Sunday, February 7, 2016

Be Afraid, Very Afraid: Millennials Heed the Siren Call of Socialism

By Joel Kotkin

he biggest story this election season is not Donald Trump or the fortunes of the two winners in Iowa, the unattractive tag team of Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton. For all their attempts to seem current and contemporary, these candidates – and Trump as well – represent older, more established elements in American life, such as evangelicals, nativists and, in Hillary’s case, the ranks of middle-age women, seniors and public-sector unions.

The biggest and most important development has been the massive support among the new generation of voters for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and his open embrace of socialism. In Iowa’s Democratic caucuses, which ended with Clinton and Sanders in a virtual tie, young people opted for Sanders at an almost inconceivable rate of 84-14. In 2008, Barack Obama won this segment, claiming only a 57 percent majority.

So we are seeing the embrace of an openly socialist septuagenarian by a generation that, within a decade, will dominate our electorate and outnumber baby boomers as soon as 2020. That should put more conventional politicians, and business, on notice. Whether you are a Republican, a free-marketer or, even a Democratic-leaning crony capitalist, be afraid – be very afraid.

Read the rest here,

9 comments:

  1. Millennials change their mind every 2-3 hours.

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    1. Yeah, wait till they get real jobs and start paying taxes on decent incomes, then see how much they approve of others living off of their expense instead of vice versa. I do think people my generation (30 and under) have received a lot more propaganda from the left than from the right. Also, the right currently seems to be mostly religious fanatics (pandering to the bible belt) which plays about as well with young people as a turd in a punch bowl.

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  2. Whether talking about "feeling the Bern" or The Donald all these "be very afraid" headlines are becoming overused.

    First off they are still trapped in the "voting" system.
    Choosing most anyone other than Hillary is a wise choice under those conditions.

    Will they still be "socialists" when given a bill for "boomer" pensions(both SS and Public Pensions) down the road ?

    What about all the other programs Bernie wants to fund ?

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  3. What do you expect after continuous socialist indoctrination starting in kindergarden??

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    1. Yep, the propagandizing on the millennials has been dramatic.

      When gov't bailed out the big banks, it really became a reinforcing symbol of the "capitalism for us but socialism for "them"" type argument(with all the associated negative connotations of capitalism & free markets)-

      The banksters get bonuses in the good years and taxpayer bailouts(socialized losses) in the bad....and many of the millennials naturally think socialism is superior to free markets because you had idiots like Bush(and most pols on the right & left in gov't) saying things like "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system"- or the gov't "had to do it". The few in high political office(Ron Paul) that explained that the lack of free markets is what caused the financial crisis were drowned out by everyone else in the media.

      Naturally the conclusion of such statements by the majority of "leaders"/pols and the subsequent bailouts is that "socialism is superior to free markets"- and many, many people believe it because that was the government line, repeated over and over again. I think it's one of the worst betrayals of economic principles for those on the right in the last decade and has tainted the viewpoint of many, just probably more so the millennials because they were coming of age during all of it.

      To the writers point in the article, many of them are buried in college debt due to the college tuition bubble and many of them are/were probably also priced out of the market in trying to get a job via minimal wage laws coupled with a crappy economy during the financial crisis.

      I can understand why they think the way they do to some degree, even though they're wrong.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmi8cJG0BJo

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  4. i guess you folk don't like any of the social welfare countries that do better in almost every way than the USA

    i guess ignorance is one thing the USA has more than any other nation

    p

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    1. Speaking of ignorance, the per capita spending on social welfare in the US is third highest among wealthy nations. When you take into account the private sector contributions, it dwarfs the others.
      The US is undeniably a "social welfare" country.

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  5. I'm a millennial that lives in a very liberal state - and I'm not far from Orange county, CA. I'm not a Sanders supporter, and I don't know too many that are - I don't even see too many Sanders bumper stickers. In fact, I don't know of too many that even pay any respects to political correctness, unless they're trying to stay out of trouble with a very left wing employer, of which there are plenty of out here.

    I'm also in a region that doesn't see a lot of people with higher ed degrees. Maybe higher "education" is the problem, and not millennials.

    That being said, millennial college students do a pretty good job of embarrassing some of us.

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  6. Millenials are all for Socialism because they think it means free stuff paid for by other people. Well, that's what Socialism does mean. It won't benefit them but they don't know that. At least not yet.

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