After the boomers, meet the children dubbed 'baby losers'

Across Spain, France and Italy, young middle-class professionals with good degrees and diplomas are facing a lifetime on low salaries with unrewarding jobs, forever poorer than their parents. Investigation by Graham Keeley in Barcelona, Jason Burke in Paris and Tom Kington in Rome

With inflation soaring, property prices sky high, wages relatively static, labour markets gridlocked and sluggish or slowing economies, Nathalie, Lorenzo, Arias and Di Martino are among tens of millions of Europeans raised to expect that their degrees and diplomas will assure them a relatively high quality of life who are now realising that the world has changed. The disappointment is a shock with big political, social, cultural, even demographic consequences.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/11/spain.france?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

 

What is the solution to this?

Stop the rampant socialism to spread further in our countries. It will be hard...

What are some specific problems to be addressed that are at the root of the crisis?

I live in Romania and I'm just introducing myself to Austrian Economics. This part of Europe has a great share of bad leaders that make stupid economical decisions. Further more, everyone here thinks Europe is the perfect economics model that our country has to follow.

Just curious what we should learn, but more importantly, what we should avoid from the other countries in the EU.

xSFx:

This part of Europe has a great share of bad leaders that make stupid economical decisions.

Europe has a great share of bad leaders that make stupid economical decisions.

Phrase it that way, and the solution is apparent: Don't let anyone make economic decisions for other people.

 

histhasthai:

xSFx:

This part of Europe has a great share of bad leaders that make stupid economical decisions.

Europe has a great share of bad leaders that make stupid economical decisions.

Phrase it that way, and the solution is apparent: Don't let anyone make economic decisions for other people.

 

Yes, that's it.

it would be hard to list all politics that hurt the people in those countries. Regulations in labor market (increases unemployment) as well as in other markets, subsidies, high taxes, housing laws (making the housing prices skyrocket),...

Add to this the bad economics conditions in the rest of the world, the increase of protectionism of some country in response to the increase of the price of food, etc, and you got it.

I invite you to read some documents in the mises.org library (http://mises.org/literature.aspx), there are offered for free and will help you to understand what happen around us. I must say it's really fascinating and helpful.

I had a professor at university who told us about how in his youth (may 68) they had enjoyed full employment and free love, and now the only thing we had to look forward to was AIDS and unemployment. He would mesmerize his students telling them how he used to quit jobs just because he didn't really like them and get work somewhere else immediately.

 

histhasthai:

xSFx:

This part of Europe has a great share of bad leaders that make stupid economical decisions.

Europe has a great share of bad leaders that make stupid economical decisions.

Phrase it that way, and the solution is apparent: Don't let anyone make economic decisions for other people.

True, but useless advice. 

Why do you live in a country that has an interventionist, socialist-leaning government?

I thought xSFx was looking for some serious advice.

Danno

 

 

I invite you to read some documents in the mises.org library (http://mises.org/literature.aspx), there are offered for free and will help you to understand what happen around us. I must say it's really fascinating and helpful.

Thanks, I have been reading libertarian literature for a while now

 

it would be hard to list all politics that hurt the people in those countries. Regulations in labor market (increases unemployment) as well as in other markets, subsidies, high taxes, housing laws (making the housing prices skyrocket),...

What about the EU itself? What's the libertarian view on this?

Is EU good or bad for the market and for the countries' economies? What about the project of the EU Constitution?

Well, welcome to the truth .

Avoid everything, learn nothing, keep on studying austrian economics. I am in Europe, live in Germany, and been a long time supporter of that kind of economy, unless I read Mises and Rothbard.

The most specific problem, that is the very root of all issues, is the idea, that a group has rights not derived from the right of the individuals the group is made of. The moment you accept group rights like taxation, welfare and the like you are doomed. I mean that literally.

Like look into your own country. I am told that a huge sale of land is going on in Romania. People that call themself entrepreneurs, but are just thugs that use coercion and priviliges from the new administration, are looting the country right now. Very similiar to what happened, and still happens in the former soviet union.

The only solution is to have the leaders make no economic decisions at all. This is called free market. Let the market make decissions. To do so the most important thing is that the state has no power to regualte anything, from landownership to provision with food. The moment the state starts to regulate incentives exist to lobby for priviliges and to grant priviliges to those that can bribe enough. It is a downward spiral and not free market. It always ends in a tyranny and in people starving to dead while the old and new Ceaucescus live in luxery and wealth. But, who am I to tell you, after all, you have lived through it while I had the grace to got my information on that through the media.

