What about the young people, Europe?

Europe, the land of the kind socialists and good-hearted people, is exploiting its young work force. Every time I am done with my Skype session with my friends from Europe, I am astounded. Simply astounded. The stories they tell me….

Young, fresh out of college graduates cannot find jobs, for months, even years! Even in Germany, the amount of people seeking for jobs is so high that students are paying agencies to find them internships- INTERNSHIPS- which are UNPAID! They are willing to pay to to get a job and work for free just to get experience. Companies have young students, graduates and even those with work experience by the balls (pardon my French). And they are exploiting them just like cruel Americans make their people work. Before anyone goes on about American crisis, I assure you, it may have been bad a couple years ago but it has been picking up and my God you could at least get a job at Wendy’s.

Many in Europe complain about Americans…who “work hard all the time. No one has vacation, no break ever”- they say. “Your healthcare system sucks and you work like a slave.” But what happened to Europe I ask you? Why is Europe failing to see that the future is in the young, spirited and driven young workforce, and not the one that  has a degree but brings you coffee, makes copies for you and secretly hates you for doing it? And why are those lucky ones that find jobs significantly underpaid?

I leave you with these thoughts, those that have comments, type away in the section below…. 😉

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The EU Fiasco- thinking in capitalistic terms

Ah, the idea of united Europe. So simple, yet so complicated. Greece has been in the news the last few days, battling the Iron Lady of Germany on their debt payments. “You gave us too much money,” they claim. “We took more than we wanted and now we have no way of repaying it back.”

Debt problems aside, there is a prevailing problem in (Eastern) European countries. Nobody wants to acknowledge it, but EU will have a hard time sustaining itself if it is not fixed. Countries like Greece, (recently joined) Croatia, Hungary, Latvia etc… they all have poor financial background. Croatians lived in socialism for decades. Do you really think the politicians, who ruled in Yugoslavia and have left behind a socialist legacy, know anything about debt? Managing? Investing?

There’s a certain discrepancy between reality and theory. In theory, they are all “educated” enough to make financial decisions. The reality is they are not used to the mind-set of capitalism. In their hearts they carry socialism. They are used to corruption. Nobody gets penalized. Greece has enjoyed creating government jobs for everyone for years, but they don’t see that they won’t survive if they do it again. Even if they leave the EU, the mentality the way people do business/ run the country will be their fall. It will also be the fall of Croatians, Latvians etc. The mentality of people needs to change. Old habits have to die out. They may not like capitalism, but their previous way of doing things didn’t work out either.

The key to EU’s success will be changing the mentality of people to not only accept capitalistic thinking but know how to use it too. Throwing money at countries without fixing their operating structure has never benefited anyone.