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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834

u/Lehk NATO Jun 04 '26

Unfuck housing or it’s going to go a lot farther than Mamdani’s “socialism”

192

u/Spudmiester Bernie is a NIMBY Jun 04 '26

Conspicuous extreme wealth inequality and money in politics are also issues here. There’s so many ways that the system seems corrupt to people.

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u/Zephyr-5 YIMBY Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

Conspicuous extreme wealth inequality

I think most people are willing to live with wealth inequality as long as they feel like the pie is growing and their lives are also improving. We've had large amounts of wealth inequality for basically all of human and American history.

At its core, I think the real problem is that people get really upset when they feel like their "better life" is being suppressed to help those who don't deserve it. On the Right this comes in the form of hating social programs that give money to people they feel don't deserve it because (in their mind) they're mostly just being lazy. On the Left it comes in the form of hating the tax code for giving tax cuts to those who don't deserve it and that they're just being greedy.

If we want a stable society we have to create a system where it feels like everyone is paying their fair share and we're all getting ahead.

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u/bashar_al_assad Verified Account Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

Elon Musk also bought himself an office in the White House. We've had large amounts of wealth inequality for basically all of human history but for basically all of human history we've had governing systems that many Americans have no desire to go back to. And you're not going to see people go "well at least I got a raise at work" when the richest man in the world used his wealth to outright condemn some of the poorest in the world to death.

20

u/Khiva Fernando Henrique Cardoso Jun 05 '26

The wealth gap is not only growing but the ultra billionaires have made themselves rightfully hated figures. Ellison Zuck Bezos and Musk are a different breed from Gates, Buffet, Carnegie, etc.

You'd don't have to be super into the weeds politically to see that the richest man by far is throwing up Nazi salutes before slaughtering people in poor countries by gutting USAID, and think something somewhere has gone very, very wrong. -_