To learn more about millennials, check
out Reason-Rupe’s new report.
Young people don’t know what socialism is.
Recent polls
have suggested that millennials are far more positive to
socialism than older cohorts. For instance, the Pew Research
Center found that
43 percent of 18-29 year olds had a positive reaction to the word
socialism, compared to 33 percent of 30-49 year olds, 23 percent of
50-64 year olds, and 14% of 65+. The older you get the more you
hate socialism.
But do young people even know what socialism means?
Perhaps not. A new
Reason-Rupe report on millennials finds that young people
are more favorable to the word “socialism” than
a government-managed economy, even though the latter
is lessinterventionist. Millennials don’t like government
intervention in the economy when you spell it out precisely, rather
than use vague terms like “socialism.”
In fact, a 2010 CBS/New York Times
survey found that when Americans were asked to use their own words
to define the word “socialism” millennials were the least able to
do so. According to the survey, only 16 percent of millennials
could define socialism as government ownership, or some variation
thereof. In contrast, 30 percent of Americans over 30 could do the
same (and 57% of tea partiers, incidentally).
Millennials simply don’t know that socialism means the
government owning everybody’s businesses. They don’t understand
that socialism means the government owns the banks, the car
companies, Uber, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc. They don’t even want
the government taking a managerial role over the economy, let alone
nationalizing private enterprise.
In fact, millennial support for a government-managed economy
(32%) mirrors national
favorabilitytoward the word socialism (31%). Millennial
preferences may not be so different from older generations once
terms are defined.
Millennials’ preferred economic system becomes more pronounced
when it is described precisely. Fully 64 percent favor a free
market economy over an economy managed by the government (32%),
whereas 52 percent favor capitalism over socialism (42%). Language
about capitalism and socialism is vague, and using these terms
assumes knowledge millennials may not have acquired.
Millennials didn’t grow up during the Cold War in which the
national enemy was a socialist totalitarian regime like the Soviet
Union. Since this time, the terms “socialism” and
“capitalism” may have taken on different meaning in the minds of
millennials. For instance, socialism could imply protecting the
vulnerable from the vicissitudes of capitalism, and capitalism
could mean government favoritism instead of a free market.
Furthermore, critics of the president keep calling Obama a
socialist. Millennials like Obama, (52% still approve of him)
and thus perhaps the critics’ constant barrage of socialist
name-calling has bolstered millennials’ opinion of the word, rather
than tainted Obama’s image.
Support for Socialism Peaks in College
There is evidence that support for socialism and a
government-managed economy rises when millennials attend college
and then recedes after they graduate.
College students are evenly divided between socialism (49%) and
capitalism (48%). Conversely, millennials who are not currently in
college favor capitalism to socialism 55 to 38 percent. (College
graduates are similar to other non-students in support for
capitalism). College campuses appear to be a incubator for
socialist views.
To
learn more about millennials, check
out Reason-Rupe’s new report.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1rgHHWK
via IFTTT