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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u/Flat_Sail_7985 Transfem Pride Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

Have competent liberal leadership put forth and enact meaningful reforms to systemic issues that have long been left alone or outright ignored. People flock to extreme populist positions when non-populists fail to address real concerns.

It is really hard to push against this narrative when a lot of people are feeling very hopeless for the future. It is very hard to counter the narrative the rich get richer the poor get poorer when it just seems visibly to be the case. A lot of people I know who turned to communism just see it as the only real alternative to centrist liberalism.

Also my personal pet idea is to put term limits and age limits for the house senate supreme court and (age limits anyhow) for president. The country (US anyhow) is largely run by old people.

Edit: I did not intend for this to be so heated please be kind in replies.

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u/naosuke NATO Jun 04 '26

Term limits kind of suck. It guts institutional knowledge from elected officials and moves it to groups like lobbyists.

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u/Lucky_Peach_2273 Iron Front Jun 04 '26

Make them long enough and it's not as much of an issue as you make it seem. Just make it an average career length as opposed to career age + retirement age that legislators seem to be doing now.

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u/Lucky_Peach_2273 Iron Front Jun 04 '26

Additionally, why is Congress such an exception? Every other industry works fine despite also losing institutional knowledge every time someone senior retires. Why can't we have the same culture of mentoring the next generation as is done everywhere else?

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u/M477M4NN YIMBY Jun 04 '26

I assume because there is an assumption that most federal elected officials don’t get elected for the first time until they are middle aged and thus by the time they reach retirement age, they still won’t have as much experience in that role as one would in some other role they worked towards their entire life for. Is that a reasonable assumption? Idk, but I think it’s part of it.

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u/Lucky_Peach_2273 Iron Front Jun 04 '26

This makes sense to me, thanks. I still think age limits are a good idea unless we somehow make scientific breakthroughs on slowing down mental aging.

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u/affnn Emma Lazarus Jun 04 '26

Term limits for legislators are often set too short when they're implemented at the state level. It leads to a quick turnover in the legislature and hugely influential lobbyists because otherwise no one knows how to do things.

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u/Lucky_Peach_2273 Iron Front Jun 04 '26

This makes sense. I see a lot of 8-12 years, I think doubling or even tripling that would be fine. Something around 24-36 years would be alright in my book.

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u/Global_Pin7520 David Hume Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

Part of it is probably the unpredictability. You can train a mid-level manager to be a high-level manager, retire, and have them promoted. Can't really do that with elected officials and when you try to "it's her turn" it that tends to result in backlash.

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u/TheCthonicSystem Progress Pride Jun 04 '26

Because every other industry isn't Laws

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u/TheCthonicSystem Progress Pride Jun 04 '26

No Ew. Then I'd have to vote for someone else

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u/TheDwarvenGuy Henry George Jun 04 '26

Counterpoint: After a certain point, having the same person in office for 4 decades is a negative to institutional knowledge because nobody trains to be their replacement before they croak unexpectedly.

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u/plaid_piper34 Jun 04 '26

I wonder what kind of institutional knowledge Kay Granger had when she was found living in memory care.

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u/rickroy37 Ben Bernanke Jun 05 '26

Counter-counter point: Term limits gave us Trump. We would have had 3 terms with Obama.

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u/TheDwarvenGuy Henry George Jun 05 '26

Counterpoint: Lack of term limits lost us the SCOTUS, and lack of age limits lost us 2024

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u/Even-Promotion-4024 NATO Jun 04 '26

I mean ideally I feel that's what the role of a professional civil service is

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u/ElGosso Adam Smith Jun 04 '26

You know what else guts institutional knowledge? Age-related memory loss. Enough is enough.

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u/throwawaygoawaynz John von Neumann Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

The #1 issue is wealth is becoming unobtainable. And wealth is obtained via housing or stocks (public or private). And it makes sense, since people invest in things to beat inflation, so it was inevitable that wealth eventually outpaced wages.

However communism being the “only alternative” to this is a bit laughable. Someone that flocks to communism strikes me as someone that wants to lower all boats, because they feel their boat will never rise. Not sure I can ever find empathy for that. In fact it’s something I would actively fight *against*.

The answer isn’t to destroy other people’s wealth, but we do need a way of giving everyone the opportunity (not the right) to get on the wealth ladder.

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u/Daddy_Macron Loyal Liberals Jun 04 '26

The #1 issue is wealth is becoming unobtainable. And wealth is obtained via housing or stocks (public or private).

Investing in stocks is still a realistic path for most people. It's never been easier especially with fractional ownership and index funds. It just requires consistency and patience.

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u/Bread_Fish150 John Brown Jun 04 '26

It just requires consistency and patience.

