What happens when a generation reaches maturity just as the welfare state which was their future goes bankrupt?It’s a devastating picture of blighted youth that threatens to distort Spain’s social fabric for years to come, dooming dreams, straining family structures and eroding the well-being of a rapidly aging population.
“This puts the whole welfare state at risk,” said Gayle Allard, a labor market specialist at Madrid’s IE Business School. “The young people who are coming on the market now are the lost generation. They are losing the advantage of their youth and energy and that does not come back.”
In the US, fantasies are coming to a close. Ryan Crocker sends a ‘secret cable’ warning that the persistence of enemy havens in Pakistan was placing the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan in jeopardy. After the riots and killings there who can doubt it even as the top generals and State Department officials tell us that everything’s fine, things are going to plan.
Europe hopes to survive the winter; they’re paying $9 per gallon of gas in Holland and Energy Secretary Chu hopes that this price will soon reach the US.
What comes next? It may pay to be ready for a major change in direction; a new realignment of many forces. We may be approaching the hinge of history.
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