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Government Cutting Benefits For "Generation Screwed"
Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man blog,
Human beings have an innate desire to thrive.
And there are few things more soul crushing than to sit idle and unemployed during one’s most formative and energetic years.
Traveling across Europe this summer, I was astonished at the economic decimation in places like Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, and Italy.
Youth unemployment rates in these countries are upwards of 40% to nearly 70%. The most recent figures published by the Italian government show yet another record high in youth unemployment.
An entire generation is now coming of age without being able to leave the nest or have any prospect of earning a decent wage in their home country.
This underscores an important point that I’ve been writing about for a long time: young people in particular get the sharp end of the stick.
They’re the last to be hired, the first to be fired, the first to be sent off to fight and die in foreign lands, and the first to have their benefits cut.
And if they’re ever lucky enough to find meaningful employment, they can count on working their entire lives to pay down the debts of previous generations through higher and higher taxes.
But when it comes time to collect… finally… those benefits won’t be there for them.
You see, every government has multiple obligations– whether to creditors and bondholders in the form of interest payments, or citizens in the form of benefits.
And when a government has to borrow money just to be able to pay interest on the money it’s already borrowed, it’s nearly a mathematical certainty that they’re going to default on at least -some- of their obligations.
For some of these obligations, it’s politically palatable to default.
Youth benefits, for example. No one is going to raise a big fuss. So you can absolutely count on governments unilaterally wiping themselves with these contractual obligations.
Case in point: the British government has just announced a new push to eliminate benefits for young people. And this is just step 1.
What a pathetic excuse for a social contract. There has to be a better way. And for young people, there is.
Youth is a gift. It’s a time in your life where you have tremendous energy and very little to lose. You’re not tied down by a mortgage or a family to support.
And rather than follow the conventional path of indebting yourself for 13-years so that you can attend university for four, and then fork over the bulk of your pay to the government, instead focus on learning tangible, valuable skills overseas.
Moving to a thriving place like China or Myanmar costs a tiny fraction of a single semester at university.
Yet learning the local languages, establishing yourself in the business community, becoming an apprentice, and building a reputation with influential people will be far more valuable than anything you could learn in Underwater Basket Weaving 101.
Best of all, when you head abroad, you are effectively divorcing yourself from the tax and debt-infested rat race back home.
While your friends back home will be living off the dole or paying the bulk of their income to the government, you won’t even know what they’re talking about.
It’s incredibly liberating. And far more prosperous.
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Hope I die before I get old
Talkin' 'bout my
"Hope I die before I get old"
So do they.
Undersecretary of Labor Spears has deveoped her own way of exhorting the young people of the US to enter the labor force so their skills can be put to use.
She has put this encouragement into music. "I hope to set an example and inspire a new generation through the magic of song.
My message is basically just: get back to work, y'all."
Full text of that message can be found here
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/britney+spears/work+bitch_21068318.html
Everybody imagines getting older. Few can imagine actually getting old.
On a separate note, the idea of heading out makes sense to me. Both my kids left college or early adulthood and burned some clock doing less lucrative but fulfilling adventures (one in Aspen as a waiter-skiier combo and the other in Thailand teaching English as a second language.) It's often parental influence that gets in the way of moves away from the so-called rat race.
LET. THEM. EAT. TWITTER. ON. FIAT.
Meanwhile at the exact same time these same countries have to import a ton of unskilled labor to work the fields. Italy for example can only find African's willing to tend to the olive trees that represent a core industry.
Anyone else see a problem with +40% youth unempolyment coupled with a need to still import low wage labor???
If you don't speak Chinese (Mandarin and/or Cantonese), don't go to China to be an "apprentice". In fact, if you don't speak the local language anywhere, don't try to be a worker-refugee. You're just asking yourself for great pain.
Although, if you're a decent looking white chick, you'll do well in practically any major Chinese city. But you better be prepared to either marry a Chinese guy, work at a hotel, or work on your back.
Sure, adventure is fun and all, but don't be a fucking idiot.
Uh oh, here comes that nasty ol' supply and demand concept again.
Perhaps they could try paying better? Or live with open borders and the resulting Mexican/Muslim invasion.
