Capitalism and Millennials: The 2018 James Q. Wilson Lecture

Am going to read through this for sure. But it seems the best way to persuade people of capitalism's merits is to make sure the system works for the majority of people. Young people in particular see very tough sledding ahead. Contrary to certain talking points, they don't fear hard work. They fear working 60 hours a week for the next twenty years and still sharing an apartment with 3-4 other people with no accumulated savings to show for it. My industry and its student loans are a big part of the problem but in no way the only part.

The system obviously benefits the most wealthy at the expense of nearly everyone else. My standard of living is below that of my parents and most Americans see the same thing. So why would kids not want to try something else?

And I find it scary, as I'm very pro-capitalism in general.

 

None of this matters - the millenials who don't support capitalism are those who can't beat out the middle classes of China and India and why the standard of living for them has dropped as opposed to the previous generation. It's a global capitalist market and the lack of intellectualism in America that has led to the false notions of us all having equal amounts of money nonsense that will cripple a progressive economy that attracts the best and the brightest from other countries. We have to make capitalism work for everyone by a little more income distribution by the 0.01%, and in order to do that, the rest have to show they can live responsibly with the added money.

 

Young people always have really stupid ideas while they are young, the best you can hope for is that the vast majority grow up eventually and end up with more intelligent ideas.

What was the old saying "If a person is not a liberal when he is twenty, he has no heart; if he is not a conservative when he is forty, he has no head."

Now that said, they've moved so far to the left they are beyond liberalism these days....to these whack jobs liberals are far right fascists....but the principal is still the same.

 

not sure it's a question of work ethics or ambition, the superwealthy in China create millions of jobs to chinese, the super wealthy in US, takes away millions of jobs ( Amazon)

 

In a social democracy you have a capitalism basis, you just don't have RAMPANT capitalism which is better for the entire society.

Capitalism unchecked ends up with 10 year olds working in the coal mines.

DD

 

That's the truth of it.

There was actually a study on this that I provided thanks to the silly quote mentioned above but people are liberal or conservative based on the circumstances given to them. Not on how old or young they are. The circumstances for many young people? Like you said, working many hours with little reward, seeing their parents or family pay crippling medical bills and knowing that if something happens to them they risk the same fate, going to college and only getting debt as their gift.

The issue with capitalism is that it creates a corporate greed that doesn't care about the people working for it but only the numbers it produces. Regulations get cut, water gets soiled, air gets polluted, and people work all week for little pay. There is a good middle ground. Capitalism works but not in every sector and not without checks.

A Mixed economy is that middle ground, it's what a lot of successful countries have, it's what the USA has but we are not keeping up with the trends.

 

you cant really fault millennials for wanting to turn away from capitalism...they have grown up in a country that is seeing increased economic disparity, the very rich getting very richer, insurmountable debt being passed onto them, institutionalized corporate welfare, ect. if you were born in the 80's or later it is all you have known.

if we want to place blame on a generation of people i would put it squarely on the baby boomers for getting us into the mess we are in now. their parents were the greatest generation and i really feel like the baby boomers are the worst this country has ever produced...selfish, short-sighted, fiscally stupid, morally compromised. and their grandkids and greatgrand kids are going to be stuck with the bill.

 

Sanctimonious Baby Boomers are running up trillions upon trillions of dollars of national debt that the Millennials will likely have to deal with in their lifetimes, after the grossly irresponsible Boomers have shuffle loose the mortal coil. Yet Boomers are unhappy at the political leanings of the Millennials.

Go figure.

 

Late stage capitalism or whatever the **** you want to call the simulacrum of a free market we have today is an abject failure.

It makes most people worse off.

Therefore they question it.

This is hard for the 43 remaining people who read the WSJ editorial page to understand, but certainly not hard for young people to understand.

 

I don't really blame them, they are young and stupid.....and even worse, they are incredibly privileged due to being fortunate enough to grow up in a capitalist country. People who are young, stupid, and incredibly privileged b**** about what they have but the hope is that they'll grow up and grow out of that immature way of thinking.....perhaps some of them will visit a true socialist country, I'm sure that would change their minds.

 

I think this whole debate is premised behind giant strawmans.

First we need to define what "socialism" means and what millennials mean by the term.

Do they want the government to do a total takeover of the means of production or do they want to extend the already in place social programs that this country has to healthcare?

 

There is no true socialist country.

There is no true capitalist country. Every modern developed country has a mixed economy.

 

As a fringe milennial, I still support capitalistic ideals. I don’t care much for big government rather for stronger customer protections. I still see government as a table setter even if bigger government runs the risk of regulatory capture and crony capitalism, with some of the case studies everyone can see and learn right now.

Truth be told, his interview sounds like Old Man Ramblings over a generation he can’t seem to understand while glossing over the perverse double standards Boomers and trump voters take and demand from the government. Trumpism, for all its bluster, lip service, and flag waving, is the purposeful redistribution of wealth and status to his voters and financial backers. But hey, they Vote Capitalism in Yougov polls, so they don’t deserve a rant.

If he’s a Carter Republican, then many of those millennials are Bush Socialists. They go to college, load up student debt, get no job offers for their degrees, and become underemployed for the jobs they do get. Housing....you mean their parents? Such smug entitlement!

It’s funny he talks about the misery of the jobless when throughout the Obama admin families were applying for and using ebt and food stamps even as they were considered middle class. Just because the media didn’t report food lines stretching around for blocks like the Great Depression doesn’t mean big government had to step in and cover for them. It wasn’t because they were lazy or shameless either. It Was Because Capitalism and Scions Like Him Failed Them...and still can’t explain or fully correct what happened to this day.

He makes some salient points about the tech economy not producing things of value...except that’s the biggest complaint about America for the last twenty years (still the millennials fault). These apps, which he obviously doesn’t understand, understandably doesn’t provide tangible social value. But what he doesn’t realize is that without funding to buy real tangible capital goods (that Old Men Like Him Own), people have to think and find opportunity elsewhere. With proper knowledge and experience, you could spend 50k on a startup, which while steep for the poor is still incredibly cheap for the ROI you put in. He should welcome that opportunity as it’s the epitome of creating something of value (even if he doesn’t see it) out of nothing.

All of his Libertarian Hayekian dogma isn’t mainstream nor does it encapsulate conservatism today. He is like a priest on a perch where it’s parishioners nod their heads, then wring out every loophole, Trump White Lie to the IRS, and red cent for a tax return. If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t tryin.Greed is always good.

In that sense, nor is he qualified to speak upon the undercurrent of younger Americans today. Even the entitled, snot nosed bastards who want to talk to him but won’t give the time of day.

 

i dont blame them either...again, i blame the baby boomer generation.

and i bet most of the people who b**** about socialism have never been to a socialist country or even been out of the united states.

 

Not that many people head to North Korea, Venezuela, or Cuba.

 

There's a pretty thick swath of generation X-ers mixed in every economic and military choice we've made this century. A lot of the escapism that even allowed Trump to become a candidate was spawned by his reality show celebrity, which was largely fueled by gen-X viewers with a continually growing role in running our society while harboring more cultural reverence for media franchises than any of our forebears.

 

Problem is that people make it out to be Capitalism vs Socialism - as if it's a binary choice. But in reality, neither works well without the other. You need to blend the two together in the right amounts. Socialism by itself sucks the incentive for progress out thus leading to stagnation and poverty. Capitalism by itself becomes a house of cards that will collapse once the inequality in wealth becomes apparent - leading to crisis and poverty.

 

haha - are you saying those are the only socialist countries in the world boreby?