Eat The Rich! Why Millennials and Generation Z Have Turned Their Backs On Capitalism

[appalachiablue]

By Owen Jones, The Guardian, Sept. 20, 2021. - Excerpts, Ed.

Nearly eight out of 10 of young Britons blame capitalism for the housing crisis and two-thirds want to live under a socialist economic system. How did that happen? The young are hungry and the rich are on the menu. This delicacy first appeared in the 18th century, when the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau supposedly declared: “When the people shall have no more to eat, they will eat the rich!” But today this phrase is all over Twitter and other social media. On TikTok, viral videos feature fresh-faced youngsters menacingly raising their forks at anyone with cars that have start buttons or fridges that have water and ice dispensers. So should the world’s billionaires – and fridge-owners – start sleeping with one eye open?

Hardly. It’s clear that millennials (born early 80s- mid-90s) and zoomers (the following generation) are not really advocating violence. But it is also clear that this is more than just another viral meme. The world’s most famous leftwing millennial, New York’s rebellious Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, neatly sums up the generation’s zeitgeist. If leftism often seems to be the preserve of socially awkward nerds – hi! – and shouty older white men, she is the totem of the cool kids who like their redistribution of wealth and power with a hefty side order of mainstream popular culture. It doesn’t sit easily with some: when the congresswoman accepted a free invitation to the uber-exclusive Met Ball in a dress emblazoned with “Tax the rich”, even some leftists joined the right in puffed-up outrage..

A report published in July by the rightwing thinktank the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) notes that younger Britons have taken a decidedly leftwing turn. Nearly 80% blame capitalism for the housing crisis, while 75% believe the climate emergency is “specifically a capitalist problem” & 72% back sweeping nationalisation. All in all, 67% want to live under a socialist economic system.. The IEA warned that the polling is a “wake-up call” for supporters of market capitalism. “The rejection of capitalism may be an abstract aspiration,” it says. “But so too was Brexit.” It’s grown on the other side of the Atlantic, too: a Harvard Univ. study in 2016 found that more than 50% of young people in the heartland of laissez-faire economics reject capitalism, while a 2018 Gallup poll found that 45% of young Americans saw capitalism favourably, down from 68% in 2010.

.. Rather than the “property-owning democracy” promised by Thatcherism, Britain looks more like a landlords’ paradise. By 2017, 40% of the homes flogged off under right to buy were owned by private landlords charging twice the rent of council properties. Indeed, in the space of two decades, the odds of a young adult on a middle income owning a home more than halved. These young people have been called generation rent, with about half of the under-35s in England renting in a private sector often defined by extortionate rents and insecurity.. There is no rational reason, of course, for the young to defend this economic system. According to a 2019 poll, two-thirds of under-25s believe their generation will be worse off than their parents...

- Read More,
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/20/eat-the-rich-why-millennials-and-generation-z-have-turned-their-backs-on-capitalism

[Shell_Seas]

1. They learned from their elder's mistakes? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Eat the rich, tax the rich, whichever comes first. 🤣

[viva la]

2. I don't know... I was the same way until the capitalist system ate me....

And then I had a family dependent on my working for a Big Bad Bank, and my pension was invested in the stock market, and I started college accounts for my kids...

I'm anti-capitalist again now that I'm not so invested in capitalism.

It's like a tarpit-- you just think you're going to put two fingers in there to retrieve that spoon you dropped, and then your job says you have to dip your shoe in it, and pretty soon you're completely trapped.
If the youngsters can find a way to avoid all this and still buy a home, etc., more power to them.

I got a kind of anarchist nephew, but he's also into some luxury brands. (The donuts he brought to the family reunion were about worth their weight in gold-- one actually had gold leaf on it.) He's got socialist beliefs but fatcat taste.

[Shell_Seas]

15. I think there's a misconception that if there was another economic system....

We wouldn't have personal things or nice things, and I disagree. Look at Finland or Denmark.

[appalachiablue]

3. Ditto. Tax the Rich or Eat the Rich- my title..

It's been a hundred years since we've seen this level of wealth concentration.

[viva la]

16. You know, if I were super-rich--

I'd willingly give up 10% or so to taxes rather than the alternative (French Revolution).

They've been safe so long, they've forgotten the taste of pitchforks.

[BeckyDem]

4. Rightly so, it is deadly for many.

Poor people die younger in the U.S. That skews American politics.

