A proposal to the country that hates young people

This is a engllisth translation of an article published from a Greek journalist, Stelios Kouloglou. The original article can be found in:

http://tvxs.gr/news/ομάδα-tvxs/μια-πρόταση-στη-χώρα-που-μισούσε-τους-νέους-του-σ-κούλογλου


Some years now, I am trying to understand why this country doesn' care for the younger generations. In the past, the age of those in power gave an easy answer: for example, when in 1990 Xenofon Zolotas became prime minister, he was *only* 86 years old. The rest partners in this little group (K. Mitsotakis, Ch.
Florakis, A. Papandreou) were more or less at the same age. The same yar Konstantinos Karamanlis was elected for second time as President of the Greek Republic in the age of 83. Those "youngsters" had of course no communication with young people. In 2004 though the 48 year old Kostas
Karamanlis (nephiew of the other guy) became one of the youngest prime ministers in the history of Greece. What is more, Th. Roussopoulos, the real prime minister working in the back stages was even younger. Nonetheless, it was as if Souflias (another very old politician) was in power.

The problem of the 700E Generation - G700 (it's a new term refering to all those young people that work for 700E month salary, with no security and working unpaid overtimes) was in its peak when these guys
came in power, however the governemtn didn't even want to hear about this thing. In the conversations that I had in 2008 with the managers of ERT (greek public television), I was asked not to air a documentary show for the G700 people. I insisted, something must be said, a cry of anguish: if the situation doesn't get better, the best minds, the youth that gives life to a country would flee abroad. The answer, more or less was: let  them leave, here they are making trouble anyways.

According to some calculations, 850.000 Greek young people chose the last decade to stay abroad, where the studied, than come back to Greece. In practice, this country undergoes an unprecedented mutation: it exports all the smart brains and imports immigrants, who even though it's not their fault, they haven't graduated from the best universities.

Many people expected that the new government by Papandreou would improve things. Given the close relationship of the new prime minister with internet and new technologies (K. Karamanlis coulnd't tell the difference between sms and blogs) and given the very many young ministers, there was the impression
that young people would now stand the centre of the attention. And they are standing indeed, but in front of the fire squad.

The consequences to the new generations from the therapy that the International Monetary Fund and Ms. Merkel demanded are giving us goosebumps: The unemployment rates will reach 30% in the young population, who will be forced to accept only work in internships, having even lower salaries - 600E per month.

Even worse are the pension schemes: in order for the young people to get a pension over than 1000E per month, their average income for all their years  working will have to be over than 1400E per month (notice the difference 600E - 1400E) and at the same time to have at least 35 years of (full) employment in
public records. In practice, there won't be an pension, especially for those working in "flexible" jobs (part time jobs) : in order for a young guy/girl to have that many regiestered years of employment, s/he will have to reach 75-80 years old. Probably, the money will serve as funeral costs.

In all these, we shouldn't add also the heavy inheritance: debt, the destroyed health insurance system, the country's face abroad, which they will have to confront with all these guys that are going to have carreers abroad. What is the young generations fault, so as to pay such a heavy price for old
generations' sins and mistakes. I don't know what makes old people in Greece sacrifice that easily the youngsters. But only in war times there is such a thing.

P.S. The current governement will definitely answer that they couldn't do it differently. There is at least one proposal coming from the past, that can at least ease the situation, even though in a different field: as young people, we often didn't have enough money for vacation, we had though the opportunity of free camping, which is now prohibited by law. Shounld't they at least make free camping legal, as a gesture of good will?