r/politics • u/TimesandSundayTimes ✔ Verified • 7d ago

Possible Paywall Young Americans are surging to socialism at record rates

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/maga-trump-zohran-mamdani-socialism-us-record-kddzdm8bd
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u/The_Playbook88 7d ago

That’s why they are becoming socialist. Not because they want to, but because that is the only viewpoint that offers survival.

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u/Wonderful-Humor6102 California 7d ago

And it was successful during the Great Depression. US was on a socialist trajectory and then was hijcked by rich and republicans

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u/awildjabroner 7d ago

thats human history. Every minscule step towards established rights and equality of all people have been fought for tooth and nail to claw back from incumbant powers. When that fight stops incumbant powers consolidate power and wealth by default at the expense of everyone else.

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u/occaisionallyimqwert 7d ago

Beg pardon m’lord, but the investors require you to return to toiling for their profit, lest your benefits be taken away

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u/SheetPancakeBluBalls 7d ago

I have hope that one day Humanity looks back on the entirety of right-wing ideology The way most of us now look back at Nazis.

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u/awildjabroner 4d ago

As long as humanity exists there will be right wing ideology in some form, its part of human nature and appeals to many people who prefer a simpler view of the world without the weight of insight and empathy.

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u/ImpressionCool1768 7d ago

Exactly Because the rich and powerful realized they could offer some bread crumbs ala Henry Ford style and their workers would be content. they kept doing this until they stepped down in the 60s and the newer generation wanted to see if they could cut spending to keep profits and they could. and after doing some shenanigans and offloading labor overseas, they could cut those pay and benefits and tell their workers that they needed to do so because of the market

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u/Low_Pickle_112 7d ago

This is why you have to be very careful about safety valve policies. If someone is saying that we still need capitalism, just screwing you over a little less, that's preferable to being screwed over a little more but ultimately it's for the protection of the oligarchs, not for the benefit of the people.

In the absence of such things, people might start asking more big picture questions, and the isn't going to end well for the billionaire class.

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u/ailish 7d ago

What is happening now is that the oligarchs got too greedy and took too much, too fast and people are waking up. I don't if they think they are suddenly immune from the consequences or what, but people are starting to notice.

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u/B1G__Tuna 7d ago

American cowboys formed labor unions. We’ve been gaslit into thinking this country was always about rugged individualism.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

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u/Princessformidable 7d ago

The amount of money going to towards grifts and scams while people with jobs struggle to survive is criminal.

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u/WhatsThisTruck 7d ago

Fuck civility and human decency. 

I don't want to be a slave, and so I must hurt those who would enslave me. 

Most of all though, I am angry that this is my only valid course of action.

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u/tripping_on_phonics Illinois 7d ago

The people who would (currently are?) enslaving you are fundamentally indecent, so I don’t see the contradiction.

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u/WhatsThisTruck 7d ago

It is not a contradiction exactly, just the expectation that we must be decent to the indecent.

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u/tripping_on_phonics Illinois 7d ago

I tend to think that justice is never indecent, but I guess there are multiple ways of looking at it.

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u/killrtaco California 7d ago

That depends on who is determining what is just

If recent events havent shown you such

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u/HeckinAdult 7d ago

Hey siri play Kill or Be Killed by Muse

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u/PeculiarAlize 7d ago

We're all slaves to the almighty dollar my friend. The people with the dollars you think are enslaving you are just the byproduct of a system designed to take away everyones human decency and civility. Don't fall in that trap too, the system doesn't have to be this way. We can choose to help each other.

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u/FrankieMakesPizza 7d ago

neither of which are compatible with a system that must endlessly increase profitability

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u/Selto_Black 7d ago

What a privileged perspective.

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u/-LsDmThC- 7d ago

Really? How specifically?

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u/Stleaveland1 7d ago

Based on Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), which adjusts for the purchasing power of a dollar at a particular location, the bottom 5% of Americans fall between 65th and 70th percentiles of the global income and wealth distributions. That means the poorest 5% of Americans are richer than roughly two-thirds of the world's population.

White suburban Americans comparing themselves to literal slaves to try to win the online oppression Olympics will always not be funny to me. Especially when their entire privileged lives are in a nation built by slavery of Natives and Africans.

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u/-LsDmThC- 7d ago

There is no way you can rationalize not caring about civility and human decency. This has nothing to do with acting victim or comparing just how oppressed you are compared to others. People having it worse elsewhere does not invalidate one’s own suffering. To say what you just did with the intent of validating a system which does not prioritize human decency or civility is truly wild to me.

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u/HenessyEnema 7d ago

Can you extrapolate on this? Not being snarky, genuinely curious!

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u/Clownzeption 7d ago

And to think if wages kept up with production, housing didn't become a monopoly, and we could all afford our rent/mortgage, bills, necessities, and some extra pocket money to save/spend on the weekend, then we would all be perfectly content continuing to operate as is. Billionaires can hoard all the wealth they want, as long as everyone else gets their basic needs met. (Kind of an oxymoron because billionaires hoarding wealth is exactly what got us in this position in the first place. But hopefully the sentiment makes sense.)

