Have a look at the figures for European nations in 2015:
Greece | 49.8%This is truly catastrophic, and under our present system is likely to get worse and worse.
Italy | 40.3%
Spain | 48.4%
Portugal | 31.9%
Slovak Republic | 26.4%
France | 24.7%
Belgium | 22.1%
Finland | 22.0%
Ireland | 20.9%
Poland | 20.8%
Sweden | 20.3%
Hungary | 17.3%
Luxembourg | 17.3%
Slovenia | 16.4%
Latvia | 16.3%
Austria | 10.6%
United Kingdom | 14.6%
United States | 11.6%
Czech Republic | 12.6%
Netherlands | 11.3%
Denmark | 10.8%
Germany | 7.3%
https://data.oecd.org/unemp/youth-unemployment-rate.htm
These people are the generation called millennials.
Now it could be that these millennials will become disillusioned, useless and totally politically disengaged as their plight gets worse. But I doubt it. Under current neoliberalism, they will see their societies implode, as manufacturing and services continue to be outsourced, automation and robotics cause mass unemployment (even if some manufacturing is re-shored), housing prices are much too high to allow them to have homes or have families (even if they wanted children), private debt drives them to debt slavery, and the social cohesion of their countries is shattered by Third World mass immigration.
More likely, as these people’s lives become increasingly hopeless and they become politically engaged, there will be tremendous backlash and millennial political movements will emerge in the coming decades. I imagine that their current propensity for cultural leftism and open borders will be shattered by reality, and one of the first casualties of their political development. Economics will be one of their major concerns, not cultural leftism.
The million dollar question: will that political movement be mainly left-wing or right-wing? What will it look like?
