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Pushing Back Against Economic Crisis, Youth Unrest Ripples Around World
Has anyone noticed that new unemployment claims just climbed by 51,000 to 454,000? Maybe we're tired of being reminded about the jobless rate. It was politely ignored in President Obama's State of the Union Address, even as he promised to boost opportunities for the next generation.
Yet the next generation is at the center of unemployment epidemic. And according to the International Labour Organisation's Global Employment Trends report, they have lots of company around the world:
The number of unemployed stood at 205 million in 2010, essentially unchanged from the year earlier... with little hope for this figure to revert to pre-crisis levels in the near term.
The ranks of the jobless include some 78 million young people worldwide, a rate of 12.6 percent. That's a slight decline from the previous year but millions more than the 2007 levels. And since the data suggests "discouragement among youth has risen sharply," there is also the untold shadow number of youth who've simply fallen out of the workforce.
In some respects, the unemployment crisis has ironically done more relative damage to wealthier countries than to poorer ones; workers in upper-tier economies fell down harder. But whether unemployment reflects an abrupt decline from privilege, or a steady socioeconomic malaise, the millions of youth who can't find work are all hurting together. And the pain is now starting to crest in a ripple of anger.
This disaffection has afflicted rich and poor countries. American youth, even the college-educated, are increasingly frustrated to find the doors that opened for their parents a generation ago now shut firmly in their faces. In July 2010, unemployment in the youth labor force, aged 16 to 24, reached a jarring 19 percent, with especially high rates among blacks and Latinos. The combination of deferred dreams and lowered expectations has bred a sense of terminal stagnation among young workers. (Meanwhile, at the other end of the age spectrum, many older workers are clinging to their jobs for survival when they should be looking toward retirement).
The same story is unfolding with more vehemence in the Global South. It's no coincidence that the outbreak of youthful unrest in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, has emerged in regions embroiled in deep economic crisis.
The ILO reports that in the Middle East:
current estimates for 2010 show a level of unemployment at 10.3 per cent, which is the highest regional rate in the world. The youth unemployment rate is almost four times the adult rate. Gender inequalities continue to be a major concern, as the gap between male and female employment-to-population ratios, at 47.2 percentage points, is twice the global average. Economic growth in 2011 is projected at 5.1 per cent, falling short of precrisis trends, with little change expected in the region's unemployment rate.
Although North Africa didn't suffer as much as other regions in the recession, the data depicts a deep long-term slump:
An alarming 23.6 per cent of economically active young people were unemployed in 2010. Productivity growth continues to be sluggish and leaves little scope for increases in wages and salaries or for progress in expanding social protection systems.
The Brookings Institution last year described a so-called youth "unemployment paradox," in which declining unemployment "is paradoxically associated with a deterioration of job quality rather than any major improvement in labor market conditions." It drew a striking comparison between the widespread youth joblessness Egypt and the United States:
The United States arrives at this juncture as a result of the worst economic recession in 70 years. Underemployment in Egypt, on the other hand, stems from a rapidly growing youth population faced with the consequences of a partial and fragmented transformation of the economy from a state-led to a market-oriented development model....
In all likelihood, the U.S. economy will resume its growth and will eventually start creating new jobs, but the high cost of health care and continued economic uncertainty may significantly slow the creation of good jobs. Like young Egyptians, young Americans may have to reduce their expectations about the quality of jobs they expect to attain in this current market and hope to upgrade over time.
What the report didn't predict, however, was a more radical reaction. The explosion of protest in Cairo shows that young people can only be forced to reduce their expectations so much, before they start pushing back and demanding revolution.
The popular uprisings obviously aren't just a response to unemployment; they're a revolt against corrupt authoritarian government, uneven development, and social disenfranchisement. And, countering Western stereotypes of "religious fundamentalism," what we've witnessed in several Arab countries reflects a secular, democratically structured youth movement driven primarily by a desire for meaningful work and economic citizenship.
As one observer reflected in a Guardian dispatch, many protesters have:
made it clear that political opposition parties, long defunct and impotent, have been replaced by grassroots social action. Their fears of detention and torture have been supplanted by the need for better living conditions and better wages.
