Twenty five (25) + reasons young people leave

Voja Zanetic

 

  1. Because their destination has a work force deficit, especially of educated individuals, so why wouldn’t they make up for this with people from a place where there is a surplus; what’s more, you get a few hundreds of thousands of euros of educational value and a few million euros of labour value ‘for nothing’
  2. Because the world is divided into a minimum of four categories of states, and every reasonable citizen of the world, especially a young one, looks to be in – let’s use a football metaphor since we’re in the middle of the Euros – ‘a higher league’
  3. Because countries they are leaving do not understand (or they don’t want to understand; or they don’t care) that brain drain and workforce drain actually means free export of capital which increases in value year after year
  4. Because here, where they could stay, young people don’t have a guarantee of the four main permanent residency foundations: Employment, Family, Justice, and Perspective of Prosperity
  5. Because the largest ‘area’ young people inhabit – the internet – doesn’t really have borders, so they don’t seem to care for them
  6. Because new generations vote with their feet: when they don’t like the country, society, or the government – they go elsewhere, where those things are better
  7. Because governments of the countries they are leaving never felt the need to have voters who would want to make a difference, or were ever interested in a future beyond a single mandate
  8. Because you don’t plan to have grandchildren in a place where some people secure the future of their own grandchildren during a single mandate
  9. Because a state, really, is a sort of service provider, and young people want a better service, plus better service providers always fight to gain new users
  10. Because proper state budgets are created based on the idea of taxing (future) capable and prosperous people, and not on the debt of (former and current) incapable and unproductive citizens
  11. Because labour is a market, and in that market our self-centred Region does not have the best offer; on the contrary
  12. Because it’s a world of digital nomads, not analogue big-shots
  13. Because the rule of the majority rules, young people are not the majority, and the majority is – let’s be real – also not interested in young people
  14. Because we still maintain the idea that our Vicinity is composed of countries with cheap labour, as if the price of labour is something as unchangeable as the population’s dominant skin colour
  15. Because freedom, among other things, means being financially self-sufficient, and young people tend to like to live where they are free; it’s just the way they are
  16. Because elections are won with promises of a better life and not with plans for a better future
  17. Because new generations never received an apology for the world they were left with
  18. Because you can take a plane and visit for the weekend, see your family on Skype, and it’s much easier to be patriotic from a distance
  19. Because migration has existed since poverty, desire, and hope – meaning, since the beginning of time
  20. Because the older generations wouldn’t stay either, if only they were younger
  21. Because those with more life to live tend to think more about the living conditions
  22. Because when you’re young you don’t accept ‘it is what it is’, ‘what can you do’, ‘as long as we’re healthy’ as solid reasoning
  23. Because parents with average pensions can’t be helped with our vicinity’s average salaries
  24. Because the grass is always the greenest when your own lawn is parched
  25. Because I could write 250 because-s, but let’s leave it at 25, as it’s time for this column to end