The millennial generation must learn that socialism is not the answer
Despite winning 86 percent of the vote in his home state of Vermont on Super Tuesday, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders has little hope of beating Hillary Clinton after she dominated seven states. She's collected 1,052 delegates; Sanders has just 427.
But because of his high level of support among millennial voters, Sander's legacy and ideology will survive far past the 2016 presidential election.
According to the Census Bureau, the millennial generation population is about 83 million, which is roughly 8 million more people than the baby boomer generation. Millennials are the largest generation America ever has produced and conservatives better start paying attention. There is no doubt millennials will be politically active for a long time.
According to polling and interviews conducted with millennial Sanders supporters, these young people are frustrated with corporate corruption, are drowning in student loan debt and can't get jobs in an economy that was supposed to have recovered years ago. I don't blame them. But their anger is misplaced. And believing that socialism is any kind of solution is severely misguided.
With the nation's youth unemployment rate sitting above the national average, young people are carrying $1 trillion in student debt in an abysmal job market. Half of college graduates do not have a job in their field of study. Under President Obama, millennials have lost out on crucial earning and career-growth years.
According to a 2013 Pew Research Center study, a record 21.6 million millennials — 36 percent — are living with their parents — the first in the modern era to have “higher levels of student loan debt, poverty and unemployment and lower levels of wealth and personal income than their two immediate predecessor generations.”
The cause of all of this despair, which ultimately leads to entitlement and government dependency, isn't the private sector but the result of a suffocating federal government. The solution to the economic problems millennials face isn't socialism and the erosion of the free market but smaller government and less intervention.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. No free college, no free housing, no free health care, no free cellphone service. Somebody has to pay for it. And, no, it cannot simply be “the top 1 percent” or “the rich” as many millennials, and Sanders supporters, believe.
When “progressive” politicians sell young people false hope about free stuff, they're being extremely disingenuous, setting them up for a lifetime of debt to the government.
Socialism is an economic system that limits choice rather than expanding it. Yet, America's largest generation believes it is the only solution. Conservatives must find a way to reintroduce the pro-liberty, free-market mindset to the millennial generation before it's too late.
Katie Pavlich is editor of TownHall.com. Her exclusive Trib column appears on the first and third Fridays of the month.
