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> Lower employment for the very young and very old is generally a good thing in places with a robust welfare state… Exactly, I can’t think of any country who h

> Lower employment for the very young and very old is generally a good thing in places with a robust welfare state… Exactly, I can’t think of any country who has had problems with the majority of the 18-24 year olds not being able to find meaningful employment. Well…except for every single country where this has been the case. It’s not like they will be sitting around with no job prospects looking at the immigrant groups getting jobs (because they have no other choice but to work) and become susceptible to some right/left wing extremist groups or anything like that.

manyfriends 4y ago
Seems like speculation / projection. If your argument about unions and extremism was supported, you’d expect to see a correlation between high union membership and “extremism”. If anything, countries with high union density (Sweden, Iceland, Finland) seem to have fewer extremist parties than low union countries like the United States, The Philippines, and Poland. In the United States, the long-term decline in industrial union power, as also seen in Great Britain during the Thatcher “union-busting” era, has presided over an increase in extremism. So whatever effect union has in employment, it’s not the kind that is shown to lead to extremism. Again, you cited a paper claiming that it supported that “unions == unemployment” when all it said was that unions are correlated with small increases in unemployment among the very young and very old. What we know is that union membership is shown definitively to result in better working conditions and safety, higher job satisfaction, and higher wages across entire industries.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > Again, you cited a paper claiming… I cited no such thing but merely pulled an opinion out of my backside. I’m really just saying that maybe it isn’t such a good idea to intentionally restrict young people from the job market because they have the exact same right to meaningful employment as anyone else.

manyfriends 4y ago

Seems like speculation / projection. If your argument about unions and extremism was supported, you’d expect to see a correlation between high union membership and “extremism”. If anything, countries with high union density (Sweden, Iceland, Finland) seem to have fewer extremist parties than low union countries like the United States, The Philippines, and Poland. In the United States, the long-term decline in industrial union power, as also seen in Great Britain during the Thatcher “union-busting” era, has presided over an increase in extremism. So whatever effect union has in employment, it’s not the kind that is shown to lead to extremism. Again, you cited a paper claiming that it supported that “unions == unemployment” when all it said was that unions are correlated with small increases in unemployment among the very young and very old. What we know is that union membership is shown definitively to result in better working conditions and safety, higher job satisfaction, and higher wages across entire industries.

UncleEntity 4y ago
> Again, you cited a paper claiming… I cited no such thing but merely pulled an opinion out of my backside. I’m really just saying that maybe it isn’t such a good idea to intentionally restrict young people from the job market because they have the exact same right to meaningful employment as anyone else.