News and Society

Well, we aren't allowed to say it, we are not allowed to tell anyone they are fat anymore, because it is not politically correct, but it is the truth. Over the years, I occasionally go to Starbucks, and I've watched the kids come in and pound down frappachino with extra caramel sauce, chocolate, and whip cream, your basic 500 to 650 calorie snack. Why are Americans getting fat you ask. Many people in New York think they have the answer; banning transfats in food, sin tax on snacks, and an add-on tax on big gulp sized soda pop.

It's not that America doesn't eat good food. It's all that junk they eat in between. The other day, I was at the grocery store and the person in front of me paying with food stamps was buying soda pop, chips, a pumpkin pie, donuts, and cake. Oh, don't get me wrong they also bought carrots, dip, fish, and a chicken. So apparently they got 20% of their diet correct.

Now then, not long ago, Michelle Obama noted that it was her vision to end this challenge of childhood obesity in one generation, but I'd say that if we keep over-feeding Americans and giving them free food with food stamps, then we are obviously going the wrong way. If people have more money to spend on food, they are going to buy the food tastes good, and they are going to feed it to their mouths until they are stuffed.

Therefore we have a bunch of people rolling along, literally, hugely overweight, and we have no one to blame but ourselves and our government for providing all this extra money which is unnecessary in free food stamps. Do I think we should limit choice? Not necessarily, I think if you buy your own food, and pay for your own health care, you can eat whatever you want.

However, if the government is paying for it, and my tax dollars paying for free food, then I would appreciate it if these folks would not make their children obese, and then claim that I need to also pay for the diabetes medicine for the rest of their lives. You see that point?

Look, here's the deal; we are not going to solve the problem of childhood obesity in one generation if we keep doing nonsensical things with these socialist food program strategies. If we really want to solve this problem we're going to need a new group of people in the White House who use common sense. We can't hope for change, we have to use smart policies, if not we shouldn't use the taxpayers money. Please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow is the Founder of the Online Think Tank, a diverse group of achievers, experts, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers, futurists, academics, dreamers, leaders, and general all around brilliant minds. Lance Winslow hopes you've enjoyed today's discussion and topic. http://www.worldthinktank.net/ - Have an important subject to discuss, contact Lance Winslow.

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BARCELONA, Spain -- Near Lisbon, Portugal, CBN News saw a locksmith cut the bolts off an apartment that was repossessed by the court and put new locks on the door.

The family was not home and seemed to have abandoned the place.

"If I was just evicting adults, it wouldn't be a problem for me," the locksmith, David Justino, said. "We are all adults and we have to deal with it."

"What is harder for me is when there are small children or disabled people," he added.

Over in Terrassa, Spain, outside of Barcelona, protestors tried to stop the eviction of a young family who fell behind on their mortgage.

"I want to work. I want to be able to pay a mortgage," the father said. 

What some call a recession is, in Spain, a full blown depression that is hitting young people and young families the hardest.

In Spain, the unemployment rate is 24.6 percent-- close to the level in the United States during the Great Depression. But the unemployment rate for Spaniards under the age of 25, is an incredible 53 percent, the highest in western Europe and higher than Greece.

That unemployment has created a "lost generation" of 20-somethings with very bleak prospects ahead of them.

Spain thought that adopting the euro would be the path to prosperity. But it is one of the European Union countries now being crushed by the euro. The one-size-fits-all nature of the currency is actually keeping the economy from recovering.

Spain's Brain Drain

On the outskirts of Barcelona, one can see the cemetery for Spain's shattered real estate bubble. Buildings once under construction are now abandoned; gravestones for a boom era that vanished.

The collapse of the real estate market pushed Spain over the edge and into depression.

Now, Barcelona blogger Santiago Perez runs a website called "The New Poor," where Spain's lost generation can share their struggles. His friend Eric Lluent has already decided to leave Spain for Iceland.

"We have no prospects. It is very difficult to plan your life here so we are now thinking of moving abroad," Lluent said. "It is paradoxical how the crisis has changed our points of view so fast and radically at once."

Judith Sants is an out of work agricultural engineer.

"I've been unemployed for 13 months now," she said. "Nowadays, things look so bad that I am contemplating the possibility of moving abroad. The way things look today, I am seriously thinking about it."

Alberto Rodriguez said when he finishes his MBA, he wants to move to London.

During the good economic times, Europeans assumed their lavish welfare state worked well. But a historic debt crisis, business failures, and high unemployment levels have created societies in which young people just starting out see no future for themselves; no way to start their careers.

Business Impossible

Many western European nations have made it hard, if not impossible, to be an entrepreneur.

In Paris, Clement Grandjean had so much trouble launching a business as a young entrepreneur, he started a Dilbert-style comic strip that makes fun of the business culture and government regulations in France.

He also wanted to reach out to other young struggling entrepreneurs and let them know that they're not alone.

While still working on his MBA, Grandjean was trying to set up a company to export French products to Japan

"I received a really, really expensive tax that I had to pay, even if I didn't make any profit," Grandjean explained.

"So we worked really hard and then the government asked for $2,000 each, just for creating the business, even if we earned zero dollars," he said. "So, we decided to stop the business before it became too expensive."

Grandjean considered leaving France but decided to stay and try to navigate the business culture.

Bankrupting a Generation

But polls have shown most French young people wouldn't even think of starting a business. They want lifetime government jobs.

All across Europe, the Lost Generation is angry for being handed a mess it didn't create.

Too many of them still live with their parents -- sometimes into their 40s, like Nuno Pinto in Portugal, who has thrown in the towel and filed for bankruptcy.

"I'm 40 years old and I'm living off my parents. That's my painful reality," Pinto said. "For that reason I'm here, to see if I can get what's my last chance, a personal bankruptcy."

When these are the prospects that young people have to looking forward to, it shows just how bad it has become for Europe's lost generation.

*Originally aired April 26, 2012.

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