Intergenerational Externalities

This is going to be the opener in a general discussion over the extent to which the younger generation of this country - people born from the 1990s to today in particular- are effectively having an economic war waged on them by the powerful political & economic classes.

I want to make a few observations with regards to a disparity between the rhetoric and the actions of today's politicians.

1. We hear prominent government politician's say that "Racking up 400m of debt in their [our children's] name every day is not right" And yet one of the proposed solutions to this debt problem is to raise tuition fees which of course is a much more direct way of increasing young people's debt! This obvious contradiction is generally totally ignored and worse still, there's no evidence that fees increases will actually decrease young people's liability for public debt and all the while Britain lags behind the average % of GDP spent on higher education (look at the highlighted columns).
2. At the same time, the biggest threat to young's people's long term security, far from being debt, is of course, the coming climate catastrophe. The significance and impact of Global Climate change cannot be understated, but in the context of a recession, the issue that constitutes the single biggest threat to young people today is totally forgotten in the political discourse.
3. Moreover, whilst the depression and/or jobless so-called recovery continue, the political classes in this country continue to obsess over one thing: the deficit. Despite the fact that interest rates have hit record lows according to our own prime minister, the economic focus is still on cutting the deficit! In spite of the mounting evidence that even financial institutions see the current approach as wrong, the government continues to obsess about the deficit and not the real crisis of increasing unemployment. Unsurprisingly, this is a policy that hits young people more than anyone else.

It is no wonder really that young people are becoming ever more angry and frustrated with a system that leaves them ever more marginalised and irrelevant. I wouldn't be surprised if the world over, young people started rejecting these systems and ones like it and searching for something new...

Oh... wait ...maybe ... I ... am ... a ... little behind on this.

(I was going to have a link for every word but I got bored because there were so many).

NB: Note that this post is an attempt to chronicle, rather than elucidate or forecast. (That stuff will come later). Specifically, I want to chronicle the disenfranchisement of young people and my views on it.