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Young Americans Aren’t Wrong To Feel Betrayed But Capitalism Isn’t The Culprit
Young Americans aren’t just drifting toward socialism. They’re running toward it, convinced that the American dream skipped their generation. Candidates openly embracing socialist labels are winning elections in major cities, and rhetoric that was once confined to radicals is becoming mainstream. The irony is that the very policies they think will save them are the ones that pushed them to the edge in the first place.
At first glance, none of this makes sense. Socialism has produced disaster everywhere it has been tried. Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any system in human history. So why are the children of its success so eager to abandon it?
The easy explanation blames TikTok, activist professors, and influencers who distrust Western civilization and condemn capitalism. There is some truth in that, but it misses a deeper and far more important cause. It confuses the spark with the fuel.
Beneath the slogans is a generation that feels economically cheated. Many young Americans no longer believe they will achieve the stability their parents took for granted. They face higher tuition, heavier debt, steeper housing costs, and a stagnant job market. Upward mobility feels elusive. The milestones of adulthood feel delayed or impossible.
A whole generation was raised to believe they deserved certain outcomes, and now those outcomes aren’t materializing. They look at the system around them and see barriers, not opportunities. And when people believe a system is rigged against them, they don’t try to fix it. They try to tear it down.
Capitalism becomes the obvious villain. If America runs on capitalism, and America feels broken, then capitalism must be the cause. And if capitalism is the cause, socialism must be the solution.
But what if their diagnosis is wrong? What if the system crushing young Americans isn’t capitalism at all, but the layers of socialist-style policies woven into the economy over the past century, policies that subtly push wealth upward and shift long-term obligations downward?
America has built an economy where one generation’s comfort is paid for by the next generation’s sacrifice. Over the last century, the United States has added an expanding array of redistribution programs to its market system. These programs were often passed in the name of compassion and fairness, but their structure consistently produces unintended consequences. Chief among them is a subtle, ongoing transfer of wealth and opportunity away from the young. That intergenerational transfer, not capitalism, is the real source of the resentment so many young people feel.
To be clear, we’re talking about generational systems and policies, not the moral character of individuals. No generation is monolithic. But the economic structures we’ve built have produced consistent patterns that burden the young generations far more than prior ones.
Here are three examples.
1. Student Loans: A Program Intended to Help that Ended Up Doing the Opposite
Federal student loans were created to help lower-income students attend college. In practice, they allowed universities to raise tuition year after year with impunity. If students can always borrow more, colleges can always charge more. The result has been runaway tuition, bloated bureaucracies, and an entire ecosystem built on the assumption that young people will take on enormous debt to obtain a degree whose value steadily erodes as more people have one.
Universities prospered. Administrators prospered. Students did not. Many began adulthood burdened by debt so large that it delayed every milestone from homeownership to marriage to starting a family.
This isn’t capitalism. It’s a government-engineered system that transfers wealth upward and locks the young into financial servitude through a student-debt burden that is nearly impossible to escape.
2. Social Security: A Safety Net That Became a Generational Burden
Social Security began as a modest safety net. It has become a demographic time bomb. With declining birth rates and rising life expectancy, fewer workers now support a growing number of retirees. Younger Americans pay heavily into a system they know won’t give them the same benefits.
The trust fund they’re told exists is filled with IOUs, because previous generations already spent the money. Today’s young workers aren’t contributing to their own retirement. They’re funding someone else’s.
Again, this isn’t capitalism. It’s the socialization of what was once the personal responsibility to save for your own retirement, now transformed into a compulsory system whose costs fall increasingly on the younger generation.
3. Government Debt: One Generation Enjoys the Benefits, the Next Pays the Bill
Government debt isn’t like personal debt. Individuals repay their own loans. Governments create social debt that hands the bill to future taxpayers. Jefferson warned that one generation has no moral right to bind another with debt. Yet that is precisely what we’ve done.
When borrowing finances bridges or innovation, future generations share in the benefit. But when it finances entitlements or political consumption, future generations inherit only the cost, through higher taxes, inflation, and a rising cost of living.
Now put the pieces together.
Student loans transfer prosperity upward.
Social Security transfers income upward.
And government debt transfers obligations downward.
The younger generation isn’t imagining things. They’re up against a system that limits their progress while shielding older generations from the consequences of past decisions. It’s no surprise they’re angry. It’s no surprise they want dramatic change.
What is surprising is the conclusions they’re drawing and where they’ve aimed their anger. Socialism now looks appealing, and capitalism gets blamed for problems created by socialist-style policies. Young Americans aren’t wrong to feel betrayed. But they are wrong about who betrayed them.
Capitalism isn’t the culprit. Intergenerational redistribution is. Policies designed to protect the vulnerable have, in practice, stacked the deck against the young. Intentional or not, socialist-style programs have loaded a massive financial burden onto the rising generation.
Unless we acknowledge the real source of this injustice, we won’t have any chance of correcting it. And if we don’t correct it, the crisis simmering beneath the surface will eventually erupt.
We’re approaching a turning point. A society cannot survive if its young are convinced their future has been taken from them. While their frustration may be misdirected, it isn’t baseless. And until we confront this generational injustice, the revolt against capitalism won’t fade. It will intensify, fueled by a volatile mix of youthful anger and misguided ignorance.
There’s still time to chart a different course. If society can finally acknowledge the injustice, and the young can understand how socialist-style policies have undermined their economic future, we can avoid the tragic outcome of a generation that destroys the very system that remains its best chance for a prosperous future.
* * *
Rabbi Elie Feder, PhD, and Rabbi Aaron Zimmer host the “Physics to God” podcast.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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