Are Young People too Stupid to Vote?

February 23, 2016 by Dan Mitchell

Which group has suffered the most because of Obamanomics?

That’s hard to answer. We know that the average family has less income today than when Obama took office.

If we want to narrow things down, we know that blacks have endured hardship because of a weak economy.

But you also could make a strong case that young people have been the biggest victims.
Which is why it is so discouraging that many of them support big government. Here are some depressing numbers from a Frank Luntz survey, as reported by U.S. News and World Report.

Fifty-eight percent of young people choose socialism over capitalism (33 percent) as the most compassionate system. …A plurality of 28 percent say the most pressing issue facing the country is income inequality – one of Sanders’ top themes.

I strongly suspect, by the way, that these young people (just like Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) have no idea how to define socialism.
But that’s hardly a cause for cheer. Even if they simply think socialism is class-warfare taxation and lots of redistribution, it’s still bad news that so many of them have been seduced by the politics of hate and envy.

It’s like they’re totally oblivious to the damage that big government has caused for young people in Europe.
Their views on income inequality are similarly flawed, though perhaps slightly more understandable since millennials have suffered through a very weak economy.

But that’s what makes this polling data so puzzling. Why on earth are young people supportive of statism when they’ve been among the main victims of the weak Obama economy?!?
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Arbess ponders the bizarre fact that so many young people support Bernie Sanders.

…voters in the millennial bracket, 18- to 34-year-olds, will for the first time equal the baby-boomer share of the electorate, at 31%. These young voters appear to be falling headlong for the Vermont senator’s plaintive narrative of economic “unfairness.”…throwaway prescriptions for redistributing income and wealth… These young voters seem not to realize that the economic policies they find so resonant are the least likely to promote the growth and the social mobility they desire.

Arbess looks at some of the data about how Obamanomics has been bad for young people.

The millennials can’t be faulted for being anxious about their economic prospects. They are coming of age in the weakest economy in generations. The underemployment rate (measuring those working a job for which they’re overqualified and underpaid) for young adults below age 30 is 60%. The overall employment-to-population ratio of 77.4% for those in the prime-of-working-life 25-54 age bracket translates into 1.5 million jobs below the 20-year average. The college graduate living in his parents’ basement and working a marginal job to service a student loan is by now an archetype of the Obama era.

He then elaborates on the self-destructive instincts of many young voters.

…Why wouldn’t young voters want “free stuff” paid for by the rich, as the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton narrative promises? Because the no-free-lunch axiom is still true: Mr. Sanders’s socialized education, health care and other policies would cost up to $20 trillion, according to analysts, requiring tax collections to increase up to 47%. And have we not at least learned from the collapse and dismantling of socialism over the past quarter century that governments lack the incentives and resources to effectively allocate and manage capital in the microeconomy? …Yet millennials, who would most benefit from a real economic recovery, replacing the false one of the past several years, so far seem intent on voting against their interests.

This video is a good summary of the issue.



Given all this evidence, I’m mystified that young people are big supporters of statism.

And it’s not just what we’ve looked at today. I’ve previously shared data indicating that they are clueless on public policy issues.

At the risk of sounding like some old guy who yells “you kids get off my lawn,” maybe the solution is to raise the voting age. Or, better yet, change the rules to that you only get to vote when you have a job and pay taxes!

More seriously, the answer is more education.

P.S. The good news is that suffering through Obamacare may change the minds of some young people.

P.P.S. In any case, the polling data on guns shows that young people are not totally hopeless.