Millennials have gotten royally screwed: That's why they're voting for Bernie Sanders

Millennials have gotten royally screwed: That’s why they’re voting for Bernie Sanders
CONOR LYNCH

In recent years, it seems like a cottage industry of sorts has formed around bashing the Millennial generation as a bunch of narcissistic, lazy, entitled, coddled, uninformed digital junkies who just can’t deal with the real world. Though older generations have always complained about youngsters being in trouble, this animus towards Millennials seems rather unique, especially because, well, Millennials are rather unique.

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With all that hate, it’s easy to forget sometimes that the Millennial generation is also the one that faces staggering levels of debt, a bleak job market (even when one does get a college degree, which has become ever more important), and the overall prospect of having a less prosperous future than one’s parents. While today’s 18 to 34 year olds are the best-educated generation in American history — 22.3 percent with a bachelor’s degree — they also have lower median earnings (inflation adjusted) than 18 to 34 year olds did in 1980, when just 15.7 percent had a bachelor’s degree. Furthermore, becoming the best-educated generation has made Millennials the most indebted generation. Back in 1993, while the oldest Millennials were busy playing Sega Genesis, the average debt per borrower in the graduating class was under $10,000; by 2015, that number had more than tripled to about $35,000 — earning the class of 2015 the honor of being the most indebted ever.

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So then, is it any wonder that Millennials — especially those who are currently in college or recently graduated, who happened to grow up during the biggest economic downturn in nearly a century and witnessed how the greed of a few could hurt an entire society — are the biggest supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt)? Millennials have inherited an inherently unfair economy and corrupt political system that is a result of nearly four decades of a neoliberal consensus. Or to put it a bit more crudely: Neoliberalism has screwed the Millennial generation. And Sanders is the antithesis of a neoliberal.

The latest poll from the Harvard University Institute of Politics found that Sanders, who trails Clinton overall by about 25 points, actually leads her 41 percent to 35 percent among Democrats aged 18 to 29. It also found that the term “Democratic Socialist” has, if anything, a positive connotation among this age group — 66 percent said the label makes “no difference,” 24 percent said it would make them “more likely” to support Sanders, and only 9 percent said “less likely.” This seems to back up past polls that have shown Millennials reacting slightly more positively to the word “socialism” than “capitalism.”