Young Americans Aren’t as Woke as You Think
May 9, 2022
by Adrian Wooldridge
Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former writer at the Economist, he is author, most recently, of “The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World.”
Journalist, Adrian Wooldridge wrote an opinion piece on Dr. Christina Elson’s research findings from her Confidence in Capitalism survey in Bloomberg Opinion.
An excerpt: Many young people are undoubtedly frustrated with the way the world works. Their frustration sometimes takes the form of praising “socialism.” Woke activists set the tone of universities and prominent corporations with their shrill certainties. Left-wing heroes such as Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attract passionate young supporters.
But a new study of younger Americans by Wake Forest University’s (gloriously named) Center for the Study of Capitalism should give us pause. The polling firm YouGov contacted a demographically representative sample of 1,999 respondents aged 18 to 40 and then split the sample into three age groups: older Gen-Zs (18-24), younger millennials (25-31) and older millennials (32-40).
The survey comes with all the usual caveats: Polling results depend on what questions you ask and people often believe in contradictory things. Still, the results suggest, at the very least, that the attitudes of young people are not fixed in stone. Their attitudes to capitalism depend on the willingness of politicians to woo them and the ability of the economic system to generate opportunities for them. The study demonstrates that younger Americans continue to believe in the holy trinity of competition, individual responsibility and earned success: Some 68% of younger millennials agree that “competition is good” and “stimulates people to work hard and develop new ideas,” while only 9% disagree.