All the best

The EU is the next Soviet Union.

Danno:

True, but useless advice. 

Why do you live in a country that has an interventionist, socialist-leaning government?

I thought xSFx was looking for some serious advice.

If it's true, it's not useless.  I live in such a country because I don't yet have the means to do otherwise.  If xSFx, or you, want concrete steps to get there, sorry, I don't know them.  If you don't know them either, it doesn't mean that then there must be some other answer that's less difficult, more "doable". My advice is dead serious, that is the only circumstance that can alleviate the problem.

 

xSFx:

Is EU good or bad for the market and for the countries' economies? What about the project of the EU Constitution?

 

I'd say no . The bigger the people governed, the bigger the government. Even if EU is now less socialist than some european country, it will in the end grow bigger and bigger.

 

The only thing that gives me a hope is internet, which could make government propaganda inefficient and regulations/taxes enforcement more costly.

The EU is so big and burdened with some many compromises that it's hard to give a definite good or bad rating to it. There are good aspects, like the exceptional mobility and cosmopolitanism of the young, which has protected them a bit from the economic depression. The advent of an European identity has sunk nationalism and opened the way for a return to regionalism. And the Euro has created a cartelized money that is not controlled by any single government and thus cannot be used to paper over deficits with inflation. All of this has come at the price of more bureaucracy and paperwork.

xSFx:

I invite you to read some documents in the mises.org library (http://mises.org/literature.aspx), there are offered for free and will help you to understand what happen around us. I must say it's really fascinating and helpful.

Thanks, I have been reading libertarian literature for a while now

 

it would be hard to list all politics that hurt the people in those countries. Regulations in labor market (increases unemployment) as well as in other markets, subsidies, high taxes, housing laws (making the housing prices skyrocket),...

What about the EU itself? What's the libertarian view on this?

Is EU good or bad for the market and for the countries' economies? What about the project of the EU Constitution?

 

 

 

 

I can't see that happening. Anything planned will end up in disaster. And if Federalism was hard to keep in this country for 75 years, god forbid socialist Europe. 10,000 page document? Can someone say so-vee-it   you- knee- un

Most people I know look at Europe as some sort of paradise (free health care! free this! free that!). I always tell them that this socialist paradise will run into trouble soon. I guess it's happening. We can only hope that people learn some lessons from this

In Spain, they have actually come up with a term to describe this generation: Mileurista

 The world is changing, fast, and Europa is starting to awaken from it forty year slumber to discover that maybe socialdemocracy isn't that goldpot it was supposed to be. The bristling middle-class, once Europa's biggest economic and social strength, is still the Continent's steam engine but it is starting to feel the strain. Middle-class youth are probably the hardest hit: caught between stagnant salaries, over-regulation, all-powerful trade unions and insane financial politics they are feeling the strain more than anybody else.

I remember that during my youth we were continously bombarded by the mantra "study law and become a lawyer: it's hard work but you'll be rewarded in the end". I am glad my father hates lawyers (so I was exposed to propaganda day and night for many years) and I am naturally inclined to distrust authority (Celtic hereditary trait?). Why? let's see what happens when a brilliant youth finally gets his law degree in Italy. Unless he has a close relative already practicing law he has to spend a certain as an apprentice in a law firm. Hard, unrewarding work (because he/she is assigned both menial and backbreaking tasks nobody wants to do) for little money (900 Euros a month is the usual dole). Before he/she can start practicing law as a full fledged lawyer or attorney he/she has to pass a State-approved exam, which he/she can take up to four years to pass. During this time he/she will either keep on being a menial "law worker" or will have to find another temporal, usually lowly-paid work. Once he/she has his/her State-sanctioned license you'd expect it will be all glory and high paid work... well that works if your father, uncle, aunt or whatever is already a senior member of a law firm (in which case your apprenticeship was true, decently-paid training and not slave work) and will introduce you into the job. Otherwise you have to find yourself a job as a low-ranking lawyer in a large law firm. You won't earn much more than you earned as a trainee, but you'll be given all the cases the firm owners will consider below their dignity, plus the menial jobs apprentices are forbidden from doing by their status. Not bad, considering this is what you'll be doing for the rest of your working life?