I want it all - and I want it NOW!
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By Juha Akkanen
After the events of May Eve and May Day, I've felt somehow old. No, actually worse than old - middle-aged.
First there was the partying at the railway warehouses in downtown Helsinki that got all out of control and turned into something like a riot.
The rioting had been preceded by a demonstration in which the protesters demanded a guaranteed basic income for all, or in other words what used to be called the "citizen's wage". This group of people have had enough, and are not going to take just any old short-term "shitty jobs" any longer.
A-hah. Citizen's wage, eh? For what? For demonstrating, going to festivals, being an eternal student?
No way, Jose, not on my dime, anyhow.
Not when I've also got to pay for the lavish spa treatments and the pension payments of the countless hordes of post-war baby boomers.
One really ought to be quite worried about the phenomenon. Youth unemployment numbers are unspeakably high, and things are not going to be improved by paying young people wages that are below established contract levels. As far as I can recall, not even the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK) has been calling for this in recent years.
The fault does not actually lie in the unwillingness of the employers. Young people seem no longer willing to accept work for which they are paid the accepted wage for the job done. They would rather chill out with their friends on labour market subsidy benefits or receiving a maintenance grant. As recently as the 1960s or 1970s, whole masses of people moved from Finland to Sweden in search of these same "shitty jobs". That was when there was nothing else to be had over there, and when there was absolutely nothing whatsoever to be had in Finland.
My head of hair took on an even stronger streak of grey after reading of young people who steal luxury items just for the fun of it, to improve the quality of their lives.
The justification of one of those interviewed left me slack-jawed: if he were actually to go and buy the items he had nicked, then he would have to work a great deal more and harder. Now he had more time left over for hanging out with friends and more money to go for a beer with.
What kind of artsy-fartsy, everybody-must-express-themselves high schools for the indolent are these modern youths being educated in?
Things have certainly gone downhill in the last few decades. The parents of these young people concentrating on the immediate gratification of their every whim would at least have been able - in the golden years of the communists and Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book - to justify their actions properly: capitalism is based on the exploitation of the consumer and above all the worker-consumer, and hence it is a crime against nature and humankind.
Liberation of items from the capitalists is hence merely the just punishment of the egregious criminal classes.
The modern raison d'être for swiping stuff, on the other hand, barely gets beyond contemplation of the swiper's navel. I want it, I have to have it. NOW.
As a taxpayer, I have accepted the idea that for my own part I shall also look after those people who for one reason or another cannot look after themselves. But that I should also support those who simply can't be shagged to do any work? Uh-hunh. No, Sir.
At that point another kind of activism kicks in, the revolt of the taxpayers. Let's really let our hair down and all do less work. There'll be a flat embargo on doing any overtime or alternatively all overtime will be taken as free-time rather than in salary. The old back-ache will be good for a couple of days off work every time it rears its ugly head. I mean who knows when that straw is going to break the camel's back, eh?
Yeah-yeah, the old geezer is foaming at the mouth again, someone might be thinking. But the one who is doing all the paying will have to enjoy his day in the sun one of these days, too.
It is the done thing for young people to question the values and the ideologies of the past generations.
If the value structure of the world of that older generation is taken and swallowed whole, then the society and the world cannot change in any shape or form.
For instance, if everyone were to live as the baby-boom generation has got used to living, then this world would be for the scrapheap and fast.
But one can not always be sure that changes from one generation to the next are for the better - or for the worse.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 13.5.2006
The writer is a Helsingin Sanomat staff political journalist.
JUHA AKKANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
juha.akkanen@hs.fi
