tim
Tim, I'm hopefully not going to take up too much space , especially not in graphs, in replying as this isn't the right thread.
Firstly can I say when I made my post it was clearly in connection with the holiday quarantine imposed by the UK and the reliance by the poorer southern EU states on tourism . I wasn't aware that you were a language teacher I wrongly assumed from your initial reply that you worked in the hospitality business .
My substantive point that the Southern European states rely to a far greater extent than the UK does on tourism and are therefore hit harder economically still stands. The effect of a two week quarantine in the UK will hit tourism in those states far harder than the UK. I am not sure how a two week quarantine will hit the income derived from students tbh and dent the proportion of GDP that the UK derives from a veritable small army of overseas students at its universities..Presumably unless they are on a crash course their length of study will be far longer than a fortnight and it would be possible to do language courses by zoom for the period of quarantine. The loss of tourism in the southern EU states far outweighs any potential loss of the cost of short language course in the UK .
The difference of opinion we have is about the poorer Southern Europeans states ( funnily enough they are often called PIGS , Portugal, Italy , Greece and Spain) and your view that swathes of poverty are a myth from the 1950s. I think we can rule out a debate on relative poverty ie if you've got a refrigerator or a mobile you are not poor as we didn't have them in the 1950s sort of stuff and focus on whether their economies are poor , poorer than the northern European states.
Despite short term booms/miracles all those four southern European states economies have been characterised by waves of recessions and more recently ) aside from very short periods) by governments responding to crisis and the EU by neo liberal policies . These policies always have the hall marks of 'modernising ' the economy through reducing labour rights, privatisation, cutting the welfare state in return for loans from the EU , loans that normally benefit the northern European countries. The only uncertainty for the northern European countries is the credit rating of the southern states and their ability to stick with the script.
I liked your point about the role of families and extended families although its a subjective suggestion that they contribute to quality of life especially as very often quality of life is also equated with wealth and poverty and is measured ,as the Italian miracle was, on the number of cars, refrigerators material goods that are sold or purchased. What ever minor boom or miracles that were reported in those southern states they were fragile, temporary and without substantiality, the recessions of the 2000s hit them the hardest Between 2007 and 2013, unemployment rates in Greece and Spain tripled to 28% and 26% in Italy and Portugal ,unemployment rates almost doubled in both countries. What is clear is that the huge increases in unemployment attacked the heart of the family and extended family tradition in those countries. That tradition was very much built around the economically active members , normally the head of the household, being economically active and supporting the rest of the family. Once that went the head of the household became subsumed into mainly a non economically active household. At least the sons and daughters could find work and assist the family but alas no , so many emigrated either permanently or temporarily . nearly a quarter of a million left Greece over a 5 year period, 150k in Italy in 2018 alone , you'll find the Portuguese all over Europe, Spain very similar. Its had not just a impact on family income but its also provided a brain drain of those that were educated ( all four countries are still in the bottom half of the EU tables for education) and left all of those countries with an imbalance of older people who are mainly economically inactive.
Those young people that stayed don't do too well in a highly competitive labour market where despite efforts by some governments the numbers on contracts are still below the northern EU states and are increasingly in precarious jobs. Four of the top six highest youth unemployment rates in the EU are filled by those from the PIGS. The collapse of the tourist industry in those countries due to covid 19 have removed whole swathes of women and young people from employment and put them on social security very often the minimum after years of no contributions through being paid paid cash in hand or due to 8 and 9 month contracts.
Eurostat estimated that in the PIGS the at-risk-of-poverty rate was 23 to 35 percent of the total population of each of the PIGS in 2017. The number of children aged 17 and under living in jobless households almost doubled across the PIGS between 2010 and 2015, while involuntary part-time employment (those who want to find full-time work but are unable to) increased substantially in the same period.
So the traditional family welfare model has been shattered, the response, at either a national or EU level has mainly been ineffective. These countries or large areas of these countries have seen ' rigid ' labour markets more 'flexible' in the hope that unemployed citizens would be incentivised to take low-paid jobs and increase the employment rate the theory was that this would have an expansionary effect on economic growth and employment as production costs fell. Overall however the 'reform' of the labour market has had only a small impact on unemployment and the decline/stagnation in wages ( there has been some small growth in Portugal in the last two years) initially led to an aggregate drop in demand , some partial recovery. Covid 19 has now had the final say.
I could go on but I did say that I wanted not to. So my point is that the southern states are poor , that there are swathes of poverty which cant be measured by cars or refrigerators or by comparing living standard to the 1950s but by active economic data and that the impact of covid 19 on tourism hits those states disproportionately to the northern states and the UK.
www.independent.co.uk
www.qld.gov.au
www.theguardian.com