Will restless young people elsewhere follow? What about the American youth who face crumbling prospects for earning a living wage, much less finding their dream job? Or the young Europeans trapped between failed macroeconomic policies and a collapsed welfare state?
To help workers cope with the global crisis, the ILO urges governments to focus on creating quality jobs and strengthening social protections, instead of merely obsessing over deficits.
Echoing Brookings's warnings about long-term decline in job quality, ILO Director-General Juan Somavia argued, "We must not forget that for people the quality of work defines the quality of a society,"
The U.S. isn't yet on the cusp of a social breakdown, but its youth are moving into an era of unprecedented frustration. How long before they tire of letting their hopes suffocate-and join their peers around the world to organize and shake up the status quo?
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32 Comments so far
Show Allthank you for the title: "economic crisis" driving the uprising.
the fake left has been trying to spin it as "scary islamic movement though washington is to blame". their spin is so predictable. always trying to poison the message by injecting "islam" into what people want, which is justice and peace, the universal aspiration.
not that an "islamic movement" is problematic in and of itself.
I do wonder how far it will spread and how long it will go on, whether it will move beyond the Islamic people to the rest of the dispossessed. Can this be the beginning of a new way of life with jobs and justice and hope for all, or the first slide down a slippery slope into violent formless anarchy that will spread world wide.
This has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with large youth populations - which just happens to be the case in many Middle East countries - with few career opportunities. It's the economy, stupid!
The only real 'solution' to the neo-liberal (fascist) problem that's developed over decades of 'free trade' income disparity and corporate parasitism is wealth distribution - and that's what really scares the US. That's what scared the West during and after WWII - and why so many socialist-leaning countries were host to genocidal purges of anyone to the left of Attila-the-Hun.
The resulting socio-economic imbalance throughout most of the world gives rise to many bogeymen, while nobody wants to mention the elephant in the room - the massive 'trickle-up' effect of the looting of the lower 99% of people in the world. The bankers (financial fraud), MIC, FIRE - fascist kleptocracies of all types - have reached an impasses: not enough to go around and still keep looting the battered and broken underclasses. Resource depletion doesn't help - and that can only get worse, as well. We're in the classic 'death-spiral' - and that tiny less-than-one-percent doesn't want to be among the dead. They're organized - 'formless anarchy' doesn't stand a chance - it can create an opportunity, but where do you go from there?
"workers in upper-tier economies fell down harder" that's because when you're already living down on the ground, you can't fall any farther unless they change the laws of physics. I wouldn't be surprised if the plutonomists are working on it. They'll invent a derivative for it all wrapped up in a hedge fund.
Hopefully young Americans are realizing that Wall Street and its wholly owned subsidiaries (the Democratic Party and the Republican Party) are responsible for 1) a century of global oppression (that Tunisians, Egyptians and others are rebelling against), and 2)ever greater domestic oppression.
"How long before they tire of letting their hopes suffocate-and join their peers around the world to organize and shake up the status quo?"
Hopefully, soon- very, very soon.
Maybe for the same reason older workers are not raising up... (Preditor, you'll never hear it coming)
Or maybe their educated enough to know about the Bounus Army in WA> D.C 1935 and what happend to them!
Or the FEMA camps waiting to reeducate and help those who are unhappy with the statue quo!.
Give me 1 in 10 chance of making a differance and I'll be in the front lines with my pitch-fork. but give me that 1 chance!
>^^<
Not likely.
Thank you Michelle Chen for giving a voice to the "it don't exist" real world,I worry for my children and grandchild.
Please consider my puncheon for building on the future of the young generation.
From: An Incomplete Education,pg45
"this nation of ours,purple mountains and all, began its life without any political parties whatsoever.George Washington -whose election in 1788 had been unanimous and unopposed -was above even thinking in terms of party loyalty. The rest of the Founding Fathers considerered 'factions',as they put it,straightening their periwigs,to be unscrupulous gang hell-bent on picking the public pocket. James Madison,for instance ,while an old hand at lining up votes and establishing majorites on specific issues, assumed that those majorities would(and should) fall away once the issue in question had been resolved.
