What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
One figure that is often ignored amongst the debt, interest rates and job losses may be the one that shows the biggest waste of the boom years and it may have the greatest impact on what the Ireland that emerges from the downturn looks like. 188,000 students are currently in college in Ireland. The downturn has been so sudden that the next wave of graduates, around 17,000, would have entered third level education with the promises of the boom still ringing in their ears. They leave with degrees in disciplines no longer relevant, or into sectors no longer recruiting.
The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) reports that currently there are 100,000 unemployed graduates in Ireland. A further survey by the UCD Students Union revealed that 30 per cent of recent graduates are unemployed with no plans to enter further education The official figures predicted 9 per cent. The response to the downturn has so far overlooked recent graduates. So, what now for the graduates with no future?
The looming prospect for many recent graduates is emigration, seen by many as a rite of passage for the youth of Ireland in harsh economic times. Even during the boom years thousands of graduates and young people with trades engaged in a sort of play emigration, taking year long work visas in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Most of these play-émigrés returned when their visas expired. Last year, Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise Mary Coughlan remarked that “they enjoyed themselves and that’s what young people are entitled to do.” Those who emigrated permanently “with degrees, PhDs, they have a greater acumen academically and have found work in other parts of the world and that’s not a bad thing”, Coughlan said. During the boom emigration was a cause for celebration, evidence that the money put into third level education and FÁS had created a young workforce the envy of other developed countries. Emigration was fetishised as proof of Ireland’s success.
On the contrary, the attitude that Ireland was simply too small to provide for its graduates highlights the complacency and instability of that system. As a result, many recent graduates are educated in sectors with such few opportunities as to make their educations next to irrelevant.
The USI report shows that, unsurprisingly, unemployment is particularly high among graduates in disciplines linked to construction; architects, engineers and lawyers. But the grim future extends to nursing, psychology and social care graduates, educated in a field which has had its funding cut to the bare bone. Teaching graduates now face a job market where hundreds apply for a single position.
The view of many is that emigration is inevitable, lest recent graduates waste their ‘free’ education. The social capital granted to them by their education gives them unprecedented freedom of movement. The world is their oyster. But the portrayal of emigration as character building and horizon expanding experience has long been contradicted by the stark reality of life for most emigrants of the last downturn. Menial labour and little opportunity in their chosen fields are the norm. Graduates of architecture and engineering may well get their chance to work in the construction sector, but it’s likely to be labouring on building sites alongside their law, humanities and science alumni.
The inevitability of emigration is entrenched by the perception of it as one of the cures for unemployment in Ireland. Presently around 1,000 people are leaving Ireland a week, while many are immigrants to Ireland returning home, the numbers of Irish emigrating is rising. And once the weight of recent graduates and other Irish youth is off the welfare system, it will aid the economic recovery. The lack of resources necessitate that any burden that can be shifted is welcomed, and there is an expectation that the youth of Ireland will emigrate in large numbers.
But unlike during the previous exodus of Irish youth, the world is in recession. America and Australia have already begun to tighten up their borders and the freedom of movement across Europe means that the traditional destination of Britain will be less fertile ground for the Irish worker than in the 1980s. Yet, the establishment is so bereft of ideas and options for recent graduates that emigration is still touted as the next logical career step, with youth unemployment increasing across Europe it remains to be seen how long this will remain a viable option.
Both public and private sector are attempting to exploit the lack of options for recent graduates. The emergence of internships and the FÁS work placement programme amount to little more than grunt work, with the carrot of a full time position dangled in front of eager young workers. Student nurses and teachers are being asked to work for free to see out the final stages of their education. There are few options for graduates in Ireland, and the attitude amongst the establishment is that nothing can be done.
The supposed inevitability of emigration and prevailing attitude that there is nothing that can be done for recent graduates shows just who benefited from the failed economic system that is now so desperately being salvaged.
In most societies wealth is transferred down the generations, from parent to child. One generation uses any benefits it enjoys, be they civil, economic or otherwise, to create a better society for the next. In Ireland the perceived necessity for young people to ‘get on the ladder’ meant the reverse, wealth was transferred from young workers to older landowners and lenders in unprecedented amounts.
In 2003 when the Central Bank first warned of a sharp fall in housing prices they were ignored, young people were urged to buy at the first opportunity as prices would continue to rise. Any subsequent warning that the bubble was soon to burst was ignored. Young people were encouraged to buy with the first time buyer’s grant, and reassured with spiels of a ‘soft landing’. Like graduate emigration during the boom, the strength of the housing market was seen as a reflection of economic and social vitality. 100% mortgages at low rates were offered on houses over ten times the average wage. It was a model designed to keep young workers in debt for decades. The Golden Circle and owners of future NAMA assets feasted on young graduates.
