Millennials are shattering the oldest rule in politics

[Jon Banks]

The assumption that people become more conservative as they get older is being challenged by the Millennial generation.

Financial Times: Millennials are shattering the oldest rule in politics

“If you are not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 35 you have no brain.” So said Winston Churchill. Or US president John Adams. Or perhaps King Oscar II of Sweden. Variations of this aphorism have circulated since the 18th century, underscoring the well-established rule that as people grow older, they tend to become more conservative.

The pattern has held remarkably firm. By my calculations, members of Britain’s “silent generation”, born between 1928 and 1945, were five percentage points less conservative than the national average at age 35, but around five points more conservative by age 70. The “baby boomer” generation traced the same path, and “Gen X”, born between 1965 and 1980, are now following suit.

Millennials — born between 1981 and 1996 — started out on the same trajectory, but then something changed. The shift has striking implications for the UK’s Conservatives and US Republicans, who can no longer simply rely on their base being replenished as the years pass...

This is borne out by US survey data showing that, having reached political maturity in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, millennials are tacking much further to the left on economics than previous generations did, favouring greater redistribution from rich to poor.

Similar patterns are evident in Britain, where millennials are more economically leftwing than Gen-Xers and boomers were at the same age, and Brexit has alienated a higher share of former Tory backers among this generation than any other. Even before Truss, two-thirds of millennials who had backed the Conservatives before the EU referendum were no longer planning to vote for the party again, and one in four said they now strongly disliked the Tories.

The data is clear that millennials are not simply going to age into conservatism. To reverse a cohort effect, you have to do something for that cohort. Home ownership continues to prove more elusive for millennials than for earlier generations at the same age in both countries. With houses increasingly difficult to afford, a good place to start would be to help more millennials get on to the housing ladder. Serious proposals for reforming two of the world’s most expensive childcare systems would be another...

https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4

[Richard Smith]

The assumption that people become more conservative as they get older is being challenged by the Millennial generation.

Financial Times: Millennials are shattering the oldest rule in politicshttps://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4

What else can you expect with the schools - and in particular universities - and social media indoctrinating young people with leftist ideology from the time they are born.  The dumbing down of society as demonstrated by falling test scores contributes to this trend.  Young people these days are bombarded with social propaganda for leftist causes and are too dumb to think for themselves.    The results are becoming apparent in the breakdown of society.  Crime, illegal aliens, no one working, homeless flooding the cities, record numbers of people dependent on governmental handouts.