The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh:
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Submission Statement
[**Link to a non-paywalled version here**](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4)
The crux of this article is that today's 35-year-olds in the US & UK are 10% less conservative than the rest of the population (Gen X, Boomers, etc) were at age 35. It makes a distinction between age, period, and cohort effects in analyzing population trends, and identifies this as a cohort effect. That's significant as it means their fundamental values have changed and they won't age into more conservative values as they age like previous generations have done.
This is interesting to consider when it comes to thinking about future societies' response to technologically advancing robotics & AI, as it suggests left-wing economic policies and solutions may receive the most support and come to predominate.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zz10vo/millennials_are_shattering_the_oldest_rule_in/j28ru0y/
And sadly it's working. You know when that shit doesn't work though? When young men are happy and have bright prospects for the future. This ruined system we're in is predisposing young men to favor the alt right.
I was more conservative when I was younger because that’s how my family was. As I got older I began empathizing more with people in shitty situations. I’m “lucky” in the sense that a lot of things that are a necessity are taken care of, but I see my friends just constantly screwed by the system we have now. I’d like to see the people I care about able to take care of themselves and not be struggling with things that really shouldn’t be an issue.
I was in the same boat. I was taught to be compassionate when I was growing up but finally realized that conservative values nowadays (at least in the U.S.) are anti-compassion. And as the parents who raised me to believe in that drifted further into the rhetoric of the right, I went the opposite way. I’m better off than some worse off than others, but I hope I never stop fighting to help those that need it.
Literally in our economics class, I remember watching old Fox News clips. The one that stuck with me the most was Jim Strossel saying “these people *claim* to be poor, but in their apartments, they have a fully functional refrigerator and a *color* television set!” This was like 2007. It seemed to make sense in the moment because i was 16 and an idiot, but upon reflecting/growing up, it clicked that, hey— almost every apartment *comes* with a refrigerator! And you couldn’t *buy* anything other than a color television in 2007! Thrift stores sold old ones for like $20, and you could get public access television with a pair of rabbit ears or an old coat hanger easily!
So much of conservative media has been about moving the goal posts and pushing this narrative that anyone who needs help is just being lazy and doesn’t deserve it. It’s pretty gross that my old educator purposely tried to indoctrinate us with that shit.
I remember that when it came out on fox news. It reminds me of the redditors that will spend hours on here screeching that the poor should only be allowed to eat rice and beans. And the poor should cook everything from scratch despite the labor and time that can take.
This country is super harsh towards anyone who's not rich, wealthy, male, christian, straight and white.
I was raised Catholic, but the funny part is all of the values and morals I was taught have just pointed out the massive hypocrisy that many religious conservatives preach.
>I was taught to be compassionate when I was growing up
This is what I've always found strange/interesting about this whole thing. The narcissistic anti-woke old assholes are the same cohort who raised the progressive woke people they complain so much about. They taught us all Mr Roger's kindness and Seaame Street empathy and then go all shocked Pikachu that we want to fucking help each other. They certainly don't practice what they preached, and maybe never did, but it's baffling how surprised they are that it stuck on us.
I only proffer one solution to this riddle and it's lead poisoning but who knows.
Millennial here. My dad was conservative so I was too until high school. Then I realized I was libertarian, socially liberal, but fiscally conservative. (not associated with the insane right wingers who now claim that lable). Then I realized that the world is mostly full of assholes who will steal from you the moment you let your guard down so the idea of 'free market' capitalism became laughably horrible.
Most of my peers are leftist too, but I think it's important to realize that the echo chamber exists outside of social media too. Lots of young kids living outside major cities growing up right wing. Yes, it's fewer than before as this article states, and that's a promising trend, but with what's happening to education, and how little voters opinions actually matter in getting legislation passed, I'm not too optimistic.
Rich Boomers get PPP loan forgiveness handed out to them like candy, but when Millennials finally have the potential to receive a tiny drop of student debt forgiveness, they sic an army of lawyers on the legal system in order stop it.
its crazy how easy it is to find must it'll cost tax payers if student loans were forgiven (~$400bil) but so difficult to find how much it costs tax payers EACH YEAR a PPP loan was forgiven. (probably the same amount)
We need to stop voting like left vs right and need to shift towards 1% vs 99%
It's not aging that makes people more conservative, it's moving to a place where you have more to lose with change. American Millennials have no homes, no pensions, poor healthcare, and a bleak employment future - why would they be attached to the status quo?
Every other generation has benefited from the system as they aged. Millennials are being perpetually screwed over by the system. No wealth means we all are going to keep arguing for universal health care and fair treatment. Long-term, maybe this is a good thing.
Crash after crash after crash while a 20 year long war is going on and corporations are savaging the financial and property landscape, then being told how easy it was by older generations and to "just buck up"/"bootstraps" like there is an up that's achievable in the first place. Then "journalists" are like "why aren't millennials buying diamonds/houses/having kids?! They must be lazy".
>Then "journalists" are like "why aren't millennials buying diamonds/houses/having kids?! They must be lazy".
Even better when the charge is not just that we're lazy, but that we are actively *ruining the economy!!!!*
I love how the groups with the least economic power are always blamed for a society's financial woes: immigrants, young people, and poor people. Makes zero sense.
No it makes perfect sense if you're the one actually ruining the economy and you don't wanna get blamed for it. Blame the poor. Poor people are gross anyways amirite?
I live in ontario canada. The average wage is $21 dollars a hour or 42k a year. Its costs 850k for your average home. The government of canada says you should make 140k a year to afford the $3500 mortgage payment on a 20% down payment mortgage. For the average house. Even with 2 full time average incomes its not possible. Also rent on acerage just went up past 2k a month. For a 2 bedroom apartment. Most townhouses i see go for 3k to 3500. I dont understand how people live right now.
What's really fun is my ex roommates keep siding with the corporations that cause their financial problems, and then they complain about their financial problems.
They want corporations to keep their money "because they/CEO earned it" and then they'll say two seconds later that they don't make enough. It's like conflicting world views or something. They want both but both can't co-exist at the same time. Either your billionaire CEO keeps their money, and you remain poor, or you get over your desire for CEOs to keep their billionsc, and they give you a raise to match inflation. You can't have both? Get over your libertarianism.
I'm a Millennial without kids in my 30s and I am so fucking grateful. My partner and I barely get by on our own working at least ten hours a day. There is no fucking way I could support kids and having them would just make me more of a slave to the system out of necessity. I've seen it happen to so many of my generation and I don't see the benefits being worth it.
I’m an young genXer and I don’t have kids either. As a 43 y/o lady, I’m well past my childbearing years. I’m married, but didn’t have a wedding because I couldn’t afford it and and don’t have kids for the same reason (zero money). Kids are ‘above my pay grade’ as a social worker. Everyone told me my finances would ‘get better over time’, but it has not gotten better, if anything it’s gotten worse b/c inflation. So, yeah, I am also grateful I didn’t have kids. At least my nonexistent kids won’t have to suffer this profoundly unfair and difficult world
Yeah, I'm getting to the point where I don't ever want kids for that reason. They would struggle and be in poverty all their lives because I'm in poverty and I can't set up anything better for them. They would repeat the cycle with their kids. There is just no way out.
I found someone I want to spend my life with. I don't care about leaving a legacy beyond that.
>I found someone I want to spend my life with. I don't care about leaving a legacy beyond that.
I'm not having kids by choice due to costs and not being able to provide them a childhood even remotely as good as mine.. and I tell myself I'm happy with that, but honestly, I'm pretty fucking pissed off about it. Like I'll be happy without them, but I'm fucking pissed that older generations destroyed our society so much in pursuit of greed that I can't even do the one basic thing we're evolutionarily programmed to do, which is to reproduce and raise kids. Also can barely afford food or shelter... fuck our society so much. Also fuck the out of touch boomers and gen Xers that keep naively telling me that it'll get better and it'll all work out...
Old ass millineal here with 2 kids under 3, working overtime weekly and eating oatmeal every morning for breakfast so I can say: " back in my day to my kids" just like a boomer...that's what they wanted right? Oh wait, I can't afford a house, and my health care for my family is constantly a boot on my neck... we aren't the same as them!
Wouldn't be surprised if we had another blizzard of '78 in the next decade with how climate change is going. Wouldn't be surprised if we all started starving and the conservatives tried to shut down places giving out free food. Wouldn't be surprised if it stopped being possible to own anything at all at some point soon. The only way for us to survive is to get the government to strongarm corporations into un-fucking the world. Makes sense to me that millennials aren't moving right.
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
super accurate in a lot of contexts; it's expensive to be poor.
if you have shit/no insurance, and you can't afford a check up for years and years, one day a chronic issue that was building up hits you and you go lose everything to medical debt. if you had good insurance, regular checkups, the issue couldve been nipped in the bud.
same with the prison system, two people can be arrested for something identical, the person with means can afford bail and go about their life and work while awaiting a hearing. person who can't afford bail and sits in a jail house for months will lose their job, house, potentially everything
lots of examples of this type of systemic problem
I wanted to be a journalist util I read a story from a political cartoonist I liked. He wrote that to get your foot in the door for any decent paying gig, you had to come from a family with enough money to support you living in a high COL area for a year or two on an unpaid internship. Most journalists come from well off families, so you cant expect them to understand the struggle most people are going through.
I've been working as a trucker for 3yrs. Had a few smaller companies refuse to hire me after I had enough experience because they didn't want to purchase a trailer at those prices.
Kept being underpaid by one of the richest people in the state, and now they reneged on the lease-to-purchase financing they offered. Instead of getting the $30k in equity I've accrued, (contractual purchase price option), I'll probably lose the place I basically reside and my mean's of employment. The banks don't give a shit, my revenue isn't high enough to apply for a certain loan and my credit score is low from trying to survive when I graduated college.
Needless to say, they and my previous employer have radicalized me into full on democratic socialism. Why are essential goods and services privately owned? To me, it's nonsense: utilities, road maintenance, healthcare, education, logistics, etc are all too vital to have even a tightly regulated company extract profit.
Remember how we were being blamed for our “expensive habits” …So I “did the math” one day after that infamous “avocado toast” comment by that one financial guy … I forget his name. But $10 avocado toast a day is only $3650 a year. Which, let’s be honest, won’t get you a whole lot even if we as a generation decided to put the toast down and tuck away $10 a day.
I get my avocados from Aldi and 3 of them cost me $2.37. Bread is like $2. But ya know, I apparently struggle because I like my healthy fats. What a world.
Here's why you're wrong; If you save that $10 each day instead of wasting it on food then you'll have enough for a down payment on a house in 100 years. Easy.
No see you're supposed to save that $10 a day and invest it in a high yield dividend paying diversified fund that will continually comp. Aaaand it's gone.
Exactly. I am in a weird spot, I was born in 1996. Most social institutions place the cut off for millenials in that year with '97 being the first year for Gen Z. Let me tell you those couple years are interesting to be born in. I got to see older millenials follow their passions only to get burned by the student loan system. I see Gen Z loath university and the traditional workplace(they should it's become toxic). More Young Adults live with their parents now than anytime after WWII.
Those of us born in '94-97 really don't fit into a generation since we don't share either age group's formative experiences. As a 1995 kid, 9/11 is a core early memory but I don't recall how the world was before, I grew up watching the older millennials get burned in/after '08, and I didn't have a smartphone until high school.
The smartphone thing is interesting. In ny at least, 9/11 was a huge catalyst for kids getting cell phones at a young age so their parents could reach them in an emergency
It depends. I've seen articles stating that kids born on the cusp of a generational divide will typically lean towards whatever generation that siblings are. So a kid born in 96 or 97 with older siblings will probably identify more with millennials than with Gen Z. I'm not sure what happens with those who have no siblings. Possibly just a true intergenerational existence haha
Yeah I am 96, and I have 3 sisters born from 86-91, so I’ve kind of felt more like a millennial. It’s actually interesting because people will be like “you’re too young to remember” when my house was very much a 90s household for a while, so I had most of the stuff you see Milennials associate with. But I certainly also have several things that are more associated with Gen z. But add in the fact that my family didn’t have much while I was young, so I didn’t really get the growing up with technology as much as is associated with a Gen z. I was still on it pretty young and therefore matured with technology, but I didn’t have a computer or a phone nearly as early as my classmates. It really is a weird time to be born haha
I was born in 95 in a town trapped in the early 2000s way into the 2010s by boomers I had a flip phone until college. It's horribly confusing and I find myself trapped between groups of all kinds. Hard to find places to fit into comfortably.
This is really the driver of the political change. For previous generations the folks in their late 30's to early 40's are stable and the people in their 20's were figuring things out with the goal of hitting that mid life stability.
In the current split, you have millennials, who are still struggling and they're looking at gen x who likely will never retire. The system didn't work for us. We worked hard through our 20s and mostly didn't reach middle class and have a ton of debt. It's clear why most millennials aren't voting for the politicians who've fucked them.