Home ownership is seen as a natural step in the life cycle of Irish people, it is seen as a sign of and provision for a stable future. The reasons for this are seen by some as historical. The fight against the oppressive landlord system in the not too distant past is sold as reason enough for young people to own their own home at the first available opportunity. But instead of legislating for reasonable rent or controlling prices on the housing markets, the first time buyers grant and reassurances of stability in the market deceived young people into buying overvalued homes while they could, further inflating prices. When worries emerged over the stability of the market, young people had to weigh the consequences of a sharp fall against the worries of not buying soon enough in a seemingly ever rising market. The incentives and reassurances from government and banking figures made the decision seem trivial.
Those who graduated in time to enjoy the higher wages, low taxes and lower mortgage interest rates of the boom are now weighed down in debt. Graduates of the last decade transferred all their wealth to the older generation of property developers and banks. The promised stability of property ownership proved to be nothing more than a confidence trick. Its collapse has effectively impoverished young workers and graduates.
Many first time buyers turned to their parents for financial help in securing their mortgages, they are once again looking home for support in making ends meet and keeping up repayments. Their younger siblings are unemployed, unable to leave home. Italy’s Minister for Innovation Renato Brunetta criticised this practice among his country’s youth, christening them bamboccioni, big babies. In Ireland, the hangover from the capture of first time buyers into debt has similarly stunted the growth of our youth.
With the knowledge that the boom years did not provide a stable system for their future, and the lack of real opportunity outside of Ireland, the best educated generation in Irish history is caught in limbo. There are few choices abroad and fewer still at home.
The economic and political crises of the last three years, and all their damning consequences for the future, have so far been met with a meek acceptance by the youth of Ireland. They will be disenfranchised even further as those who don’t pay income tax or own homes are treated as an afterthought in the discussion on how the country should be rebuilt.
Perhaps without the pressure relief valve of emigration this generation will not allow itself to be shunted aside in the debate on the future of Ireland.
Photo taken from Mindful Youth’s flickr stream. Many thanks.
Discussion
Leave a Comment
Sins of the Father
Subscribe by Email
Best of the Web
EU Should Admit Greece is Bankrupt | Christian Rickens
The unvarnished truth - the second Greek Bailout should not have happened.
The mistake isn’t the size, but the construction of the bailout package. It isn’t geared to the requirements of the people of Greece but to the needs of the international financial markets, meaning the banks.
How else can one explain the fact that around a quarter of the package won’t even arrive in Athens but will flow directly to the country’s international creditors? The holders of Greek government bonds are to get some €30 billion as an incentive to convert their old paper into new bonds. The aim is to keep alive the illusion that Greece isn’t bankrupt — after all, the creditors are voluntarily forgiving part of the debt. The financial sector is cleverly manipulating the fear that a Greek bankruptcy would trigger a fatal chain reaction.
That leaves €100 billion. But that too isn’t geared to what Greece needs in order to get back on its feet. It’s linked to an estimate of how much debt the Greek economy can bear without collapsing. International technocrats agree that with debts amounting to 120 percent of gross domestic product, the country can just about go on servicing its debt. That’s the level at which the cow can go on supplying milk without dying of exhaustion. So 120 percent became the goal.
Collaboration, with our European partners | Cunning Hired Knaves
The European project was supposed to be a bulwark against the dangers of fascist ambition, but now it is the instrument used to dismantle European democracy in the interest of the risk adverse looking for a steady income stream from the provision of the social net by those who cite the words and actions of old fascists while doing so.
The post Collaboration, with our European partners by Richard of Cunning Hired Knaves summed up in one sentence. For much better sentences and many more urgent points read the post.
On Sunday there were massive demonstrations throughout the Spanish state, with half a million people on the streets of Madrid and 450,000 in Barcelona, protesting against the labour ‘reform’ planned by the Partido Popular, the right-wing party that most closely represents the interests of the power elites that conserved their position when the transition from dictatorship to democracy was undertaken.
S.P.A.R.K. protest at cuts to lone parents, Dublin 18th February 2012
Many families were cut in the last budget but lone parent families were particularly hit by the Fine Gael/Labour Party government.
The key elements are that single parents can’t take advantage of training such as Community Employment (CE) Schemes and when the youngest child turns 7 years old, the parent is declassed as a lone parent but treated as an ordinary worker even though there are few affordable creche places. There is a bill coming up in March which will copper fasten some of the worst elements of government plans.
There is particular anger directed at the Labour Party because they are associated with women’s rights and a more progressive society.
Please share the link to this video
Exiting the euro | Michael Roberts
Michael Roberts argues that those in Greece who cite the example of Argentina when suggesting that Greece should leave the Euro are not necessarily looking at the whole picture. The situations are not the same, Roberts points out, citing Argentina’s former central bank governor at the time, Mario Blejer and his recent piece in the Financial Times. He also points to research based on the the experience of five recent devaluations of economies in crisis (including that of Argentina) which “shows that they lead to a 10-20% fall in real GDP and take five to ten years to recover to previous real GDP levels. But that is not to say that there is no alternative to “lowering wages, privatising the state sector, reducing taxes for the corporate sector (especially big business) and ‘deregulating’ labour markets i.e. the super-exploitation of the Greek people to raise profitability.”
