Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and one of the first outside investors in Facebook (now Meta), wrote an email in 2020 to Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen and others, warning them, “When 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why.”
That email became public after Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City. It immediately went viral because 78% of voters 18-29 voted for the socialist last Tuesday. Understanding why has now become vital to the future of America.
The young are angry and insecure. They are perplexed about why they're having such a hard time finding a decent job. They're shocked at housing prices. They're saddled with student debt. They're either unable or don't know how to connect with the opposite sex to make lasting relationships. They wonder why it's so hard to become an adult.
They look at their parents and grandparents and imagine the relative ease with which their elders made their way to adulthood, securing jobs right out of college or even high school, getting married, and having children.
Why can't I have that same life, they ask.
"If you graduated in 1970 with no student debt, compare that to the millennial experience: too many people go to college, they don’t learn anything, and they end up with incredibly burdensome debt," Thiel told The Free Press.
"Student debt is a version of this generational conflict that I’ve talked about for a long time."
Another aspect of the "generational conflict" is housing.
"It’s extremely difficult these days for young people to become homeowners. If you have extremely strict zoning laws and restrictions on building more housing, it’s good for the boomers, whose properties keep going up in value, and terrible for the millennials. If you proletarianize the young people, you shouldn’t be surprised if they eventually become communist," Thiel notes.
A major problem is that expectations of the young don't match the available opportunities to make a good life for themselves. Those expectations led directly to young people taking on more than $2 trillion in student debt.
"Younger generations are told that if they do the same things as the boomers did, things will work out well for them," Thiel said. "But society has changed very drastically, and it doesn’t work in quite the same way."
While Thiel, who backed Donald Trump’s re-election, disagrees with Mamdani’s answers to New York’s housing affordability problems, he credited the lawmaker for talking about the issue more than establishment figures have been.
He also said he’s not sure if young people are actually more in favor of socialism or if they have become more disillusioned with capitalism.
“So in some relative sense, they’re more socialist, even though I think it’s more just: ‘Capitalism doesn’t work for me. Or, this thing called capitalism is just an excuse for people ripping you off,'” Thiel added.
Nikki Haley's son, Nalin, a 24-year-old graduate of Villanova University, is familiar with the problems of his generation, and he has taken a definite turn to the right in wanting to address them.
“We don’t just stop illegal immigration. I think we need to stop legal immigration," he told UnHerd's Sohrab Ahmari.
He thinks former MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan should be "denaturalized" and kicked out of the country.
"I’m often sarcastic, but not in this case. I mean, he hates America. If you hate America, you shouldn’t be in America. … Everyone wants to make it so complicated," said Haley. "That’s the thing with the past generation. They always talk about the rules, regulations, process. No, it’s simple. If you don’t like America, get out.”
Haley shares the concerns of many people his age who are finding it difficult to share in the American dream.
“My friend group from high school, all graduated, great degrees from great schools,” he says. “It’s been a year and a half, and not one of them has a job — not one. So I’m angry at that, because I’m having to try and help my friends get jobs when their parents got jobs immediately — not just after graduating college, but out of high school.”
On the question of affordable housing, he says “My parents bought their first house for $90,000. I mean, that house probably now is worth $400,000. How can we compete?”
Thiel summed it up: “Capitalism is not working for a lot of people in New York City. It’s not working for young people."
I don’t know if I would say that young people are pro-socialist. I would say they are less pro-capitalist than they used to be. If capitalism is seen as an unfair racket of one sort or another, you’ll be much less pro capitalism. So in some relative sense, they’re more socialist, even though I think it’s more just: Capitalism doesn’t work for me. Or, this thing called capitalism is just an excuse for people ripping you off.
Simply waving a magic wand and eliminating $2 trillion in student debt is not going to prompt Millennials to understand how life works. Waving that magic wand to freeze or lower rents, or make houses as cheap as they were in 1970 (or just less expensive), is wrong-headed.
When Odysseus was on his way home from the Trojan War, his ship passed the island of the legendary Sirens, whose songs were so beautiful they would drive mariners mad, causing them to jump ship and resulting in their ships crashing into the rocks.
Odysseus wanted to hear the Sirens' song, so he had his men plug their ears with beeswax while tying him to the mast so he could listen. "If I implore and bid you to loose me, then do ye tie me fast with yet more bonds," Homer wrote.
Odysseus heard the Sirens' song, begging and pleading with his men to cut him loose so he could reach the creatures who were singing. They refused, but Odysseus was able to understand why men would kill themselves for the Sirens' song.
We may be approaching a moment when America’s youth will need to resist socialism’s siren song of false hope and delusion—or risk the collapse of the 250-year-old American experiment."