Also from: Ourselves To Know,John O'Hara;pg213
the following quote from a lawyer(Ben Rosebery) in the novel:
"I'm a lawyer and maybe I know a little bit more about what we lose when a law is passed. Every law,good or bad, strengthens the government, and nearly every law stays on the books no matter what party is in power. Meanwhile, you and I, the individual citizen, have lost some liberty. The trouble is,of course,every new thing means new laws".
Respectfully submitted for your benefit in the hope that a stable foundation will be made possible for the younger generation's economic,political and social world that should be at least as good as mine and hopefully better with the inclusion of this old timer's experience.
Why should anyone have to lower expectations? ( except for the military.)
Maybe the military should be given an allowance, and when the money is all gone, that's all they get. I'm sure that this would be an excellent way to track all that "lost "money.
A big maybe here: Maybe like the citizens, the retired military should only be allowed to make( beyond their pension) the same low amount that retired citizens do on their social security. When they retire and work as consultants for arms makers, aren't we making old generals into real life "Predator Drones?
Maybe the White House should also list on its website the monthly amount that the military is spending as opposed to what the social programs are spending.
Maybe students will have to sue colleges for granting degrees in non-existant jobs. And too, if colleges accept money from corporations, then they must tie graduates to placements. This is already done by Harvard and Yale, isn't it?
Maybe Wall St. should be hobbled instead of the people.
Maybe corporate America gets NO tax breaks unless they create jobs.
Maybe shipping money offshore, for any bank or person will be seen as MATERIAL ASSISTANCE to the undermining of America. ( although that should apply to all nations.)
Maybe so many in Congress should stop saying' "It's the Peoples' will," because we all know that the "Will to power' refers to their own one-way street.
The young participate in uprisings but they should remember experience. The colonists fighting the War for Independence did not do this so they could go into crushing debt to American bankers, but that is what they got. The college educated, secular youth of Iran did not bring down the shah to install an Islamic theocracy, but that is what they got. The protesters in Red Square did not want to install mob capitalism, but that is what they got.
If the revolution does not have a unified, consistent, and workable goal, they are likely to find themselves in a situation that is little improved.
Excellent post!
>^^<
It did make me smile today when I heard that young people marching in protests today in England were urging one another to "walk like an Egyptian".
Sadly typical of journalists, author of this article Michelle Chen does not grasp the implication of what she is writing. Effectively, what is chronicled is the failure of contemporary economic theory, rather than the incisive economic analysis Ms. Chen appears to assume. Relevantly, Ms. Chen asserts,
"The combination of deferred dreams and lowered expectations has bred a sense of terminal stagnation among young workers. (Meanwhile, at the other end of the age spectrum, many older workers are clinging to their jobs for survival when they should be looking toward retirement)."
This being so, then current political consensus on reducing social programs will perpetuate youth unemployment. Conforming to contemporary economic theory, however, the only solution Chen provides is, "To help workers cope with the global crisis, the ILO urges governments to focus on creating quality jobs." As to what constitutes "quality jobs," Chen is silent, as is contemporary economic theory.
Additionally, if "quality jobs" are the solution to youth unemployment, and youth unemployment is global, then perhaps countries the world over must seek "quality jobs." Doing so, will the market for "quality jobs" become saturated, reducing compensation, while perpetuating youth unemployment? Assumed by Chen and contemporary economic theory is humans have infinite demand, while denying physical entropy. Being so, Malthus is denied, perpetual productive "growth" being made possible. These assumptions being false, the solution to youth unemployment proposed by Chen and contemporary economic theory will fail.
Empirically, these assumptions appear mistaken. A recent sociological study determined consumptive satisfaction is achieved at about an annual income of US$80,000, additional income meeting only the demand for social status. Denial of entropy puts economics at odds with physics, which presumes entropy, this when physics appears far more successful a discipline than economics. Finally, the economic presumption of economic egoism is at odds with the far more complex observations of psychology.
Effectively, contemporary economic theory presumes a crudely simplistic conception of reality, more befitting that of an ideology than of an empirical scientific discipline.
I think Chen is trying to say that years of replacing good quality jobs with bad quality jobs has backfired and there's plenty of truth to that. Don't be fooled with Malthusian propaganda. Good quality jobs does not come at the expense of higher unemployment. Companies have to be responsible and opportunities for small businesses to succeed must be restored. The governments could start there.