But the left could also find an alternative policy to exiting the euro where Greece negotiates a full default on its debt to private and foreign bondholders; takes over the banks; and uses the savings from bond and interest repayments (€17-20bn a year) to start state directed investment in jobs, technology and funding small businesses, while staying in the euro to protect the savings of the people from destruction, keeping down inflation and avoiding a rise in foreign debt. The question of exiting the euro then becomes an issue for the Euro leaders to impose (and to be resisted by a campaign within Europe), not as the main policy plank of the left.
Corporate tax avoidance: where are the worst offenders?
This table comes via the Tax Justice Network (and Richard Murphy). It’s from a table produced by U.S. researcher Kimberly Clausing and as TJN notes “demonstrates which countries are working hardest to wage economic warfare on the United States (and, by extension, on other countries,) via the global tax system”.
Solidarity campaign to support the people of Greece
Mikis Theodorakis, famous Greek composer of Zorba’s Dance, and Manolis Glezos, veteran resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation, have issued a call for a European Front to defend the people of Greece and all those facing austerity. We have decided to support this call and work with trade unions, campaigns and parties across Europe to establish a European Solidarity Campaign to defend the people of Greece. We will organise solidarity and raise practical support for the people of Greece; they cannot be made to pay for a crisis for which they are not responsible.
Chris Dillow | Capitalism against freedom
[...]
During the Cold War, opponents of communism routinely, and not entirely wrongly, claimed to be champions of liberty. Freedom for capitalists and freedom of speech and thought go together, it was claimed. “Freedom is indivisible” wrote Bruce Winton Knight in 1952. “Economic freedom is…an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom“ wrote Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom. And back in 1944 Friedrich Hayek complained that “We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.”
Today, though, this seems wrong. Many threats to freedom come from capitalists. The story is no longer capitalism and freedom, but capitalism against freedom.
Ian Stewart | The mathematical equation that caused the banks to crash
In The Observer, Sunday 12 February 2012
Anyone who has followed the crisis will understand that the real economy of businesses and commodities is being upstaged by complicated financial instruments known as derivatives. These are not money or goods. They are investments in investments, bets about bets. Derivatives created a booming global economy, but they also led to turbulent markets, the credit crunch, the near collapse of the banking system and the economic slump. And it was the Black-Scholes equation that opened up the world of derivatives.
The equation itself wasn’t the real problem. It was useful, it was precise, and its limitations were clearly stated. It provided an industry-standard method to assess the likely value of a financial derivative. So derivatives could be traded before they matured. The formula was fine if you used it sensibly and abandoned it when market conditions weren’t appropriate. The trouble was its potential for abuse. It allowed derivatives to become commodities that could be traded in their own right. The financial sector called it the Midas Formula and saw it as a recipe for making everything turn to gold. But the markets forgot how the story of King Midas ended.
Greece: a Sisyphean task | Michael Roberts
In a Eurozone that is unwilling to share its surplus with weaker, hardest hit economies there is no other option for those economies but default. Despite the agreement of Greek politicians to shorten their political life and accept the deal all that they have done is simply postpone this eventuality once again. However, even that postponement might be shortened by the Greek elections in April where the smaller leftist parties outside the coalition currently have 40% of the vote. Or so says Michael Roberts:
Whatever the Greek coalition leaders agree to and try to implement, such is the weakness of Greek capitalism, it will not be able to meet its fiscal targets or get its debt down to reasonable levels. Before the end of the year, the Troika will have to report that Greece is not delivering. Then the EU leaders will have to decide whether they ‘let Greece go’ or not. The EU leaders have agreed to more money for Greece (or more accurately its bondholders and banks) in return for draconian cuts in living standards in order to provide more time to try and ‘ring-fence’ other vulnerable Eurozone states like Portugal and Ireland (where they are preparing extra funding). So when Greece goes down, it will not affect the rest (or so the EU leaders hope). Of course, the Greek people may force the issue earlier if they vote in an anti-Troika government in April.
As Greece stares into the abyss, Europe must choose | Maria Margaronis
Do we really want to live in an economic union that must destroy the future of millions in order to just tick along? Maria Margaronis points out that the situation in Greece today says little about Greece and everything about the EU.
The trouble with historical metaphors is that they can obscure the present: what’s really at stake here is not Greece’s identity but Europe’s. All eyes are fixed on Athens, but the way out of the crisis requires a choice about what kind of Europe we want. The one we have now, with its deep structural inequalities and its rigid adherence to a failed economic ideology, protects neither democracy nor human rights. Stiff-necked and punitive, it prefers to eat its children.
We welcome and encourage lively discussion from the public about articles on Irish Left Review. You can leave a comment using the form at the bottom of the page. Please read through the existing comments before posting your own.