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Majority of Millennials Reject Capitalism?
In a poll that should shock exactly no one, 51 percent of Millenials reject Capitalism, and want an alternative economic system:
Although the results are startling, Harvard’s questions accord with other recent research on how Americans think about capitalism and socialism. In 2011, for example, the Pew Research Center found that people ages 18 to 29 were frustrated with the free-market system. In that survey, 46 percent had positive views of capitalism, and 47 percent had negative views — a broader question than what Harvard’s pollsters asked, which was whether the respondent supported the system. With regard to socialism, by contrast, 49 percent of the young people in Pew’s poll had positive views, and just 43 percent had negative views.
And apparently, just as with gay marriage, Millenials are now dragging older generations to their point of view on economics as well:
Published in Domestic Policy, EconomicsA subsequent survey that included people of all ages found that somewhat older Americans also are skeptical of capitalism. Only among respondents at least 50 years old was the majority in support of capitalism.
Fools. Damn fools.
I see this quote from Heinlein a lot. I expect only to have reason to see more and more of it:
Just wait until they realize we’ve all been waiting for them to grow up and get a job to pay for everything. LOL.
Of course while using their iPhones to twitter and facebook their hatred of capitalism; while drinking their Starbucks waiting for their American Airline flight to Vegas.
Millennials haven’t been taught anything and have been allowed to grow up thinking they’re precious show flakes by their parents. Then taught garbage while in K through 12, getting straight A’s thinking they are totally smart when then know nothing of the real world. Only to be marinated in leftist grievance crap for four years at college where they live in the lap of luxury paid for by student loans they took out.
Well now the real world is a knocking and the loans payments are due and our precious little angels realize they have to get job to pay for it. how unfair!!!
The Triumph of Mis-Education!
This is more of a selling problem. Yesterday I saw on Twitter, I think it was from Gallup, that well the Millenials are almost evenly split between capitalism and socialism, it’s something like 25-75 when it’s changed to state controlled economy and free market economy.
Now I need to find the damn thing.
I’m going to be at least a partial devil’s advocate here, because the Obama Economy is real, not just something we talked about on Ricochet, and if you’re 18-24 years old, it’s the only economy you’ve ever known. If this is “capitalism” they aren’t too impressed. Is that so hard to believe?
The miracle years of the postwar American economy is when many of us learned our lessons. Life was harder then, but it kept getting better. Bosses were tough, but the system weeded out the worst ones. You could believe in that system, even if you didn’t read Adam Smith or Russell Kirk. High school graduates could raise families, tow a motorboat into their driveways, even send their kids to college.
Suppose you’re a kid now. It’s still hard to get a decent job; everything costs a fortune. The most normal thing in the world for young people to do–start a family–costs a fortune, and at 24 it looks like you’ll never, ever get off running up the down escalator of student debt. They aren’t all jetting off to Cabo and renting BMWs.
You don’t understand what happened. Your older brother, who graduated in 1996, has a pretty good life. Some of the people you know who did succeed seem utterly amoral and lead–to you–useless, pleasure seeking lives. On the other hand, everyone you read on the web assures you that you’ll suffer forever. Would you instinctively love that economic system, if that’s the way you came to learn about it?
Valid point. This is Obama’s true legacy and the culmination of Saul Alinsky’s dream.
Very good points, Gary. It is not surprising that Millenials would react poorly to what they understand to be source of their diminished prospects. But economic illiteracy is substantial in the larger society, not just Millenials.
Except, if you read the Wall Street Journal at all regularly, you will see many stories of how the business world is changing to accommodate those “snowflake” millennials. Companies are adjusting the workplace to appeal to those youngsters who want to start at the top rather than working to get there. More rewards, sooner, etc.
Gary, you are spot on.
In order to have some affinity for capitalism by this group, it would help if they experienced some.
It seems a large portion of video games are post apocalyptic shooters, almost all network television shows business as the villain and government agents or superheroes who have no income as the good guys, they have been told since birth the greedy generation before is destroying their planet and they graduate college with a load of debt and are lucky to pour burnt coffee with sugar and milk to their luckier predecessors.
Yes, it’s a heckuva puzzle why socialism looks good.
Yes but who is telling them this? If they don’t know why Obama’s economy is bad, then they are going to just chalk it up to the “American System” that their professors are railing against every single day. Mitch McRyan and the boys certainly aren’t telling them that Obama’s economy is NOT capitalism.
To be successful in a capitalist system requires you to understand the needs (or wants) of others so you can work to fill those needs.
Millennials have been taught to focus on themselves. Starting in the womb they were photographed, pampered, and made to feel special. They have been treated this way their entire life. Thus, they rarely consider the needs of others, and even less often consider the work involved in filling their needs.
Worrying about your needs, and not considering the cost of filling those needs describes a socialist. They turned out exactly as we raised them to be.
It may be, in part, a matter of branding and bad associations:
The prior commenters have all made good points – no need to rehash them. My first, and continuing urge is to rant about what kind of abysmal ignorance is required to believe that socialism is a viable and even enviable scheme of government.