This is just bullshit. Feeling sorry for the unemployed youth? Let them go do something for 6-8 hours a day. Why are they sitting around doing nothing? There is plenty of work to be done, yes it might be free volunteer work, but what kind of man are you if you sit around the house all day doing nothing????
"You most likely know it as Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me." —J. Peterman from Seinfeld
They're gonna start blocking all the exits before too long. All these dying countries will need to keep the debt slaves trapped inside the borders.
the IRS makes you pay TAXES wherever you are.
And if you try to leave, a big fucking exit tax that's an estimate of what you'd pay over future years if you remained.
Check it out... little known factoid.
Go to the IRS and State Department websites, Q&A and tell them you're leaving. They'll get in touch with you and let you know all about it.
PS DO not fucking go to any of the Obiedontchacareformeanymore sign-up web sites. As soon as you open an account, they got your ass pegged... well, little Billy, you came here. and you didn't buy anything. Maybe you owe us a penalty and we'll just go ahead and deduct it from your bank account.
Do Not Be That Dumb.
Then again if you are that dumb.....
Darwinism
Acute Liberal Darwinism.
Taking care of those who you'd told you were taking care of.
Kinda
When I leave, it will be on a tourist visa.
And, no, I ain't coming back.
Psst -- keep this a secret, but the foreign earned income exclusion is pretty sweet.
$80k aint shit when you have real skills and zero chance of compensation for your tax-slavery.
When the collapse happens China will not have much employment opportunities either. Its jobs come from manufacturing goods for westerners to buy -- which of course we know won't happen for much longer when the dollar dies.
If you want a job in the future go to where the remaining fossil fuels are. The world is running out of oil quickly and therefore cannot grow and provide manufacturing jobs. China will soon be in big trouble since it imports half the oil it burns.
China will simply switch their base to another country or countries. Always customers in the world always.
And with no dollar pegging each transaction, the Chinese are just mother fucking waiting.
I wouldn't move to China if you paid me to live there.
What about Chinatown?
"Forget it, Jake..."
i'd move into Lucy Liu
Who is Vietnamese.....
Like that matters....
She still rove you rong time.
And old by now...
American. With parents from Beijing & Shanghai.
I would NOT move "into" Margaret Cho the comedian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Margaret_Cho_2009.jpg
She is fat and does not like d*ck.
U no like pollution?
Massive shafting of youth ... Look at fourth chart here
http://patrick.net/forum/?p=1223928
Recent debt jump is huge, and will be paid by the youth and unborn!!!
It will be defaulted upon long before then.
Thats the only thing the youth have to look forward to,the looks on the
Boomers faces when their stolen/pulled forward wealth evaporates like
unicorn pisss in the sun.
Here's another option Simon - the 1776 option. Brits could use a little systemic purge and a few executed parliamentarian fucktards...just sayin'...
Nothing you say will happen that way. Stop living life in the future.
Generation Screwed wasn't counting on receiving benefits anyway, we knew before hand that we were being robbed by SS and Taxes.
>> there are few things more soul crushing than to sit idle and unemployed during one’s most formative and energetic years.
Been there, done that. I worked construction during the early 70's. I got laid off and was out of work for a year before being able to scrounge up a gig driving a taxi. Let me tell you, if you haven't experience it, it was horrible. It must have been the depression, but I'd get up at sunrise, or before, every morning. I'd make my coffee, smoke a big fat spleef and read the paper. I then would hit the beach to go sailing or spear fishing, mostly spear fishing. Most the time I was able to poach a snook to bring home and grill. I was reduced to drinking mostly domestic beers, a situation I wouldn't want to have to relive. My brother moved in with me and his girl friend used to sneak into bed with me in the mornings to take care of my wood. As my brother was usually severely hung over, he didn't seem to mind. We didn't have cable TV then, but then again, nobody did, as cable wan't around. And I still don't. So we were forced to listen to music all damned day long. If it wasn't for my brother's hash connection I'd have been stuck smoking only reefer. Yeah, fuck, what miserable times. Unemployment should not be wasted on the youth.
Hmmm been there too. Grew up in rust belt in late 70s. Father always telling me that there were no jobs.
