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Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

theatlantic.com

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Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#81

Post by iaskwhy »

niles wrote: post #27

What's a good website to directly target skilled workers in Spain / Greece / Italy / etc? I'm always on the look for good design, code, marketing, writing, really just about anything (even with a little language barrier). oDesk and similar don't seem to attract what I would consider to be 70% of a country's workforce. Any sense of if they have training / skills? Where are these people looking for work (online)?

As far as I know (I'm Portuguese), everything in Europe is very local so people are looking for work on their countries local job sites. There's also another problem that probably affect more the Portuguese people than the others: if you had a job you were paid a really low salary (the average is probaly around 800 EUR/month net), you were not able to save enough money to go abroad so, for most people, that is not an option.

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#82

Post by pyriku »

flexie wrote: post #56
petsagouris wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (Col…

Yes, it's hard to maintain free healthcare and free education like in Northern or Western Europo when Greeks pay little or no tax. As I understand it unemployed Greeks receive free health care for up to one year. After that period, patients must pay for their own treatment. That's still more than many places in the US. The fact that public education is (often?) so bad that private tutor schools are needed to enter un…

Excuse me, but the welfare systems are public, not free. We pay for them with our taxes. At least in Spain, education and health system are public, not free.

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#83

Post by kalleboo »

autodafe wrote: post #75
obstacle1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end capital ownership and property rights are just concepts we've collectively agreed are legitimate. Once living conditions become dystopian and wealth inequality skyrockets even more than it already has, I suspect society will legitimize "stealing" from the well. Notably, the well doesn't care whether or not you steal water from it. The water was never 'owned' by it in the first place.

I agree that ownership and property rights are an invention - though one of a free society. And you are correct that society can just as easily decide that these rights are no longer valid, though that is not a society I would ever consider free. To a certain extent that is happening already. The day the individual is forced to give up his last right and his last dollar to the ugly greed of the 'collective good' will…

Imagine a future where self-driving cars (=home delivery taking over retail), 3D printers, fully automated factories, and the death of copyright/intellectual property has put 75% of the population out of work. It's hard to imagine anything BUT some kind of socialist/communist system required.

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#84

Post by claudius »

anonymous wrote: post #61
brownbat wrote: post #59

The conventional (conservative/economic liberal/libertarian) wisdom is that employers are reluctant to hire new youths because these states mandate so many employer provided protections for any new hires. Employers become risk averse, unwilling to give anyone untested a first shot at the labor market. Evidence is somewhat mixed based on this chart. The UK has traditionally had lower severance ("redundancy") pay requi…

That's pretty much entirely false, at least as I can see it. Employers can and do hire young, inexperienced people on contracts that say "we can fire you when we want and we don't owe you". Those aren't proper long-term labour contracts, true, but it's precisely what you want for someone who's getting a job for the very first time in their life. Edit: for the record, I'm from Bulgaria and our unemployment rate for un…

That’s because Germany implemented the necessary social reforms before the crash (around 2005), rather than after. It also still has a superior education programme with apprenticeships for standard jobs, as well as cheap university access with extra funding for poorer people.

Edit: You can even see this in the graph. German youth unemployment peaked in 2005, well before the financial crisis but after a decade of slow growth, also cf. [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe#Modern_use

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#85

Post by kalleboo »

brownbat wrote: post #59

The conventional (conservative/economic liberal/libertarian) wisdom is that employers are reluctant to hire new youths because these states mandate so many employer provided protections for any new hires. Employers become risk averse, unwilling to give anyone untested a first shot at the labor market. Evidence is somewhat mixed based on this chart. The UK has traditionally had lower severance ("redundancy") pay requi…

Denmark's attempt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#86

Post by claudius »

dnu wrote: post #60
lignuist wrote: post #2

Interesting, how Germany decoupled itself from the rest of Europe in this graph.

This might be misleading. Germany has something named "mini job" or "400 euro job", where you are paid exactly 400 euro which barely covers the groceries and the rent for a room. A lot of young people have such a job, and this keeps the unemployment rate low.

The amount of people employed in such jobs has actually decreased in recent years and nowadays, more people than ever are employed in full social security jobs in Germany.

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#87

Post by claudius »

douglasisshiny wrote: post #6
lignuist wrote: post #2

Interesting, how Germany decoupled itself from the rest of Europe in this graph.

Considering that Germany is essentially the ECB -- no, it's not. As a lender of last resort, the ECB has failed. It has failed to acknowledge to lessons taught by history; and it has failed to look itself in the mirror now. Germany reaped the benefits of having small economies join the EU; now they refuse to take full responsibility; hell, they refuse to even allow, say, 4% core inflation for a couple of years to hel…

Yes, because they learnt the lessons from history and if there is anything that Germany wants to avoid then it is inflation.

Furthermore, the ECB is controlled by a money-printing Italian and last time I checked, German influence in the ECB was extremely low, especially compared to the relative size of Germany within the EU.

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#88

Post by kalleboo »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #20
hkmurakami wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with Spain lies is the (private) banks, not government finances. Unlike Greece, where the government needs to get bailed out, in Spain it is the banks that are in trouble.

The banks were in trouble in Ireland, and Ireland stood behind them (which destroyed them). The banks in Iceland were in trouble and Iceland walked away from them. Much less pain in Iceland compared to what Ireland is going through. When in doubt and able, default.

Iceland had their own currency though, and from the looks of a graph I googled up they inflated the ISK 100% since before the crisis. Ireland and Spain don't have that option.

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#89

Post by rbehrends »

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?

Basic welfare is an unavoidable cost. The only way to avoid paying for food, housing, and healthcare is, to be blunt, to starve or bleed to death in the gutter. And basic welfare doesn't really cost much. The cost drivers for the European welfare systems are healthcare and pensions. With respect to healthcare, the EU countries actually have the enormously inefficient American system beat (often for better quality at lower cost), with respect to pensions, they generally lag behind due to lower fertility rates.

Education pays for itself because it is an investment. The average person will be more productive and earn more (thus increasing GDP and also their personal tax payments) if they have an education rather than being illiterate. ROI for education is extremely good. Countries like Switzerland and Germany do not subsidize education just because it's a nice thing to do, but because it's a positive sum game.

Re: Europe's Record Youth Unemployment

#90

Post by fauigerzigerk »

sliverstorm wrote: post #65
snowwrestler wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. has not followed a program of austerity, and our economy and hiring is recovering faster than Europe's.

Apples and oranges. The U.S. didn't crash as hard, and doesn't have some of the EU's unique challenges.

But those unique challenges don't indicate that the U.S approach wouldn't work, they just explain why it isn't chosen.
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