The often-cited Victor Davis Hanson weighs in at Fox News with an answer to the question, "why do Millennials favor socialism?" He cites four factors which he believes share the blame.
They are these: (1) runaway immigration of people with little English and few skills who frankly need government services to survive, (2) tech sector Uber-wealthy who feel guilt about their (at least somewhat) unearned riches, (3) expensive universities causing crushing student loan debt keeping graduates from achieving independence - a state normally associated with moving right politically, and (4) doctrinaire Republican free traders who saw nothing wrong with shipping most manufacturing overseas, destroying huge swathes of employment.
Hanson's four factors, appear valid to me. I'd add a fifth: the fairly steep expansion of prolonged adolescence extending now into the early 30s.
When I graduated from college, the expectation was most people married more or less immediately in their early 20s. Shortly thereafter they purchased a home and then raised children.
The idea one would be living in the parents' basement into early middle age seemed ridiculous. Prolonged dependency and delayed adulthood make the idea of parent care leading to government care seem natural. Perhaps Millennials will never become adults, seeking someone or something to lean on forever.
Where did our people lose their self-respect, their need to be autonomous? Hanson blames student loans, maybe he's right.
When the law was changed to permit children to remain on their parents' health insurance to age 26, I saw that as a milepost on the road to ruin. Maybe not a cause, but an effect of a seeming refusal to grow up and get on with life.
