NYT Uses Story of Youth Underemployment to Push for Further Cuts in Living Standards

The New York Times published an article entitled "Lack of Jobs in Southern Europe Frustrates the Young" to the front page of its website on New Year's Day. At first glance, I was happy to see the concerns of the overeducated and underemployed being publicized. However, the title of the article troubled me for two reasons:

1) The issue is not limited to Southern Europe, and
2) It is not merely frustration that this problem generates.



The article starts out strongly:

It galled her that even with her competence and fluency in five languages, it was nearly impossible to land a paying job. Working as an unpaid trainee lawyer was bad enough, she thought, but doing it at Italy’s social security administration seemed too much. She not only worked for free on behalf of the nation’s elderly, who have generally crowded out the young for jobs, but her efforts there did not even apply to her own pension. [Emphasis added]

But instead of focusing on the real causes for the uncertainty of the social position of the young and educated, the authors prefer to blame the elderly, the unions, and, of course, the Chinese.

Giuliano Amato, an economist and former Italian prime minister, was even more blunt. “By now, only a few people refuse to understand that youth protests aren’t a protest against the university reform, but against a general situation in which the older generations have eaten the future of the younger ones,” he recently told Corriere della Sera, Italy’s largest newspaper. [Emphasis added]

Yes, that's it. The young are not really protesting against being screwed by those in charge, but are in fact protesting against their parents, many of whom are also in an increasingly precarious situation. It has absolutely nothing to do with the widening social divide, the travesty of the financial crisis, the political response to it.

Even before the economic crisis hit, Southern Europe was not an easy place to forge a career. Low growth and a corrosive lack of meritocracy have long posed challenges to finding a job in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal. Today, with the added sting of austerity, more people are left fighting over fewer opportunities. It is a zero-sum game that inevitably pits younger workers struggling to enter the labor market against older ones already occupying precious slots.

Perfect words for the complacent Upper East Side NYT reader to pat himself on the back. See how bad they have it in those lazy old Mediterranean countries?

Nevermind that those Italian graduates only had to pay relatively nominal sums to earn those degrees and that the outlook for American graduates is arguably far worse.

“What we have is a Ponzi scheme,” said Lawrence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University and an expert in fiscal policy. 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.” [Emphasis added]

Ah, yes. The good old Ponzi scheme! No speech and agenda to slash benefits, pensions, and labor protections is adequate without this misnomer. Then we have this comical attempt to bring the Chinese into this! But who pushed for trade relations with China? Who brought China into the WTO telling us that everyone would benefit remarkably? No, don't ask yourselves those questions. It's much better to encourage xenophobia against the Chinese people, much of whom is just as overeducated and underemployed (or exploited ruthlessly to fill the Waltons' pockets, for example).

The authors then go on a rampage against labor unions and their associated parties:

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.”

"Many young people"? Could this be the New York Times' equivalent of Fox News' "some people say?" Can someone tell "Dr." Kotlikoff and the New York Times what happened when the French tried to oh-so-altruistically change the labor laws for the wondrous benefit of the French underemployed? Shame on the French youth for not knowing what's good for them!

But that's not all. The article concludes in a most despicable manner. It takes the issue of raising the retirement age (done to inequitably apportion the cost of the financial crisis and its subsequent clean-up) and frames it as something the young underemployed want:

“Now people are being sent into early retirement at age 55,” said Sara Sanfulgencio, 28, who has a master’s degree in marketing but is unemployed and living in Madrid with her mother, who owns a children’s shoe store. “But if I haven’t started working by age 28 and I already have to stop at 55, it’s absurd.”

So in the world of the New York Times, young overeducated workers want to work longer, with smaller pensions (if any) and with fewer labor protections. Unbelievable. If this is so, then how do the NYT and the Manhattan cocktail party circuit explain the prominent involvement among the young in every single anti-austerity movement in Europe? Next week, the New York Times will tell us that British students will actually benefit from higher tuition fees.

This is but a cheap attempt to turn a serious socioeconomic issue into an opportunity to propagandize for further undercutting the living standards of the majority of the population.