This is reminding me of my Dad (born 1930) fretting over the fact that his Father-in-law (born 1910) thought that Socialism was a protective and promising thing and that eventually the country would come around to doing more than dabbling her big toe in it. Dad’s catch phrase while fretting was “It’s not that he’s not a hard worker. He is! I have great respect for his work ethic.”
He eventually decided that there was something in Grandpa’s personal history or in the times that he has lived through that left him vulnerable to the lies of Socialism, whereas he, Dad, had fortunately grown up during the Depression with a personal history that strengthened him against falling for such things. Even as a small child, I was aware of the irony of that statement, although not yet aware of the word irony.
Dad was also scornful of the way political and social outlooks tended to swing back and forth like a pendulum. “Why can’t people just think things through and come to the right conclusion and then leave it alone.” I’m not going to open that can of worms here. But if there’s a bit of pendulum swing in among the poorly worded questions and poorly thought out answers, it wouldn’t surprise me at all. Grandpa would be enjoying it.
The poll DOES mention “capitalism”, and yes, it’s almost as popular as well. The OP linked Huffington article in turn links to an article with more expanded poll results where scrolling down the page to the second chart it shows that the alluded demographic of young people are at a dead heat 46/47 % Pos/Neg relative to their attitude to Capitalism, vs. 49/43 re: Socialism. That other article’s conclusion BTW is “little change in public’s response to capitalism vs. socialism”, which reinforces the opinion that the Huffington writer was seeing too much of what s/he cared to see into it.
I would say the Huffington Post writer was MORE alert to the implications of the poll than the Pew people. There was little change in the public overall, but a LARGE change among the youth who were polled. The Huffington Post writer noted it, Pew, for whatever reason, did not.
When? Never. That’s when.
It doesn’t help that Liberals seem to toss around terms like “laissez-faire capitalism” and “socialism” as synonyms for “bad economic policy” and “good economy policy” ( or vice-versus if your Conservative) with no clue what the terms actually mean.
“Regulation” is not the same thing as socialism.
Well…what have you acheived or innovated by 29?
Or what do you think you bring to the table that someone with 15 to 20 years of experience doesn’t already have?
The only reason Obama is president is because of young people. He won with a 9 million net vote margin, and 7 million of those votes came from 18-29 year olds who were barely 20% of the electorate (since they gave him a 30 point margin it worked out to 7 million net votes among that demographic). The other 2 million net votes came from everyone 30 and older.
So yeah, politicians care what young people think. As they should.
Granted, we have never seen pure laissez-faire capitalism in the US and hopefully we never will. But the fact is, it was the REPEAL of Glass-Steagall that opened up banks to the liability caused by CDOs. Banks need to be kept completely separate from investment houses, and investment houses need to be regulated shitless. But now that they pretty much own Congress … both parties … it is not gonna happen. At least, not from Congress.
I never understand this attitude. I’ve met plenty of folks in my life who are just plain dismissive of younger generations. Why? There’s lots of fifty year old failures, too.
Seconded. People generally do not know what Socialism is. So when they say they approve of it, there’s little telling what exactly it is that they are expressing approval of.
“The young are full of exalted notions, because they have not yet been humbled by life and learnt its limitations.” – Aristotle. Of course, many consider Aristotle a smug unctuous prig-and-pig whose aristocratic philosophy appeals mainly to the respectable middle-aged.
It has nothing to do with being a “failure”. Young people tend to think they know everything already. And not only do they lack practical experience to back up what they think they know, they often don’t even know what they don’t know. You can often learn more from a 50 year old “failure” than you can from a 24 year old “success”.
Yes actually.
Really, can you think of anything a person has been doing for 7 years that they would be better at it that 99% of the people who are just starting out?
One of these days you’ll have to meet my first travesty of an assistant system admin from my first “IT Director” position (which, not incidentally, I was promoted to at age 26). The hire was forced on me because he was a drinking buddy of the company owner.
Pro tip: if a guy’s in his 50s, and his highest job title was “Journeyman Electrician” before he got a two-year certification in Linux Administration, consider the idea that he’s actually literally incapable of learning anything new.
After I fired that chucklefuck (first day as a Linux admin, I find out he has no idea what “ls” or “rm” or “grep” mean.), I hired a 19-yr-old college dropout, who succeeded well enough that he’s now at 24 the IT Director for a fairly large private school.
So no, in my experience, age and competence are absolutely unrelated. Those extra years don’t mean a goddamn thing if the person is question is a lazy chucklefuck, or if the younger person is an ambitious go-getter.
Yeah. I think we all understand that there are stupid, lazy, incompetent or simply unqualified people at all ages. That’s why hiring managers don’t just go by DOB.
Of course, you do realize you sound like every arrogant 20-something “IT Director” who thinks setting up computer networks and administering email accounts is the height of intellectual and professional acheivement. And why do you put it in quotes? Are you implying that wasn’t your job title?
The owner of your company must be doing something right to be running his own company. And there must be some reason he would entrust a position at his company to one of his drinking buddies. And as one of my former managers told me long ago, you take part of the success or failure of every employee who works for you. Yes, sometimes we have to fire people who don’t work out. But you also have to look at yourself to make sure you did all you could to try to make that person successful.
My point is maybe this individual wasn’t a good fit for this particular position, but the fact that you dismiss him as a “chucklefuck” is more of a reflection on you, than him.
Don’t you mean “Young people like the idea of reasonable rewards for reasonable labor instead of an upper-middle class and rich segment of the society being inflated by corporate welfare and anti-democratic mechanisms?”
(How many rich/upper middle-class people do I know that have hardly ever worked in their lives but reap the best rewards society’s labor has to offer? Well ya a lot lol)
“Poor people are just so lazy! Who built my house? Uh carpenters and stuff. Who tends my gardens? Uh gardeners? Who works on the factory floor? Uh lazy poor people. What has my wife done for the last 15 years? Well she drank a lot, sometimes she makes dinner, but only if she’s not on the internet or at the spa all day. What have my thirty year old children accomplished in their lives? Well they’re working on their education, well one mostly does drugs. But I make a million dollars a year so screw you. You’re shit to me.”
What young people are opposed to isn’t capitalism, it’s Americanism, or what is called capitalism in America, which isn’t anything of the sort. It’s a shell game and corporate welfare. Profits by control of government. Profits through anti-competition mechanisms. Profits by deceit and theft.
Of course what Europe calls socialism has many of the same problems but at least in that BSpoopia people are educated, don’t starve, have good medical/shelter and aren’t psychotic twats to interact with like in the US.