and what it would take to develop in-house expertise. Legislators and some labor advocates say President Obama should require government agencies to consider a company's labor and performance record when awarding contracts.

But for all the research and recommendations, nothing much is happening in Congress or the administration, in part because the status quo is lucrative for powerful corporations and big campaign donors, and is entrenched by the revolving door between government agencies and private-sector contractors. Reform will not be simply a technical exercise. It also will be a political battle, one that no one has taken up in earnest yet.

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Editorial: Governor Cuomo’s Stingy Pardons

The power to grant clemency is a critical function of the executive branch. It serves as a last, case-by-case resort to remedy an unjustly long sentence, erase a wrongful conviction or show forgiveness where it is merited. But New Yorkers seeking clemency from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, either from within prison or after their release, have found virtually no consolation during the three years of his tenure.

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That fact was highlighted by Mr. Cuomo's decision this week to exercise his clemency power for the first time since taking office in 2011. When he finally took action, he did so with miserly caution, pardoning just three men for relatively minor crimes committed long ago.

Seymour Hunter, 70, spent one day in jail 20 years ago for trying to sell drugs. Gerardo Alvarez was sentenced to three days' community service after cocaine was found in his car. Rocco Paciello was convicted of statutory rape for dating a 15-year-old girl when he was 22. He served eight days in jail; he and his girlfriend later married and have been together 21 years. Mr. Cuomo said that each of these men "paid their debt to society long ago" and "are deserving of a second chance." Surely that is true, particularly for Mr. Hunter and Mr. Alvarez, both of whom hope to become United States citizens. But there are still many more prisoners serving unfairly long sentences under the state's outdated and only partly reformed Rockefeller drug laws, or who have demonstrated that they, too, deserve a second chance. As a former attorney general who fought for the laws' reform, Mr. Cuomo can do better.

Part of the problem is that New York's clemency process is opaque, unpredictable and unproductive.

Some states have developed better processes to handle clemency requests with more regularity and transparency. In California, Gov. Jerry Brown issued 127 pardons last month, and in Illinois, Gov. Pat Quinn has granted clemency more than 1,000 times over four-plus years. Mr. Cuomo should show more courage on this issue and take the lead to improve New York's clemency process.

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Op-Ed Contributor: Anxious Youth, Then and Now

FOR years now, we've heard the gripes by and about millennials, the offspring of the Great Recession, caught between childhood and adulthood. Their plight seems so very 21st century: the unstable careers, the confusion of technologies, the delayed romance, parenthood and maturity.

Many of the same concerns and challenges faced the children of the industrial revolution, as the booms and busts of America's wild 19th century tore apart the accepted order.

Each New Year's, young men and women filled their diaries with worries that seem very familiar today: They found living with their parents "humiliating indeed" and felt "qualified for nothing." Others moaned: "I am twenty-five and not in love yet." Gathering over beer or cigars, they complained about how far they were from marriage, how often they switched jobs.

The idea that millennials are uniquely "stuck" is nonsense. Young Victorians grasped for maturity as well, embarrassed by the distance between their lives and society's expectations.

These Americans were born into an earthquake. During the 1800s America's population exploded from 5 million to 75 million. By 1900 nearly as many people lived in New York City as had lived in the entire country during the Revolution. The nation went from a rural backwater to an industrial behemoth — producing more than Britain, Germany and France combined — but every decade the economy crashed. America saw the kind of wild change we see today in China, and in a new society with little to stabilize it.

For rootless 20-somethings, each national shock felt intimate, rattling their love lives and careers. Many young adults could not accept that their personal struggles were just ripples of a large-scale social dislocation. So each New Year's, they blamed themselves. In a Jan. 1, 1859, entry in her journal, 19-year-old Mollie Dorsey, stuck on a Nebraska homestead in the middle of a recession, castigated herself for not being "any better than I was one year ago."

Romance worried them above all. Today some fret about the changing institution of marriage, but we are used to such adjustments; 19th-century Americans were blindsided when the average age of marriage rose precipitously, to 26 — a level America didn't return to until 1990. In a world where life expectancy hovered below age 50, delaying marriage until 26 was revolutionary.

Cities brimmed with bachelors and unmarried ladies in their mid-20s, once a rare sight. In their New Year's reflections, men and women noted that their parents had had children by their age. One typical Union Army soldier wrote home wondering, "Do you think I will be married before I am thirty?"

This social change brought personal turmoil, especially for young women. Marriage meant love and family, but in a society that discouraged ladies from working, young women were dependent on their husbands. Remaining single meant economic and legal instability, and the perception of childishness. When the mother of one diarist, Emily Gillespie, scolded the Midwestern farm girl by saying, "you are twenty years old and not married yet," it hardly mattered that Emily was in line with her generation.

While some looked for love, others looked for jobs. Before the modern era, young people found work within family networks, laboring at home or on a farm, pausing for "elevenses" (a late-morning whiskey break) or an afternoon nap. The industrial economy changed that.

The good news was that there were more jobs; the bad news was that they were isolating and temporary. Work now meant small factories or lumber camps or railroad crews of strangers. They were monitored like machines, with pressure to increase productivity replacing the slower pace of preindustrial labor.

For young people this meant chronic instability. A young man might brag about his new job one week and find himself begging for money from his father the next. Frustrated youths worried that their jobs did not reflect their age or ability: One brilliant young speaker complained about working in a cramped Philadelphia boot factory, nailing soles when he should have been climbing a soapbox.

While 19th-century young adults faced many of the anxieties that trouble 23-year-olds today, they found novel solutions. The first was to move. Young men and women were notoriously transient, heading out on "wander years" when life at home seemed stalled. In one Wisconsin county, 90 percent of those present in 1870 were gone by 1880. Most set out with no plan, few connections and a small carpetbag of personal possessions.

Another solution was to find like-minded young adults, to share, as one later put it in his memoir, their "baffling discouragements and buoyant hopes." Nineteenth-century young people were compulsive joiners. Political movements, literary societies, religious organizations, dancing clubs and even gangs proliferated. The men and women who joined cared about the stated cause, but also craved the community these groups created. They realized that while instability was inevitable, isolation was voluntary.

Today's young adults are constantly rebuked for not following the life cycle popular in 1960. But a quick look at earlier eras shows just how unusual mid-20th-century young people were. A society in which people married out of high school and held the same job for 50 years is the historical outlier. Some of that era's achievements were enviable, but they were not the norm.

The anxieties that 19th-century young people poured into their New Year's diary entries are more common. Americans considered young adulthood the most dangerous part of life, and struggled to find a path to maturity. Those who did best tended to accept change, not to berate themselves for breaking with tradition. Young adults might do the same today. Stop worrying about how they appear from the skewed perspective of the mid-20th century and find a new home, a new stability and a new community in the new year.

Jon Grinspan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, is writing a book on young people and 19th-century American politics.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 4, 2014

An Op-Ed article on Wednesday about young people's anxieties in the 19th century misstated a diarist's surname. She was Mollie Dorsey when she wrote the diary entry quoted in the article; she was not yet known as Mollie Sanford.

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