Spain Recoils, as Its Hungry Forage Trash Bins for a Next Meal; Youth Unemployment at 50%
On a recent evening, a hip-looking young woman was sorting through a stack of crates outside a fruit and vegetable store here in the working-class neighborhood of Vallecas as it shut down for the night.
At first glance, she looked as if she might be a store employee. But no. The young woman was looking through the day’s trash for her next meal. Already, she had found a dozen aging potatoes she deemed edible and loaded them onto a luggage cart parked nearby.
“When you don’t have enough money,” she said, declining to give her name, “this is what there is.”
The woman, 33, said that she had once worked at the post office but that her unemployment benefits had run out and she was living now on 400 euros a month, about $520. She was squatting with some friends in a building that still had water and electricity, while collecting “a little of everything” from the garbage after stores closed and the streets were dark and quiet.
Such survival tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace here, with an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and more households having adults without jobs. So pervasive is the problem of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution.
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Economic growth is pitiful. Unemployment has topped 8 percent for an exhausting 43 months. The nation is careering toward a so-called fiscal cliff, and maybe a recession.
As it loses its sovereignty, Spain finds itself in a vortex from which it cannot escape. It has entered into a second recession within three years. It has no money to combat this dilemma, as the private sector is collapsing, and so, as a result, are tax revenues, and the government is stuck with massive social programs. The national unemployment rate as of August 2012 is 24.6%, but for the young (16-24 years of age) it is now 52.9%. For those between the ages of 20 and 29, the rate is 39%. People are withdrawing and hoarding what cash they have, and many are moving to other countries. Tax revenues thus continue to decline, and few businesses will contemplate a start-up or move to Spain under these circumstances. The nation cannot cut spending beyond a certain point without fomenting a national upheaval, and it cannot promote programs to grow the economy. A financial and societal collapse is thus inevitable.
Just 96,000 American jobs were added in August in a bleak monthly jobs report as 368,000 left the workforce, bringing labour market participation down to its lowest level for 31 years and dealing a blow to President Barack Obama’s re-election chances.
Premier Wen Jiabao told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Europe must “strike a balance” between fiscal tightening and measures to promote growth. “Europe’s debt crisis has continued to worsen, giving rise to serious concerns in the international community. Frankly, I am also worried,” he said.