NEET is a term coined by the United Kingdom government that describes youth between the ages 16 through 24 who are “Not in Education, Employment, or Training.” It refers to 19 million young people throughout the seventeen-country Eurozone. This sad statistic is only a segment of the total unemployed. Failing economies and entitlement mentalities fostered by Euro-Socialism, are now bearing the undesirable fruits of NEETs.
According to Massimiliano Mascherini from the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, “The figures on increasing youth unemployment are shocking. But in the calculations, we generally only count the young people who are ready to work and who want to work. There is also an enormous group which is so demotivated that they are turning away from the labor market.”1 He goes on the say that this group has little faith in their fellow man and social institutions. They are politically and socially isolated and consequently, prone to end up in crime.
This generation has no hope in the future and no motivation to change their state in life or the current moral crisis. They see no solutions offered by politicians or have no hope in the present financial climate. One must ask what produced this degree of apathy and cynicism in such a large portion of today’s youth? The answer is simpler than one might think: the loss of integral morality coupled with a life imbued with erroneous socialistic ideas. Why make any effort if the government is willing to provide subsidies? This produces an entitlement generation that is fast becoming the new barbarians.
Europe has been playing a fiscal shell game by implementing socialist “reforms” that incur deficit spending obliging those who will work to subsidize those who will not, while passing on the prodigious debt to future generations. Currently the U.S. is suffering an unacceptable 16.8 percent youth unemployment that pales in comparison to the European Union’s average of 22.7 percent, with Italy at 34.5, Spain at 53 and Greece at a staggering 55 percent. Any child can understand the perils of deficit spending. The problem with the socialists is that sooner or later they run out of other people’s money.
So, what will the NEETs of today leave as a legacy for future generations?
The riots in the UK in August of 2011 are a prime example of the worst element in the NEETs. They do nothing, own nothing, have nothing to lose and are open to participate in violent and chaotic behavior stimulated by agents of agitation.
Many of the UK rioters attempted to give a moral explanation for what they saw as justifiable looting. “I only looted shops that I knew were like major consumer brands, stuff that was like industries, businesses, like big businesses, like international businesses that are just raping the world anyway,” said a Battersea resident who looted in Clapham.2 A 19-year-old who stole from a JD Sports shop argued: “JD is also selling Nike stuff. Nike blatantly commits world crimes against people in factories, sweatshops, so they’re getting their comeuppance now. It’s karma so I just hit those shops, I didn’t hit any small town businesses that affect our local economy.”3 Since when do international businesses have no effect on a local economy? NEET logic 101.
Justify as they might, the root of the problem is much deeper. Europe is now realizing the sordid effects of their departure from the origins of the very blessings that brought about the civilization that is being destroyed. Europe has been pursuing the false utopia promised by the liberal proponents of socialism and has one of two choices. Either plummet headlong into the abyss of anarchy, chaos and despair as a result of failed socialistic promises, or return to the framework of order that created Christian civilization when the four Gospels were applied to social life.