Warfare Between Generations Still Largely Covert

...young Japanese and Italians pursue increasingly cautious lifestyles. Nearly 80 per cent of unmarried Japanese between the ages of 18 and 35 live with their parents. The ratio is nearly as high in Italy.

Such unadventurous living means people do not grow up, and do not take risks – such as having children or starting a business. _WRM

Italy and Japan are the leading edge of this global demographic transition within developed countries. Russia is experiencing much of the same phenomenon, as is much of Europe, North America, and Oceania.

In Italy and Japan, companies are reluctant to hire young people on what American universities call “tenure track”; unsure about their future needs and resources they don’t want high cost employees that can’t be fired. The older workers are too powerful to dislodge — just as in American universities the tenured professors are too powerful to give up tenure. So younger workers increasingly are hired if at all on temporary contracts, with lower benefits and fewer prospects for promotion. _WRM

The problem is the most dire in countries and regions which have transferred power from the individual and the private sector to the public sector. This willful concentration of power reduces opportunity for newcomers.

To succeed today, many young people need to recognize that no job will be waiting for them when they finish studying. They are going to have to create their own opportunities. It is a good time for creative entrepreneurs. _WRM

Unfortunately, in such aging societies there is little opportunity for entrepreneurial initiative. Paralysing taxes, regulations, and public debt leave little room for meeting the real needs of a healthy population.

The welfare state grows and grows, concentrating on meeting the needs of the weak, the old, the diseased, the dispossessed, and the illegal alien outsider. Meanwhile, the young and gifted are shunted aside, unwelcome. People with new ideas and new ways of solving problems are an unwelcome distraction and threat to the political class, and must be struck down and removed from the public stage.

This is happening routinely in Russia, and other dictatorships. But it is also happening less overtly in Canada, the US, and other developed democracies.

The war between the generations -- and between styles of thinking -- remains mostly covert. But that could change quickly. If you do not want your nation to flare up in outright inter-generational warfare, consider changing the way your government solves problems.