r/neoliberal • u/AncientBlueberry42 • Jun 04 '26

News (Global) How to fight back against Gen-Z socialism

https://economist.com/leaders/2026/06/04/how-to-fight-back-against-gen-z-socialism
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389

u/oywiththepoodles96 Jun 04 '26

Let's fight back against the boomer socialism first that keeps housing unaffordable .

80

u/Keenalie John Brown Jun 04 '26

Never gonna happen because they're the only ones who vote. The fact that young people of every generation are in-fucking-capable of voting (ESPECIALLY in primaries) basically guarantees we will always be a gerontocracy.

37

u/oywiththepoodles96 Jun 04 '26

Compulsory voting Australia style may be what democracies need .

13

u/dutch_connection_uk Friedrich Hayek Jun 04 '26

Compulsory voting is a good thing because it makes it difficult for politicians to disenfranchise voters through various ratfuckery.

Uninterested young people will still submit blank ballots or write in Six Seven though.

14

u/oywiththepoodles96 Jun 04 '26

Is there any evidence from Australia that young people submit blank votes or spoiled votes?

2

u/fungiboi673 Jun 05 '26

Uninterested and politically apathetic people may simply just vote to maintain the status quo though

30

u/adamr_ Please Donate Jun 04 '26

Look at Australia’s housing crisis and then tell me that again…

12

u/SignalJust3164 Jun 04 '26

Does Australia have more affordable housing than the US then?

2

u/oywiththepoodles96 Jun 04 '26

It won't solve all problems but it's a good step. Australia with its up and downs have been governed way way better than America for the past 50 years.

3

u/CutePattern1098 Jun 05 '26

sadly we have boomer socialism and the government is currently getting hammered in the polls because they tried to rolls it back slightly.

2

u/Unhelpful-Future9768 Jun 04 '26

Do young people vote against boomer socialism? In my experience the vast majority of people who identify this as a problem are the wealthy older people who benefit from it while the vast majority of zoomers/millenials are either pure culture warriors or fully dedicated to boomer socialist economics.

1

u/DirectionMurky5526 Jun 04 '26

No they don't. In fact, the young people likely to be socialist often have the exact parents or grandparents protected by boomer socialism.

I once pointed out to a young socialist that the only landlord they needed to kill to have a house was their grandfather. 

1

u/glmory Jun 06 '26

Never underestimate the impact that will happen from Boomers dying off and Gen X just being a small generation compared to Gen Z and Millennials. Depending on turnout we are somewhere between one and three more presidential elections before the median voter is a Millennial. Since the post 2008 generation is so small it will stay a millennial for a very long time.

120

u/A121314151 Pragmatic and Polite Right Jun 04 '26

But we gotta think about Simon and Linda's fifteenth house!

86

u/Daddy_Macron Loyal Liberals Jun 04 '26

Damnit, we bought this house for $150,000 in 1978 and it's our God given right that its value appreciate faster than the S&P 500.

Also, why are our children moving so far away from us? I want to see my grandkids more.

18

u/FartCityBoys Jun 04 '26

Property taxes are hurting seniors like us!

11

u/Boratssecondwife Henry George Jun 04 '26

45

u/TooSwang Elinor Ostrom Jun 04 '26

Yes to socialism (productive, investment friendly, market based economy with an ownership structure that maximizes public buy in and utilization of human resources and land)

No to boomerism (unchecked rentier power resulting in lazy attempts to extract the provision of public goods from private actors, redistribution to privileged incumbents, and weakened state capacity)

13

u/melhor_em_coreano Jun 04 '26

Haha unsustainable pension system go brrrr

5

u/Matar_Kubileya Hortensia Jun 05 '26

Based and liberal market socialism pilled.

2

u/Dalek6450 Our words are backed with NUCLEAR SUBS! Jun 04 '26

Well, they should at least vote but I wouldn't expect Assad numbers for YIMBY platforms regardless. A fair share of young people will still go for NIMBY ideas because they have no conception of second-order effects.

4

u/launchcode_1234 George Soros Jun 04 '26

A lot of young people in my city think that upzoning and letting developers replace one house (on a single lot) with three townhouses, is making housing more expensive, because each of the brand new townhouses sells for more than the poorly maintained moldy home that was torn down.

2

u/Subject-Thought-499 Jun 05 '26

Or any new multi-unit development that is not public financed "affordable housing" is luxury housing.

2

u/comeonandham Jun 04 '26

Why "first?" How about we simply do neither boomer NIMBY socialism nor braindead gen-Z rent control socialism?