Losing Their Religion

Very encouraging numbers from the latest Reason-Rupe poll of Millennials and their attitudes towards government:

The Reason-Rupe report finds this skepticism of government has millennials favoring general reductions to government spending and regulations:

73 percent of millennials favor allowing private accounts for Social Security; 51 percent favor private accounts even it means cutting Social Security benefits for current and future retirees because 53 percent of millennials say Social Security is unlikely to exist when they retire

64 percent of millennials say cutting government spending by 5 percent would help the economy

59 percent say cutting taxes would help the economy

57 percent prefer a smaller government providing fewer services with low taxes, while 41 percent prefer a larger government providing more services with high taxes

57 percent want a society where wealth is distributed according to achievement

55 percent say reducing regulations would help the economy

53 percent say reducing the size of government would help the economy

The numbers aren’t great across the board. Millennials still support socking it to the rich, guaranteed food, shelter, health insurance, and college education (What’s left? –ed), hiking the minimum wage, etc.

What it looks like to me is, the Millennials love progressivism in theory, but they’ve become disillusioned with Big Government’s ability to deliver on it — or on much of anything else. And that’s not a bad place to begin winning them over to free minds and free markets.

Or as I’ve written and stated too many times to count: There’s no faster way to discredit progressivism than to enact it… but, dear lord, the cleanup.