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Jayne: Capitalism is losing political capital with millennials

By Greg Jayne, Columbian Opinion Page Editor
Published: May 8, 2016, 6:00am

Let us set aside, for a moment, the debate over whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is really Beelzebub incarnate and is a threat to destroy the United States.

I know, I know, there seems to be no middle ground, as most people who are politically involved are convinced that one assertion or the other is inviolate. Yet the guess here is that the country can survive either presidency.

So, let us talk about something that does, indeed, threaten the future of the nation. You see, there was a recent headline on The Washington Post’s Wonkblog site that read, “A majority of millennials now reject capitalism.” Talk about the politics of fear. Talk about a menace to our way of life. Talk about something that is a little more important than who uses which bathroom. OK, it’s a lot more important.

Because capitalism is what built the United States into the world’s strongest economy. It is what developed the auto industry a century ago and provided the public with the means to buy those cars. It is what created the industrial power that was triumphant in World War II. It is what led to innovations that put cameras and Internet access and music players in a single device that fits in the palm of your hand. You didn’t see the iPhone being invented in Venezuela.

Yes, capitalism has served us pretty darn well for the past couple centuries. And yet a recent Harvard University survey of 18- to 29-year-olds found that 51 percent of respondents nationwide do not support capitalism, while only 42 percent said they do support it. Lest you think that is an aberration: A 2011 survey by Pew Research Center found that among people aged 18-29, 46 percent had positive views of capitalism while 47 percent had negative views.

Capitalism, of course, can mean different things to different people. So John Della Volpe, the polling director at Harvard, interviewed some of the respondents, finding: “They’re not rejecting the concept. The way in which capitalism is practiced today, in the minds of young people — that’s what they’re rejecting.”

Impact on the election

Therein lies the problem. Therein lies the impact of capitalism on the current presidential election. It is no accident that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, by appealing to large numbers of people who feel left behind by modern capitalism, have fomented minor political revolutions in their own way.

In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, Steven Rattner writes that Republicans have nobody but themselves to blame for Trump’s hijacking of their party. “You created the anger that lifted his candidacy by years of systematically and effectively preventing passage of legislation that might have ameliorated the tough economic state of Mr. Trump’s core voters,” he wrote. Under the headline, “By Opposing Obama, the Republicans Created Trump,” Rattner detailed how congressional Republicans rejected legislation out of a singular desire to stick it to the president.

Rattner, make no mistake, is a Democrat and worked with the Obama administration on the bailout of the auto industry. But his observations bring to light the absurdity that has been conservative economic policy for the past 30-some years. The doctrine of trickle-down economics — i.e. tax cuts for the wealthy and tax breaks for corporations — has been about as successful as a North Korean missile launch.

Just look at Kansas or Louisiana, where Republican orthodoxy has turned the state economies into simultaneous dumpster fires. Just look at the Bush tax cuts and the Great Recession that followed a couple years later. Just look at how capitalism is working for young people and then wonder why they are losing faith in the system.

Capitalism, undoubtedly, has served this nation well. But it is equally true that unfettered capitalism without a steady hand to guide it will leave a growing number of people behind.

When that number grows large enough, well, that’s when we have a real threat to our nation.

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