The Expansive Social Safety Net In Europe Is Now A Hangman's Noose Upon Their Economies And The Young People Within

The next time some Progressive-Fundamentalist in America tries to sell you on how much America could only one day hope to become like Europe (Bill Maher) please tell him to keep his bill of goods.

I realize that this article will be under-reported just as the story about the major population shifts that the US Census represented was.   Certain media operatives are loathed toexpse the truth about the massive failure that the grand Ponzi scheme of redistributionist economic policies are.  For some people their own resentment and grievance based theories prove to provide the cataract of distorted vision which perpetuates their bigotry.

Bottom line:

• Competency Development through education
• Free Markets for exchange
• Government Regulation for insuring transparency in competition and access to opportunity rather than engineering the winners and losers

are the key ingredients to a sustainable and prosperous society.

NY Times: Europe’s Young Grow Agitated Over Future Prospects

He said that pay-as-you-go social security and health care were a looming fiscal disaster in Southern Europe and beyond. “If these fertility rates continue through time, you won’t have Italians, Spanish, Greeks, Portuguese or Russians,” he said. “I imagine the Chinese will just move into Southern Europe.”

The problem goes far beyond youth unemployment, which is at 40 percent in Spain and 28 percent in Italy. It is also about underemployment. Today, young people in Southern Europe are effectively exploited by the very mechanisms created a decade ago to help make the labor market more flexible, like temporary contracts.

Because payroll taxes and firing costs are still so high, businesses across Southern Europe are loath to hire new workers on a full-time basis, so young people increasingly are offered unpaid or low-paying internships, traineeships or temporary contracts that do not offer the same benefits or protections.

“This is the best-educated generation in Spanish history, and they are entering a job market in which they are underutilized,” said Ignacio Fernández Toxo, the leader of the Comisiones Obreras, one of Spain’s two largest labor unions. “It is a tragedy for the country.”

Yet many young people in Southern Europe see labor union leaders like Mr. Fernández, and the left-wing parties with which they have been historically close, as part of the problem. They are seen as exacerbating a two-tier labor market by protecting a caste of tenured older workers rather than helping younger workers enter the market.

For Dr. Kotlikoff, the solution is simple: “We have to change the labor laws. Not gradually, but quickly.”

Yet in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, any change in national contracts involves complex negotiations among governments, labor unions and businesses — a delicate dance in which each faction fights furiously for its interests.

Because older workers tend to be voters, labor reform remains a third rail to most politicians. Asked at a news conference last year about changing Italy’s de facto two-tier system, Italy’s center-right finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, said simply, “You can’t make violent changes to the system.”