Gramado, a symbol of the rich, against whom youth rebel in Brazil[/caption]Carol Forsloff---Youth rebellion is occurring in many places around the world as young people can’t get jobs. So in Brazil, as in Egypt, young people are taking to the streets to vent their frustrations. Will the US see the same kind of showdowns in the future?
In Brazil today newscasters hypothesize the problem of student rioting will get even worse, due to the political issues inside the country. Despite the fact that formal figures depict Brazil’s unemployment low, the fact is that many of the youth are vastly underemployed, or are not in any kind of job or job training program.
Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, DC., tells us,“The protests led to a complete change in the political landscape in Brazil,” Sotero said. “The youth, which has typically been alienated from the political discussion, is now clearly a new layer of that landscape, and can be mobilized.”
Joblessness in Egypt is also a significant problem, with a record 13.2 percent of the population without jobs, while eight out of every 10 of these people are under age 30 and 25% of them have a university degree or higher.
And even as Congressional leaders in the United States are at loggerheads over the debt ceiling and government shutdown, young people, like those in other countries, are facing unemployment in greater and greater numbers, even as many of them are college educated.
While many in the United States bemoan the unemployment and the growing gap between rich and poor, it seems the problems of getting a job if you are under the age of 30 is a worldwide phenomenon. The biggest concern, however, is how that overwhelming issue can impact how young people react to government and whether or not they will trust the government to help in any situation. And the question is asked: Will they follow the Brazilian and Egyptian models and take to the streets, as an outgrowth from the previous year's Occupy Movement?
This country has at times rebelled against superiors before. We are talking a combination of ages that have supported the drug cartels and they indeed seem to have more power there than the so called authorities. I forget where I read the article but it was a very popular one.
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