Indeed, maxpayne, I wish not to be "fooled with Malthusian propaganda," or with mainstream economic propaganda. What I do wish for is a rethinking of the dismal "science," for its current state is indeed "dismal."
Paul Samuelson defines "Economics" as,
"the study of how men and society end up choosing . . . to employ scarce productive resources that could have alternative uses, to produce various commodities and distribute them for consumption, now or in the future, among various people and groups in society." [Paul A. Samuelson, Economics, ninth edition (New York: Mcgraw-Hill Book Company, 1973), 3.]
As currently conceived, economics is either impossible, or minimally significant.
* If demand is infinite, and supply is infinite, then economics is impossible.
* If demand is finite, and supply is infinite, then economics is impossible.
* If demand is infinite, and supply is finite, then economics is impossible. There would be “a war of all against all,” [Thomas Hobbes, De Cive (London, Printed by J.C. for R. Royston, at the Angel in Ivie-Lane. 1651), Source: Archive for the History of Economic Thought created by Rod Hay at McMaster University in Canada, Chapter One, “Of the state of men without Civil Society,” “In the mere state of Nature,” XIII., http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/decive.htm.] in which humans “are in the condition which is called war . . . . and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” [Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by John Plamenatz (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1969), 143.]
* If demand is finite, and supply is finite, then economics is minimal.
Assuming economics is minimal, and "good quality jobs" produce resources in high demand, then "replacing good quality jobs with bad quality jobs" has little significant meaning. It has greater significant meaning only assuming infinite demand and finite resources. Assuming this, though, there must be “a war of all against all,” in which case there is no rational means of analyzing, "the costs and benefits of improving patterns of resource allocation." [Samuelson 3]
Thus, inheriting the confusion of modern economics, Chen neither explains nor resolves "the unemployment crisis." Neither does Barack Obama in his recent State of the Union call, "to encourage American innovation." Assuming demand is finite, and supply is finite, an "unemployment crisis" is explicable only assuming a cabal against employment, in which case producing "good quality jobs" is irrelevant. Ph.D. taxi cab drivers in Cairo, Egypt, illustrate this. Alternatively, assuming demand is infinite, and supply is finite, then arming yourself is more rational than "good quality jobs."
Economics is rotten to its core; it needs to be either rebuilt, or consigned to "the ash heap of history."
I whole heartedly agree with the point you are making.
Economics is quackery. It is about the most useless and non meaningful "science" ever conceived of. Creationism is more valid as a theory.
The notion that via education we can create enough "high quality" jobs for all of the worlds 7 billion people is insane. Just as is the notion that all nations can develop industry and manufacturing to "export" goods to one another.
All one needs to do is look at a "High income" community. At whose expense do those people earn those high incomes? Who does the menial work and at what wage? Why does the lawyer make more then the Janitor and if EVERYONE was a lawyer who would pick up the trash and who would those lawyers represent?
If everyone made 80k a year what would the cost of new homes and cars or the food on the table be? How is it that Chinese earning 1000$$ a year have a 40 percent savings rates and Americans making 50 thousand a year are in debt up to their ying yang?
Not to discount these fascinating discussions on the fallacies underlying modern economics and Malthusian principles, but, it seems that a single quote from the International Labour Organisation has been interpreted as a flawed prescription for saving global capitalism. That's one aspect of the systemic debate surrounding "development," but the main theme of the piece is solidarity between economically and socially disenfranchised youth around the globe. It doesn't seem that the discourse on economics being quackery (while certainly relevant in the long term) has immediate resonance with what's being heard on the streets of Cairo today, where protesters' demands center on ousting an authoritarian regime and asserting the most basic civil and economic rights.
Economic quackery will hit these people if and when they get 'regime change' and find out that removing the police-state does not resolve their employment issues. If they can't earn money, get a decent job, get married and raise their family - will it make any difference if they have 'basic civil and economic rights' - just because they can see these obstacles easily does not mean that repression is the underlying causal factor. 'Economic theory' is the bullshit invented for the wealthy 'elite' (parasites) to justify their status remaining ossified - that is what is causing the social and economic problems. We must always ask qui bono?
