This is a political hybrid society, undefined poll labels like this mean little.
Marketers care what young people think because those are the ones that haven’t yet made up their minds about which products to buy. Once people do decide what kinds of things they like it’s hard to get them to change their minds. Just like their politics.
This. Still it’s not a comforting thought for right wingers.
Is any society any different in that regard?
Yeah, the nerve of those 12-year-olds not bringing in an honest paycheck!
My guess,l along with others, is that they’ve seen a bunch of morons saying socialism is bad, and so they get a good opinion of it.
I’ll bet that politicians who want their votes care what they think.
I’ll also bet you that businesses that want their money care what they think.
I’ll even go for the trifecta: I’ll bet you that their peers care what they think.
Socialism can be called a lot of things, but decadent isn’t one of them. Capitalism has issues with decadence – idiotic adoration of billionaires and stupid products nobody needs. The Soviet Union, East Germany, North Korea, Mao’s China, etc. – they were all work and no play. A hard bed to sleep on, and slogans for breakfast. My guess is the responders don’t really want socialism, but merely some form of capitalism with a few more strings attached and a few extra welfare programs.
It’s the same with all the big ideologies of the 20th century. Fascist and Nazis everywhere, it has become so normalized that these days nobody care. Same with racist.
Socialism can be accepted in America (much of our economic programme is Social Democracy-lite already anyways) as long as Socialists are patriotic (the American Socialist parties have vehemently opposed even the war in Afghanistan), is not revolutiony, or counter-culture (which is why the late 60s New Left was never a serious contendor for political power).
One century after the start of the long death of Enlightenment/Nineteenth-Century liberalism and capitalism, its destruction is about to be complete in America also. 
Sooo… I’m guessing that most everyone in this thread is older than 29. Not me, of course. I’m still young.
If the opinions of young people were not important, John McCain would be President.
Im just barely young enough to fit the poll’s demo. My parents certainly tried to raise me to be a rugged individualist, but it didn’t take. Still a socialist scummo.
[QUOTE=2sense]
This. Still it’s not a comforting thought for right wingers.
[/QUOTE]
All depends on WHAT you want to regulate. In my experience, ‘right wingers’ want to regulate just as much as ‘left wingers’ do, they just want to regulate different things.
As for the OP, going to go with the majority opinion here…badly written poll that really doesn’t say anything and certainly doesn’t show any trends in American thinking. I’d say it’s due mainly to the fact that most Americans, let alone most Americans in the demographic underlined in the OP, don’t have a clue what socialism actually is. And kids are more open to weird ideas and causes because they don’t have much experience and latch onto what a favorite teacher or personality might be saying without really looking into it in-depth. Thinking back on what I thought when I was in that age range is both sobering AND hilarious now. 
-XT
[QUOTE=xtisme]
And kids are more open to weird ideas and causes because they don’t have much experience and latch onto what a favorite teacher or personality might be saying without really looking into it in-depth.
[/QUOTE]
This could just as accurately be stated as, “Most people are open to weird ideas and causes and latch onto what a favorite teacher or personality might be saying without really looking into it in-depth.”
You’d be wrong on all three counts. Candidates and businesses have a similar interest–ie, selling themselves or their product to as wide a demographic as possible. This is not the same as actually caring about that demographic. It’s a means to an end, a tool to be manipulated, but not something to drive the agenda.
And their peers are equally irrelevant. They have yet to achieve much of anything worthwhile.
The same could be equally said for your own demographic, gramps.
And realistically, when I was 29 I’d already accomplished a hell of a lot more than my father with my life, by HIS own admission (in fact, I downplay that, because who wants to show up the old man).
Eh, I’m a few years older than the demographic, and I’m a rugged individualist who is ALSO a socialist scummo, because not everyone is capable (if nothing else, due to bad luck) of being a rugged individualist and frankly I would prefer not to see homeless people when I’m driving to work.
I recall the late Philip Klass (aka his nom de plume William Tenn) telling an anecdote about an officer warning him to be wary of professors and journalists because “they’re all socialists”. Telling him that the best-educated people and the best-informed people are “socialists” was not a very effective warning against socialist indoctrination.
In all seriousness, I think we’ve already hit on the reasons for this result–it’s a combination of poorly defined polling and the push to mis-define “socialism” as “anything we don’t like” by certain members of the public face of the Republican Party.
Exactly, if you’re not a laissez-faire capitalist you’re a socialist. No middle ground, and EVERYBODY has seen what laissez-faire capitalism gets you, so socialism, as defined, looks damn good.
However, I do think there’s more to it than that. Essentially, the current economic crisis is minting progressives at a really brisk rate. America will be moving to the left instead of the right in a few years, and a very good thing for us all, as the current rightward drift has led us to a very bad place where we torture people, destroy social safety nets, and in general behave like idiots.
You don’t understand marketing very well. Marketers care about the young demographic more than they do about us in the older demographic because our preferences are set, and theirs are more flexible. Sometimes you can’t be all things to all demographics; if you can’t you are going to go after the younger ones. Proof: 60 Minutes is not a franchise like CSI. Of course marketers don’t care what they think out of altruism, but because you can’t target your advertising correctly if you don’t know what they think.
The only way you can say no one under 29 has achieved anything worthwhile is if you think CEOs and other high execs do everything for a company. Plenty of the real work - and the real innovation - is done by the younger crowd.
Who cares? The bottom line is, their vote counts the same as yours does. If you want to discuss financial support, and political influence, that would be a different matter. The largest problem stopping a hard trend left is the voter apathy among that age bracket, not any problem with their views.
The title of this thread also contains a false dichotomy: The poll doesn’t say anything about their views of capitalism. It says that they’re more likely to have a positive view of socialism than a negative one. But it’s possible to have both capitalism and socialism, or to have neither.