ArcaMax

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Young people are freaking out about the current cost of living crisis. But following their feelings is about the worst thing they could do if they ever want their situation to improve, particularly when it comes to identifying who’s really responsible for the mess they’re in.

American Pollster Frank Luntz spoke recently to a Generation Z focus group — generally defined as voters 18 to 29— and found that they like the sound of socialism and consider capitalism to be the source of their problems. But when actually listening to how they describe capitalism, they started talking about big corporations. By contrast, Luntz says, they actually hold entrepreneurship in high regard. What exactly do they think capitalism is, in its purest form, if not entrepreneurship? It doesn’t seem like they’ve learned the difference between capitalism and corporatism — the latter best characterized as the long arm of the state mucking around and playing favorites on the economic playing field.

And what do the kids want the government to do to fix the unfairness resulting from all this government intervention? To govern even harder, apparently. Because the same participants in Luntz’s focus group also said that they favor equality over meritocracy. Who decides what’s considered “equal”

In taking away from the “haves” to give to the “ have nots” then, brainiacs? Answer: the same establishment that created this whole mess in the first place. They don’t like corporatism which, by definition, is the direct result of state intervention, but they’d be totally cool with the state doing the same when it comes to individuals, taking from the so-called “rich” to give to the poor.

This kind of Robin Hood thinking is also trendy here in Canada right now, where there’s a housing crisis in addition to high inflation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal budget recently promised to level the playing field with $38 billion USD in taxpayer cash to be spent on things like affordable housing for Gen Z and Millennials.

“We’re going to build almost 4 million new homes by 2031. We’re going to change the way homes are built in Canada. And we’re going to create a new generation of homeowners,” Trudeau promised on social media.

Seems rather ambitious given that there are 3.7 million minutes between now and 2031. By that calculation, Canada would have to build roughly one house every minute. Back in 2021, Trudeau also vowed to plant 2 billion trees by 2030, but based on an audit last year, the government looks on track to meet about 3.8 percent of that goal.

To pay for this scam, they’re raising taxes on capital gains over about $180,000 USD up to 67 percent (from the current 50 percent). “Millennial and Gen Z Canadians can get a good job, they can work hard, they can do everything their parents did and more, and too often the reward remains out of reach,” said Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, who in the exact same budget had earmarked another $2 billion USD for Ukraine. It also commits another $158 million USD for development and reconstruction. Maybe all the Canadian youth can just move to Ukraine since there seems to be no end of cash for building there. Or are their parents paying for that, too? (Spoiler alert: Duh.)

Know what’s really toxic in this whole debate about how the government is going to save young voters? The notion that the so-called “rich” are some kind of monolith of people who don’t deserve what they now have and should have it redistributed into the pockets of the youth in the interests of fairness and equality. Some of those “rich” folks were once among the working poor, grinding their entire lives and sacrificing nice things like vacations to live frugally because they deliberately chose to prioritize building a nest egg. Other kids — including some of these same young voters now complaining — enjoyed all the benefits of their own parents’ opposite choice to live it up. How exactly is it fair to take it out on families who deliberately delayed gratification and who are now finally able to enjoy the reward, only for the government to move the goalposts on them.

It’s all too tempting for those now suffering to support the government’s strategy of invoking class warfare as a means of attempting to secure the support of the ever-increasing demographic of “have nots”. But the inept establishment’s own misguided and shortsighted ideologically driven policies, on everything from spending to immigration, were responsible for creating the whole mess in the first place. Don’t expect that anything they do now will somehow save you. As former US President Ronald Reagan said way back in 1986: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.”