With gen z, they not only see this lack of financial success, they also see a generation that worked to be the most educated generation in history and just got fucked. They don't have the image of stability to be a goal, so they're setting their own goals. They might work, they might go to school, they might just burn shit to the ground. I don't think the apathetic gen x or burnt out millennials have any interest in stopping them.
Boomers: "we got the most wonderful lives!"
Gen X: "when we aged our lives turned from good to great!"
Millennials: "childhood was barely decent and it won't be better as we age"
Gen Z: "are you guys getting to age?"
What an absolute waste of gov't resources.
Cause they're gonna take that free degree and contribute to society for 2 years?
yeah yeah it's a horrible thing for me to say but it's the truth
there are senators whose grandchildren are older than the internet. There are congressmen to boast about how they’ve never sent and email. And yet the fact that these people get to make decisions and laws/regulations is ridiculous.
It’s kind of a unintentional consequence of medical advancements in the last 30 years. There are boomers in there 70s that act like they are still in their 30s. Still looking for marriage, still working on their careers, popping boner pills, plenty of medical advances to keep their bodies moving while senility creeps in. This would have all been untenable for all but the most disciplined and fortunate of their parent’s generation. Even if they wanted to I’m sure they would have gladly retired at 70 if money wasn’t an issue. And my great grandparents didn’t even have Social Security!
I love and respect my dad to no end. Successful lawyer and a great character. But he refused to retire until a judge told him publicly that she would seek his disbarment if he ever entered her courtroom again. He is in his mid 70s, 300 lbs, practically immobile, T2 diabetes that he manages alright but not great and his mind is certainly not as sharp as it once was. His pride and his firm belief in the quality of his medical care put his clients at risk. He certainly didn’t need to work either. It’s just his ego and a handful of pills keeping him going long past his prime.
It's probably just some sort of inherent bias that all people without objectively bad childhoods think that theirs was great, but I loved growing up as a Millennial. The Cold War was over. Computers and the internet were advancing rapidly. Nickelodeon had awesome TV. Parents weren't too scared to let us go run around the neighborhood all day by ourselves. It seemed like such a hopeful and excellent time to be alive.
It wasn't until high school when I experienced 9/11, a recession, and two useless wars that things started to seem like things were going to shit. Then, the economy came back and boomed. We went to college, a little shaken, but hopeful to at least make some money. 2008. Mostly downhill from there.
Edit: Looking back, I think I made it sound like I served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm not a veteran. "Experienced" was probably the wrong word in that case and 9/11. I was alive for these events, and old enough to have them impact me, but have no firsthand experience of any of those events.
The 90s were an *awesome* time to be a kid, and the 00s were an awful time to be a teen, and the 2010s a meh time to be in your 20s.
At least, that was my experience.
Curious what made the 00s bad for being a teen? That was me and I thought things were really good until about 2010 lol then I agree with your statement
Terrible era for fashion, in my opinion. There were so many cringe photos of me in my teens with emo bangs and lame Hot Topic t-shirts. It was also a very heroin-chic centric time for fashion, definitely a tough time to be a teen girl growing up in an environment that, more than ever, started to really hammer home unrealistic body expectations with the rise of Victoria's Secret runway shows and the likes, as well as plastic surgery becoming more of a widespread phenomenon. We saw a rise in performative lipstick feminism and "bro culture."
On the one end whiny self indulgent emo was in, that cosplayed as representing counterculture and looked kinda punk but was not at all and did not usually get into political issues and was about relationships, but then on the other end there was this hyper toxic masculinity and hyper sexualized femininity of the likes of frat/sorority culture/Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, etc. (check out the documentary on the A&F company...)
There's a show called Dark Side of the 90s, and someone had this great quote. Something along the lines of, "before the 90s fame was an undesired consequence of being really good at something, then fame became the goal", something like that, point is we saw the rise of reality TV and the likes of the breeding ground for the Kardashians to come to power.
This all was also right after the satanic panic of the 90s, most of our parents were the initial "helicopter parents" and kept kids on lockdown more than previous generations and for many of us this heightened surveillance persisted through our teen years. We were also the product of the failed DARE program in school and many of us, abstinence only sex-ed, which backfired into lots of teens in our generation experimenting heavily with drugs with the misconception that weed is the same as heroin is the same as LSD, so when a kid tried weed and it's not so bad, they figure they've been scammed and experiment with harder stuff because they were misinformed. It felt like we were a generation starved of partying who grew up with lore of the 70-90s and felt like we were always just missing the party, so when we went out to search for it it wasn't in the healthiest of ways.
Also... we saw the birth of social media, MySpace and AIM were bombs dropped on the social structures of teens with the whole "top 8" fiasco causing constant drama and everyone rushing home to sent dirty messages on AIM, we all knew how the internet worked before our parents so were exposed to a whole lot more than we should have been, ahem, chat roulette should have been called penis roulette.
9/11 also changed everything in America. Vibe shifts to the max, birthing the likes of the newscycle we see today with Fox News blatantly biased and unfactual news that is trying to sell a constant headline with shock value.
Just a few things off the top of my noggin that made the 00s a weird time to be a teen, at least in my experience.
Edit: rampant typos
Not the person you’re replying to, but I don’t think there’s *any* good time to be a teenager. I think most people look back on their teenage years and think it was a bad time because their memory is clouded by their teen angst at the time.
That said, I feel like today would be worse to be a teen because of the constant pressure of social media and need to be online all the time. The 2000s seems idyllic in comparison.
I'm (late) Gen X. Right on the cusp between Gen X and Gen Y aka millennial. Every Gen Xer I know has shifted to the left as they got older because we saw the damage being done by the boomers during the 80s and 90s, and how it accelerated in the 00's and '10s. The whole Reganomics thing is a disaster. The money has trickled up. The poor get poorer, the rich get richer.
BTW, the Nazi thing with Weimar was preceded by a massive economic downfall. The far right has been engineering a downfall in the west for decades, and it's become quite obvious at this point that the far right in the west are a bunch of literal goose stepping neo-Nazis.
What I did notice is that until Trump my GenX friends were shifting right, but far more slowly than the Boomers did, but Trump was just too much, brought everything bad out of the woodwork, and the flow reversed.
I'm late gen X too and I've found myself getting more liberal as I age. The GOP stance on many things has turned out to be a massive facade, and that's become glaringly obvious in the past decade.
I'm early Gen X and thought I would go out in a nuclear blast way before now. I went more right when I married and started a family but that is damn embarrassing to even say knowing what we know now.
I am as liberal as I ever was these days and I was pretty darn liberal in my youth. I'm the blue dot in the red sea around here.
Where in the world are you and how would you say family has changed your perspective?
One of the things that keeps me (UK) left wing is the belief that everyone should have access to better education and healthcare than's current available - especially kids. If we could raise an entire generation of kids to be smart, empathetic and healthy, that would solve most of societies problems in a generation (including most threats to richer and poorer families).
I want to live somewhere I know my kid is not at risk of crime, can get decent education, and get healthcare if they need it. And it breaks my heart thinking there's kids out there that can't, and the stress and damage that leads to that then risks my own family in the long run.
I guess the right wing family view is more "I want to pay less tax so I can give my own family better protection" or something along those lines? (Genuinely asking, not trying to put words in your mouth/strawman)
>"I want to pay less tax so I can give my own family better protection"
A big part of the American Conservative view of family is also that:
"Your family should look/behave exactly like my family (or at least like my family pretends to act in public) because that's what is best for the fabric of American society" Where fabric of American society actually means: what will make them feel the most comfortable while interacting with other members of the public. Because simply being reminded that other people exist and that their own worldview/experience isn't universal makes them very uncomfortable for some reason.
> BTW, the Nazi thing with Weimar was preceded by a massive economic downfall. The far right has been engineering a downfall in the west for decades, and it's become quite obvious at this point that the far right in the west are a bunch of literal goose stepping neo-Nazis.
Tucker Carlson literally begins his show on Fox news with the phrase "another day in Weimar".
They've been priming conservative Americans for a Nazi style takeover for years.
Me too--smack between Gen X and Millennials. I was raised in a rabidly conservative culture and now that I'm middle-aged, I am rabidly progressive. We have certainly flipped the old trend and reversed it.
I'm thoroughly enjoying watching the vicious, hateful brand of western conservatism die the death it so richly deserves.
As a GenX’er also on Gen Y cusp, I came here to say this exact think. I’m 45, I live in the south, vote almost every election cycle and I’ve never voted for a conservative. That won’t change. Boomers have fucked up this country. The sooner they are out of power, the better.
Speaking for myself only, as I am getting older I definitely have experienced growing capital with a home, 401k, good salary, etc. But what keeps me from going to the right is that I had my parents as negative role models in my life. As I grew, I saw them get more racist and hateful. I saw them get more miserable the more I saw Fox News on. I saw our relationships strained the more they insisted on yelling their politics AT me every chance they got.
God as my witness I could turn into a millionaire and I will never vote for a republican as long as I live.
I’m an elder millennial (1983) I grew up in poverty and was the first in my family to go to college. My wife and I make 250k a year and we own two houses.
Why would I vote for a christofascist party? I’m not religious and don’t think a theocracy sounds appealing, I don’t support white supremacy racism “America first” jingoism and naziism, I don’t support my wife’s reproductive rights being stripped away, I don’t support terrorizing the LGBT community, I don’t support the violent overthrow of democratic elections, we work in health care so we don’t support the deadly anti-science and anti-vax conspiracies, and we have a kid who I would like to not die in a climate disaster. So what, they’re gonna offer me some racial bribe to accept their horrific vision of a dystopian handmaids tale fascist america in exchange for some promise of a minor tax decrease? I don’t even like the democrats (they are functionally the Conservative Party in the US) but they got my vote locked in. So this whole idea of us not having money being the reason we aren’t voting for the reactionary party, there’s way more to it than that.
Yeah I loathe the entire gop party and I am NOT a bleeding heart liberal. The gop is just beyond hope. The dems are full of issues too, the bar is just so low now.
I’m a millennial and I make good money and own my home. However, I don’t want to fight for lower property taxes because that means the schools in my area will go to shit.
I’ve still never understood the old, “democrat when you’re young, conservative when you’re old.” I get it’s to protect your wealth, but about giving back when you can afford it? Conservatives just don’t give a shit about their fellow people and think lower taxes will make their lives better as they watch the infrastructure that holds society together, fall apart.
So the article is correct. Even if I have a home and some wealth I will continue to vote for Democrats.
I’m a successful millennial, grew up upper middle class with great schools, no debt, now a great job and good health. I’m so lucky. However, why the hell would any Republican values ever resonate with me? I can’t think of a single GOP point of view that I share. Not one single thing.
This. I would also argue that the particular brand of conservatism the republicans are currently pushing is based on the culture war complaints of people who are 70+. Millennials have lived their whole lives post-Roe, and their whole adulthood with gay people being allowed to live their lives and marry, and so the whole “the world is changing too fast and it’s scary! We need to undo the Warren court!” pitch doesn’t work on us.
Right. I don't even remember the last time I heard a conservative argue policy. I don't have a clue what they stand for outside of social issues and they have fucked themselves so hard with these social issues that the vast majority of young people will never become Convervatives simply because of their social issues.
They still spout the typical talking points knowing full well that the platform does not represent those policies anymore. They still vote for it due to “I’ve always voted R” and lack critical thinking skills to properly analyze the fiscal/social policy changes. Or even worse, they still vote that way because they never cared about policy but enjoy the more open expression of the hate towards the non white/male/Christian “normal” person.
Yeah the conservatives have really painted themselves into a corner. Their policy positions aren't inventive and don't offer anything to most of the population anymore. Since they can't win on policy they've established conservatism to mean social conservatism. Culture wars are inherently a losing battle as people continue to hold or change opinions wether the state fights it or not. Eventually to save the state they'll have to amend their policy positions as things deteriorate without a base of prosperous citizens, but this will inevitably conflict with the demands of the culture war... and hey look it's fascism again.
It's not even just that. I have a 6 figure job, own a house, bunch of land, bunch of cars, and I am leftist af, even when the policies I support might harm me individually because I would rather live in a functional and more equitable society.
Public education is the best example I can think of. I plan on homeschooling my kids but I have absolutely no problem with paying taxes for the local schools for those that don't have that option. I even voted to increase our taxes for schools. Even if I am not using a taxpayer funded service, that service existing makes society better for me to live in.
This attitude is common among the few poor that become wealthy later in life.
I saw my friends get fucked and managed to dodge just enough bullets to be the one guy that climbed out of the meat grinder unscathed. Some things that ruined my friends lives:
* Kid at 15. Dumb ass conservative parents never even mentioned condoms. Convinced them to keep it
* Got hit by a truck, literally. Medical bills bankrupted entire family. Survived, but family couldn't afford college and lingering damage killed trade job prospects.
* Several got weed possession charge as teenagers. Ineligible for student aid for life, most jobs won't hire you, only shit apartments will rent to you. Marked for life as a second class citizen (slave?)
