Capitalism isn’t cool anymore. I was sitting in my senior political science class last week when the topic came up, and it quickly fell into a familiar critical refrain.
One woman in my class shot her hand in the air to shout that “systemic oppression” would never end until we got rid of capitalism altogether. The professor nodded along approvingly while three others chimed in to agree. When one lone student suggested it might be better to find ways to work within the capitalist system, the room fell silent; her suggestion was met with a predictably collective dirty look.
This was just one class at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, but I’ve come across countless other students with the same attitude over the last few years. While many journalists may have been surprised by the new Axios poll revealing soaring levels of support for socialism among young people, this was no news to me. But that doesn’t make it any less concerning; by turning our back on the capitalist system that has done so much to expand opportunity and lift people out of poverty, my generation is sabotaging our own future.
Many of my peers have bought into traditional socialist selling points and are now foolishly starting to view our economy as a zero-sum game where the disadvantaged can only get ahead by forcibly redistributing wealth and injecting government control into private industry.
When Axios surveyed 18-to-24-year-olds, they found that an astonishing 61 percent view socialism in a favorable light. In a disturbing twist, even 29 percent of young Republicans, aged 18 to 34, viewed socialism positively. Among the first age group, 70 percent think that the government needs to do more to close the gap between wealthy and poor Americans, and a vast majority views systemic benefits the wealthy enjoy as a bigger problem than regulations and constraints on the market.
The values of today’s young people are personified in the form of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the socialist upstart from the Bronx who has made her way to the halls of Congress. Her agenda offers everything my generation now desires, but a closer look reveals that her brand of socialism would actually destroy our future. Ocasio-Cortez campaigns on socialized healthcare, hiking the minimum wage, a federal jobs guarantee, and a “Green New Deal” that would rapidly force the fossil fuel industry out of existence.
Many young people think that this wish list, which will somehow grant them everything for free, can simply be paid for with more taxes on the rich. Reality is much more complex. The “soak the rich” pipe dream ignores the fact that the wealthiest Americans already pay the vast majority of federal income tax revenues and that even Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed 70 percent top marginal tax rate would only raise $720 billion, at most, over a decade — which is just roughly 2 percent of her proposals’ total cost. When the congresswoman was asked on CNN about how she’d pay for her $40 trillion in socialist proposals, she couldn’t come up with an answer.
It’s because she doesn’t have one.
Ocasio-Cortez, along with most members of the insurgent socialist movement, knows she can’t pay for her proposals just by taxing the rich, but she doesn’t care. The real plan is just to raise taxes on everyone and run up the federal deficit with untold trillions in government spending. This is why, in supporting socialism, young people are signing the death warrant for our own financial future.
The nearly $22 trillion national debt is only climbing higher each year, and ultimately, we are the ones who will pay the price. If our socialist sympathies are left unchecked, budget deficits will skyrocket and young people will be on the hook for countless billions more in taxes every year just to cover the annual interest payments. Over the long run, the mounting national debt will strangle the economic growth that’s so vital to our future. Even worse, it will leave our livelihoods forever vulnerable to a financial crisis of unprecedented proportions that will emerge if the government eventually can’t pay its bills.
So while I understand the alienation and frustration so many of my peers are feeling in the face of limited economic opportunities and mounting student debt, the young Americans letting their disenfranchisement push them toward socialism need to realize what they’re getting us into, before it’s too late. Radical economic reforms might sound great, but ultimately, we’re the ones who will pay the price when it all goes wrong.
Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is an editor with Young Voices.
