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CHAPTER I

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problem. Since the morę skilled had hlgher probabl1ities to find Jobs, this was extrapolated to the system; unfortunate1y, what applles to lndlviduals not necessarily does to the system, where the effects were simply a reshuffling of lndlvldual probabl1 i11es of finding Jobs.

Morę sophisticated experts held that morę training would have lncreased the relatlve competltiveness of the country. But sińce all of the competing countrles did the same, relative competitlveness remained substantlally stable, while the overall need for labour was likely to decrease.

Similar patterns of wrong conceptualizations stay behind other attempted leasures, such as marginal employment subsidles and provisions aimed at fostering labour and labour-market flexibility. We cali * them,- ln our Report, *stereotypes*, sińce they have the. look of common-sense reasoning, they are widespread among people and across countrles, and they produce results whlch are very convenient for powerful vested interests.

Despite the great cultural, insti tutional and economic differences among the observed countrles, the policy measures whlch have been adopted are extraordinarlly similar, at least from a purely descriptive point of view. The only reason we have been able to find for this is the wide diffusion across countrles of the same stereotypes. And this confirmed to us to put a priority upon the role and the inadeąuacy of the cultural endowments and of the abllity to understand the functloning of our socio-economic systems upon whlch we are presently relying for regulatlng our societies.

1⁰ • Where_we_are w^th unempl_oy®ent and labour pol^ięies

In this sectlon we will attempt to summarize, in the most complete but compact way, as the end-result of our prevlous analyses, where we are - in Europę- in the domain of unemployment and unemployment policies:

(a) the problem is that of unemployment, not of youth unemployment. This is now becoming increaslngly evident, as long as in soae countrles adult (mainly małe) workers start to be 8queezed out by (mainly female and/or young) workers. This was correctly forecasted, however, by our previous Reports, whlch polnted out

(a.l) that youth unemployment was only the most visible manifestati on of a major allocation disease. This forestalls the use of idle (human) resources for the satisfaction of stlll unsatlsfled needs;

(a.2) that, given the inability to raise the activity ratę of our economic systems through aggregate economic policies, most of specific youth employment policies were likely to result in a mere redistribution of available jobs (see point c below);