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Fewer Than Half of Young Americans Are Positive About Capitalism (cnbc.com)
gollum123 writes: According to a new poll from Gallup, young Americans are souring on capitalism. Less than half, 45 percent, view capitalism positively. "This represents a 12-point decline in young adults' positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68 percent viewed it positively," notes Gallup, which defines young Americans as those aged 18 to 29. Meanwhile, 51 percent of young people are positive about socialism. This age group's "views of socialism have fluctuated somewhat from year to year," reports Gallup, "but the 51 percent with a positive view today is the same as in 2010."
liberalism is not about socialism. here in the USA there is lots of socialism for the government hating conservatives. Free money for farmers, unending highway construction and expansion when public transit is cheaper, socialism for rural airports with no real flights, government bailouts when property rights idiots build in flood zones in houston and then run to the government to rebuild their homes, socialism for police and prison unions and corporations via sending people to jail for minor crimes, etc.
Its not the liberals protesting legalization of marijuana. It's the conservatives and police who will see a reduction in their jobs
.....or maybe there's a generation of people who don't blindly accept what they're told and question things, apply logic/reason, and think objectively.
It's quite obvious that most core ideas underlying (free market) capitalism also fail, just like socialism has in the past. That's why over the years, governments and their people stepped in to make modifications (e.g., welfare capitalism). Many existing models have pretty huge flaws. Take the US for example where capital accumulation continues indefinitely leading to higher and higher concentrations of wealth. One obvious issue here is this then shifts social power to the wealthy through governmental manipulation.
While it's true most modern day capitalistic economics work better than other models we've seen in the past, that doesn't mean it will continue indefinitely and it certainly doesn't mean we have the "be-all-end-all-model." Thinking we do is both ignorant and arrogant.
We also need to revisit the social contract as to what a society expects by agreeing to fall into a governmental system. It's quite obvious people aren't happy with the current social contract because most citizens are falling further and further into losing their half, so to speak. As such. they're rightfully upset. Now, we can both agree socialism isn't the answer but our current frame of capitalism isn't the answer either and it needs some changes to give people what they rightfully deserve.
Capitalism is bad at:
No where on earth is there a purely capitalist society outside of complete anarchy (e.g. Somalia). Once a government is established, the first thing it does is socialize something: defense.
Some other things most countries socialize:
Education is a prime example of capitalism dealing poorly with long time horizons. If we took loans out to pay for our entire education, it would be 20 years before we could make the first payment. Most debt is expected to be paid off in less than 30 years.
In terms of natural resources, the value placed on them is based on the labor required to extract them. However, air requires minimal labor to extract. You do it every time you breath. Because of this, we have subconsciously, and collectively agreed that no one owns the air. It is shared by all of us as a community. It's a communist system.
In summary, capitalism is a tool in our economic system, that works along side socialism and communism to get resources to people that need them. The trick is choosing the correct tool for the task!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Eh.... I'm very curious as to precisely how the poll was conducted. This is one of those things where the precise wording is important, and the subject is vulnerable to a lot of bias.
As an example, I will use my own views. I'm well aware of how poorly socialism has fared historically, but I'm also aware of how the implementation of socialist ideals has always been hindered by human corruption and greed, just as those same vices have caused inequality and suffering in capitalist societies. If I were asked whether I'd want to live under a socialist government, my response would be a resounding "no".
However, if asked whether I would be in favor of socialism as a legislative doctrine, I would have to answer "yes". I have seen significant evidence that governmental structure can actually run social services decently, if the human corruption can be adequately checked in the system design. Philosophically, I believe that we as a society should work to support the whole society, rather than seeking personal hegemony.
To borrow a phrase, capitalism is the worst system, except for everything else we've tried. There are certainly some good ideas in socialist systems, but they rely on an awful lot of trust. Capitalism assumes no trust, but brings its own collection of faults. I think an ideal system would draw on both ideologies (and others), with careful thought toward how the system can be exploited in the future.
One way that balance can be acheived is by using technology to monitor and control governmental services, filling the role that bureaucracy does today. It is much easier to design a "fair" computer than it is to ask a human to be "fair", because it's relatively straightforward to have computers explicitly ignore certain input.
That means we need to educate our children not just on civics, but on security, philosophy, history, and technology, as well.... We're doomed.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
That's an oversimplified description. Socialism isn't just that the government owns the means of production, but also that it is responsible for the distribution of the produced goods and services. Since that's also the much larger and more difficult part of the philosophy, it's also the part that should be discussed most thoroughly.
In essence, any government that collects taxes already has a government-owned means of production. The government produces tax income. How it then uses those taxes is the subject of endless debate, and those of us who want a bit more socialism want to see distributions that focus on the socialist philosophies. We want to see less focus on propping up private industry, and more focus on community projects. We want less subsidies for corporate expansion, and more grants for anyone to claim.
In short, the socialist influence the young people look for is for government to aim to improve life outside of work, rather than dumping resources into privately-managed companies that have primarily just increased inequality over the past few decades.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I was a die-hard conservative at 20. At 38, Iâ(TM)m pretty liberal.
I make plenty and own my home mortgage-free, but too much of the country is getting the short end of the stick.
I followed the same path- only less extreme. I've gone from right of centre to left of centre (stayed pretty centrist over all- even now).
I probably didn't have much of a heart at 20. I was pretty cold and rational. Getting older, being married, experiencing life, having children, I realised there is more to life than money and society matters. I gained empathy with age whereas many people get jaded and lose empathy.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Don't forget they protect that debt so that not even bankruptcy can discharge it.