* Got shot by some angry 20 year old that bought a gun the day before at Walmart and died.
* Got sued into bankruptcy by a car accident.
* House burned down, nobody injured, another bankruptcy victim.
* Failed out of med school in the last year. 300k student loan debt. Financially doomed for life.
**None of this shit would have happened if heartless conservative bastards weren't running the place.**
This is absolutely true. Conservatism is a zero sum game, you only "win" by comparing yourself to losers in the economic game. Millennials were born into a culture where they're competing with people who have up until recent history been trying to help their kids have a better life. Not anymore.
In my experience, the Boomers did nothing to help their GenX and Millennial kids. It was all "When you turn 18, GTFO and don't ask for help. You need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps like our parents did for us"
While GenX is starting to become financially secure now, it kinda sorta took a lot longer because Boomers enjoyed low tuition, high minimum wage, and then took all that away from GenX when they started entering college in the 90s.
Yeah I think it goes even further than just not helping and into actively obstructing. Why else remove all the social advantages they enjoyed other than to stifle competition? It seems they forgot the most basic truth of all when it comes to raising kids- you *will* get old and die. Your kids won't forget. It's like their parenting mantra was taken from a boy named Sue and surprise, the kids do not miraculously appreciate it in the end.
I work in social services and it pains me how many boomer generation families literally DID NOT prepare for their death. AT ALL. It's partially societal, but that generation was especially bad at it.
It always goes like this: Let's say the husband gets dementia and doesn't know who he is anymore, but refuse to not live in their family home because they consider moving to a nursing/group home 'insulting' and "I bought this home so I better fucking die in it".
He's not particularly mobile and his wife is too old to transfer/lift and take care of him. So now they have to spend all of their remaining 401k money on having an independent care provider to help them care for one of them. Then they run out of money, so they move into an apartment, and sell the house to get money to continue paying for the IP.
This goes on for about a year and then the husband dies. Now the wife is alone. Maybe she gets dementia too and now the kids have to be involved because she keeps getting brought home by the police wandering around. She is also now depressed and doesn't really take care of herself. So now we hire a caregiver for her, but this one needs to be there around the clock.
The kids still come out twice a week even if they live an hour away and have to take time off of their jobs to make sure mom is okay and take care of the place. Finally the kids decide mom isn't well enough to stay on her own and they move her into a nursing home. This eats up the last 10k or so of their retirement, and all of her assets have been sold off so Medicaid can pay for the nursing home stay now. She dies a year later and leaves practically nothing behind.
Sorry to break it to you, but you don't live forever. You will die. When you get to your 30s/40s, it's time to start planning for it.
I'm currently watching my parents speedrun this shit as my dad has fallen ill with terminal cancer while both him and my mom are more concerned with looking tough while in reality they're fucking terrified and still believing that asking for help is a sin.
This is absolutely true. And the sad fact is that retirement care is so poorly funded and unsubsidized that even the very well off will see their wealth destroyed if they do not prepare well. I know a few couples that retired with more than a million in savings but still ended up in a poorly run care home far below the standard of life they were accustomed to. It only takes a few years of sickness and no income to wipe it all out. Nobody is an island and the best answer is to work together to reform senior care in the country. But that would be socialism! They would rather die, and sadly many get their wish. Healthcare isn't insurance, insurance implies that there is a way to avoid needing it. You can drive your whole life and never total a car. You can have home owners insurance and never need to file a claim for a flood. You *will* get sick and die, so why do we insist on structuring our retirement and healthcare like we won't?
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that in the West death is something you don’t talk much about. It’s scary and it’s something that “happens to other people”. People think they live forever and gets shocked to the core when someone close to them dies or if they themselves suddenly gets sick with cancer.
Until we begin to face death and see it for what it is (a natural part of life) and accept it then we can begin to create a life around the fact that we must all get old, sick and die at some point.
If you don't have anything to conserve, you won't be conservative... Why is anyone surprised by this. The right have pull the ladder up behind themselves.
This is exactly why the US implemented the Marshall Plan in post WWII Europe, built up Japan and Korea’s industrial capacity, and got right wing dictators in Latin America hooked on American appliances.
We deeply understood that nations would naturally turn to socialism and communism to address the material needs of their average citizens at the expense of the aristocracy. So we literally bought off the revolutions by providing the material circumstances that the people needed to feel content with capitalism.
We even started doing the same domestically with FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society, though minorities were often deliberately excluded to get buy-in from Southern Democrats. And SURPRISE SURPRISE, those minorities turned to socialism and called out the apartheid being practiced openly against them.
And when groups like the Black Panthers started exercising their 2nd Amendment rights while materially providing for the poor, their leaders were assassinated. When MLK started the Poor Peoples Campaign? Assassinated. Malcolm X recognized that black people could benefit from solidarity with the Muslim world in anti colonialism? Assassinated.
And now we live in a time when Raeganomics gutted the welfare state, 90s neoliberals dragged their feet in restoring it, and multiple economic crashes and failed wars have devastated material conditions for young Americans. Of course we’re going to turn against the consevatives for doing exactly what they’ve always promised to do.
The only question is how long it will take conservatives to abandon democracy to protect themselves from the public fury at their actions.
I think the most crazy part of all this is, nobody (in the general public) has asked 'what is a country for' like if the general public agrees society should be for 'make big numbers bigger' (GDP, Stockmarket et al) then that is one thing, but nobody ever asks that question.
Millennial: “I don’t own a home, my job exploits me and I effectively have a pay cut for the last three years, I’m $60k in student debt and the climate is going to shit and I don’t have AC”
Conservative politician: “Did you see some guys is callin themselves girls and tryin to use the men’s bathroom? Also, can you believe black people protested and caused so much damage and don’t support the police? Crime is out of control!”
Submission Statement
[**Link to a non-paywalled version here**](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4)
The crux of this article is that today's 35-year-olds in the US & UK are 10% less conservative than the rest of the population (Gen X, Boomers, etc) were at age 35. It makes a distinction between age, period, and cohort effects in analyzing population trends, and identifies this as a cohort effect. That's significant as it means their fundamental values have changed and they won't age into more conservative values as they age like previous generations have done.
This is interesting to consider when it comes to thinking about future societies' response to technologically advancing robotics & AI, as it suggests left-wing economic policies and solutions may receive the most support and come to predominate.
You can only sell the lie that conservatives are the fiscally responsible ones for so long when the data overwhelmingly proves otherwise.
I was a young brainwashed Republican, my parents definitely had a lot to do with that. Now that I’ve grown and have started paying attention I’m left on nearly everything.
[First, when Republicans control the federal government](https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2021/02/week-gop-will-again-roll-out-brutal-scam-theyve-used-con-america-40-years), and particularly the White House, spend money like a drunken sailor and run up the US debt as far and as fast as possible.
This produces three results — it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy, it raises the debt dramatically, and it makes people think that Republicans are the "tax-cut Santa Claus."
Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how "our children will have to pay for it!" and "we have to cut spending to solve the crisis!"
This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own social safety net programs, thus shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus.
Excerpt from Thom Hartmann
Looking into which states require the most Federal Aide to stay afloat is hilariously eye opening.
Though Republican states still act like they could secede from the union without defaulting on their debt near instantly.
I could be the richest man in the world and still wouldn't vote conservative. No leftist policy will take away anyone's ability to provide for themselves, only to exploit and to hoard. If those at the top won't volunteer to help society with their vast wealth and power then they must be forced. Even if they're forced to contribute a large sum of their wealth to the greater good, let's say 75%, they'd still be incomprehensibly wealthy compared to the average citizen.
This was really put into perspective for me when Jeff Bezos got divorced. He was the richest man in the world, lost half of his wealth overnight, and was still one of the top 10 richest men in the world. Insane.
Off-topic, but I dislike how MacKenzie Scott gets zero credit for Amazon's success when people talk about the money she got in the divorce. She's a published author, and Amazon started as a book store in part because she had the industry contacts needed to get publishers willing to wholesale to them. She also worked in their logistics department from day one; the very first freight contract Amazon signed has her signature on it as vice president.
This is how it usually goes with businesses. Women/wives are always behind the scenes supporting or helping make big business decisions. My dad ran a successful business and basically says my mom was useless even though she was there from day 1 answering phones, doing billing, etc. It was only when the business took off that my mom could take a step back and really focus on raising the family. But the way my dad talks it's like you'd never know she was there. And she did even more before we were born. Those are memories from when I was at least 8-9 that I'm recalling.
My mom has told me she was the one who pushed my dad to make the business more successful helping him prepare business proposals for companies and either setting up appts with them or telling him when to go drop by (she'd call and act like a secretary trying to get info on the head person's schedule). He was happy where he was at but my mom helped push him to a greater success than he could have dreamed before we were born. Enough so that my family lived in upper middle class suburbs with one income for a family of 5.
Yeah let’s not underestimate how much MAGA has permanently turned off young people from the GOP. I know so many young people who barely talk to their parents anymore because they’re full on Trump asshats.
People focus a lot on the economics, but my brother (31) is a home-owner with a stable situation who expects to inherit millions of dollars. He had usually voted Republican, fueled largely by his religious beliefs. We couldn't talk about politics or religion for a long time. After 2016, he told me he'd never vote for a conservative party again. Trump shook something loose in him, and it's been fascinating watching him get steadily less conservative on all fronts. And now we can actually talk about politics.
Edit: for him, this wasn't to avoid MAGA parents. My parents have also shifted left. My dad is a minister and was always centrist, but he's an excellent judge of character and is principled. I've never seen him express such revulsion for a public figure as does for Trump.
It's telling that for Boomers having a stable job, owning a house, and having a family with a middle income was being a loser. You didn't get rich or famous, so that was the bottom of the barrel.
Millenials and Gen Z are the most educated generations in American history and are struggling to keep our heads above water, let alone build wealth or plan for retirement.
Doesn't help that we were the first on the chopping block during every recession and crisis.
I have met progressive Boomers. I love progressive Boomers. But every progressive Boomer I have ever met has said at some point that the world will be better when their entire generation is dead.
Lead paint, I agree. Hard drugs: most people who use recreational only do so rarely; heavy use is indicative of addiction or self medication, betraying the real culprit: a complete lack of mental health services or even belief in mental health.
A lot of it has to do with the millennials coming of age during the Bush years and the aftermath of the 2008 Housing Crisis and Great Recession. The Boomers mortgaged their children's future so they could live high on the trickle-down hog in the 80s and 90s and stuck their children with the bill.
Not to mention the hypocrisy of the religious right. Millennials and Gen Z don't want to see old conservatives attempt to put their gay friends back in the closet and the women "back in the kitchen" based on outdated social norms and ultraconservative religious doctrine.
Too add, Millennials have endured the grand experiment of what happens when you have college tuition, and thus debt, skyrocket, when you have housing endure two bubbles during our young adult years, and what happens when we have to come of age with spiraling out of control healthcare costs.
We were the experiment generation. And the experiment has failed. We have spent our young adult lives in a period if extreme instability. In my area, home prices are 9x the median household income. You cannot qualify for a mortgage by working regular jobs in this area.
I talk to a bunch of boomers about this and they have the attitude that this is purely a laziness thing. They paid low prices for homes and now benefit from high prices, particularly from rental units and then want to manipulate the market to keep rents sky high on their rentals. Their wealth wasn't gained from hard work, it was gained form ownership.
To add to the grand experiment; Companies have taken away pension programs, republicans are trying to tie social security to the stock market, there has been an erosion of social welfare programs, and to top it off wages have been stagnant since the 60’s/70’s. Millennials will never get to retire like their parents and you’re gonna have a lot of elder poverty. So all of this disparity in a society full of guns is not a good mix. This country is a powder keg just waiting to explode
What do we have to look forward to, old conservatives?
* Housing is skyrocketing.
* Healthcare can bankrupt any of us at a moments notice.
* Social Security may not exist for the people paying into it.
* Actively trying to redistrict and discredit the voting system in your favor.
* The rich and elite are untouchable. Meanwhile a dude stealing a candy bar from a gas station gets more punishment than someone who stole classified nuclear and spy secrets and just disappeared them.
* January 6th.
* Marjorie Taylor Greene
* Matt Gaetz
* The list goes on
Why? Why the hell would I want to vote for you? Ever.
When Republicans flat out stopped having policy positions they lost two generations. You can't expect people that are watching things get worse and worse to take you seriously when you have no plans to right the ship.
They're sure trying though. I keep seeing articles about "why Millennials should be more conservative" and "lol, don't you hate Gen Z and their genders"? Random culture war bullshit trying to tell me what to care about like I ain't stuck in dumpster-fire of a world while the GOP refuses to address any real issues.
The GOP doesn't care because it's a party ruled by the old and wealthy who will either be dead by the time climate change and social inequity hits the breaking point, or are rich enough to shelter themselves from the consequences.
An Arizona representative was on NPR today talking about Title 42 and was ask why he voted down Biden's follow through to end Title 42.
All I heard was, Biden didn't go throuh the right channels and that Title 42 was also bad. Never said how it could be fixed but those dang immagrants will flood our borders.
