Oh, to not be EUROpe

[erudito]

This graph sets out how catastrophically bad youth unemployment is in debt-ridden EUROpe. Meanwhile, in Oz, unemployment is holding steady at 4.9%The euro was a bad idea: lots of economists said so at the time, but the EUrosuperstate decided that it could make it work in a Triumph of the Will. As folk discuss the odds of various states (starting

Comments

[catsidhe]

“Triumph of the Will”?

Really?

And, I don't know if you know this, and I don't know if you care, but Norway isn't a member of the EU. If you're looking for a Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain distraction from the fact that Breivik was quoting all the same people that you like to, and inconveniently not insane, you might want to find something other than the Euro to do it.

You could always compare the dead on Utøya with the Hitler Youth, while you're making Nazi references.

[ford_prefect42]

You are conflating ideas which Erudito is not

[yamamanama]

I don't know why people say things like "Oh, hitler ate sugar, so sugar must be evil" when there's a huge difference between things like eating sugar or observing that the sun rises in the east and targeted killings against political opponents.

*or as I said to someone else who said the same thing about Hitler eating sugar, creating and fostering ethnic and religious hatreds.

Guilt by association

[erudito]

Folk do guilt-by-association because it is an easy move. Some folk have attempted to metaphorically tar-and-feather people in Oz that Breivik quoted in his manifesto because he quoted them: it is the same move.

I dislike the arrogant authoritarianism that underlies a lot of EU policy and processes: hence the "Triumph of the Will" jab. But it, as I explain to catsidhe, about arrogance not concentration camps.

[hometime]

A few years ago I was taught be a ballet teacher who had emigrated from Germany for exactly this reason- because she saw that in the EU, her daughter had no clear future. She and her partner could always get work (dance teachers/ choreographers), but her 21 year old daughter was essentially unemployable.

[jordan179]

The flip side of mandating very high minimum wages (Norway's is $20/hr) is that new entrants into the work force become unemployable in the legal economy.

[catsidhe]

Youth unemployment rate, USA, 2008: 10.5%
Youth unemployment rate, Norway, 2008: 7.5%

[ford_prefect42]

Do you have a point? Or did you simply miss the graph at the *very* top of the OP?

Is your purpose in posting to this thread to discredit your cognitive abilities? Because if so, you are suceeding admirably.

[ford_prefect42]

Everything ends badly. Else it wouldn't end.

A bracing pessimism

[erudito]

Some things can, however, gently fade away.