I think Egytians - at least the college educated - are more sophisticated in terms of 'economic theory' than your average American. Their uprising is based on the blatant inequities evident in their daily lives - the 'business elite' that run 'their' government according to US' neoliberal free-market bullshit via the US-bankrolled police-state flaunting their wealth and status while unemployment, stagnation, and disenfranchisement are SOP for everyone else.
The economic premises are integral, not peripheral - they must be immediately addressed or the 'revolution' will be meaningless (and quickly co-opted). This IS an economic revolt - so it is vital to confront 'economic quackery poste haste.
There are studies that hold "consumptive satisfaction" at far lower than that, maybe because "US $80,000 is itself not a good indicator of what one consumes, let alone how satisfied one is.
Philandrel, Right on, man! The system is so fundamentally flawed there's no point in discussing solutions within its framework as this article does.
Only the politically connected and the elite will have work soon. My son just graduated from a University and the only people he knows that got jobs were the ones with particular skills in accounting and other math related field like chemical engineering etc. The rest are finding it almost impossible to get any "decent" work anymore. There are lots of scut jobs that a monkey could do, but anything else you need connections to get.
Are corporate jobs the only ones that count?
Unemployment, diminished hopes for a good life for the young, foreclosures and twenty percent poverty exists while wall street propers. This can not continue.
Me thinks little of this discussion deals with a larger problem. What are people doing!!!???
Not to get too ad hominem about it, but the poster-boy for the economic fallacies outlined by philandrel earlier here is Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's labor secretary, who argued for educating the work force in order to compete in the global technological revolution. Meanwhile, the costs of higher education were increasing at roughly twice the rate of general inflation, and this trend continued so that today many if not most recent U.S. advanced-degree graduates are wallowed in debt peonage while U.S. corporations import similarly-qualified workers who have far lower wage expectations.
Perhaps among the economic fallacies philandrel might recognize is the assumption of Nationalism as an organizing principle. This issue was of great concern to Arthur Schlesinger, of JFK's "brain trust." Today, we see that neo-liberal globalism depends on nations less and less except for demagogic purpose.
The ironies here are delicious. Strange how Tunisians, Egyptians, Algerians, Yemenis, Jordanians, Lebanonesques, and assorted other malcontents suddenly view themselves as "similarly situated" as regards tyranny.
In any case, an economics which includes a speculative commodities market that can drive up the global price of necessaries without regard to actual human need, or even empirical regard to realities on the ground, is a corrupt economics. (A great critic of the existing system, as regards real estate [FIRE], is Michael Hudson.)
Strangely, this revolution is being televised because the MSM have no real choice, thanks to the now dominant New Media. Egypt shut down Facebook and Twitter et al, briefly, but then realized that their System's own infrastructure is also now dependent on the interchange. The Matrix is its own narcissistic addiction.
For some reason I am reminded of a joke that went around during my college years so long ago, something like this:
The Whompus Cat is the meanest animal in the whole world.
What make him so mean?
Well, he has a head on the one end and a head on the other.
If he has a head on the one end and a head on the other, how do he shit?
He don't. That's what makes him so mean.
*****
Who you gonna believe? Me, or yore own lyin eyes?
Welcome to the Wireless World, Puppets!
(This is why the FCC is tiering the Electromagnetic Spectrum in favor of the rich, and Media Consolidation. Young people created the digital revolution. One senses Rebellion in the air. The Baby Boomers had a chance for profound change after WWII, and blew it. Capitalism cum Globalism now dominates, with increasing inequity.)
Something has to give.
-30-
People keep talking about "jobs". What is this word "jobs"? If you mean meaningless work designed to give the employed an income and an illusory sense of independence, you will be among the majority that fail to see that the job crisis is really a crisis in over-population.
Most jobs are artificial and do nothing to improve the human condition. Consumerism and celebrity-entertainment were created to occupy the minds of those that contribute least to the advancement of society. Other desk-bound paper tigers are continually reminded of their worth to the organization's goals.
Employment is such a critical issue because it distracts idle minds, long recognized as a necessary element to a soma-addicted society since an elitist committee that wrote the bible with its proverb "Idle hands are the devil's tools".
It is most always youth that experiences unrest, so here's to youth!
We aren't any of us going to get far eating 0bama's promises.