“Our time is now”: The story of my generation

JOSÉ DOMINGO GUARIGLIA

It’s very simple. You are between 24 and 35 years old. The society is demanding from you to have a house of your own, a nice car, a husband/wife or at least a boyfriend/girlfriend and a successful job that will give you the access to independence and a bright future.

The reality? You still live with your parents or you rented a room in an apartment you share with 1, 2 or 3 other people, you move around the city with public transportation because you can’t afford a modest car, you are still single and you can’t think about getting married because you know you can’t pay for a decent house. The worst thing is that you are not working because it’s very difficult to find a job these days and this blocks the possibility for you to create your own future, to make plans about how is going to be your life…not in 5 years time, but in 2 or 3 months!

This is the story of my generation, of those who were born in the 80’s (and some in the 70’s). We are the sons of the post-War generation, those who had the chance to live in welfare, have a job before graduating and buy a big house in the suburbs of an industrialized city. As you can imagine, we didn’t have that luck.

We are everywhere, especially in Europe, North America and South America. Our present is the only certainty because our future is a sentence with a giant and alarming question mark that we are supposed to change. But will we be able to end the sentence?

Since 2008 the economic crisis changed everything. Having a job has become a privilege, even if you don’t like it, or they pay you a misery. Sometimes, they didn’t pay you because you are an intern and you are learning. This has a sense if you are a student but not if you have a Bachelor Degree, 1 or 2 Master Degrees and you end an internship to start a new one, creating the vicious circle of the XXI-Century Slave that works without getting paid.

In Latin America some people are desperate and they look at Europe for a solution, while Europeans are leaving their countries following the American dream. But is America the answer?

We all know the undesirable effects that the economic crisis brought to all of us but the countries seem to not get over it after 3 years. On the website Economic Crisis, you can read:

“The United States is facing economic disaster on a scale few nations have ever experienced. Most people are unaware of the easily observable signs of this emerging crisis. While we persist in our superpower mentality, we have quietly become a second-class country in many respects. We no longer produce what we need to sustain ourselves, we import much more than we export, and we are selling off our assets and taking on massive debts to sustain a standard of living we can no longer afford. Not only was this not the way we became a superpower but it is a sure way to lose this status”.

Let’s see what will happen in the next months. Meanwhile, we can make fun of it with the Italian movie La Ballata dei Precari. It’s the only thing we can do

La ballata dei Precari