Cathy Reisenwitz is a writer whose work has appeared in The Week, Forbes, the Daily Beast, VICE Motherboard, Reason magazine, Talking Points Memo and others, and she’s appeared as a commentator on Fox News and Al Jazeera, which an interesting combination to say the least.
In the discussion I mentioned the coining of the word NEETs, young people who are Not in Employment, Education or Training. I also mentioned how many young men have not worked a single hour in employment the last year – over 17 per cent.
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On October 29 last year, Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia crashed, killing all 189 people on board died. On March 10 this year, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed killing all 157 passengers and crew.
Both planes were brand new Boeing 737 MAX 8s. In
the days since the second crash, aviation authorities in countries starting
with China, and finishing with the United States on March 13 have grounded all
of this type of aircraft. This is remarkable because not only are these
newly-delivered planes, they are a new model.
There are less than 400 of this type of
aircraft around the world, the first one was delivered less than two years ago have
been delivered around the world so far; Boeing
has an order book of nearly 5,000 more, but I wouldn’t be counting on that
now if I were them.
This could just be an unfortunate
coincidence, but the fact that the two tragedies had similarities in the way
that the aircraft crashed is worrying, as is the fact that during 2018 at least
two pilots reported problems that could be related that happened when they were
flying this model.
It’s notable that the government-ordered
groundings began in China, and that the US was the last holdout, which looks
like some political or national pride issues are in play here,