Europe’s Generational War by Harold James - Project Syndicate

Europe’s Generational War by Harold James - Project Syndicate





The focus on the present has far-reaching consequences. The impact is particularly severe in a context of labor mobility, where the losers at the ballot box – the young – wield another weapon: their feet. In countries dominated by gerontocratic politics, young people typically try to leave as quickly as possible. And because young people receive extensive subsidies in the form of education, when they leave, they take with them resources that could otherwise have been used to pay for other people’s retirement. Put another way, they leave behind a debt burden that will be much more difficult to reduce without them.



A better approach would be to reverse the exodus of the young through better policies, as Ireland did in the late twentieth century, with rapid economic growth leading many of the skilled workers who had left in the 1980s to return – and spur even faster growth. In order for such a reversal to take place, however, young people’s countries of origin must become more open and more innovative – no small feat, especially when the elderly are in political control. In short, there are many feedback loops that make the gerontocracy self-reinforcing.