An interesting new poll came out this week
from Gallup showing that among millennials
and generation Z, socialism is just as popular,
just as acceptable as capitalism.
Now, this is the only age group where those
two things are roughly equal and capitalism
has as much favoribility as socialism.
The other age groups, the boomers, the gen
excers, they view capitalism far more favorably.
Then they view socialism.
Now, this is not the first poll to show this,
certainly not in the last three or four years.
We have seen this trend among the youth in
this country where they look at socialism
and I'm not talking about you know, what's
happening or happened in communist countries.
We're not talking communism.
We're talking about what's going on in European
democratic socialist countries.
That's what they're gravitating to and here's
why, and here's also why the older generations
aren't necessarily on board with that yet.
For the millennials, for the people, 38 37
I think it is in younger capitalism's basically
been a failure for our entire lives.
We were born into a world, and I know this
because I'm one of them.
At the top end of that age group, but I'm
still in it.
Technically.
We were born into a country in the early 1980s
that was busting up the unions left and right,
and when that happened, the middle class died
off.
The gap between worker pay and CEOs exploded
and it continues to explode.
To this day, workers are getting less, they're
getting fewer benefits.
Health insurance costs have risen, pharmaceutical
costs have risen astronomically.
We have been through three different recessions.
Those of us born in the early 1980s we went
through the great recession.
We have seen the capitalistic system fail
repeatedly, and every time there's a so-called
recovery, we somehow don't get any part of
that.
The top 1% do the big businesses do.
The stock market gets a huge rebound.
We're bailing out billion dollar corporations
were subsidizing billion dollar corporations
with a few more billion dollars.
Capitalism has failed us for our entire lives.
So yeah, it is a little bit more attractive
to look over at these democratic socialist
countries and say, wow, you guys don't have
to pay at the point of service for healthcare
at all.
Okay.
Yeah, we want that.
Oh, you guys don't have to pay for college
either.
Even though I'm pushing 40 and still have
tens of thousands of dollars in student loan
debt, that's preventing me from being able
to do more meaningful things in my life.
Yeah, I want that too.
Now the genexers and the baby boomers, they
don't feel that way.
Do you know why capitalism hasn't been a failure
for their entire lives?
The boomers grew up at a time when capitalism
was fantastic and the new deal helped along
with that too, and that was also a little
bit of democratic socialism, but they don't
view it as that.
They just see it was capitalism doing what
capitalism does, but capitalism don't do that
no more and it can't because of what our politicians
have done to it.
Capitalism can work phenomenally with proper
regulations and safeguards in place, but over
the years we have destroyed those safeguards.
We have destroyed those regulations, most
of which came at the hands of the Republicans.
We have destroyed the labor unions, killing
the voice of the American workers.
And once you destroy all that and you just
let capitalism have added, it can't succeed.
And the last 40 years have proven that you
can't argue that it did succeed because it
hasn't, at least not for our generation.
And that's why we're gravitating toward these
other bold, big ideas where the government
comes in and says, Hey, guess what?
Corporations?
You can't do that.
Hey, guess what?
American citizens, you can have this.
We're going to take care of you because that's
what we want.
Because we're tired of watching this same
capitalistic economic system fail repeatedly
while we're being told that we're somehow
responsible for that.
No, no boomers, that's you.
You did this to us.
We will never return to the glory days of
capitalism here in the United States, not
without a big Hardy injection of some democratic
socialism.