The key piece of this puzzle is Saul Alinsky, as someone alluded. He marks the apotheosis of the Frankfort School’s accomplishments in destroying the West. His lesser pupil, currently occupying a distinguished piece of real estate on Pennsylvania Avenue, only follows in Alinsky’s cloven-hooved footsteps.
Incidentally, I mentioned to my daughter (23) that statistic about young people not knowing what socialism actually is – apparently there is already a memo out from the central office on this issue: We can structure socialism anyway we want, we’re not stuck with the mistakes of the past, etc. My daughter is a great person, and I love her, but she (and apparently virtually all her friends and acquaintances) have completely succumbed to this nonsense.
Socialism (and those who adhered to it) killed more than 100 million people in the 20th century alone.
If they can rehabilitate socialism, ask them if they would be willing to do the same for the KKK.
I don’t know….I have a daughter graduating college next month, and she’s been on an exhaustive job search, landed a good job in NYC, and negotiated a higher salary than they offered. All this when we wanted her to go on to law school. She’s debt-free, btw.
I know she’s a Dem, but I don’t know whether she voted for Sanders the Communist; as of a phone conversation we had as she walked to the polls to cast her vote, she wasn’t sure.
So–what? Maybe the kids just want a kinder, gentler capitalism? Maybe they think of socialism as just raising everyone to their own privileged level, instead of the reality of lowering everyone to grim subsistence?
If so, I guess they’ll grow out of it when they start getting and spending their own money.
But I don’t know. I’d’a THOUGHT that, when they started negotiating their own salaries, they’d come to realize the total meaninglessness of “income inequality”. They seem to have a passion for making money. Won’t it eventually occur to them that by doing so, they’re creating new wealth, not consuming somebody else’s? That just the fact that one person makes a lot of money does not mean another person can’t do so? That wealth is an infinite concept, it’s not like land or gold. It’s an artificial system–how much wealth is there in the world? As much as we all agree!
But I guess there’s not much reason for optimism, really–look at Sanders, Ayres–those geezers never grew out of it…
I can tell you exactly what they’ll say: “Democratic socialism is completely different from communism.”
Mission Accomplished by our wonderful public education system.
“The goal of socialism is communism.”
– Vladimir Lenin
The second half of that article is scarier. It basically reveals how selfish this whole movement is. Millennials support socialism if it means free stuff for them, but as soon as you explain that they’ll have to help pay for it themselves, they suddenly lurch right.
Remember, too, that to the average millennial, Capitalism means “rich people doing mean things to poor people.”
They been sayin’ that for decades. But the young’uns say it as if they just figured it out.
They’re kids. Many have either been raised by helicopter parents or neglectful parents. Now they are faced with a near future of having to make their own place in the world and the only skills they have are dancing to dub-step, illegally downloading music onto their electronic devices, playing video games and texting really fast.
They are getting to the stage of intellectual development and reasoning ability where their observations of the real world are in stark contrast to every assumption that informs their world-view. The education system has consumed them, not nourished them.
Few of them have faith in God, family structures that foster a sense of security and stability or friendships that provide accountability, guidance or encouragement.
They aren’t the enemy. They are victims.
The “greatest” generation supposedly defeated authoritarian regimes on battlefields all over the world (pssst! they were voting for them here at home before the war), then they came home, had kids and decided that they had done enough heavy lifting for one lifetime and sat them in front of TV’s and neglected them, turning them into the mindless drones that now define our culture.
Capitalism relies on skilled labor and an educated market. In a country of 320 million, there me be 20-30 million who can survive in such an environment.
“Rejecting” capitalism is like “rejecting” physics.
Umbra fractus and Kozak:
I read that this a-historical approach to education was a deliberate plan. A reaction to the founding-myth type history we had? I know ours was sketchy and simplistic and, as we hear constantly now, didn’t deal with the nastier realities of conquest of the continent.
But it was like the bookshelf you had in your room as a kid–sure, it didn’t hold everything, and it was never meant to house the entire library you’d accumulate over your lifetime–but it was a frame, it was a place to store new stuff you learned..it showed you that you needed shelves, and you could always expand on the basic structure. It put you on track to being the kind of person who would always HAVE bookshelves.
You could and you would change your mind about “Brave Columbus”, “Honest George Washington”, etc, but at least you knew approximately who they were and when they lived.
Greatest compliment my daughter ever gave me: “Mom, I found the greatest bookstore today! So pretty, seems to have everything! It looks like what I imagine the inside of your mind looks like!”
Gravity. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.
One can only hold such views when lying comfortably in the bosom of a free enterprise society.
At 24, fresh out of college I was as left as they come…but life teaches much better lessons than school ever did or could. They’ll come around.
I will say as someone that manages about 70 folks, half of whom are millenials they do tend to think of themselves as awesome little snow flakes that are superior to those around them. Oh, and getting 6 hours in a day out of them is like asking them for a lung.
Can’t we send them all to live in Venezuela for a few weeks?