Thousandistas

Reading my old buddy Hugh's blog.  (It's him who got me started, the bastard.  Can I have my life back now please...)

He was talking about the passing of the good blue collar jobs in the USA, as in the collapse of Detroit, Flint, etc.  He got a comment from one of his regulars of which he has legion, which I am going to reproduce in full because it speaks volumes about how life is for the young of today.  Not least in highly underemployed and economically traumatised Spain. 

"That con­ver­sa­tion about white-collar jobs is four years old in Spain.

This is the short ver­sion: The peo­ple who were in their 20-30s in the 1970s saw that a Uni­ver­sity degree made a big dif­fe­rence in your job and salary. They made their kids (anyone born 1970  –  1985) study, and that young gene­ra­tion belie­ved for a while that we could do the same trick as our parents. Get a degree. The job will follow.

We now have a word for peo­ple of my gene­ra­tion with a hand­ful of degrees: mileu­ris­tas. Thou­san­dists. As in, someone who makes around 1,000 euros a month. There’s so many of us, no one’s willing to pay us more than a (barely) living wage."