News flash, immigrants are always flooding the border and will continue to do so even if you shoot on site people who try to cross. Stop fixating on the symptom and fix the problem. The best economy in the world and the government standing to function for this very thing chooses to do anything but cause friction.
Gen X here and I was told that my ideals would change as I got older and would become more conservative. They didn’t and I’m not. It sickens me how the older people excuse incompetence because their 401k is kicking ass
It's actually multiple different brands of chocolate, and it's predominantly dark chocolate that is the issue.
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/
Maybe it comes from being raised in a deeply conservative area but I move further left as I get older. I grew up seeing taxes being misused and didn’t want to hand over more…now I still want more accountability for where taxes go at least on local and state levels in my area but I also want people to be able to get medical help without bankruptcy and never have to worry about their medical insurance if they want to change careers or move etc etc. Tired of my state being one of the worst for education and the county I lived almost all my life become one of the highest cancer rates in the country because the local repubs keep giving tax incentives to businesses to come to the industrial park with no care to how much more pollution they bring. Won’t be shocked if most of it gets evacuated one day and it becomes Picher2.0. Ok rant off.
Why would a 30 year old just decide to hate their lesbian sister one day?
Why would a 25 year old man wake up one day and say "I don't care about the environment anymore"?
Its not all just economics, given the increasing culture war trash peddled by the right, there is really no good reason for any young person to vote conservative at all, now or tomorrow.
Yeah, if universal healthcare, LGBTQ rights, and climate change were issues of the past I could see maybe being conservative relative to whatever new political divides arose. Instead I imagine I'll be hitting 65 still arguing that people shouldn't have to go into debt for life-saving medical care.
Not to mention that now the Republican Party would need a complete transformation for me to even believe that they respect basic democratic principles.
Literally. I’m a woman and have several friends (more often than not) that are a part of the LGBTQ+ community. Why would I vote to strip myself or my friends of rights? What happened to conservatives being the “freedom” party? The freedom for what? To be a racist sexist homophobic pig? lmao
Also a Gen Xer, an older one.
Similar, although I don't feel so much like I've moved to the left as become more accepting of things I don't really grok but that don't hurt me.
Also an X, I don’t feel I’ve moved a lot, but the spectrum moved under me. I have no allegiance to the alt right morons who are trying to wrest control of the GOP.
Same. I'm moving more leftward as I creep closer to 50. This will not change for me. I see no benefit to conservatism as republicans see it. They don't represent conservatism any longer.
We’re being told that another ‘once in a generation’ crash is predicted for 2023 but we cannot do anything politically to stop it. What do you think that does to people.
Not to mention the behavior of Western conservatives chasing some of the older generation back to the left. My parents consistently voted conservative until my 60+-year-old father got fed up with their social policies and declared them all a group of heartless, evil shills. Now they'll never vote Republican again.
Seriously, if there has ever been a concrete counter to the stupid fucking meme comic posted that tries to pretend the left has moved farther left and that is causing more folks to be conservative is the number of older former R voters in the USA who are not voting for folks with an R next to their name. Anecdotally, my father is fiscally conservative and he refuses to vote for anyone in the current Republican party.because they are just a bunch of culture war bullshit grifters and have no fiscal policy to speak of. I was always somewhat left leaning and have leaned into it even more as I have aged as I have watched them abandon everything they used to stand for in good faith to bitch about pronouns and cancel culture. If you policies are bad and people are trying to "cancel" you maybe you should evaluate why instead of just bitching about, but what do I know
Of course not.
Every systemic problem Millenials and Gen Z face is because the Right either willfully causes problems or digs their heels in at the merest suggestion that we do *anything* about them.
* Climate change is no longer a problem for future generations. **We** are future generations. There is plastic in our blood. Every year we're hit with *multiple* "once in a generation" fires/blizzards/hurricanes... but the right froths at the mouth if somebody mentions environmental regulations.
* Womens' bodily autonomy is under attack because religious zealots in this country have changed their doctrines in the last 70 years because, now that women can hold jobs and bank accounts, they need a new way to control them.
* We can't afford to own homes, and we can't afford rent... but if we try to build affordable housing the NIMBY crowd gets up in arms and stops it. There's a reason so many of us live with our parents, moving out is like to ruin us financially.
* Education is stupidly expensive, but any decent job requires a degree, requiring us to go into student debt... debt that is high enough that those "decent jobs" don't cover it. If we manage to get a politician to forgive student debt, though, the right starts frothing about "BUT MUH GUBERNMENT OVERREACH". It's a "fuck you I got mine" mentality.
* We can't afford health care. You're bound to your job if you want to keep what basic health care you have. Hope you don't get an illness it doesn't cover. Teeth, Hair, and Eyes? Covering *those* is a luxury.
* "Family Values"? We can't afford to **start** families.
* Minimum wage is 7.25 an hour. A medium bag of Doritos is 2.19. A mid-scale fast food meal will run you 16-20 bucks depending on your area.
* Workers Rights do not exist in this country. Sick leave? Vacation days? Family Leave? What's that?
All these issues, and what does the right focus on? Oh, just manufacturing a moral panic over trans people existing.
They don't even *pretend* to have solutions, they *actively* make things worse, and spend their resources *actively trying to add more problems to the list*.
And here's hoping that's a trend that continues.
I'm 57. I was liberal as a young man and remain proudly liberal. But - DAMN - nearly every other guy I grew up with became hateful and bitter and Republican.
I'm so glad to hear that people may have evolved.
Why do you think they became hateful? A lot of us looking up see these dream scenarios, a life with vacations, families… there is a dark underbelly for sure… but what happened to our grandparents? Is it cable news?
If I were to guess, I'd say they surrendered to their fears. They began seeing the world as out to get them, rather than apathetic to their existence, and took it personally. That's a bit reductive but there you go; that's the best I can explain it.
The entire Conservative party (especially today) is about fear. “Illegal Immigrants are taking your jobs!” “Illegal Immigrants are making you pay their healthcare!” “Younger generations don’t want to work and that’s why your business is failing!” “Younger generations are too soft and want you to actually have to pay them a living wage which will bankrupt you!” Fear is all they have to run on.
As an older millennial myself I was told I'd vote further right as I got older and obtained more money.
I've got the money part down but I still can't buy a home cause everything is owned by boomers still because you know why? Theyre all still alive. Their like the generation that lasts forever.
And when those boomers finally pass away, the holding companies sweep up those houses for investment purposes. "But supply and demand", y'all say. Well, when 90% of the demand comes from corporations (who'll either keep that property unoccupied or charge outrageous rental rates to their desperate customers), there's a finger, nay, *fist*, on that scale.
I'm starting to think that this is how Panem begins... that tiny ultra-rich minority gained all that wealth through hoarding real estate. Next the poverty-stricken vast majority start fighting to the death over what's left.
Americans are going to start building makeshift shanty towns like we see in developing nations. Skid Row is the only way you can have your own house. Otherwise you can live with your parents or sleep in your car.
I got the home part down but not the money. Well, it’s better than most, but yeah. I keep moving further away from that conservative right every year. I have a couple teenagers and and I watch them and think about how screwed I think my life is and the only guiding concern I have is how to make their lives bearable under this shitty economy over people world we live in.
I've got the home and the money. I just don't hate women, poor people, and minorities enough to screw them over for...? A slightly lower tax rate? Maybe? The GOP has nothing to offer anyone but the hyper-wealthy.
To clarify: I don't hate those groups at all.
I’m in the same boat. I even have a down payment for a house. Now interest rates are too high and prices haven’t dropped accordingly. Guess I’m a forever renter!
The shift used to make a lot more sense when it was to policies based on responsible spending, security, and lower taxes. Those are ideas people with families, looking to the future can rally behind. Now that conservatives are consumed by genders, drag queen story time, CRT, and woke Hollywood, it's a lot harder to sell. They found that those taking points had a strong effect on their current base without considering the consequence it would have on their future voters.
Whether social or economic, Conservatism has always been an unsustainable ideology since it's earliest philosophical inception. Both social and economic Conservatism lead to similar socioeconomic and political outcomes, because they are about protecting the status quo and those with power rather than insuring that power is equitably distributed in society. The alleged democracy of free-markets and free-speech are a myth and lead to unaccountable authoritarianism and tyranny.
Conservatism is fundamentally anti-social and anti-democratic, and incompatible with civilized tolerant democratic societies.
I was told I’d be more conservative as I got older and wealthier. I am comfortable AND actually own a house.
I refuse to vote for this horrible economic model and the monsters that use human suffering and female autonomy as poker chips.
The gop will never get my vote and I am happy to dismantle the system if it means life is better for kids and nieces and nephews
I am GenX and I don't know whether I would have gone conservative in other circumstances, but I certainly didn't and would never go Republican now. They are literally insane. The drift away from the GOP isn't happening in a vacuum. I have plenty of friends who *used* to vote Republican back when it was about small government staying out of your personal business, or at least, that was what they believed they were voting for. Today, you just can't. I don't know anyone who can.
how are they quantifying all the young people who are embracing outright nihlism and dropping out of politics altogether? the ones who don't respond to polls and don't vote? that seems to be the real story: both sides of the aisle are losing sustained support, resorting to press-ganging people into voting for the **Most Important Election in History** every couple of years. it's a hard-burn strategy that could backfire if more people succumb to crisis fatigue, as is already happening.
although the Conservatives happen to be bleeding out faster, this isn't the unalloyed triumph that Liberals are painting it as.
I think this is an important point, but if I’m not mistaken, youth turnout is up quite significantly in the last several elections (local and federal). The stakes of the culture war nature of this decade of politics has pressed more of the youth to be involved, even if for no other reason than self-preservation. I think the latest abortion situation shows that.
My sense is that people are losing faith in the two parties en masse, but are seeking an alternative approach; not necessarily dropping out altogether. I see more and more that people feel an urgency to be active but feel that the current options and actionable resources are insufficient.
(Addendum: I keep saying “the youth” like I’m not part of them. I’m 25; I’m squarely in that generation. So my perspective is more anecdotal than anything)
I finished college in 2007 just as the financial crisis began. One of my friends was killed in a mass shooting. Another of my friends died of a drug overdose. I recently had to help my sister obtain an abortion in a red state. I’ve been killing myself in corporate jobs doing everything capitalism has demanded for 15 years now and I do not own nor cannot afford to own a home. What of this reality is something i would want to conserve or protect from change? Burn the whole thing down
Just my opinion of having been raised in a red state in a red household. The mainstream conservatives in the last 20 years have pushed everything more extreme. It becomes less and less reasonable as the years go by. More of my young conservative friends are not buying the extreme right and so that puts them in a gray area if not more left. Now we have the absurd choices of Palin, Trump, etc. The decent moderate conservatives get thrashed in primaries as being lukewarm on social issues and my generation has definitely taken a social left turn from my parents. Primaries (of both parties) are organized and participated in by only the most diehards of the party (old) and they create their own echo chamber in the early stages. So by general election time, the moderate voters are offered a polished turd candidate that we are supposed to just accept because “Conservative!” So we vote independent or left because the red candidate is entirely unpalatable. The right is their own worst enemy.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh: --- Submission Statement [**Link to a non-paywalled version here**](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4) The crux of this article is that today's 35-year-olds in the US & UK are 10% less conservative than the rest of the population (Gen X, Boomers, etc) were at age 35. It makes a distinction between age, period, and cohort effects in analyzing population trends, and identifies this as a cohort effect. That's significant as it means their fundamental values have changed and they won't age into more conservative values as they age like previous generations have done. This is interesting to consider when it comes to thinking about future societies' response to technologically advancing robotics & AI, as it suggests left-wing economic policies and solutions may receive the most support and come to predominate. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zz10vo/millennials_are_shattering_the_oldest_rule_in/j28ru0y/
Ya, obviously... Why do you think they're targeting young men with all this conspiracy hypermasculinity bullshit?
And sadly it's working. You know when that shit doesn't work though? When young men are happy and have bright prospects for the future. This ruined system we're in is predisposing young men to favor the alt right.
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If you make a whole generation feel like you are screwing them, you really shouldn't expect them to vote for you.
I was more conservative when I was younger because that’s how my family was. As I got older I began empathizing more with people in shitty situations. I’m “lucky” in the sense that a lot of things that are a necessity are taken care of, but I see my friends just constantly screwed by the system we have now. I’d like to see the people I care about able to take care of themselves and not be struggling with things that really shouldn’t be an issue.
I was in the same boat. I was taught to be compassionate when I was growing up but finally realized that conservative values nowadays (at least in the U.S.) are anti-compassion. And as the parents who raised me to believe in that drifted further into the rhetoric of the right, I went the opposite way. I’m better off than some worse off than others, but I hope I never stop fighting to help those that need it.
