This is actually headline news:
Canadians under 35 are more left wing than the rest of Canada and could transform the political landscape if only they voted, according to a new study.
The study, set to be released Friday, found evidence of an emerging generational divide in Canadian politics. Younger Canadians are consistently more favourable to the idea of government intervention in the economy, ensuring a decent standard of living for all, increasing health-care spending and protecting the environment, the study says. And the difference between those over and under 35 on many policy questions was often in the range of 10 percentage points.
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Prof. McGrane said one of the most interesting results is that the gap between older and younger people is relatively consistent across regions and education levels.
So people who pay relatively little in taxes, have few financial or family burdens, and are less likely to own their own businesses are perfectly fine with Big Government. Or to put it another way: I don't mind spending if someone else is picking up the tab.
To borrow from Kate at SDA: The world still has far too many journalists.
That younger Canadians are more Left-wing is neither very insightful or terribly new. Since the 1960s the youth, carefully conditioned by on average about twenty years of state schooling, have dutifully entered society spouting the statist gibberish they were taught. They adopt the pose of the outsider, the radical and the non-conformist because that's how they were raised.
Over the last few years I've seen the first millennials slip into the workforce. Some of them do actually find real work, or what passes for such in the corporate world. Contrary to popular perception their degrees, outside of a handful of technical fields, have little impact on their employment prospects. Sociology or B-School what really matters is if they have family or family friends in positions of influence. A well placed uncle is worth more than all the BA, BSc or B. Comms in the whole wide world.
Working as I do at the heart of a Godless Corporate Head Office in Downtown Toronto I've got a front row to the antics of the nieces and nephews of the great, the good and the well ensconced. I'm among a very small number of employees in my department who were hired without an internal reference. It really is who you know, at least in those heavily regulator sectors of the economy where genuine free market capitalism is merely a dirty rumour.
The crop I see close up tend to be a bit more energetic and well groomed than average. Still the sense of entitlement is about the same. A key hallmark is the passionate commitment to ideas they do not understand and would be hard pressed to even gloss over. They are coffee shop radicals who cave at first contact with an intelligently argued position or new idea. Youth has not changed much down the centuries but the lies their elders teach them has.
Based purely on anecdotal evidence my guess is that these young liberals need a good decade of proper mugging by reality before they realize that their parents, teachers and professors have lied to them. Socialism didn't work in the twentieth century but since they don't teach history any more the lessons will have to be relearned in the twenty-first. I doubt the school fees will be any cheaper.
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