"I see nothing for the future." The young man is not impressed by empty platitudes about the greatness of America?
Take one young Pittsburgh man I met in a recent focus group. A college graduate working part-time as a bartender, he felt weighed down by hopelessness, adrift in a country where rising costs, stagnant wages and lack of affordable housing have made even the modest ambitions of other generations feel out of reach for him. “Hope is great,” he told me, “but I see nothing for the future.”
The young man’s experience reflects a broader crisis of confidence and purpose, rooted in economic insecurity and social disconnection. The Covid pandemic exacerbated the alienation, with many first-time voters spending thousands of hours isolated and online in their formative years.
While these struggles affect the whole country, they weigh especially on young men of all educational, racial and ethnic backgrounds. Nearly three-quarters of Gen Z men report feeling regularly stressed by an uncertain future, stirring painful memories of the Great Recession they witnessed as children. These feelings erode self-esteem and diminish their interest in personal relationships and long-term planning, leading many to describe their future as “bleak,” “unclear” and “scary.”
Today’s young men are lonelier than ever and have inherited a world rife with skepticism toward the institutions designed to promote and defend American ideals. Men under 30 are nearly twice as likely to be single as women their same age; Gen Z men are less likely to enroll in college or the work force than previous generations. They have higher rates of suicide and are less likely than their female peers to receive treatment for mental health maladies. Most young men in my polling say they fear for our country’s future, and nearly half doubt their cohort’s ability to meet our nation’s coming challenges.
The rest of the article is garbage. It makes it seem that it was easy for Trump to be a Pied Piper. And the text entirely ignores the bipartisan failure to address the issues of younger voters. I wonder why the writer would have that POV and ignore the democrats' failure?...
By John Della Volpe
Mr. Della Volpe is the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. He runs a research firm that conducted polls for a PAC supporting the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaigns.
Here's a suggestion by the brain genius.
To reignite the hope of the emerging generation, Ms. Harris should make a sweeping national call to both military and civilian service — name it the Generation Z Compact to Rebuild and Renew America. Such a plan would offer a sense of identity, community and patriotism, while providing economic stability and skill-building — things many young men feel they are missing.
Comments are off because of course they are.
I think there is more to that. Subsistence farmers were very poor, but they had a lot of children, because children were extremely helpful for them. Urban workers on the other hand have zero incentives to have children other than purely emotional ones, and capitalism reduces everything to economic incentives. No wonder birth rates are falling most in the most advanced capitalist societies.
Subsistence farmers weren't alienated from their product, they were producers and they weren't even producing commodities. And in primitive agriculture you needed a lot of hands else you starved, since it was labour intensive, especially after serfdom made it even more labour intensive (for sake of simplicity i leave out how serfdom alienated peasant). Note the same dynamic was during the industrial revolution where for some time worker families also had many children because not only that was custom they brought from their villages but they were also needed because wages were so low that women and children needed to work. It led to shocking exploitation where for example the average life expectancy for worker in Manchester were 15 (FIFTEEN) years at one point, only after wokers fought eventually it came to the:
Yes, but it's actually the same dynamic as above, but because children labour is outlawed, children are pure net loss (and a huge loss, not like in case of subsistence farmer). People are again grouping up to survive because single wage is increasingly nonliveable, but those groups don't include children.
Also we're not talking about children per se here, but about being single, and it's again part of the same dynamic, where the accumulated wealth of previous generation(s) is drained and young people are starting from the point of desperation not security. That does not encourage relationships, especially coupled with cultural norm and pressure that in most places in west still require men to be out early and be "breadwinners". Interestingly enough this situation also had parallel in the agriculture history where due to debts and dividing the land people were forced out of land into the world, becoming landless farmhands, vagrants, bandits or later being absorbed into industry (of which first three cathegories were also notorious for not having families).
So yes, there's more, and it all again directly leds to the economic base. It's the same process but in different phases.