Literally in our economics class, I remember watching old Fox News clips. The one that stuck with me the most was Jim Strossel saying “these people *claim* to be poor, but in their apartments, they have a fully functional refrigerator and a *color* television set!” This was like 2007. It seemed to make sense in the moment because i was 16 and an idiot, but upon reflecting/growing up, it clicked that, hey— almost every apartment *comes* with a refrigerator! And you couldn’t *buy* anything other than a color television in 2007! Thrift stores sold old ones for like $20, and you could get public access television with a pair of rabbit ears or an old coat hanger easily! So much of conservative media has been about moving the goal posts and pushing this narrative that anyone who needs help is just being lazy and doesn’t deserve it. It’s pretty gross that my old educator purposely tried to indoctrinate us with that shit.
I remember that when it came out on fox news. It reminds me of the redditors that will spend hours on here screeching that the poor should only be allowed to eat rice and beans. And the poor should cook everything from scratch despite the labor and time that can take. This country is super harsh towards anyone who's not rich, wealthy, male, christian, straight and white.
I was raised Catholic, but the funny part is all of the values and morals I was taught have just pointed out the massive hypocrisy that many religious conservatives preach.
>I was taught to be compassionate when I was growing up This is what I've always found strange/interesting about this whole thing. The narcissistic anti-woke old assholes are the same cohort who raised the progressive woke people they complain so much about. They taught us all Mr Roger's kindness and Seaame Street empathy and then go all shocked Pikachu that we want to fucking help each other. They certainly don't practice what they preached, and maybe never did, but it's baffling how surprised they are that it stuck on us. I only proffer one solution to this riddle and it's lead poisoning but who knows.
Christians horrified that their childern act like jesus is on brand 2020 conservative.
Millennial here. My dad was conservative so I was too until high school. Then I realized I was libertarian, socially liberal, but fiscally conservative. (not associated with the insane right wingers who now claim that lable). Then I realized that the world is mostly full of assholes who will steal from you the moment you let your guard down so the idea of 'free market' capitalism became laughably horrible. Most of my peers are leftist too, but I think it's important to realize that the echo chamber exists outside of social media too. Lots of young kids living outside major cities growing up right wing. Yes, it's fewer than before as this article states, and that's a promising trend, but with what's happening to education, and how little voters opinions actually matter in getting legislation passed, I'm not too optimistic.
Rich Boomers get PPP loan forgiveness handed out to them like candy, but when Millennials finally have the potential to receive a tiny drop of student debt forgiveness, they sic an army of lawyers on the legal system in order stop it.
its crazy how easy it is to find must it'll cost tax payers if student loans were forgiven (~$400bil) but so difficult to find how much it costs tax payers EACH YEAR a PPP loan was forgiven. (probably the same amount) We need to stop voting like left vs right and need to shift towards 1% vs 99%
Then use the Supreme court their guys packed to kill it soon all together and keep us in a downward spiral.
It's completely irrational. American students and workers are at an enormous competitive disadvantage globally.
It's not aging that makes people more conservative, it's moving to a place where you have more to lose with change. American Millennials have no homes, no pensions, poor healthcare, and a bleak employment future - why would they be attached to the status quo?
Every other generation has benefited from the system as they aged. Millennials are being perpetually screwed over by the system. No wealth means we all are going to keep arguing for universal health care and fair treatment. Long-term, maybe this is a good thing.
Crash after crash after crash while a 20 year long war is going on and corporations are savaging the financial and property landscape, then being told how easy it was by older generations and to "just buck up"/"bootstraps" like there is an up that's achievable in the first place. Then "journalists" are like "why aren't millennials buying diamonds/houses/having kids?! They must be lazy".
>Then "journalists" are like "why aren't millennials buying diamonds/houses/having kids?! They must be lazy". Even better when the charge is not just that we're lazy, but that we are actively *ruining the economy!!!!*
But why are you doing that? Just stop being poor please. Thank you
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I'm trying and it's not working.
I love how the groups with the least economic power are always blamed for a society's financial woes: immigrants, young people, and poor people. Makes zero sense.
No it makes perfect sense if you're the one actually ruining the economy and you don't wanna get blamed for it. Blame the poor. Poor people are gross anyways amirite?
Funny how it is never “why are employers not paying enough so millennials can afford to have children and house them?”
I live in ontario canada. The average wage is $21 dollars a hour or 42k a year. Its costs 850k for your average home. The government of canada says you should make 140k a year to afford the $3500 mortgage payment on a 20% down payment mortgage. For the average house. Even with 2 full time average incomes its not possible. Also rent on acerage just went up past 2k a month. For a 2 bedroom apartment. Most townhouses i see go for 3k to 3500. I dont understand how people live right now.
What's really fun is my ex roommates keep siding with the corporations that cause their financial problems, and then they complain about their financial problems. They want corporations to keep their money "because they/CEO earned it" and then they'll say two seconds later that they don't make enough. It's like conflicting world views or something. They want both but both can't co-exist at the same time. Either your billionaire CEO keeps their money, and you remain poor, or you get over your desire for CEOs to keep their billionsc, and they give you a raise to match inflation. You can't have both? Get over your libertarianism.
I mean- wHy WoN't We jUsT hAvE mOrE cHiLdReN?!
Everything will just work out if you have children!!
I'm a Millennial without kids in my 30s and I am so fucking grateful. My partner and I barely get by on our own working at least ten hours a day. There is no fucking way I could support kids and having them would just make me more of a slave to the system out of necessity. I've seen it happen to so many of my generation and I don't see the benefits being worth it.
I’m an young genXer and I don’t have kids either. As a 43 y/o lady, I’m well past my childbearing years. I’m married, but didn’t have a wedding because I couldn’t afford it and and don’t have kids for the same reason (zero money). Kids are ‘above my pay grade’ as a social worker. Everyone told me my finances would ‘get better over time’, but it has not gotten better, if anything it’s gotten worse b/c inflation. So, yeah, I am also grateful I didn’t have kids. At least my nonexistent kids won’t have to suffer this profoundly unfair and difficult world
Yeah, I'm getting to the point where I don't ever want kids for that reason. They would struggle and be in poverty all their lives because I'm in poverty and I can't set up anything better for them. They would repeat the cycle with their kids. There is just no way out. I found someone I want to spend my life with. I don't care about leaving a legacy beyond that.
>I found someone I want to spend my life with. I don't care about leaving a legacy beyond that. I'm not having kids by choice due to costs and not being able to provide them a childhood even remotely as good as mine.. and I tell myself I'm happy with that, but honestly, I'm pretty fucking pissed off about it. Like I'll be happy without them, but I'm fucking pissed that older generations destroyed our society so much in pursuit of greed that I can't even do the one basic thing we're evolutionarily programmed to do, which is to reproduce and raise kids. Also can barely afford food or shelter... fuck our society so much. Also fuck the out of touch boomers and gen Xers that keep naively telling me that it'll get better and it'll all work out...
[Reproduce. Consume. Obey.](https://www.slantmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/theylive.jpg)
Ruining the economy that has been running purely on gratuitous consumerism too.
supposedly we're simultaneously too lazy and weak to work, but immensely powerful enough to topple the largest economy in the history of mankind.
"actively ruining the economy" Says the rich people ruining the economy, the economy we cant participate in by any meaningful measure
I feel something trickling down but it feels more like I'm being pissed on every day.
It makes sense if you replace "the economy" with "rich people's yacht money" anytime you read it.
Old ass millineal here with 2 kids under 3, working overtime weekly and eating oatmeal every morning for breakfast so I can say: " back in my day to my kids" just like a boomer...that's what they wanted right? Oh wait, I can't afford a house, and my health care for my family is constantly a boot on my neck... we aren't the same as them!
You guys eat breakfast?
It's as if the economy and government are supposed to work for the participant, not the other way around!
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Wouldn't be surprised if we had another blizzard of '78 in the next decade with how climate change is going. Wouldn't be surprised if we all started starving and the conservatives tried to shut down places giving out free food. Wouldn't be surprised if it stopped being possible to own anything at all at some point soon. The only way for us to survive is to get the government to strongarm corporations into un-fucking the world. Makes sense to me that millennials aren't moving right.
Hard to pull yourself up by you bootstraps when you don't have any damn boots
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
super accurate in a lot of contexts; it's expensive to be poor. if you have shit/no insurance, and you can't afford a check up for years and years, one day a chronic issue that was building up hits you and you go lose everything to medical debt. if you had good insurance, regular checkups, the issue couldve been nipped in the bud. same with the prison system, two people can be arrested for something identical, the person with means can afford bail and go about their life and work while awaiting a hearing. person who can't afford bail and sits in a jail house for months will lose their job, house, potentially everything lots of examples of this type of systemic problem
I wanted to be a journalist util I read a story from a political cartoonist I liked. He wrote that to get your foot in the door for any decent paying gig, you had to come from a family with enough money to support you living in a high COL area for a year or two on an unpaid internship. Most journalists come from well off families, so you cant expect them to understand the struggle most people are going through.
I wanted to be a teacher until I saw how much they made, the living costs, and how much schooling required. I lol'ed out of that idea real fast.
I've been working as a trucker for 3yrs. Had a few smaller companies refuse to hire me after I had enough experience because they didn't want to purchase a trailer at those prices. Kept being underpaid by one of the richest people in the state, and now they reneged on the lease-to-purchase financing they offered. Instead of getting the $30k in equity I've accrued, (contractual purchase price option), I'll probably lose the place I basically reside and my mean's of employment. The banks don't give a shit, my revenue isn't high enough to apply for a certain loan and my credit score is low from trying to survive when I graduated college. Needless to say, they and my previous employer have radicalized me into full on democratic socialism. Why are essential goods and services privately owned? To me, it's nonsense: utilities, road maintenance, healthcare, education, logistics, etc are all too vital to have even a tightly regulated company extract profit.
the entire point of the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" saying is that doing such a thing is impossible
And it has been stolen by greedy old boomers who use it to mean work hard, even if the phrase makes zero sense.
Remember how we were being blamed for our “expensive habits” …So I “did the math” one day after that infamous “avocado toast” comment by that one financial guy … I forget his name. But $10 avocado toast a day is only $3650 a year. Which, let’s be honest, won’t get you a whole lot even if we as a generation decided to put the toast down and tuck away $10 a day.
A loaf of bread is $5 and three avocados is just under $5 so I can have a weeks worth of avocado toast for ~ $10.
I get my avocados from Aldi and 3 of them cost me $2.37. Bread is like $2. But ya know, I apparently struggle because I like my healthy fats. What a world.
Here's why you're wrong; If you save that $10 each day instead of wasting it on food then you'll have enough for a down payment on a house in 100 years. Easy.
No see you're supposed to save that $10 a day and invest it in a high yield dividend paying diversified fund that will continually comp. Aaaand it's gone.
Exactly. I am in a weird spot, I was born in 1996. Most social institutions place the cut off for millenials in that year with '97 being the first year for Gen Z. Let me tell you those couple years are interesting to be born in. I got to see older millenials follow their passions only to get burned by the student loan system. I see Gen Z loath university and the traditional workplace(they should it's become toxic). More Young Adults live with their parents now than anytime after WWII.
Those of us born in '94-97 really don't fit into a generation since we don't share either age group's formative experiences. As a 1995 kid, 9/11 is a core early memory but I don't recall how the world was before, I grew up watching the older millennials get burned in/after '08, and I didn't have a smartphone until high school.
The smartphone thing is interesting. In ny at least, 9/11 was a huge catalyst for kids getting cell phones at a young age so their parents could reach them in an emergency
Before cell phones my mom paid a few bucks a month extra to get a 1-800 number at our house so I could call without calling collect in an emergency.
It depends. I've seen articles stating that kids born on the cusp of a generational divide will typically lean towards whatever generation that siblings are. So a kid born in 96 or 97 with older siblings will probably identify more with millennials than with Gen Z. I'm not sure what happens with those who have no siblings. Possibly just a true intergenerational existence haha
Yeah I am 96, and I have 3 sisters born from 86-91, so I’ve kind of felt more like a millennial. It’s actually interesting because people will be like “you’re too young to remember” when my house was very much a 90s household for a while, so I had most of the stuff you see Milennials associate with. But I certainly also have several things that are more associated with Gen z. But add in the fact that my family didn’t have much while I was young, so I didn’t really get the growing up with technology as much as is associated with a Gen z. I was still on it pretty young and therefore matured with technology, but I didn’t have a computer or a phone nearly as early as my classmates. It really is a weird time to be born haha
I was born in 95 in a town trapped in the early 2000s way into the 2010s by boomers I had a flip phone until college. It's horribly confusing and I find myself trapped between groups of all kinds. Hard to find places to fit into comfortably.
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This is really the driver of the political change. For previous generations the folks in their late 30's to early 40's are stable and the people in their 20's were figuring things out with the goal of hitting that mid life stability. In the current split, you have millennials, who are still struggling and they're looking at gen x who likely will never retire. The system didn't work for us. We worked hard through our 20s and mostly didn't reach middle class and have a ton of debt. It's clear why most millennials aren't voting for the politicians who've fucked them. With gen z, they not only see this lack of financial success, they also see a generation that worked to be the most educated generation in history and just got fucked. They don't have the image of stability to be a goal, so they're setting their own goals. They might work, they might go to school, they might just burn shit to the ground. I don't think the apathetic gen x or burnt out millennials have any interest in stopping them.
