Making Sense of the Millennial Generation

Millennials' political views don't make any sense is the headline of an Atlantic article about a new Reason-Rube survey of millennials. Senior editor Derek Thompson writes:

Millennial politics is simple, really. Young people support big government, unless it costs any more money. They're for smaller government, unless budget cuts scratch a program they've heard of. They'd like Washington to fix everything, just so long as it doesn't run anything.

That's all from a new Reason Foundation poll surveying 2,000 young adults between the ages of 18 and 29. Millennials' political views are, at best, in a stage of constant metamorphosis and, at worst, "totally incoherent," as Dylan Matthews puts it.

It's not just the Reason Foundation. In March, Pew came out with a similar survey of Millennial attitudes that offered another smorgasbord of paradoxes:

• Millennials hate the political parties more than everyone else, but they have the highest opinion of Congress.
• Young people are the most likely to be single parents and the least likely to approve of single parenthood.
• Young people voted overwhelmingly for Obama when he promised universal health care, but they oppose his universal health care law as much as the rest of the country ... even though they still pledge high support for universal health care. (Like other groups, but more so: They seem allergic to the term Obamacare.)

Thompson has three takeaways from the poll.

1. Millennials are more liberal but they get more economically conservative when they make more money.
   
2. Millennials don't know what they're talking about when it comes to economics. He cites several examples of conflicting, even irreconcilable, ideological positions. Examples: 58% want to cut taxes overall, but 66 % want to raise taxes on the wealthy; 66% say 'when something is funded by government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful', but more than two-thirds think government should guarantee food, shelter and a living wage.
3. Millennials don't know what socialism is, but they think it sounds nice: 42% think socialism is preferable to capitalism, but only 16% could accurately define socialism in the survey. [To their credit, 52% said capitalism is the better system.]

Yet maybe the explanation for millennial ideological schizophrenia is as simple as this: their transition from childhood idealism to adult realism is taking years longer than previous generations.

Twenty-somethings in the 1940s had childhood idealism brutally stripped from them by a world war overseas and rationing of food, gas, and every other material good at home. Forced to face and overcome evil and deprivation, they went on to become "the greatest generation" of achievement and accomplishment.

In contrast, many of today's twenty-somethings reside in the protected economic shelter of family (living at home or subsidized by it) and/or government (subsidized by student loans, food stamps, etc.). They can afford to cling to childhood idealism longer.

The question isn't whether the 86-million-strong millennials will come to grips with adult economic realities (they will have to at some point). It's whether the nation can economically survive the length of time it's taking for them to do so.