Millennial Study Reax

TMV’s Kathy Kattenburg chimed in earlier on the recently released CAP study re: just how progressive the Millennial Generation seems to be.

Sitting in for Andrew Sullivan, Patrick Appel added to the reax with the headline, “We are All Socialists Now,” then pointed to Derek Thompson’s take that “Millennials are stoked about the goals of liberal government … but pretty ambivalent about the means.”

My dueling thoughts on the subject were ably articulated by two commenters on Thompson’s post. First, “Jordan,” who wrote:

I’m pretty sure the never-ending debacle that was the Bush administration turned the Millenials off to the idea of ’small government’ for good. The debate among people my age, largely, is about government’s effectiveness, and how it can best interact with business to achieve the policy goals we want (green energy is a prime example). I think we view corporations and government as a continuum of institutions, not in the sense that they’re all “the man,” but in the sense that they all have a particular role to play in support of one another.

Next, “Duder,” who opined:

This is not exactly surprising. Big government looks much more attractive when it’s free. People are getting a pretty nice return on their tax dollars currently with our massive deficits, while the national debt is something no one feels. Assuming we don’t have a Zimbabwe style debt currency crisis (fingers crossed), eventually people will have to be taxed to pay for all this stuff. This is not to say that we shouldn’t tax more and provide all this government action to make a better society. I’m just curious as how views will change when people actually have to pay for it.

Taken together, Jordan and Duder generally sum up my attitude: government has a legitimate role; focus on government effectiveness (implied: rather than its size); let government invest, but beware the potential future cost. Then again, no one seems to care what my generation thinks.