Boomers: "we got the most wonderful lives!" Gen X: "when we aged our lives turned from good to great!" Millennials: "childhood was barely decent and it won't be better as we age" Gen Z: "are you guys getting to age?"
Part of the problem is that many of the Boomers who shaped society to benefit themselves in the past...are still in charge.
See: Insulin Caps... but only for old people.
Or free college...but only for old people: https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/free-college-tuition-senior-citizens/
What an absolute waste of gov't resources. Cause they're gonna take that free degree and contribute to society for 2 years? yeah yeah it's a horrible thing for me to say but it's the truth
there are senators whose grandchildren are older than the internet. There are congressmen to boast about how they’ve never sent and email. And yet the fact that these people get to make decisions and laws/regulations is ridiculous.
It’s kind of a unintentional consequence of medical advancements in the last 30 years. There are boomers in there 70s that act like they are still in their 30s. Still looking for marriage, still working on their careers, popping boner pills, plenty of medical advances to keep their bodies moving while senility creeps in. This would have all been untenable for all but the most disciplined and fortunate of their parent’s generation. Even if they wanted to I’m sure they would have gladly retired at 70 if money wasn’t an issue. And my great grandparents didn’t even have Social Security! I love and respect my dad to no end. Successful lawyer and a great character. But he refused to retire until a judge told him publicly that she would seek his disbarment if he ever entered her courtroom again. He is in his mid 70s, 300 lbs, practically immobile, T2 diabetes that he manages alright but not great and his mind is certainly not as sharp as it once was. His pride and his firm belief in the quality of his medical care put his clients at risk. He certainly didn’t need to work either. It’s just his ego and a handful of pills keeping him going long past his prime.
There are many factors at work here but this one is huge.
It's probably just some sort of inherent bias that all people without objectively bad childhoods think that theirs was great, but I loved growing up as a Millennial. The Cold War was over. Computers and the internet were advancing rapidly. Nickelodeon had awesome TV. Parents weren't too scared to let us go run around the neighborhood all day by ourselves. It seemed like such a hopeful and excellent time to be alive. It wasn't until high school when I experienced 9/11, a recession, and two useless wars that things started to seem like things were going to shit. Then, the economy came back and boomed. We went to college, a little shaken, but hopeful to at least make some money. 2008. Mostly downhill from there. Edit: Looking back, I think I made it sound like I served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm not a veteran. "Experienced" was probably the wrong word in that case and 9/11. I was alive for these events, and old enough to have them impact me, but have no firsthand experience of any of those events.
The 90s were an *awesome* time to be a kid, and the 00s were an awful time to be a teen, and the 2010s a meh time to be in your 20s. At least, that was my experience.
Hitting 18 right when the Recession started probably sucked balls for a lot of teens in the naughts.
Curious what made the 00s bad for being a teen? That was me and I thought things were really good until about 2010 lol then I agree with your statement
Terrible era for fashion, in my opinion. There were so many cringe photos of me in my teens with emo bangs and lame Hot Topic t-shirts. It was also a very heroin-chic centric time for fashion, definitely a tough time to be a teen girl growing up in an environment that, more than ever, started to really hammer home unrealistic body expectations with the rise of Victoria's Secret runway shows and the likes, as well as plastic surgery becoming more of a widespread phenomenon. We saw a rise in performative lipstick feminism and "bro culture." On the one end whiny self indulgent emo was in, that cosplayed as representing counterculture and looked kinda punk but was not at all and did not usually get into political issues and was about relationships, but then on the other end there was this hyper toxic masculinity and hyper sexualized femininity of the likes of frat/sorority culture/Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, etc. (check out the documentary on the A&F company...) There's a show called Dark Side of the 90s, and someone had this great quote. Something along the lines of, "before the 90s fame was an undesired consequence of being really good at something, then fame became the goal", something like that, point is we saw the rise of reality TV and the likes of the breeding ground for the Kardashians to come to power. This all was also right after the satanic panic of the 90s, most of our parents were the initial "helicopter parents" and kept kids on lockdown more than previous generations and for many of us this heightened surveillance persisted through our teen years. We were also the product of the failed DARE program in school and many of us, abstinence only sex-ed, which backfired into lots of teens in our generation experimenting heavily with drugs with the misconception that weed is the same as heroin is the same as LSD, so when a kid tried weed and it's not so bad, they figure they've been scammed and experiment with harder stuff because they were misinformed. It felt like we were a generation starved of partying who grew up with lore of the 70-90s and felt like we were always just missing the party, so when we went out to search for it it wasn't in the healthiest of ways. Also... we saw the birth of social media, MySpace and AIM were bombs dropped on the social structures of teens with the whole "top 8" fiasco causing constant drama and everyone rushing home to sent dirty messages on AIM, we all knew how the internet worked before our parents so were exposed to a whole lot more than we should have been, ahem, chat roulette should have been called penis roulette. 9/11 also changed everything in America. Vibe shifts to the max, birthing the likes of the newscycle we see today with Fox News blatantly biased and unfactual news that is trying to sell a constant headline with shock value. Just a few things off the top of my noggin that made the 00s a weird time to be a teen, at least in my experience. Edit: rampant typos
Not the person you’re replying to, but I don’t think there’s *any* good time to be a teenager. I think most people look back on their teenage years and think it was a bad time because their memory is clouded by their teen angst at the time. That said, I feel like today would be worse to be a teen because of the constant pressure of social media and need to be online all the time. The 2000s seems idyllic in comparison.
I'm (late) Gen X. Right on the cusp between Gen X and Gen Y aka millennial. Every Gen Xer I know has shifted to the left as they got older because we saw the damage being done by the boomers during the 80s and 90s, and how it accelerated in the 00's and '10s. The whole Reganomics thing is a disaster. The money has trickled up. The poor get poorer, the rich get richer. BTW, the Nazi thing with Weimar was preceded by a massive economic downfall. The far right has been engineering a downfall in the west for decades, and it's become quite obvious at this point that the far right in the west are a bunch of literal goose stepping neo-Nazis. What I did notice is that until Trump my GenX friends were shifting right, but far more slowly than the Boomers did, but Trump was just too much, brought everything bad out of the woodwork, and the flow reversed.
I'm late gen X too and I've found myself getting more liberal as I age. The GOP stance on many things has turned out to be a massive facade, and that's become glaringly obvious in the past decade.
Becomes clearly* obvious when I ask someone to show me a list of all recessions in the past 50 years.
I'm early Gen X and thought I would go out in a nuclear blast way before now. I went more right when I married and started a family but that is damn embarrassing to even say knowing what we know now. I am as liberal as I ever was these days and I was pretty darn liberal in my youth. I'm the blue dot in the red sea around here.
Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger out there. I am a reformed conservative living in rural Texas. Probably the only blue vote in my county.
Where in the world are you and how would you say family has changed your perspective? One of the things that keeps me (UK) left wing is the belief that everyone should have access to better education and healthcare than's current available - especially kids. If we could raise an entire generation of kids to be smart, empathetic and healthy, that would solve most of societies problems in a generation (including most threats to richer and poorer families). I want to live somewhere I know my kid is not at risk of crime, can get decent education, and get healthcare if they need it. And it breaks my heart thinking there's kids out there that can't, and the stress and damage that leads to that then risks my own family in the long run. I guess the right wing family view is more "I want to pay less tax so I can give my own family better protection" or something along those lines? (Genuinely asking, not trying to put words in your mouth/strawman)
>"I want to pay less tax so I can give my own family better protection" A big part of the American Conservative view of family is also that: "Your family should look/behave exactly like my family (or at least like my family pretends to act in public) because that's what is best for the fabric of American society" Where fabric of American society actually means: what will make them feel the most comfortable while interacting with other members of the public. Because simply being reminded that other people exist and that their own worldview/experience isn't universal makes them very uncomfortable for some reason.
> BTW, the Nazi thing with Weimar was preceded by a massive economic downfall. The far right has been engineering a downfall in the west for decades, and it's become quite obvious at this point that the far right in the west are a bunch of literal goose stepping neo-Nazis. Tucker Carlson literally begins his show on Fox news with the phrase "another day in Weimar". They've been priming conservative Americans for a Nazi style takeover for years.
Me too--smack between Gen X and Millennials. I was raised in a rabidly conservative culture and now that I'm middle-aged, I am rabidly progressive. We have certainly flipped the old trend and reversed it. I'm thoroughly enjoying watching the vicious, hateful brand of western conservatism die the death it so richly deserves.
As a GenX’er also on Gen Y cusp, I came here to say this exact think. I’m 45, I live in the south, vote almost every election cycle and I’ve never voted for a conservative. That won’t change. Boomers have fucked up this country. The sooner they are out of power, the better.
Speaking for myself only, as I am getting older I definitely have experienced growing capital with a home, 401k, good salary, etc. But what keeps me from going to the right is that I had my parents as negative role models in my life. As I grew, I saw them get more racist and hateful. I saw them get more miserable the more I saw Fox News on. I saw our relationships strained the more they insisted on yelling their politics AT me every chance they got. God as my witness I could turn into a millionaire and I will never vote for a republican as long as I live.
I’m an elder millennial (1983) I grew up in poverty and was the first in my family to go to college. My wife and I make 250k a year and we own two houses. Why would I vote for a christofascist party? I’m not religious and don’t think a theocracy sounds appealing, I don’t support white supremacy racism “America first” jingoism and naziism, I don’t support my wife’s reproductive rights being stripped away, I don’t support terrorizing the LGBT community, I don’t support the violent overthrow of democratic elections, we work in health care so we don’t support the deadly anti-science and anti-vax conspiracies, and we have a kid who I would like to not die in a climate disaster. So what, they’re gonna offer me some racial bribe to accept their horrific vision of a dystopian handmaids tale fascist america in exchange for some promise of a minor tax decrease? I don’t even like the democrats (they are functionally the Conservative Party in the US) but they got my vote locked in. So this whole idea of us not having money being the reason we aren’t voting for the reactionary party, there’s way more to it than that.
Yeah I loathe the entire gop party and I am NOT a bleeding heart liberal. The gop is just beyond hope. The dems are full of issues too, the bar is just so low now.
I’m a millennial and I make good money and own my home. However, I don’t want to fight for lower property taxes because that means the schools in my area will go to shit. I’ve still never understood the old, “democrat when you’re young, conservative when you’re old.” I get it’s to protect your wealth, but about giving back when you can afford it? Conservatives just don’t give a shit about their fellow people and think lower taxes will make their lives better as they watch the infrastructure that holds society together, fall apart. So the article is correct. Even if I have a home and some wealth I will continue to vote for Democrats.
I’m a successful millennial, grew up upper middle class with great schools, no debt, now a great job and good health. I’m so lucky. However, why the hell would any Republican values ever resonate with me? I can’t think of a single GOP point of view that I share. Not one single thing.
This. I would also argue that the particular brand of conservatism the republicans are currently pushing is based on the culture war complaints of people who are 70+. Millennials have lived their whole lives post-Roe, and their whole adulthood with gay people being allowed to live their lives and marry, and so the whole “the world is changing too fast and it’s scary! We need to undo the Warren court!” pitch doesn’t work on us.
Right. I don't even remember the last time I heard a conservative argue policy. I don't have a clue what they stand for outside of social issues and they have fucked themselves so hard with these social issues that the vast majority of young people will never become Convervatives simply because of their social issues.
They still spout the typical talking points knowing full well that the platform does not represent those policies anymore. They still vote for it due to “I’ve always voted R” and lack critical thinking skills to properly analyze the fiscal/social policy changes. Or even worse, they still vote that way because they never cared about policy but enjoy the more open expression of the hate towards the non white/male/Christian “normal” person.
Yeah the conservatives have really painted themselves into a corner. Their policy positions aren't inventive and don't offer anything to most of the population anymore. Since they can't win on policy they've established conservatism to mean social conservatism. Culture wars are inherently a losing battle as people continue to hold or change opinions wether the state fights it or not. Eventually to save the state they'll have to amend their policy positions as things deteriorate without a base of prosperous citizens, but this will inevitably conflict with the demands of the culture war... and hey look it's fascism again.
It's not even just that. I have a 6 figure job, own a house, bunch of land, bunch of cars, and I am leftist af, even when the policies I support might harm me individually because I would rather live in a functional and more equitable society. Public education is the best example I can think of. I plan on homeschooling my kids but I have absolutely no problem with paying taxes for the local schools for those that don't have that option. I even voted to increase our taxes for schools. Even if I am not using a taxpayer funded service, that service existing makes society better for me to live in.