Guess what - I moved out and went to California. Always had a job - probably because I don't take "no" for an answer.
Re: Yeah, fuck, what miserable times.
We're here for ya man, we know what it's like.
PS during the brief times I was unemployed, I didn't have time for spearfishing or anything else.
I did not sleep, eat or fuck around until I had a job.
That is what happens when you act like there is no safety net.
Pot and hash have destroyed so many lives. Jack Webb tried to warn people.
Also ***king your brother's girlfriend is just asking for bad karma dude.
Hah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
>> have destroyed so many lives
Heh, you had me going for a minute there buddy. You have that dry wit thing down pat. Touche.
You've got me crying in my beer.
Yeah, being an unemployed Yute and in debt is rough ... been there too. I was lucky the Nuns and Jesuits beat the work ethic into me, so I wandered down to the docks when USA was selling grain to the USSR. I was not a union member but they needed an extra man for this or that 6 man team so I got a job most mornings ... 12 hours loading 50 pound bags of grain a day, 4 days a week ... Jesus, Joseph and Mary that made me a believer.
Those 'formative years' probably caused me to be the Cheap Bastard I am today.
Had similar luck...and it got me unafraid of labor early in life.
Moving to a thriving place like China or Myanmar costs a tiny fraction of a single semester at university.
simon jumped the shark. he just advised us to move to a "thriving myanmar".
I quit reading when he displayed the fact that he doesn't know what "decimation" means.
Though FWIW, I can't recall seeing anyone else use it correctly either.
Isn't that dividing by 10?
No genius, it is multiplying by 0.9
* Disclaimer: No sarc tag on your post.
Trouble for TPTB, young people are easiest to stir into revolution too. They have the most at stake. That's why TPTB keep an iron fist control over education and media.
This "blogger" occasionally has a nugget of good writing here and there, but this is possibly the biggest load of shit I've read in a awhile. Brilliant fucking advice, tell young people to move to fucking China and Myanmar to grow in the local trades? I forgot how easy it was to do that, I forgot that most young people have the fortitude to undertake such a venture. Idiot.
These dude talks a lot about running away from problems, probably why I strongly dislike his "advice", sounds like a wealthy person who has had a "traveled" life.
If shit gets rough...know how to work on machinces, weapons, farm, have a decent understanding of human health and first aid, know about plants & animals, now how to handle yourself in physical situations.
Or take his advice and learn the world by weaving fucking baskets in Myanmar.
I thought you could not travel to Burma. I can imagine the school field trips...
The average young slacker moving to China? Good luck with that. No EBT cards. Produce or starve. Can you imagine the avg slacker asking their Chinese sweatshop boss for a break to update their Facebook page, send a few text messages or tweets, go skateboarding and go get a latte at Starbucks?
Remember Sinatra's NY NY about "you can make it there you can make it anywhere." Go luck making it in China if you are a slacker or hispter.
I know someone who goes to China every summer to teach English but they are a little weird. I bet those gigs are harder to get and the money is not very good.
"Produce or starve." Interesting how many have been soooo programmed to become, then live as parasites. They can't comprehend producing to make a life, but would manipulate, vote and beg to feed off others. It's the Obama leech infested way....Here is a good illustration of the nasty parasitic bugs in which I speak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADRv6AsznH4
The Socialist Arthropod: the Tick.
The Capitalist Arthropod: the Dung Beetle.
Get your socialist hands off my Medicaid motor-scoot you goddamn hippy. I'm ENTITLED to as many hip replacements as I want because I worked at my Big-MIC scam my entire life, I didn't sit around all day bitching about life.
And get a goddamn hair cut you goddamn hippy. Love it or leave it!!!
"Moving to a thriving place like China or Myanmar costs a tiny fraction of a single semester at university."
R U serious? Are you including ALL costs in your calculations?
The youth are just naive in believing the lie that is the criminality of government. The old, well they should know better from just experience alone. The old should be teaching the young that those of government and the banks are nothing more than a criminal gang of thieves and thugs.
Government criminality repeats, not history.
We were taught this in the 1960s and 1970s.
"Youth benefits, for example."
What the fuck is a government-run "youth benefit?"...is that like employer provided unemployment insurance?