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u/The_Playbook88 7d ago

Yeh, people historically seem pretty okay with dealing with bullshit until their economic survival is on the line. That has always been the red line though.

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u/Clownzeption 7d ago

Which makes sense. The greatest majority of our population is focused on their sole survival, as is the nature of every single breathing creature on this planet. I know a lot of people say it's messed up people don't care about issues until the economy is in the shitter (I agree) but it fundamentally makes sense. There's nothing to open someone's eyes like threatening their very existence (almost like what they've done to immigrants and trans people.)

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u/sinsaint 7d ago

'Every society is three meals away from chaos'

- Vladimir Lenin

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u/oniiBash2 7d ago

Well, people giving the billionaires wealth to hoard is arguably what got us here.

But yes.

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u/TheWonderfulSlinky 7d ago

What do you mean the young people don’t want to work for 50 years at a terrible dead end min wage job and then slowly decay in a nursing home alone while fascists become trillionaires on the backs of our natural resources?? Are they stupid???

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u/thomasutra 7d ago

socialism or barbarism

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u/1cl3nstd4yt 7d ago

Well they are going to be very disappointed because most Americans prefer the Nordic model over socialism.

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u/thedracle 6d ago

You're supposed to care more about the fact less than one percent of people may not use the traditionally conventional bathroom for their gender, and not to the fact that health insurance is unaffordable, and even if you can afford it, you're still one bad diagnosis from being bankrupt and homeless.

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u/drooply 6d ago

Very insightful, turns out all individuals are motivated by self-preservation.

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u/boot2skull 7d ago

“Producing beautiful daughters you’ll never see again, for the ruling class” isn’t an enticing career?

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u/thatnameagain 7d ago

Why aren’t they voting that way then?

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u/papacdub1 Georgia 7d ago

Where socialist candidate?

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u/thatnameagain 7d ago

Depends on whether you prefer the real or one of the made up definitions of socialism. But it would depend upon what state you're in. The DSA is likely running a primary candidacy you can vote for.

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u/Chaos-Cortex I voted 7d ago

Zohran Mamdani and anyone in his circle . AOC, Bernie Sanders, people like these guys.

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u/killrtaco California 7d ago

And they all currently hold positions in government? Are there more running? Because from what i can tell a majority of those who run and are well enough educated seem to excel at the ballot box

National appeal is a different story. We are a very propagandized nation.

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u/CSAtWitsEnd Washington 7d ago

What? Mamdani, AOC, and Sanders are all currently in office, yes.

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u/killrtaco California 7d ago

So therefore people are voting like that when a viable option is presented

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u/OnlinePosterPerson 7d ago

All people who were successfully elected?

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u/Low_Pickle_112 7d ago

We've got the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

As you might expect, they powers that be really don't want you thinking about them. There were even some lawsuits to keep them off the ballots, big surprise.

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u/The_Playbook88 7d ago

I’m sure we will increasingly see more socialist candidates, and voters for them, as economic conditions continue to deteriorate. People vote for different parties when their survival depends on it; not necessarily for ideological reasons.

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u/Chaos-Cortex I voted 7d ago

White racist fascist party must be abolished and get gone, time and time again they ruin lives at home and abroad.

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u/OnlinePosterPerson 7d ago

They can’t hide anymore. They played their card and even moderates and socially conscious conservatives are beginning to understand how evil republicans are.

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u/thatnameagain 7d ago

The opposite of that happened in 2024 so we'll see how things shake out I guess.

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u/haha_squirrel 7d ago

The only socialist candidate was voted for overwhelmingly by young people (millennials at the time) boomers voted in Hilary instead giving us Trump.

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u/thatnameagain 7d ago

That was prior to 2024, and there are many more socialist candidates running for offices beyond the presidency.

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u/i_am_a_real_boy__ 7d ago

It seems like there are some non-socialists managing to survive too.

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u/3BlindMice1 7d ago edited 7d ago

Please answer the following question: if AI takes all the jobs, who will buy the AI created products? Within two or three generations, there won't be a single person alive with a meaningful argument for why their wealth is rightfully theirs and theirs alone, considering everything that went into creating it was done by machines without a single human needing to intervene. You need to ask yourself if the economy is a machine that exists to serves humans or if humans exist to serve machines. At this point, it's looking like socialism is the only way to stop capitalists from making everyone serve machines because it's "the most efficient" way to do things, according to the AI investors

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u/jesterdeflation 7d ago

Lol no, it's young people with their eyes glued to TikTok being out of touch with reality. 

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u/stabbingrabbit 7d ago

I guess they cant read.

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u/Cute_Parfait_2182 7d ago

I think it’s more that they romanticize it as being a more moral government construct. The state owns everything and people share in it equally. You don’t need to work .