NEXT QUESTION:

Three candidates get to answer a question, then three get to answer another question.

The next question: NYC Economy has rebound, but there is still high joblessness. How can we fix this?

ANDY: I don't have an immediate quick term solution, it's tied in with affordable housing as well. We send a lot of jobs to third world countries. We should get broadband internet access in people's houses and join that with job training, especially for working mothers who need help. We can give them the jobs we outsource.
The job market requires internet access.

CHRIS RIGGS: Yeah, I mean, out of the hundreds of thousands of people I've spoken to, jobs are the number one thing. Yeah, the economy has rebound, but that's only for the top 1% of the country. If you own 10 million dollars of real estate, it's now worth 30 million dollars. But if you don't own anything, you're not seeing that. If you want a job making something, move to China. Where's the tallest building in the world? It's in China! They don't make anything in NYC! The entire economy here is built around moving a pile of papers from here to here. I'd recommend people try to get a job at Wall Street moving papers around. You can make a lot of money and it's fun. I've done it. 60% of our money is in the stock market.

SETH: Jobs are becoming obsolete faster and faster. We need to help students learn to learn with interesting curriculum. How about a place people can go to find jobs? Government should be about helping people find jobs. Monster.com provides jobs. The city should do that in a citywide forum, not in separate newspapers. New businesses - also, no taxes for the first five years. That's how we create jobs and help the city. But it's gotta start with education.

CHRIS RIGGS rebuttal: You need money to start a business. The people who need jobs don't have money. So, how are they going to start a business?

SETH: We give interest free loans to the Yankees. Can't we do that for New Yorkers? That's where the loans should be going.

SECOND QUESTION: More than 200,000 people between ages 16 and 24 with no jobs who aren't working in NYC. Besides focusing on improving public education, what can we do to fix the problem?

AUDREY: I agree in part with what Seth says. It starts at the educational level how you're going to proceed in your life. I find that once children have learned how to write and read at a basic level, some are not academically inclined after that. That causes a lot of disruption in class. The teacher needs to use extra attention to quiet those students down. When they get to highschool age, offer them a chance to go into a vocational track, where they can do training in any field that will make them a productive member of society. That way, they can come out of school with a skill and not be a burden to us.

CHRIS BRODEUR: Apologized for drinking his free beer the Tank offered him. We all learned more in the real world than we did in school. Here's one of my hundreds of proposals that saves billions: I want to put kids out of highschool and put them into internships. They learn in the real world. Most of my proposals are very comprehensive. 14 year olds hanging out with 14 year olds doesn't work. It stunts them emotionally. It doesn't work. There's no shortage of money. Bloomberg pays Ed Schuyler $176,000 per year to lie to you. I propose a $60,000 cap on all government jobs. If you don't like it, go work in the private sector.

SETH: About Internships: I have 20 students who want to do internships. It costs a lot of money. Are they being abused? Are they getting coffee? Unless you are in the schools, you don't know what goes on in the classroom and you don't know what it takes to fix what is wrong with the schools? Where are these kids? Are they in a gang? Are they smoking marijuana? I want to legalize marijuana. Second, I want to be a leader and a role model for the 1 million students in the city and the young people who aren't students in the city. Unlike the president who can't talk to his enemies, we can talk to gangs. I have talked to gangs and worked with them before. They want to be talked to, they need to be talked to. We can all get along.

AUDREY REBUT: Seth understands things from the point of view of a teacher. (New candidate joins the forum.) I don't know if we can talk to gangs or not, but marijuana is a problem.

CHRIS BRODEUR REBUT: The war on drugs stole a billion tax dollars and accomplished nothing. He's arresting everyone for smoking but smoked pot. It's hypocracy. If politicians are hypocritical, they should go to jail.

SETH REBUT: I want to be a leader and a role model to these students. I want to help them learn something. Maybe not science or social studies, but there must be something you want to learn, and you can find out why. We can impart this info and succeed.

We've been joined by Tony Bramawitz.