My first move would be to privatize the post office so that entity would stop sucking the life out of the system. My carrier is excellent, hard working. But a couple of the clerks need to rethink their career. It's as if I'm asking them to move a mountain when I go to mail a few packages. Some of these people would not last a week in the private sector.
They need to bring in private management and work on accountability lots more. In the meantime, I'm looking at UPS and FedEx where they are much more polite and they would be happy to get a new customer.
"Some of these people would not last a week in the private sector."
Sure they would! Middle and Upper management is full of people just like them.
That's why the new generations should refuse to work till the whole system collapses and changes.
They better run that idea by Mom and Dad first.
If they are denied jobs how can they refuse to work?
One needs a job to refuse to work.
The country needs to rise as one and make the constitution work and close the Fed once and for all so it's owners onWall Street cannot rob American citizens and America any more.
There's still 30%-60% of youngsters still working...
I think we should take the young and put them on ice floes and push them out to sea. Just like the Eskimos.
I think we should float congress, the whitehouse and wall street out on those ice floes...
Bernanke gets his own ice floe...about the size of an ice cube.
If young.
Leave the country until you see how thes plays out between the Wall St. banks and their globalist traitors in Washington D.C. and the United States of America.
Might not take long.
Yeah, and go where? The rest of the world is broke too. Ireland? GB? France? Greece? Portugal, Spain, and on and on and on. The bankers/politicians absolutely destroyed the world economy. Ain't nowhere to hide, Bro. The titanic is sinking.
well there used to be the .mil they could join but now that the .mil doesn't like tats, the pool of cannon fodder generation screwed is generation doubled screwed btw i hate the .mil complex - just sayin'
Ted Kaczynski called it
Ted be da man!
Shouldn't that be "generation 1-800-FUCKYO"?
Agree with the general theme - but in reality i rarely see it work - you end up getting off cycle with respect to marriage and having children - you lose connection with your church and family and siblings - and all for money? The real problem as I see it is that most people don't really work that hard to begin with where they are right now - they think they are working but if you were to check the number of text messages and tv shows watched and coffee breaks and budweiser breaks and completely wasted weekends then you get a better sense of why the outlook looks so tough...completely agree the government is shafting this generation but Myanmar is hardly the answer. I'm a seller...
Yearly deficits of 1+ trillion dollars, the dollar having all the popularity of a case of small pox, inflation crawling up like a 16-legged spider on bath salts, unfunded liabilities up the wahzoo, a dearth of decent paying jobs, ever decreasing tax revenues, hyper-inflation straining at the bit, Fukushima on the cusp of blowing sky high - WHAT possibly could go wrong?.......
"An entire generation is now coming of age without being able to leave the nest or have any prospect of earning a decent wage in their home country."
a, i thought this was an article about the youth, not us old folk.
:)
What a clown, Simon. Burma? Thriving? Get an apprentice job?
Two things are thriving: public works projects that get funded by the IMF, World Bank, or some foreign country's Import-Export Bank, because as one of the last remaining "frontier" markets, Burma has "debt-ability". Looking for work in that sector, Simon? You know, because labor is so scarce in that land with 63 million people, a land with a per capita income that hasn't yet reached $400 per year? Come on over. Live on-site in a corrugated metal shack, share your flat with twenty others, plus cobras and Russell's vipers, and take home upwards of five dollars a day in what is now a coveted position. Now let's see...at 350 work days a year, plus a fifteen day unpaid malaria break........yup, no US tax burden, as you fall under the minimum earnings threshold. Just think of all that cash you can send home to Mom and Dad!
The other thing thriving is RE speculation. Get in on the ground floor, Simon. Pick up an acre in Yangon's toniest neighborhoods for US$26 million, then set up, I don't know, maybe a hair salon or a betal nut vendor or "Institute of Business Studies" (all the rage now, selling dreams, when reality for the 99% remains a nightmare). While establishing yourself in the local business community, and building your home on that bargain land, stay in a hotel that cost $28 a night two years ago and now goes for $300. Or maybe you can get one of those selfless, compassionate NGOs to give up his or her now $4000/month kind-of-dumpy flat, paid for by donations of people like you who haven't a clue about the real situation in Burma. Farmland in the countryside? Well, if roads and services to your property aren't important, $30,000 per acre might get you something. You might get it cheaper, but there's that "title" thing, so you might be buying somebody's Brooklyn Bridge. Rule of law is just about pulling into town, but it'll be a while still before it applies to foreigners, so best be patient.