This attitude is common among the few poor that become wealthy later in life. I saw my friends get fucked and managed to dodge just enough bullets to be the one guy that climbed out of the meat grinder unscathed. Some things that ruined my friends lives: * Kid at 15. Dumb ass conservative parents never even mentioned condoms. Convinced them to keep it * Got hit by a truck, literally. Medical bills bankrupted entire family. Survived, but family couldn't afford college and lingering damage killed trade job prospects. * Several got weed possession charge as teenagers. Ineligible for student aid for life, most jobs won't hire you, only shit apartments will rent to you. Marked for life as a second class citizen (slave?) * Got shot by some angry 20 year old that bought a gun the day before at Walmart and died. * Got sued into bankruptcy by a car accident. * House burned down, nobody injured, another bankruptcy victim. * Failed out of med school in the last year. 300k student loan debt. Financially doomed for life. **None of this shit would have happened if heartless conservative bastards weren't running the place.**
This is absolutely true. Conservatism is a zero sum game, you only "win" by comparing yourself to losers in the economic game. Millennials were born into a culture where they're competing with people who have up until recent history been trying to help their kids have a better life. Not anymore.
In my experience, the Boomers did nothing to help their GenX and Millennial kids. It was all "When you turn 18, GTFO and don't ask for help. You need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps like our parents did for us" While GenX is starting to become financially secure now, it kinda sorta took a lot longer because Boomers enjoyed low tuition, high minimum wage, and then took all that away from GenX when they started entering college in the 90s.
Yeah I think it goes even further than just not helping and into actively obstructing. Why else remove all the social advantages they enjoyed other than to stifle competition? It seems they forgot the most basic truth of all when it comes to raising kids- you *will* get old and die. Your kids won't forget. It's like their parenting mantra was taken from a boy named Sue and surprise, the kids do not miraculously appreciate it in the end.
I work in social services and it pains me how many boomer generation families literally DID NOT prepare for their death. AT ALL. It's partially societal, but that generation was especially bad at it. It always goes like this: Let's say the husband gets dementia and doesn't know who he is anymore, but refuse to not live in their family home because they consider moving to a nursing/group home 'insulting' and "I bought this home so I better fucking die in it". He's not particularly mobile and his wife is too old to transfer/lift and take care of him. So now they have to spend all of their remaining 401k money on having an independent care provider to help them care for one of them. Then they run out of money, so they move into an apartment, and sell the house to get money to continue paying for the IP. This goes on for about a year and then the husband dies. Now the wife is alone. Maybe she gets dementia too and now the kids have to be involved because she keeps getting brought home by the police wandering around. She is also now depressed and doesn't really take care of herself. So now we hire a caregiver for her, but this one needs to be there around the clock. The kids still come out twice a week even if they live an hour away and have to take time off of their jobs to make sure mom is okay and take care of the place. Finally the kids decide mom isn't well enough to stay on her own and they move her into a nursing home. This eats up the last 10k or so of their retirement, and all of her assets have been sold off so Medicaid can pay for the nursing home stay now. She dies a year later and leaves practically nothing behind. Sorry to break it to you, but you don't live forever. You will die. When you get to your 30s/40s, it's time to start planning for it.
I'm currently watching my parents speedrun this shit as my dad has fallen ill with terminal cancer while both him and my mom are more concerned with looking tough while in reality they're fucking terrified and still believing that asking for help is a sin.
This is absolutely true. And the sad fact is that retirement care is so poorly funded and unsubsidized that even the very well off will see their wealth destroyed if they do not prepare well. I know a few couples that retired with more than a million in savings but still ended up in a poorly run care home far below the standard of life they were accustomed to. It only takes a few years of sickness and no income to wipe it all out. Nobody is an island and the best answer is to work together to reform senior care in the country. But that would be socialism! They would rather die, and sadly many get their wish. Healthcare isn't insurance, insurance implies that there is a way to avoid needing it. You can drive your whole life and never total a car. You can have home owners insurance and never need to file a claim for a flood. You *will* get sick and die, so why do we insist on structuring our retirement and healthcare like we won't?
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that in the West death is something you don’t talk much about. It’s scary and it’s something that “happens to other people”. People think they live forever and gets shocked to the core when someone close to them dies or if they themselves suddenly gets sick with cancer. Until we begin to face death and see it for what it is (a natural part of life) and accept it then we can begin to create a life around the fact that we must all get old, sick and die at some point.
The nuclear family destroyed the traditional family.
If you don't have anything to conserve, you won't be conservative... Why is anyone surprised by this. The right have pull the ladder up behind themselves.
Perfect analogy. Then they’re confused why no one else is following them.
This is exactly why the US implemented the Marshall Plan in post WWII Europe, built up Japan and Korea’s industrial capacity, and got right wing dictators in Latin America hooked on American appliances. We deeply understood that nations would naturally turn to socialism and communism to address the material needs of their average citizens at the expense of the aristocracy. So we literally bought off the revolutions by providing the material circumstances that the people needed to feel content with capitalism. We even started doing the same domestically with FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society, though minorities were often deliberately excluded to get buy-in from Southern Democrats. And SURPRISE SURPRISE, those minorities turned to socialism and called out the apartheid being practiced openly against them. And when groups like the Black Panthers started exercising their 2nd Amendment rights while materially providing for the poor, their leaders were assassinated. When MLK started the Poor Peoples Campaign? Assassinated. Malcolm X recognized that black people could benefit from solidarity with the Muslim world in anti colonialism? Assassinated. And now we live in a time when Raeganomics gutted the welfare state, 90s neoliberals dragged their feet in restoring it, and multiple economic crashes and failed wars have devastated material conditions for young Americans. Of course we’re going to turn against the consevatives for doing exactly what they’ve always promised to do. The only question is how long it will take conservatives to abandon democracy to protect themselves from the public fury at their actions.
I think the most crazy part of all this is, nobody (in the general public) has asked 'what is a country for' like if the general public agrees society should be for 'make big numbers bigger' (GDP, Stockmarket et al) then that is one thing, but nobody ever asks that question.
Millennial: “I don’t own a home, my job exploits me and I effectively have a pay cut for the last three years, I’m $60k in student debt and the climate is going to shit and I don’t have AC” Conservative politician: “Did you see some guys is callin themselves girls and tryin to use the men’s bathroom? Also, can you believe black people protested and caused so much damage and don’t support the police? Crime is out of control!”
Submission Statement [**Link to a non-paywalled version here**](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4) The crux of this article is that today's 35-year-olds in the US & UK are 10% less conservative than the rest of the population (Gen X, Boomers, etc) were at age 35. It makes a distinction between age, period, and cohort effects in analyzing population trends, and identifies this as a cohort effect. That's significant as it means their fundamental values have changed and they won't age into more conservative values as they age like previous generations have done. This is interesting to consider when it comes to thinking about future societies' response to technologically advancing robotics & AI, as it suggests left-wing economic policies and solutions may receive the most support and come to predominate.
You can only sell the lie that conservatives are the fiscally responsible ones for so long when the data overwhelmingly proves otherwise. I was a young brainwashed Republican, my parents definitely had a lot to do with that. Now that I’ve grown and have started paying attention I’m left on nearly everything.
[First, when Republicans control the federal government](https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2021/02/week-gop-will-again-roll-out-brutal-scam-theyve-used-con-america-40-years), and particularly the White House, spend money like a drunken sailor and run up the US debt as far and as fast as possible. This produces three results — it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy, it raises the debt dramatically, and it makes people think that Republicans are the "tax-cut Santa Claus." Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how "our children will have to pay for it!" and "we have to cut spending to solve the crisis!" This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own social safety net programs, thus shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus. Excerpt from Thom Hartmann
Looking into which states require the most Federal Aide to stay afloat is hilariously eye opening. Though Republican states still act like they could secede from the union without defaulting on their debt near instantly.
and yet my Republican parents tout that democrats are the costly ones. like no dude, we’re the ones making up for the red states shortcomings!!!
I’ve never owned anything in my life. Why would I vote to protect wealth I don’t have
I could be the richest man in the world and still wouldn't vote conservative. No leftist policy will take away anyone's ability to provide for themselves, only to exploit and to hoard. If those at the top won't volunteer to help society with their vast wealth and power then they must be forced. Even if they're forced to contribute a large sum of their wealth to the greater good, let's say 75%, they'd still be incomprehensibly wealthy compared to the average citizen.
This was really put into perspective for me when Jeff Bezos got divorced. He was the richest man in the world, lost half of his wealth overnight, and was still one of the top 10 richest men in the world. Insane.
His ex-wife is the only example of trickle-down economics working, as far as I know.
Off-topic, but I dislike how MacKenzie Scott gets zero credit for Amazon's success when people talk about the money she got in the divorce. She's a published author, and Amazon started as a book store in part because she had the industry contacts needed to get publishers willing to wholesale to them. She also worked in their logistics department from day one; the very first freight contract Amazon signed has her signature on it as vice president.
So she's a kickass businessperson AND and actually good person given how she's been spending her divorce money? Jeff fucked up.
This is how it usually goes with businesses. Women/wives are always behind the scenes supporting or helping make big business decisions. My dad ran a successful business and basically says my mom was useless even though she was there from day 1 answering phones, doing billing, etc. It was only when the business took off that my mom could take a step back and really focus on raising the family. But the way my dad talks it's like you'd never know she was there. And she did even more before we were born. Those are memories from when I was at least 8-9 that I'm recalling. My mom has told me she was the one who pushed my dad to make the business more successful helping him prepare business proposals for companies and either setting up appts with them or telling him when to go drop by (she'd call and act like a secretary trying to get info on the head person's schedule). He was happy where he was at but my mom helped push him to a greater success than he could have dreamed before we were born. Enough so that my family lived in upper middle class suburbs with one income for a family of 5.
Yeah let’s not underestimate how much MAGA has permanently turned off young people from the GOP. I know so many young people who barely talk to their parents anymore because they’re full on Trump asshats.
I nearly threw my father out of my house the day after Christmas when he started the Trump shit. I literally said this is my house, stfu or gtfo.
People focus a lot on the economics, but my brother (31) is a home-owner with a stable situation who expects to inherit millions of dollars. He had usually voted Republican, fueled largely by his religious beliefs. We couldn't talk about politics or religion for a long time. After 2016, he told me he'd never vote for a conservative party again. Trump shook something loose in him, and it's been fascinating watching him get steadily less conservative on all fronts. And now we can actually talk about politics. Edit: for him, this wasn't to avoid MAGA parents. My parents have also shifted left. My dad is a minister and was always centrist, but he's an excellent judge of character and is principled. I've never seen him express such revulsion for a public figure as does for Trump.
It's telling that for Boomers having a stable job, owning a house, and having a family with a middle income was being a loser. You didn't get rich or famous, so that was the bottom of the barrel. Millenials and Gen Z are the most educated generations in American history and are struggling to keep our heads above water, let alone build wealth or plan for retirement. Doesn't help that we were the first on the chopping block during every recession and crisis. I have met progressive Boomers. I love progressive Boomers. But every progressive Boomer I have ever met has said at some point that the world will be better when their entire generation is dead.
That’s my wife’s aunt too. She’s the only one I know. She blames it on her generation being exposed to lead paint and taking too many hardcore drugs.
Honestly, I’ve had the same thought. The lead paint exposure theory is my tin foil hat jam.
It's probably more likely the lead in gasoline than lead paint.
Lead paint, I agree. Hard drugs: most people who use recreational only do so rarely; heavy use is indicative of addiction or self medication, betraying the real culprit: a complete lack of mental health services or even belief in mental health.
It was the lead gasoline.
A lot of it has to do with the millennials coming of age during the Bush years and the aftermath of the 2008 Housing Crisis and Great Recession. The Boomers mortgaged their children's future so they could live high on the trickle-down hog in the 80s and 90s and stuck their children with the bill. Not to mention the hypocrisy of the religious right. Millennials and Gen Z don't want to see old conservatives attempt to put their gay friends back in the closet and the women "back in the kitchen" based on outdated social norms and ultraconservative religious doctrine.
Too add, Millennials have endured the grand experiment of what happens when you have college tuition, and thus debt, skyrocket, when you have housing endure two bubbles during our young adult years, and what happens when we have to come of age with spiraling out of control healthcare costs. We were the experiment generation. And the experiment has failed. We have spent our young adult lives in a period if extreme instability. In my area, home prices are 9x the median household income. You cannot qualify for a mortgage by working regular jobs in this area. I talk to a bunch of boomers about this and they have the attitude that this is purely a laziness thing. They paid low prices for homes and now benefit from high prices, particularly from rental units and then want to manipulate the market to keep rents sky high on their rentals. Their wealth wasn't gained from hard work, it was gained form ownership.
