Yes, historically people have moved to the right as they aged. But it's worth remembering how very different things were for the Boomers. The attraction of the rat race is a lot greater if you're essentially un-burdened by student debt, and you spend your twenties in an era with strong job creation, as the Boomers did. Maybe, now that unemployment is low and incomes are rising, we'll see the traditional shift of millennial attitudes to much greater conservatism as they age, as with earlier generations. But given just how large the preference for Democrats was in the last election-- even for those in their 30s-- it sure as hell isn't showing up yet. I don't expect the millennials to stay as liberal as they are now in 20 or 30 years. But I expect them to be significantly more liberal than the Silents, Boomers, and even Xers at those ages.
Synthetic opiates are necessary pain medication for many people.
Sadly, they are addictive to a significant minority of people.
Most legitimate users are not susceptible to opioid addiction, but over-aggressive control over the drugs will cause a lot of unnecessary suffering.
Thus, the opioid fervor is one cause that I don't support.
I care more about pain relief than I do about the safety of drug abusers. I know that they have a genetic weakness, and I feel bad for them, but not to the extent that I'd deny medication to those who need it by making synthetic opiates unnecessarily difficult to get. I trust doctors over legislators when it comes to making medical decisions.
anatta (01-16-2019), USFREEDOM911 (01-16-2019)
Well, if you check the link I provided, about total government spending, you'll see what happened in this era wasn't a high rate of government spending growth. Quite the contrary: there has never been a period this long in American history with such a low rate of government spending growth. Instead, the issue was very poor revenue growth. Some of that was due to underwhelming economic growth, but it has also been due to multiple rounds of upper-class tax cuts.
Also, there was a shift in government spending, in the same period. Previously, there was more government spending on services (at the federal, state, and local levels), which is employment-intensive. Now there's a lot of government spending on the military, which employs relatively few people dollar-for-dollar. For example, slash a hundred billion dollars from the military budget and throw it to education or infrastructure, and you'll employ a lot more people.
Bourbon (01-16-2019), Phantasmal (01-16-2019)
@ post one.
Is there anything less cool, and more repellent than a conservative millennial?
Probably not!
Trump does have a fan boy base in the 18 to 29 age bracket. Sadly, I believe most of them are either buck-toothed racist hillbillies, or misogynistic INCEL losers.
One major shift I have been noticing: Elderly conservatives have no idea that their attempts at throwing out archaic and outdated cold war expressions (aka, Bolshevik, commie, Marxist) are having less and less effect.
No one under the age of 40 remembers the Cold War, and attempts to paint liberals as witting allies of ruthless Stalinists just fall flat on their face. I actually feel a little bit embarrassed for the octogenarian teabaggers who still think their use of Bolshevik insults are clever, or have any effect whatsoever. Essentially, is seems that elderly teabaggers are unaware that what might have seemed clever, funny, and effective in 1953, just ain't cutting the mustard in 2019!
Phantasmal (01-16-2019)
Truth Detector (01-17-2019)
Phantasmal (01-16-2019)
cawacko (01-16-2019), Truth Detector (01-17-2019), USFREEDOM911 (01-16-2019)
USFREEDOM911 (01-16-2019)
The debt rose not because of unusually quick government spending growth. Government spending growth was, rather, at a record slow pace (you can confirm with the links I provided). It's because of unusually slow revenue growth. Bush pushed through two big upper-class tax cuts (and Obama signed off on making most of that permanent), and then Trump pushed through another big cut. The top bracket paid 91% as recently as the early 60s, and 70% as recently as the early 1980s, but now they pay just 37%, and the rates are still lower on the kinds of income earned by the idle rich (just 20% on long-term capital gains). And where corporations paid a top rate of 52% from the early 1950s through early 1960s (and 52.8% in the late 1960s), now they pay just 21%. We're essentially running up debt because tax policy was altered to further enhance the wealth of the economic elite.
Cypress (01-16-2019)
Truth Detector (01-17-2019)
Along the lines of my original point, the right-wingers are ironically responsible for the decline in negative stigma around terms like Marxist, socialist, commie, and so on. They spent so many years screeching "socialism" every time someone argued for any social spending, that they effectively redefined the term in popular culture. People thought, "well, if it's 'socialist' to want universal healthcare, like they have in every other wealthy nation, then I guess I'm a socialist." The right-wingers now wonder why when someone says "socialist" people don't react as if someone had mentioned Stalinism, but it's because of the reckless and exaggerated rhetoric of the right-wingers that the attitude shift happened. If they hadn't spent decades pretending every liberal was Chairman Mao, they wouldn't have worn away the reaction to those terms.
Last edited by Oneuli; 01-16-2019 at 10:57 AM.
Cypress (01-16-2019)
Truth Detector (01-17-2019)
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