{"id":5150,"date":"2017-09-12T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2017-09-12T18:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/?p=5150"},"modified":"2024-09-23T22:46:36","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T04:46:36","slug":"americans-30-prefer-socialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/americans-30-prefer-socialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans Under 30 Prefer Socialism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2014 Published with Permission of FreedomProject.com \u2014<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Willi Schlamm, an Austrian journalist who survived communist occupation, once quipped: “The trouble with socialism is socialism. The trouble with capitalism is capitalists.” This very astute observation was surely born of experience. Schlamm\u2019s point was clear: capitalism works, even though some capitalists may exploit the system. But socialism is a dangerous and unworkable idea that corrupts even the most idealistic of its practitioners.<\/p>\n

New data is now showing a big shift in American attitudes toward socialism.<\/p>\n

A survey of U.S. adults conducted by the\u00a0American Culture and Faith institute<\/a>\u00a0suggests that 40 percent of Americans prefer socialism to capitalism and free markets. A\u00a0Gallup poll (2016)<\/a>\u00a0also found that 55 percent of Americans younger than age 30 hold favorable views of socialism. It makes perfect sense that younger generations\u2014who have not experienced full throttle socialism first hand, and who have yet to have a house or own a business\u2014are taken in by the utopian fantasies of government school teachers and leftist academics.<\/p>\n

I see the consequences of this miseducation of the youth in my own career as a university professor. Every semester I deal with students who have guzzled the intoxicating promises of Marxist rhetoric, but neglected the sober and nourishing milk of historical and economic reality. I have heard from many students, years and decades after they took my courses, that “real life” had finally disabused them of their youthful dalliance with central planning and big government overreach. For 11 years, I gave these students basic literacy quizzes in my classroom, and you can read about the discouraging\u00a0results here<\/a>.<\/p>\n