The Great Experiment

Sometimes it's not all on the Internets. Since July I've been a subscriber to the New Statesman, an inspired birthday present on the part of my parents. In this week's there is an article on 'Generation Jobless,' and there were some lines which hit right home:

Those young Europeans born in the 1990s, the eldest of whom turned 18 in 2008 and are now aged 23, have been through an experiment that is shared across the continent. It is an experience that young Europeans have not had in common since the austerity and rebuilding of the 1950s, but that was still a time of hope.

In many material ways the young people of Europe are the best-off generation, the first to live all their life with access to the internet, most of them in heated homes with hot running water, well clothed, well fed, and entertained, even many of the poorest. Yet all that means little if you are told repeatedly, having spent a decade and a half in education, that your labour is of no value.