According to recent polls taken, millennials reject capitalism and embrace socialism. Now while that may look as though we individualists have lost millennials (I myself am one), below the surface is a different story. They reject capitalism in name, but socialism in practice as well. It’s not surprising that young people view word socialism in a positive manner and capitalism in a negative one as they’ve both been misappropriated. The word ‘capitalist’ has been used to describe the US economy over the past 50 or so years when in fact it hasn’t been truly capitalist for decades with it gradually being merged into a corporatist, semi-fascist nightmare of high taxation, ridiculous red tape and regulations and handouts and laws favoring big corporations over smaller and startup businesses.
Socialism (or ‘Democratic Socialism’) by contrast has been used to describe the Scandinavia countries which have had generous welfare states that leftists and socialists have claimed to have work. Except that they haven’t and these countries have in fact scaled back their welfare states. In fact, the Prime Minister of Denmark blasted Bernie Sanders for describing the country as ‘socialist’. The reason why these countries are as well off as they are has nothing to do with the hybrid socialism they embraced in the late 60s to early 70s, but rather the laissez faire free market capitalism they had for about a century. In the 1950s, Sweden was among the wealthiest countries in the world.
Their government was incredibly small and almost never intervened in economic matters. In fact, during the start of the Great Depression while Hoover and FDR were making things worse in the US with passing higher taxation, higher tariffs and new welfare programs, Sweden the Nordic countries did nothing and they recovered within several years. In the Great Britain under Neville Chamberlain (who all he’s remembered for is “Peace in our time”) and a conservative government cut spending dramatically and they recovered within a few years. The US by contrast took over a decade to truly get out of the Depression under FDR.
The word capitalism has been misappropriated so many times now that young people think it’s responsible for many economic downturns due to too little government regulation when in fact there was too much government involved with handouts to corporations and the forcing of banks to give out loans to people who couldn’t ever pay them back which led to the ’07-’08 financial crisis (which has its roots in the Clinton years with the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan and was tolerated during the Bush years). And now we’re on the verge of an even bigger crisis than the one at the end of the Bush presidency thanks to Obama policies and the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates at or near 0% first under Bernanke and now more so with Janet Yellen.
The term free markets isn’t actually used as often and therefore doesn’t get so bad a rap from people who aren’t so fluent in economics. In free markets, there’s no crony capitalism or corporate handouts (that includes green energy subsidies). There’s no government involvement in daily economic matters. There’s even no Federal Reserve as currency is subject to the free market just like anything else. And while it isn’t perfect, it’s one of the best things to have come out of humanity. Socialism by contrast is among the worst (as demonstrated with the total collapse of Venezuela). The word capitalism may well be lost so free markets may well be the way to go.
Libertytalk 