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Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

theatlantic.com

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Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#41

Post by JamisonM »

kposehn wrote: post #33
kposehn wrote: post #32

Youths with nothing to lose are how bloody revolutions start, rarely turning out well for any involved. I find one thing about the unemployment rate in Europe truly scary: There are a /lot/ of youths there with nothing to lose.

And another thing: austerity is all that stands between Europe and total collapse. They can't keep writing checks they cannot cash.

Actually, they can keep writing cheques and cashing them, they have their own currency, it allows you to do that. The current problem is that the "core" of the EU thinks it is in their best interest to keep inflation down and let the other nations suffer. The best evidence we have so far indicates that this is a very bad idea.

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#42

Post by autodafe »

flexie wrote: post #35
jcrites wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they making a living and otherwise providing for themselves? (Serious question.) Is homelessness also skyrocketing, or do the unemployed receive benefits of some kind?

It's different from country to country, but in general lot's of them live with their parents and most of them receive some welfare. In Southern Europe it's not unnormal to live with your parents way into your twenties or even early thirties. And it's not considered embarrassing either. In the cafés of Barcelona, Rome, Athens, you will meet the well dressed 31 year old guy with a smart phone in his pocket a laptop on…

Welfare, free health care, free education... Free to him but it has to be paid for by someone. As more people rely on those benefits, the cost goes up for those who contribute to the system. The frightening question is what happens when the well runs dry?

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#43

Post by mullingitover »

nhebb wrote: post #31
jcrites wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a particularly constructive comment, especially the sarcasm. I can see that you've been on HN for a while, but in the future it would be great if you could consider stating your concerns directly. (Unless you're just trying to make a joke, in which case it doesn't make complete sense to me. We're talking about positions that require college education.) Or do you genuinely believe that allowing a greater le…

On one hand you're trying to invoke the emotional imagery of a wave of immigrants coming through Ellis Island, but with the stipulation that they are college educated. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses - as long as they have a STEM degree. You've managed to come across as both populist and elitist in the same argument, so sarcastic replies aren't completely unexpected.

My sentiments exactly. "Let's plunder these unfortunate countries for their talent" is a bit unseemly. I'm not against immigration, in fact I think the US needs it if we're going to avoid having our birth rate go flat/negative. But why couldn't these companies open offices in Spain and Greece instead of trying to siphon off their talent?

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#44

Post by zalew »

jcrites wrote: post #17
hkmurakami wrote: post #14

This is scary, yes. But there's more to any unemployment story than just the stats. What are the prospects of an unemployed young person getting a job at any point in the future, even when the economy recovers? Is there a strong bias towards new grads, that would lead to a "lost generation" that permanently suffers in the job market? How does society look on the unemployed? Do they look at them with sympathy or scorn…

How are they making a living and otherwise providing for themselves? (Serious question.) Is homelessness also skyrocketing, or do the unemployed receive benefits of some kind?

the average age of a homeless person for Poland is 51(f) to 55(m). around Europe to be homeless & young you usually are a junkie, the rest just stays with their parents.

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#45

Post by ajross »

benologist wrote: post #24
jcrites wrote: post #19

It would be great if the US government provided an expedited Visa program for college-educated foreign nationals who have received a job offer from a company in the US. There is H1B, but that applies to specialty occupations. (I'm not an immigration expert - perhaps this already exists and I don't know about it?) How many people from those countries immigrate to the US or wish to? If they're willing to work, and a co…

Why does it have to be US? The whole world is shrinking, a centuries-old, artificial line shouldn't be a barrier.

The point was more that the US is a plausible sink for that excess labor. Yes, it would indeed be great for Belize or Angola to loosen immigration restrictions and make more six figure tech jobs available to young europeans. But...

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#46

Post by petsagouris »

flexie wrote: post #35
jcrites wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they making a living and otherwise providing for themselves? (Serious question.) Is homelessness also skyrocketing, or do the unemployed receive benefits of some kind?

