From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   How to Talk to Millennials About Capitalism   
   Polls show that young people embrace socialism—but they also distrust   
   government regulation and admire entrepreneurialism and small business.   
   by Edward L. Glaeser, Spring 2019, City Journal   
      
   For generations, younger Americans found Communists just as scary as Count   
   Dracula, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Darth Vader. Socialism, so strongly   
   associated with Marx and Lenin, never caught on in the United States. To   
   modern millennials, however,   
    fear of socialism seems as ancient as a rotary phone. In March 2019, Axios   
   released results from a Harris poll showing that about half of millennial and   
   Generation Z respondents believed that “our economy should be mostly   
   socialist.” That result is    
   no outlier, but rather a consistent finding over recent years. In 2018, Gallup   
   found that 51% of 18- to 29-year-old Americans view socialism favorably; only   
   45% look at capitalism positively. An August 2018 YouGov poll revealed that   
   only 30% of 18- to 29-   
   year-olds had good feelings toward capitalism, while 35% regarded socialism   
   positively. Bernie Sanders, an avowed Democratic Socialist, nearly captured   
   the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, thanks in part to youth   
   support. Another Democratic    
   Socialist, newly elected House member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York,   
   herself a millennial, has achieved overnight celebrity, accumulating more than   
   3 million Twitter followers while trumpeting a 70% marginal tax rate.   
      
   Just 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, how can socialism have   
   made such a comeback? The likeliest answer: the Great Recession left   
   millennials looking for alternatives to capitalism, without the Cold War   
   ideological guideposts that    
   positioned older generations. Both the Right and the Left have redefined   
   socialism, moreover, so that many young supporters now think that it just   
   means a cuddlier, more equitable government.   
      
   Yet even if socialism has been redefined, its rising approval among the young   
   is still a problem for proponents of economic liberty. For decades, apostles   
   of free markets could condemn bad economic ideas merely by branding them   
   “socialist,” because    
   real-world Marxists did such a good job of showing how much evil could radiate   
   from a state-controlled economy. But those negative examples are mostly   
   vanquished now. The task ahead is to convince today’s young people that   
   society requires liberty as    
   well as compassion. The private ingenuity that generates new products and new   
   jobs needs both incentives and reasonable regulation. If our current politics   
   tell us anything, it is that this case must be made again, with arguments that   
   resonate among    
   Americans who’ve probably never heard of Lavrentiy Beria.   
      
   In 2009, Fox News host Sean Hannity mocked the Obama administration’s vast   
   stimulus bill as “the European Socialist Act of 2009.” Hannity joined a   
   long line of conservative critics who’ve hurled the term “socialism” at   
   liberal opponents,    
   seeking to discredit their plans to expand government. Hannity’s tag   
   didn’t derail the stimulus, of course, and a week later, a Newsweek cover   
   story blared: “We are all socialists now,” heralding a new era of   
   government intervention in the    
   economy. That headline to Jon Meacham’s nearly decade-old story is even   
   truer today, as those recent poll numbers of younger Americans suggest.   
      
   The trend line is striking. Gallup polling data show that the share of   
   Democrats holding a positive view of socialism increased from 53% in 2010 to   
   57% in 2018, while the share who held a positive view of capitalism fell from   
   53% to 47%. The shift is    
   particularly dramatic among the young. In 2010, according to Gallup, 68% of   
   18- to 29-year-old Americans felt favorably toward capitalism; 51% felt   
   favorably toward socialism. Eight years later, only 45% of that age group view   
   capitalism positively,    
   while 51% still liked socialism. YouGov polling found even starker figures,   
   with just 39% of 18- to 29-year-olds viewing capitalism favorably in 2015; by   
   2018, that figure had fallen to 30%. The comparable numbers for those over 65:   
   59% and 56%. The    
   figures differ from poll to poll, but the direction is clear: for millennials,   
   “socialism” is a viable option.   
      
   Socialism’s comeback has been helped along by a change in meaning.   
   Merriam-Webster defines socialism as “any of various economic and political   
   theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of   
   the means of production and    
   distribution of goods”—pretty much the traditional meaning of the term.   
   The 1912 election was the high-water mark for American socialism in this   
   sense, with Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Debs winning 6% of   
   the popular vote. That year,    
   the party’s platform called for “collective ownership and democratic   
   management of railroads, wire and wireless telegraphs, express service,   
   steamboat lines, and all other social means of transportation and   
   communication and of all large scale    
   industries”—as well as the banking and currency system and land, too,   
   “wherever practicable.” In a 1949 Gallup poll, 46% of Americans with an   
   opinion on socialism thought that it meant government ownership or control of   
   business.   
      
   In 2018, by contrast, Gallup found that only 22% of respondents understood   
   socialism to mean government control. Thirty percent thought socialism meant   
   equality, and another 13% equated it with benefits and services, like free   
   medicine. Three times as    
   many Democratic and Democratic-leaning respondents thought socialism meant   
   either equality or free benefits and services than thought it meant government   
   control.   
      
   If socialism is just about higher tax rates and more generous health care,   
   then perhaps the cause of freedom doesn’t have much to fear. Few of the new   
   socialists seem to want industries nationalized outright. Ocasio-Cortez’s   
   preferred marginal tax    
   rates are lower than those that President Dwight Eisenhower—a    
   epublican—found acceptable.   
      
      
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