Oh, and try to stay out of the now regular tussles between Buddhist monk-led citizens vs. Moslem minorities. Those get testy.
Simon, you forget to recommend North Korea and Dagestan, too. Perhaps next article? Quite the homme du monde, aren't you, Simon?
.
It would certainly be an education of sorts.
Buddhist lynch mobs - who'd a thunk it?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/they-stood-shouting-at-us-t...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/27/burma-s-rohingya-muslim...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/burma-buddhists-jailed-mob-...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/1000strong-burmese-buddhist...
I also seem to recall hearing that Chinese citizenism was blobbing up in northeastern Burma.
Probably following the next article, wherein he advises enterprising youths on the fast-track opportunities for prosperity available to them in the lucrative field of processing bricks of hashish in Afghanistan.
>>>Quite the homme du monde, aren't you, Simon?
Simons does at times have useful things to say. However much of his copy reminds me of the small advertisements for fake sideburns and moustaches that used to appear in the back of "Boy's Life" in the 1960s:
"Look Impressive Anytime!"
How did I know this was going to be a Simon Black article.
funny thing is, they likely have no idea what is going, & could care less as their face is buried in a cell phone socializing about useless trash (likely a freebeee odummer phone). A perfect ovomit supporter
"there are few things more soul crushing than to sit idle and unemployed during one’s most formative and energetic years."
Kids these days, shit when I was young I would have loved to sit "idle" while I made wine/beer and grew weed then bartered it.
Long black markets!!
'Generation screwed' screwed by the babyboom generation, the most destructive generation that the planet produced.
Ah, but they "Paid in", and gave us the INTERNET! They deserve every penny they want, regardless of the fact that a dozen of them paid for each parent to retire on much less than they are getting monthly, and only a couple Genxers are paying for them to retire rather lavishly. I call them the Least Generation. They are all ideologues. They think everyone deserves everything they want, and can't contemplate at all that things cost money. Everyone should have health care. Everyone deserves an iGadget. Eveyone deserves to retire at 60, and live free for 30 years, etc...
The sad reality is, the Least generation borrowed this country into bankruptcy and promised everyone a lavish retirement. Now, those poor fools that thought they were going to make as much a year retired as they were working are going to be really disappointed when the cash cow dries up. but, hey, it's all the republicans/democrats fault. Generation Least... when the SHTF, point fingers! Maybe the next generation will provide us with leadership instead of Harry reid, nancy pelosi, boehner, Bush and Obama.
well, that's just the way it is. Most of these third worlders have strong families and still beleive in the bible and the "multiply and get your revenge against the (white) oppressor" part of it while atheist suicidal decadent white families have been imploding for two decades now. And our own christian ancestors are the ones who gave them the book and evangelized them in the first place. The south is replacing the north, as the atheist, materialistic hedonisit north has stopped breeding. Newsflash, the south didnt. At this point it's just simple maths.
The funniest part of it all, is that im sure black people see jesus as a black man just like latinos must imagine him...as a latino.
The irony of the whole thing is staggering. Fact is skin color matters first and foremost, and religion is just a group strategy of survival.
Make no mistake tho, the 1% who allowed globalization and so called "multiculturalism" in the west, are still at the top of the pyramid and laughing out loud all the way to the bank as they always did. They simply merged all lower social classes of the world together to lower salaries and increase their earnings and power over them.
Not sure they ll be able to send the little white kids from 15 to 35 in wars for bullshit reasons tho. They re too busy waging virtual wars on COD and battlefield 3 online to release their repressed testosterone and natural aggressives impulses while single mom is working 3 diff part time jobs to pay the bills.
Daddy s too busy watching football and porn and working 50 hours a week for 10 bucks an hour, living in his own little shitty appartment to care. "Freedom" as he calls it. What a mess the west has become.