Young voters are financially drowning — and the life raft the Democratic Socialists of America is throwing them is an anchor in disguise.
If Americans don’t see past this facade, they’ll be sinking even faster.
Consider a typical 22-year-old, fresh out of college with a business degree and a decent entry-level job in a booming city like Austin, Texas.
Rent eats a third of his paycheck, while nearly one-fifth of it goes to commuting costs.
He’s paying down tens (if not hundreds) of thousands in student loans.
Without help from Mom and Dad, a down payment on a home is decades away, as is marriage.
Little wonder that only 9% of voters under 30 have a “very positive” view of capitalism, or that nearly 60% of voters aged 18 to 24 want a Democratic Socialist to win the White House in 2028, according to a recent Heartland/Rasmussen poll.
Young voters are right that the system is failing them.
They’re wrong, though, about which system it is.
What they’ve experienced isn’t free-market capitalism at all — it’s a quasi-socialist economy that’s let government displace the market in precisely the spending categories that have become least affordable.
Turning further toward socialism means embracing the anchor that’s already weighing them down.
Just look at where their pain is already concentrated: education, housing and health care.
These are among the most regulated, subsidized and government-directed sectors of the American economy, and therefore the least like capitalism.
It’s no coincidence they’re also the least affordable.
Meanwhile consumer items like televisions, cellphones and software — all sold in comparatively competitive markets — keep getting cheaper and better.
Start with college, where Washington is the dominant student lender.
The federal government hands out money with little regard for a student’s major, cost of attendance or odds of repayment.
When government floods a market with subsidized loans, sellers inevitably raise prices.
So tuition soared, administrative bloat followed — and 22-year-olds are graduating with the equivalent of a mortgage but no home to show for it.
Housing is the same: Federal, state and local restrictions like zoning, minimum lot sizes, parking mandates and years-long permitting requirements make it illegal or prohibitively expensive to build where people want to live.
Simultaneously, federally backed mortgages through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pump up demand.
When government throttles supply and amplifies demand, prices skyrocket.
Health care may be the least market-driven sector of all: Government pays for roughly half the nation’s health spending.
Certificate-of-need laws in many states force providers to get permission, often over their own competitors’ objections, before opening a new facility or buying equipment.
Tax policy ties insurance to employers, so patients rarely see prices or shop around; without price transparency, cost-controlling competition never kicks in.
Then there’s regulatory capture, where the industries that government is supposed to police end up writing the rules meant to constrain them — as when pharmaceutical lobbyists shape the FDA approval pipeline, or behemoth financial firms use compliance burdens to keep out new competitors.
That’s cronyism, not capitalism.
And the inflation that’s devoured young Americans’ paychecks in recent few years was driven by trillions of dollars in deficit spending by Congress, which the Federal Reserve accommodated by creating money ex nihilo.
The DSA’s platform invites voters to imagine a future where “food, education, energy, medicine and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses.”
But the sectors that most resemble that vision are the basket cases young Americans already accuse of failing them.
Handing government more control means adding fuel to the fire.
Worse, socialism destroys the engine that makes life more affordable and better over time.
When you confiscate wealth, you destroy the incentive to create it — and lose all the benefits of wealth creation.
In free markets, entrepreneurs profit only when creating value for others; if government takes the reward for their risk, expect less of both.
Translation: fewer modern conveniences and medical breakthroughs as invention and innovation grind to a halt.
Still, “Say no to socialism” isn’t much of a platform — and lecturing young voters about frugal living and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is off-putting, to say the least.
Socialists make empty promises, but the capitalist counteroffer must be concrete.
So we should push costs down by getting Washington out of student lending — and home lending, too.
Repeal costly regulations that prevent builders from constructing new homes.
Scrap certificate-of-need laws, and mandate medical price transparency.
Expose who’s really writing the regulations that industry insiders claim to hate.
Young voters aren’t naïve for wanting the fair shot their parents had.
They’re right to be frustrated.
But the answer is to give free markets a chance to actually work — not to pile on more of the government meddling that created the mess.
E.J. Antoni is a senior fellow at Unleash Prosperity and chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, where Annie Heim is a research assistant.
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