They saw a problem (cost to do college was getting a bit too high and becoming too needed) and inadvertently poured gasoline on the problem by triggering a huge escalation of cost through trying to provide relief while compromising with the private sector (you can spend government money and the debts *will* be repaid, but the government will not step in to negotiate terms because *that* would just not be capitalist enough).
The state of college funding represents the worst blend of capitalism and government intervention. More government control over pricing or less government meddling in the loans would likely work better.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I feel that capitalism works well for economy building,
Correct. Capitalism serves the needs of the masses so long as you are experiencing significant growth. When the growth slows or stops, as it must if we are to avoid destruction of the biosphere upon which we depend, pure capitalism has run its course. At that point, [more] socialism is needed in order to serve the masses, who are no longer offered a share of excess.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And yet, if you ask young people about this, they see that Denmark and similar countries have high living standards and rank at the top for happiness. Meanwhile in the US they see poverty, a massive gap between rich and poor, unaffordable education, unaffordable housing, unaffordable health care, and so forth. So is it any surprise that when given the poll that young people think about these issues?
Taxes are a matter of perspective. We tend to hate our relatively low taxes in the US because we see so littlle in return for our money, whereas in many high tax countries thre is a visible return of services back to the tax payers.
And also there are extremes. Denmark isn't engaged in autocratic centralized control of all facets of the economy. Yet some people spit at the word "socialism" as if it were equivalent to Stalinism or Maoism. We also don't have an extremist model of capitalism in the US either. Most modern countries are indeed a mix of some capitalist ideas and some socialist ideas. Denmark is clearly a capitalist state but it also has had social-democrat governments with strong social welfare programs - it's not 100% one way or the other.
Another problem is that "socialism" is being used by the right as an insult to apply to anything they don't like, exactly the same as the left using "fascism" to apply to anything they disagree with.
I'm leaning toward simply being wrong and away from being outright-evil, aside from a few specific cases of pathological psychopaths who probably also believe themselves to be the great visionaries who are doing what is necessary.
Economics sounds like bullshit when it's correct. Microeconomics shows you can escape poverty by going out, working hard, and starting a business. Macroeconomics shows jobs come from consumer demand, and opening a business in a poverty area either won't work or will take jobs away from other people in that area and cause no net-gain of jobs. Macroeconomics also shows bringing jobs back to America by closing off trade results in huge losses of American jobs as you open a factory for 50,000 workers making a good at a higher price than the 150,000,000 American workers were paying, ultimately losing shipping and retail jobs, resulting in poorer Americans overall and 90,000 jobs lost, a net 40,000 loss in American jobs.
When you work out the economics, you find that social welfare programs make the economy overall more-productive, stabilizing the consumer base and increasing revenue streams. Those higher taxes on the rich end up making the rich richer, and giving money to poor and unemployed people causes them to get jobs. If you don't work out the whole economic machine, it all looks obviously wrong.
I assume that conservatives are in general just wrong about things, not pretending they believe in bullshit economics about tax cuts and eliminating welfare.
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All of you here on Slashdot came from privileged backgrounds.
Really? My parents qualified for foodstamps when I was a child. I qualified for foodstamps twice as an adult. I got a college education, but I lived at home, worked a job, and paid 100% of my tuition myself (it was possible because I did it before the massive tuition inflation took hold). I didn't even get any grants. Just student loans, which took the full 10 years to pay off thanks to the DotBomb.
I know, everyone thinks that got where they are by 100% of their own efforts but if you were truly honest with yourselves, you'd realize how lucky you are.
Lucky? If I was lucky, I'd be a rockstar, live in hilltop houses, drivin' fifteen cars, and the girls would come easy and the drugs would come cheap.
Instead I live in suburbia. I have the suburban lawn and the two car garage my parents had (most of the time).
Having said all that, I'll respond to the GGP post. People are not liberal at 25. People are what their parents were when they're 25. You get your politics from your parents as assuredly as you get your religion from them. It takes time to shuck either one of them off and learn enough to know better. Me, I'm over 40 now, and like the sibling post, my house is paid off. And I'm fairly liberal too, especially because I know damn well social services are good and useful because I used them, for a while, and if the hard-scrabble all-consequences-are-yours-alone-to-deal-with "conservative" assholes had their way, I'd have starved to death at 27. It's a stupid fucking philosophy that would result in enormous amounts of preventable tragedy, for no benefit whatsoever, and humanity has never ever pursued it, in all of history, because humans have empathy, and these sociopathic little shits should stop wishing for people to get what they deserve—they just might get theirs.
There's a hugely bizarre attitude toward "socialized medicine." In a capitalist country, one can argue having the LARGEST number of people healthy and able to work is best for the economy, so EVERYONE should have access to healthcare. Not unreasonable. One of the problems we have with medicine is that it's outrageously expensive for no reason why anyone can, or will, tell. Why? Why should a 2 day hospital stay where the only thing you get is 6 IVs of (not expensive) drugs over that time cost almost 20K? Why? When the room isn't clean, and you question whether the staff have adequately washed hands before coming in, etc. Capitalism should encourage efficiency and all I see in healthcare is...the opposite.
I am curious about how other age ranges feel about capitalism right now too.
The funny thing is that capitalism is still the best method for managing resources since the inputs and outputs are decentralized; however, once everything gets centralized like it is right now, I would have to ask if it is really capitalism or if it has morphed into something else.
TL;DR, asking today's youth about capitalism is absurd since we do not really have capitalism right now. Maybe a form of corporate fascism since companies seem to be able to buy laws with impunity.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen