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| Emily Ekins, |
Millennials are the
only age group in America in which a majority views socialism favorably. A
national Reason-Rupe survey found that 53 percent of Americans under 30 have a
favorable view of socialism compared with less than a third of those over 30.
Moreover, Gallup has found that an astounding 69 percent of millennials say
they'd be willing to vote for a "socialist" candidate for president —
among their parents' generation, only a third would do so. Indeed, national
polls and exit polls reveal that about 70 to 80 percent of young Democrats are
casting their ballots for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who calls
himself a "democratic socialist."
By Emily Ekins, The
Washington Post For Blog of Juan Pardo
Yet millennials tend to
reject the actual definition of socialism — government ownership of the means
of production, or government running businesses. Only 32 percent of millennials
favor "an economy managed by the government," while, similar to older
generations, 64 percent prefer a free-market economy. And as millennials age
and begin to earn more, their socialistic ideals seem to slip away.
So what does socialism
actually mean to millennials? Scandinavia. Even though countries such as
Denmark aren't socialist states (as the Danish prime minster has taken great
pains to emphasize) and Denmark itself outranks the United States on a number
of economic freedom measures such as less business regulation and lower
corporate tax rates, young people like that country's expanded social welfare
programs.
Coming of age during
the Great Recession, millennials aren't sure whether free markets are
sufficient to drive income mobility, and thus many are comfortable with
government helping to provide for people's needs. Indeed, a Reason-Rupe study
found that 69 percent of millennials favor a government guarantee for health
insurance, and 54 percent support a
guarantee for a college education. Perhaps most striking is that millennials
favor a bigger government that provides more services — 52 percent of them do,
compared with 38 percent of the nation overall.
So, will it last? Are
millennials ushering in a sea change of public opinion? Do they signal the
transformation of the United States into a Scandinavian social democracy?
It depends. There is
some evidence that this generation's views on activist government will stick.
However, there is more reason to expect that support for their Scandinavian
version of socialism may wither as they age, make more money and pay more in
taxes.
The expanded social
welfare state Sanders thinks the United States should adopt requires everyday
people to pay considerably more in taxes. Yet millennials become averse to
social welfare spending if they foot the bill. As they reach the threshold of
earning $40,000 to $60,000 a year, the majority of millennials come to oppose
income redistribution, including raising taxes to increase financial assistance
to the poor.
Similarly, a
Reason-Rupe poll found that while millennials still on their parents' health-insurance
policies supported the idea of paying higher premiums to help cover the
uninsured (57 percent), support flipped among millennials paying for their own
health insurance, with 59 percent opposed to higher premiums.
When tax rates are not
explicit, millennials say they'd prefer larger government offering more
services (54 percent) to smaller government offering fewer services (43
percent). However, when larger government offering more services is described
as requiring high taxes, support flips, and 57 percent of millennials opt for
smaller government with fewer services and low taxes, while 41 percent prefer
large government.
Millennials wouldn't be
the first generation to flip-flop. In the 1980s, the same share (52 percent) of
baby boomers also supported bigger government, and so did Generation Xers (53
percent) in the 1990s. Yet, both baby boomers and Gen Xers grew more skeptical
of government over time and by about the same magnitude. Today, only 25 percent
of boomers and 37 percent of Gen Xers continue to favor larger government.
Many conservatives
bemoan millennials' increased comfort with the idea of "socialism."
But conservatives aren't recognizing that in the 20th-century battle between
free enterprise and socialism, free enterprise already won. In contrast with
the 1960s and '70s, college students today are not debating whether we should
adopt the Soviet or Maoist command-and-control regimes that devastated
economies and killed millions. Instead, the debate today is about whether the
social welfare model in Scandinavia (which is essentially a
"beta-test," because it hasn't been around long) is sustainable and
transferable.
Millennials like free
markets, and most already accept that free markets have done more to lift the
world out of poverty than any other system. Instead, what this generation has
to decide is whether higher education and health-care innovation, access, and
high quality can be best achieved through opening these sectors to more
free-market reforms or though increased government control. This is a debate we
should be glad to have
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