It's different from country to country, but in general lot's of them live with their parents and most of them receive some welfare. In Southern Europe it's not unnormal to live with your parents way into your twenties or even early thirties. And it's not considered embarrassing either. In the cafés of Barcelona, Rome, Athens, you will meet the well dressed 31 year old guy with a smart phone in his pocket a laptop on…

There is no free health care in Greece at the moment. Everyone pays to receive treatment from the public health care system even if you pay your health care insurance monthly fees.

Furthermore the free education is a hugely false fact. For almost 20 years now if a child is not getting education outside of the public school system he/she will not be getting anywhere close to getting onto the 3rd educational level (College or University). The funding and the personnel is inadequate to say the least.

Mind you the public sector is governed by the 5-out-1-in rule (5 people leave 1 gets assigned a position) in general but in the education sector this analogy is rounding up to 10-out-1-in.

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#47

Post by adventured »

JamisonM wrote: post #41
kposehn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And another thing: austerity is all that stands between Europe and total collapse. They can't keep writing checks they cannot cash.

Actually, they can keep writing cheques and cashing them, they have their own currency, it allows you to do that. The current problem is that the "core" of the EU thinks it is in their best interest to keep inflation down and let the other nations suffer. The best evidence we have so far indicates that this is a very bad idea.

Cuts or inflation, it's the same end result. One is just more of a fraud than the other. Inflation is almost universally preferred by the political class because it does a better job of hiding the erosion of purchasing power and standard of living.

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#48

Post by zalzane »

potatolicious wrote: post #30
mullingitover wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who'd like to drive down the value of my labor down to poverty levels, this is a fantastic idea.

Oh, this is just hysteria. The kind of software engineers that Amazon, Google, Facebook, et al are importing are all above the six-figure threshold, many of them well above it. This community really makes me facepalm sometimes. It is the only group that can, while getting free massages, catered meals, free shuttles to/from work, get paid well into the six figures, and enjoys an incredibly high standard of living even…

Who says all those immigrants are going to be high-end google-worthy engineers?

The chances are in favor that they would drive down the pay of the first quartile of programmers based on quality, not the savants making 100k+/y.

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#49

Post by zanny »

autodafe wrote: post #42
flexie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different from country to country, but in general lot's of them live with their parents and most of them receive some welfare. In Southern Europe it's not unnormal to live with your parents way into your twenties or even early thirties. And it's not considered embarrassing either. In the cafés of Barcelona, Rome, Athens, you will meet the well dressed 31 year old guy with a smart phone in his pocket a laptop on…

Welfare, free health care, free education... Free to him but it has to be paid for by someone. As more people rely on those benefits, the cost goes up for those who contribute to the system. The frightening question is what happens when the well runs dry?

Considering how, in the US at least, wealth and asset holdings has extremely concentrated itself in the top fraction of the population in the last 30 years, probably not soon.

I mean, most of these states aren't raising taxes, but are playing with monetary gears to keep money injection from spurring inflation (albeit they have had huge taxes for decades).

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#50

Post by adventured »

javs42 wrote: post #39
sopooneo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean that you believe austerity will help avoid collapse, or that austerity will bring it on ? I think you mean the former. I'm too ignorant on the issue to have an opinion myself.

Unfortunately there is still debate about the benefit/drawbacks of austerity, but if Europe is any indication, it is just degrading the whole situation. What's keeping Europe away from the edge or from a turn to prosperity is the hard-nosed devotion to austerity.

Ah yes, if the troubled European nations would just spend a lot more money they don't actually have while not paying off any of their debts, while pretending they could ever afford the vast welfare states they built, they would find themselves prosperous again. Keynesian faith based economics at its finest. Spend what you don't have, run up debts you can never pay back, and print your way deeper into destruction when all else fails, because inflation is easier to lie about than an equivalent austerity cut.

Keynesian economics, turning first world countries into second world countries since 1936.

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