By Javier M. Rodriguez
and
Cristian Capotescu

May 31, 2018


The 2017 U.S. Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measures reports that within the country, 40 million people — more than one in every eight Americans — live in poverty. Almost half of them are categorized as indefinitely in “deep poverty,” living with less than $2 a day.

Put that together with the fact that in the U.S., about 2.6 million people die every year — and most of those deaths are associated with poverty.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/05/31/because-poor-people-die-younger-in-the-u-s-our-politics-are-more-unequal-than-elsewhere/

[Budi]

5. Heard this for 5 yrs & still waiting for anyone to write a Bill. They have the power to do so.

Where is it?
Because a slogan is just a slogan till legislation is written to make that change.

[RainCaster]

6. This is a great op-ed

It talks about the economy in the UK, but IMO, it could be equally applied to the US economy. I'm a boomer, with zoomer kids, & I can't see any way that they can afford a house right now. Hell, they can't even qualify for a one BR apartment working full time.

[appalachiablue]

7. It definitely speaks to the American economy which

requires major work to provide stability and economic security esp. for struggling young generations and the vulnerable. Change has to arrive, the current level of wealth concentration and economic inequality hasn't been seen here for a century. Here's to better times ahead.

[slightlv]

14. Recognizing this,

We had the good fortune to use up most of the remainder of my retirement money to but a one story ranch when my fibromyalgia and bad back made it mandatory. The house we had (3-story) was one of those historical with a story behind it that needed a lot of work. We saw the opportunities and fell in love with what "could be," forgetting we had neither the money nor the stamina and backs to make it happen. So, rather than sell it for nothing, we hung on to it, paid the taxes, and thought to rent it out to a couple who might get evicted during the pandemic. Instead, my daughter decided to leave her husband and move up here with her kids.

In her situation, I'd have given my eye teeth to have someone gift me with a 30k house, even if it DID need a lot of work. After quite a bit of work, several new pieces, and much frustration, she decided to move into an apartment more to her liking. I saw it the other day. It's not exactly what I was expecting. But hea, I'm Mom... what do I know, right? I'll back her, whatever she wants. My only want now is to get the new water heater hooked up so there's hot water. I've already got someone who wants to move in, tho she's got no income right now... but she's more than willing to do housework and yardwork there and here for me.

I was only trying to help my kid be about 20 years ahead of where I was when I was her age. Instead, she's going to follow the same, hard path I followed; and in a day and country that's a heck of a lot harder than I had to make it in. Meanwhile, my sis and I are trying to help my Mom in the nursing home. Talk about being in a sandwich generation! (LOL)

[underpants]

8. 👀

Reading later. Thanks

[SWBTATTReg]

9. Out of 330 million Americans, give or take, only perhaps 10s of thousands only have benefited. The

rest of us are left picking up the scraps and fighting for a decent minimum wage, and constantly facing increasing costs for everything in order to keep our heads above water. So much for capitalism, and its fair distribution of wealth, eh? Pathetic. A ringing denouncement of capitalism if I ever saw one. I call it Predatory Capitalism.

[Farmer-Rick]

10. In the US, the filthy rich have tried to subvert our democracy 3 times

The 1st was slavery. The filthy rich got richer and richer off the backs of forced labor. All of the South was turned into a support system for slave run plantations. While the plantations merged and bought each other out, creating bigger and more profitable farms, they were also attempting to take over the government. Slavery doesn't work well with democracy, just ask the ancient Romans. So the filthy rich who owned these slave farms attempted to get rid of democracy. So they seceded from that democracy so they could have their own little oligarchy.

The 2nd time was after the filthy rich created such an unstable economy with huge speculation with borrowed money that it created the Great Depression. FDR crushed them and brought them under control. The filthy rich attempted a coupe but it failed. FDR then instituted 90+ percent taxes and created laws that kept the filthy rich in check.

Then in the 80s, all those controls on the filthy rich were slowly removed so we are now back to the filthy rich trying to destroy democracy yet again.

Yeah, we need to eat the rich but we also need to outlaw the accumulation of more wealth than small countries. It is rediculus we allow these elite capitalists to gain so much wealth they can't be stopped. It crushes democracy. Capitalism is incompatible with democracy.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

11. Capitalism is incompatible with democracy

That is a self evident truth.

Sad so many are beholden to it.

[Farmer-Rick]

12. True that.

[appalachiablue]

13. Awesome essay, worthy of a separate post.