Even I was taken aback by these numbers. Encouraged yes, and surprised as well. I’ll reserve comment right now, but want to toss this stuff out. It’s fascinating and obviously very important.
These are outtakes from the final post in Thomas Edsall’s NYT blog Campaign Stops, in which he reports on what’s being called the ‘Rising American Electorate”. It’s quite remarkable. The youth vote is pretty important in these numbers which, to me, means our future will be very different than our present.
Not only does a plurality (49-43) of young people hold a favorable view of socialism — and, by a tiny margin (47-46), a negative view of capitalism — so do liberal Democrats, who view socialism positively by a solid 59-33; and African Americans, 55-36. Hispanics are modestly opposed, 49-44, to socialism, but they hold decisively negative attitudes toward capitalism, 55-32. . . . When voters were asked whether cutting taxes or investing in education and infrastructure is the better policy to promote economic growth, the constituencies of the new liberal electorate consistently chose education and infrastructure by margins ranging from 2-1 to 3-2 — African Americans by 62-33, Hispanics by 61-37, never-married men by 56-38, never-married women by 64-30, voters under 30 by 63-34, and those with post-graduate education by 60-33.
Keep voting kids.
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
Whatever Works 
You know, Moe, I don’t think anybody is advocating pure socialism these days. That’s just as bad as pure capitalism, which is what Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley practiced. Maybe we need a new name for capitalism tempered with benign regulation. I’ll have to think about that. 🙂
BTW, I just figured out what was wrong with my gravitar on your site. The autofill was inserting @icloud.net for my email instead of the correct @icloud.com. These dang computers have no flexibility. 🙄
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You fixed it and now a new picture. I like the new one. And hope you had a nice T’day Jim.
As for ‘names’, I don’t even think there is pure socialism anywhere . . . I think what people think of as ‘socialism’ is basically the European model which mixes it all – capitalism, democracy, socialism, even state socialism and state capitalism.
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Yes, thank you, that is exactly what I was going to say. Maybe the younger generation is beginning to see that there is a difference between Western European-style social democracy and pure socialism/communism. Having lived under both the Eastern European and the Western European model, there is nothing more frustrating to me than to see the two lumped together as if they are the same thing.
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And of course brat, that ‘lumping together’ is just a cynical political strategy used by those who absolutely know that it’s false.
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I do get that feeling, yes. Saying that any gov’t program/regulation automatically translates to “Communism” is too silly for anyone to really believe.
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I didn’t think a pure socialist/communist state had ever been implemented, with the closest exception being Russia 1917-19. Most non-Trotskyist socialists would characterize the USSR, China, Cuba, and the satellite countries as “state capitalist.” On the other hand, pure capitalism hasn’t been implemented anywhere either. Good attempts were Chile under Pinochet (tutored by ubercapitalist Milton Friedman), and the Northern Mariana Islands in the 1990s (shepherded by veteran state wreckers Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff).
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And yet ‘they’ get away shouting ‘socialism!!!’ all the time re Europe. If that’s socialism, I want me some of that!
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Amen!
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