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Youth unemployment: myths and hard realities : Comments
By Lucas Walsh, published 11/11/2009In the current economic climate the pathways of young people to work are a priority.
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Yet the interventionists responsible for brining in each of those policies see only the immediate benefit. It never occurs to them that they might have unintended consequences further down the line that are worse, from the interventionists' own point of view, than the original problem they were trying to solve.
Policies specifically intended to address youth unemployment cannot fix the problem; they can only make it worse; or worsen other important priorities.
It is easy to remedy the problem: abolish or at least suspend the income tax, the GST, the BAS, the minimum wage laws, occupational licensing, compulsory superannuation, and so on and on.
But if we are not willing to do that, then we need to have the honesty to say: youth unemployment is not a priority. We prefer to make our young people unemployed as the price at which other vested interests can enjoy privileges which government extorts from the rest of the population.