Young Americans are turning to false solutions for real problems
WRITTEN BY
Staff Writer
A recent CATO Institute poll revealed that 62% of Americans under 30 hold a favorable view of socialism. For those raised on stories of socialism’s failures, this is no doubt alarming. But before we dismiss these young people as naive idealists educed by radical professors, we need to confront an uncomfortable truth: they’re responding rationally to an economy that has fundamentally broken its promises to them. I know because I lived it—and I grabbed that socialist rope myself.
When Hard Work and Bootstraps Isn’t Enough
I was raised in California’s agricultural belt with values that mirror what many Montanans still cherish: hard work, personal responsibility, faith, and family. I did everything I was supposed to do. I taught myself programming, moved to San Francisco, and worked for tech startups that promised to change the world. I was skilled, dedicated, and believed that competence and effort would be rewarded. Instead, I found myself laid off repeatedly as startups collapsed or pivoted. Each time, I’d land another position, only to watch the cycle repeat. It wasn’t that there wasn’t work to be done in tech—there was plenty. But I was increasingly competing with a global workforce of programmers who could be hired for pennies on the dollar compared to American wages. The very tech companies I worked for had lobbied for the H-1B visa programs that flooded the market with foreign workers willing to work for less.
My father experienced this betrayal even more directly. He retrained his replacement from India not once, but twice in different tech jobs. Even after persistent job searching and interviews, the economic reality ultimately pushed him into early retirement—forced out of an economy that views experienced American workers as expensive liabilities rather than valuable assets. COVID only accelerated this trend, making it acceptable— even preferable—for companies to hire remote workers from other countries.
By 2017, I’d had enough. I fled San Francisco for Montana and started freelancing, desperately trying to gain some control over my economic future. But the larger reality remained: where my grandfather’s generation could work for one company their whole lives with a pension, people my age—and even my father’s—face constant job insecurity, wage stagnation, and the need to constantly reinvent ourselves just to survive.
The data bears this out. About seven-in-ten Americans think young adults today have a harder time than their parents’ generation when it comes to saving for the future (72%), paying for college (71%) and buying a home (70%), according to a Pew Research Center survey. Research by Stanford economist Raj Chetty shows that 90% of children born in the 1940s earned more than their parents, while only half of those born in the 1980s have achieved the same. College costs have jumped 153% in 40 years, according to Bankrate. Home prices have gone from about twice the median income in 1960 to 3.5 times median income by 2019. The federal minimum wage has lost 46% of its purchasing power since its peak in 1968, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This isn’t about work ethic or character. This is about a fundamental economic restructuring that has left an entire generation worse off than their parents despite working harder and being more educated.
Read the complete Article: Why Young Americans Are Drinking from Broken Cisterns
