Quote of the Day: Young people get the sharp end of the (political) stick

This underscores an important point that I’ve been writing about for a long time: young people in particular get the sharp end of the stick.

They’re the last to be hired, the first to be fired, the first to be sent off to fight and die in foreign lands, and the first to have their benefits cut.

And if they’re ever lucky enough to find meaningful employment, they can count on working their entire lives to pay down the debts of previous generations through higher and higher taxes.

But when it comes time to collect… finally… those benefits won’t be there for them.

You see, every government has multiple obligations– whether to creditors and bondholders in the form of interest payments, or citizens in the form of benefits.

And when a government has to borrow money just to be able to pay interest on the money it’s already borrowed, it’s nearly a mathematical certainty that they’re going to default on at least -some- of their obligations.

For some of these obligations, it’s politically palatable to default.

Youth benefits, for example. No one is going to raise a big fuss. So you can absolutely count on governments unilaterally wiping themselves with these contractual obligations.

Case in point: the British government has just announced a new push to eliminate benefits for young people. And this is just step 1.

What a pathetic excuse for a social contract. There has to be a better way. And for young people, there is.

Youth is a gift. It’s a time in your life where you have tremendous energy and very little to lose. You’re not tied down by a mortgage or a family to support.

And rather than follow the conventional path of indebting yourself for 13-years so that you can attend university for four, and then fork over the bulk of your pay to the government, instead focus on learning tangible, valuable skills overseas.

This is from Simon Black at the Sovereign Man