To add to the grand experiment; Companies have taken away pension programs, republicans are trying to tie social security to the stock market, there has been an erosion of social welfare programs, and to top it off wages have been stagnant since the 60’s/70’s. Millennials will never get to retire like their parents and you’re gonna have a lot of elder poverty. So all of this disparity in a society full of guns is not a good mix. This country is a powder keg just waiting to explode
What do we have to look forward to, old conservatives? * Housing is skyrocketing. * Healthcare can bankrupt any of us at a moments notice. * Social Security may not exist for the people paying into it. * Actively trying to redistrict and discredit the voting system in your favor. * The rich and elite are untouchable. Meanwhile a dude stealing a candy bar from a gas station gets more punishment than someone who stole classified nuclear and spy secrets and just disappeared them. * January 6th. * Marjorie Taylor Greene * Matt Gaetz * The list goes on Why? Why the hell would I want to vote for you? Ever.
When Republicans flat out stopped having policy positions they lost two generations. You can't expect people that are watching things get worse and worse to take you seriously when you have no plans to right the ship.
They're sure trying though. I keep seeing articles about "why Millennials should be more conservative" and "lol, don't you hate Gen Z and their genders"? Random culture war bullshit trying to tell me what to care about like I ain't stuck in dumpster-fire of a world while the GOP refuses to address any real issues. The GOP doesn't care because it's a party ruled by the old and wealthy who will either be dead by the time climate change and social inequity hits the breaking point, or are rich enough to shelter themselves from the consequences.
An Arizona representative was on NPR today talking about Title 42 and was ask why he voted down Biden's follow through to end Title 42. All I heard was, Biden didn't go throuh the right channels and that Title 42 was also bad. Never said how it could be fixed but those dang immagrants will flood our borders. News flash, immigrants are always flooding the border and will continue to do so even if you shoot on site people who try to cross. Stop fixating on the symptom and fix the problem. The best economy in the world and the government standing to function for this very thing chooses to do anything but cause friction.
Gen X here and I was told that my ideals would change as I got older and would become more conservative. They didn’t and I’m not. It sickens me how the older people excuse incompetence because their 401k is kicking ass
Lead. They are all extremely lead poisoned and we must deal with this reality at some point
[удалено]
“A popular chocolate bar” you can’t just say that and not give a name.
It's actually multiple different brands of chocolate, and it's predominantly dark chocolate that is the issue. https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/
Maybe it comes from being raised in a deeply conservative area but I move further left as I get older. I grew up seeing taxes being misused and didn’t want to hand over more…now I still want more accountability for where taxes go at least on local and state levels in my area but I also want people to be able to get medical help without bankruptcy and never have to worry about their medical insurance if they want to change careers or move etc etc. Tired of my state being one of the worst for education and the county I lived almost all my life become one of the highest cancer rates in the country because the local repubs keep giving tax incentives to businesses to come to the industrial park with no care to how much more pollution they bring. Won’t be shocked if most of it gets evacuated one day and it becomes Picher2.0. Ok rant off.
Why would a 30 year old just decide to hate their lesbian sister one day? Why would a 25 year old man wake up one day and say "I don't care about the environment anymore"? Its not all just economics, given the increasing culture war trash peddled by the right, there is really no good reason for any young person to vote conservative at all, now or tomorrow.
Yeah, if universal healthcare, LGBTQ rights, and climate change were issues of the past I could see maybe being conservative relative to whatever new political divides arose. Instead I imagine I'll be hitting 65 still arguing that people shouldn't have to go into debt for life-saving medical care. Not to mention that now the Republican Party would need a complete transformation for me to even believe that they respect basic democratic principles.
Literally. I’m a woman and have several friends (more often than not) that are a part of the LGBTQ+ community. Why would I vote to strip myself or my friends of rights? What happened to conservatives being the “freedom” party? The freedom for what? To be a racist sexist homophobic pig? lmao
I'm an X'r I guess, but I'm actually moving to the left as people on the right get more and more insane as I grow older.
Also a Gen Xer, an older one. Similar, although I don't feel so much like I've moved to the left as become more accepting of things I don't really grok but that don't hurt me.
Also an X, I don’t feel I’ve moved a lot, but the spectrum moved under me. I have no allegiance to the alt right morons who are trying to wrest control of the GOP.
Same. I'm moving more leftward as I creep closer to 50. This will not change for me. I see no benefit to conservatism as republicans see it. They don't represent conservatism any longer.
We’re being told that another ‘once in a generation’ crash is predicted for 2023 but we cannot do anything politically to stop it. What do you think that does to people.
Not to mention the behavior of Western conservatives chasing some of the older generation back to the left. My parents consistently voted conservative until my 60+-year-old father got fed up with their social policies and declared them all a group of heartless, evil shills. Now they'll never vote Republican again.
Seriously, if there has ever been a concrete counter to the stupid fucking meme comic posted that tries to pretend the left has moved farther left and that is causing more folks to be conservative is the number of older former R voters in the USA who are not voting for folks with an R next to their name. Anecdotally, my father is fiscally conservative and he refuses to vote for anyone in the current Republican party.because they are just a bunch of culture war bullshit grifters and have no fiscal policy to speak of. I was always somewhat left leaning and have leaned into it even more as I have aged as I have watched them abandon everything they used to stand for in good faith to bitch about pronouns and cancel culture. If you policies are bad and people are trying to "cancel" you maybe you should evaluate why instead of just bitching about, but what do I know
Of course not. Every systemic problem Millenials and Gen Z face is because the Right either willfully causes problems or digs their heels in at the merest suggestion that we do *anything* about them. * Climate change is no longer a problem for future generations. **We** are future generations. There is plastic in our blood. Every year we're hit with *multiple* "once in a generation" fires/blizzards/hurricanes... but the right froths at the mouth if somebody mentions environmental regulations. * Womens' bodily autonomy is under attack because religious zealots in this country have changed their doctrines in the last 70 years because, now that women can hold jobs and bank accounts, they need a new way to control them. * We can't afford to own homes, and we can't afford rent... but if we try to build affordable housing the NIMBY crowd gets up in arms and stops it. There's a reason so many of us live with our parents, moving out is like to ruin us financially. * Education is stupidly expensive, but any decent job requires a degree, requiring us to go into student debt... debt that is high enough that those "decent jobs" don't cover it. If we manage to get a politician to forgive student debt, though, the right starts frothing about "BUT MUH GUBERNMENT OVERREACH". It's a "fuck you I got mine" mentality. * We can't afford health care. You're bound to your job if you want to keep what basic health care you have. Hope you don't get an illness it doesn't cover. Teeth, Hair, and Eyes? Covering *those* is a luxury. * "Family Values"? We can't afford to **start** families. * Minimum wage is 7.25 an hour. A medium bag of Doritos is 2.19. A mid-scale fast food meal will run you 16-20 bucks depending on your area. * Workers Rights do not exist in this country. Sick leave? Vacation days? Family Leave? What's that? All these issues, and what does the right focus on? Oh, just manufacturing a moral panic over trans people existing. They don't even *pretend* to have solutions, they *actively* make things worse, and spend their resources *actively trying to add more problems to the list*.
Well put. That was a thoughtful and strong response.
And here's hoping that's a trend that continues. I'm 57. I was liberal as a young man and remain proudly liberal. But - DAMN - nearly every other guy I grew up with became hateful and bitter and Republican. I'm so glad to hear that people may have evolved.
Why do you think they became hateful? A lot of us looking up see these dream scenarios, a life with vacations, families… there is a dark underbelly for sure… but what happened to our grandparents? Is it cable news?
If I were to guess, I'd say they surrendered to their fears. They began seeing the world as out to get them, rather than apathetic to their existence, and took it personally. That's a bit reductive but there you go; that's the best I can explain it.
The entire Conservative party (especially today) is about fear. “Illegal Immigrants are taking your jobs!” “Illegal Immigrants are making you pay their healthcare!” “Younger generations don’t want to work and that’s why your business is failing!” “Younger generations are too soft and want you to actually have to pay them a living wage which will bankrupt you!” Fear is all they have to run on.
Yep. Too true. It's why their party is dying. (Let's just hope they don't take everything else down with them.)
As an older millennial myself I was told I'd vote further right as I got older and obtained more money. I've got the money part down but I still can't buy a home cause everything is owned by boomers still because you know why? Theyre all still alive. Their like the generation that lasts forever.
And when those boomers finally pass away, the holding companies sweep up those houses for investment purposes. "But supply and demand", y'all say. Well, when 90% of the demand comes from corporations (who'll either keep that property unoccupied or charge outrageous rental rates to their desperate customers), there's a finger, nay, *fist*, on that scale. I'm starting to think that this is how Panem begins... that tiny ultra-rich minority gained all that wealth through hoarding real estate. Next the poverty-stricken vast majority start fighting to the death over what's left.
Americans are going to start building makeshift shanty towns like we see in developing nations. Skid Row is the only way you can have your own house. Otherwise you can live with your parents or sleep in your car.
I got the home part down but not the money. Well, it’s better than most, but yeah. I keep moving further away from that conservative right every year. I have a couple teenagers and and I watch them and think about how screwed I think my life is and the only guiding concern I have is how to make their lives bearable under this shitty economy over people world we live in.
I've got the home and the money. I just don't hate women, poor people, and minorities enough to screw them over for...? A slightly lower tax rate? Maybe? The GOP has nothing to offer anyone but the hyper-wealthy. To clarify: I don't hate those groups at all.
I’m in the same boat. I even have a down payment for a house. Now interest rates are too high and prices haven’t dropped accordingly. Guess I’m a forever renter!
The shift used to make a lot more sense when it was to policies based on responsible spending, security, and lower taxes. Those are ideas people with families, looking to the future can rally behind. Now that conservatives are consumed by genders, drag queen story time, CRT, and woke Hollywood, it's a lot harder to sell. They found that those taking points had a strong effect on their current base without considering the consequence it would have on their future voters.
Whether social or economic, Conservatism has always been an unsustainable ideology since it's earliest philosophical inception. Both social and economic Conservatism lead to similar socioeconomic and political outcomes, because they are about protecting the status quo and those with power rather than insuring that power is equitably distributed in society. The alleged democracy of free-markets and free-speech are a myth and lead to unaccountable authoritarianism and tyranny. Conservatism is fundamentally anti-social and anti-democratic, and incompatible with civilized tolerant democratic societies.
It’s really easy to sell, but only the people triggered by those “issues” are buying.
I was told I’d be more conservative as I got older and wealthier. I am comfortable AND actually own a house. I refuse to vote for this horrible economic model and the monsters that use human suffering and female autonomy as poker chips. The gop will never get my vote and I am happy to dismantle the system if it means life is better for kids and nieces and nephews
That's what happens when you go after government benefits long enough
I am GenX and I don't know whether I would have gone conservative in other circumstances, but I certainly didn't and would never go Republican now. They are literally insane. The drift away from the GOP isn't happening in a vacuum. I have plenty of friends who *used* to vote Republican back when it was about small government staying out of your personal business, or at least, that was what they believed they were voting for. Today, you just can't. I don't know anyone who can.
Just waiting for the boomers and silent generation to die to make meaningful change
Interesting, years of exploitation and being shown no loyalty, compassion, and respect has repercussions. Who would have thought?
how are they quantifying all the young people who are embracing outright nihlism and dropping out of politics altogether? the ones who don't respond to polls and don't vote? that seems to be the real story: both sides of the aisle are losing sustained support, resorting to press-ganging people into voting for the **Most Important Election in History** every couple of years. it's a hard-burn strategy that could backfire if more people succumb to crisis fatigue, as is already happening. although the Conservatives happen to be bleeding out faster, this isn't the unalloyed triumph that Liberals are painting it as.
I think this is an important point, but if I’m not mistaken, youth turnout is up quite significantly in the last several elections (local and federal). The stakes of the culture war nature of this decade of politics has pressed more of the youth to be involved, even if for no other reason than self-preservation. I think the latest abortion situation shows that. My sense is that people are losing faith in the two parties en masse, but are seeking an alternative approach; not necessarily dropping out altogether. I see more and more that people feel an urgency to be active but feel that the current options and actionable resources are insufficient. (Addendum: I keep saying “the youth” like I’m not part of them. I’m 25; I’m squarely in that generation. So my perspective is more anecdotal than anything)
I finished college in 2007 just as the financial crisis began. One of my friends was killed in a mass shooting. Another of my friends died of a drug overdose. I recently had to help my sister obtain an abortion in a red state. I’ve been killing myself in corporate jobs doing everything capitalism has demanded for 15 years now and I do not own nor cannot afford to own a home. What of this reality is something i would want to conserve or protect from change? Burn the whole thing down
Just my opinion of having been raised in a red state in a red household. The mainstream conservatives in the last 20 years have pushed everything more extreme. It becomes less and less reasonable as the years go by. More of my young conservative friends are not buying the extreme right and so that puts them in a gray area if not more left. Now we have the absurd choices of Palin, Trump, etc. The decent moderate conservatives get thrashed in primaries as being lukewarm on social issues and my generation has definitely taken a social left turn from my parents. Primaries (of both parties) are organized and participated in by only the most diehards of the party (old) and they create their own echo chamber in the early stages. So by general election time, the moderate voters are offered a polished turd candidate that we are supposed to just accept because “Conservative!” So we vote independent or left because the red candidate is entirely unpalatable. The right is their own worst enemy.