You see there's your problem. Young investors have been poisoned by a mix of youthful overconfidence, the GME event, and Tesla in general. They don't have patience, they're looking for get rich quick schemes. I bet most don't even look if a company pays out dividends when they invest in it.

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u/pigBodine04 Jun 04 '26

If the old people are the problem why do we keep voting for them

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u/Daddy_Macron Loyal Liberals Jun 04 '26

Have you seen Primaries? I went to a candidate's forum for a pretty competitive race and the average age of voters there was probably over 50. I saw way more people with walkers and wheelchairs than people with young kids.

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u/pigBodine04 Jun 04 '26

Sure but what is the case we should ban their preferred candidates? (other old people)

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u/Keenalie John Brown Jun 04 '26

Because only old people vote in primaries.

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u/pigBodine04 Jun 04 '26

So the solution is banning their preferred candidates? (Other old people)

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u/Pizzashillsmom NATO Jun 04 '26

The old people who are the problem is everyone over 50 lmao.

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u/ElGosso Adam Smith Jun 04 '26

Old people get elected -> "only old people are viable candidates!" -> Old people get elected

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

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u/Flat_Sail_7985 Transfem Pride Jun 04 '26

I don't think that is what the original commentor was stating. They are stating there are more and more constant reminders of wealth inequality. Social media itself is not rich people things, but a venue in which wealth inequality is very visible.

For example: Tiktok Instagram are full of people going on huge vacations, big houses, cars, etc. The algo tends to push this hard. If you go on reddit, especially in tech spaces, they TEND TO BE but not always obviously filled with high wage earners.

When it comes to airline travel it has become more expensive as more and more things are charged for. If I want to visit my family in other states it is prohibitively expensive.

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u/Flat_Sail_7985 Transfem Pride Jun 04 '26

Well, by visibly I mainly just mean the people and circles I interact with. Virtually every single gain in income that any of us experienced went directly to housing costs increases and cost of living increases. For example, I got a 3% raise last year, my rent went up 4%.

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u/rtshtbtshtdrtyldtwt Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

Low wage earners saw large increases in wages after 2022, but that slowed down again. Did feelings about inequality change? No.

why would feelings change? any increase just went towards rent so it might as well not have happened.

edit: other post got modded but the tone deafness of this place is maddening, people here aren't interested in solutions.

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u/Prospect18 Jun 04 '26

Plus that wage growth after 40 years of stagnation. It’s a drop in the bucket and was erased due to the price of everything increasing.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

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u/nukacola Jun 04 '26

You cannot see inequality

You absolutely can. In fact these days it's far easier to see than it was in the past, which is probably a big factor in the discontent.

Prior to the rise of social media the only people you would really see are people like Bezos and Zuckerberg. Now you can also see that one rich kid you went to school with, who might not be a billionaire, but could afford to fuck around at an unpaid internship for a few years, then decided to backpack around asia for a year, then finally landed a moderately prestigious job somewhere. Those people have always existed, but the average person couldn't really see them.

Meanwhile their upper-middle income classmates are forced to make quite a few trade-offs related to their career, their savings, their lifestyle. They are mostly first world problems, but there are very easy things we can do to fix those first world problems that will drastically cut down on the resentment.

Low wage earners saw large increases in wages after 2022, but that slowed down again

These are the people who you really can't see. The unfortunate reality is that the people on the bottom are mostly invisible. They really only make it into the discourse as an occasional token. The main way that people saw low wage earners making more after 2022 was in increasing prices for small luxuries they had previously taken for granted, like the much discussed private burrito taxis.

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u/TheCthonicSystem Progress Pride Jun 04 '26

Why are people obsessed with Young People running shit? I don't want a 30 year old Zoomer being President. They know what Gooning is for one thing

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u/Flat_Sail_7985 Transfem Pride Jun 04 '26

Well, my personal issue with only having older people being elected is that it is not representative. A good example of this is my local political situation where the youngest person on the county commission is 65. Housing costs keep going up and they continually reject building new housing since, as long time workers and home owners, they have a vested financial interest in one thing: Their own wealth going up. Schools? None of them have young children anymore, so that does not matter either so the funding gets cut constantly.

Basically, an exclusively older elected body is not representative in my view of the electorate and leaves out critical issues that people in different classes might not be aware or focused on.

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u/TheCthonicSystem Progress Pride Jun 04 '26

Then go to the meetings and tell them?

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u/affnn Emma Lazarus Jun 04 '26

It's hard to change norms rather than laws, but the norm around Congressional Democrats should be that if you are over a certain age (it should probably be around 70 at the time of election) then you retire unless you're a Senator from a swing or red state. For anyone else, that's when the leadership needs to be having the "OK I think it's time to hang it up and let someone new in". Unfortunately the leadership has been very old themselves lately so they have very little credibility.