Generation Y more on the economic right

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Well, this is good news. Perhaps there is hope for humanity after all.

Though I wouldn't really consider my generation to be right wing. More left-libertarian, from the look of the article. It's just that people, such as those at the BBC, have the bad habit of generalising all politics into left and right - and funnily enough, considering those who want freedom to be right wing...

Perhaps it is because we've grown up with the internet, and all the news and alternative structures that it has brought.

But please, don't be so arrogant as to suggest that if people disagree with you they must be brainwashed.

Thats what I see, they are economically conservative, but not what is typically called "social conservative" indeed, perhaps closer to what the US Americans call "Libertarian". I think this is ultimately responsible, combined with the "language of management" and framing of literally everything in narrow economic terms.

An example is the conservative administration in my country, who seem determined to relentlessly attack that very segment of young people, yet the reaction is as much one of cynicism toward government as a whole as just toward that particular party.


An attitude I often heard expressed at university was "we're all screwed, but we need to survive somehow" combined with a mistrust of all institutions - public and private and an idea that people should not depend on the state because the state itself is not dependable. This may lower the opinion of the welfare system more generally, even among those who support the concept.

Libertarianism presents itself as "third-way" (i.e. alternative to let/right) although the "usual suspects" always seem to be involved.

IMHO, political debate in western democracies is dead (or at least in paralysis). There are currently no convincing arguments for an alternative to the present system, and the "language of debate" has been entirely captured by the 'economic right', leaving them 'winning by default' while everyone else either endlessly repeats some "media sound bite" or argues over mostly pointless "issues of the day".

No, there are no arguments that convince *you*.

I don't know what country you live in, but here in the UK, the left have taken much of the language ("bedroom tax", as an example).

Young people are getting tired of an incompetent and malignant government, they're want freedom FROM government.

Spot on, namesalltaken.

Here in the UK, the Labour Party of Blair, Brown and now Miliband, is virtually indistinguishable from Cameron's Tories, in its economic policy and just about everything else. By the standards of today's vapid political "debate", even Heath's 1970s Conservative government would be viewed as "socialist". Miliband won't even champion something like a "mixed economy".

No wonder you never hear a member of GenY showing any interest in, or awareness of, economic fundamentals. It's not so common amongst the later additions to GenX either!

gov't is the only thing that can save the 99% from the robber barons.

Absolutely. Now someone needs to tell them that!! !

Who save us from the government?

Perhaps the French had it right with Madame Guillotine.

The guys who were sending people to the guillotine were the government!

in theory, the voters are supposed to be the government, but americans long ago lost their noodle and got hoodwinked.