David Craig, on December 21st, 2022Wednesday/Thursday/Friday blog
Here are a few charts readers might find interesting/worrying.
They’re based on surveys about people’s attitudes, particularly young peoples’ attitudes, to Socialism and Capitalism.
Socialism – Getting back into favour?
Here’s a chart comparing the overall population’s view of Socialism and Capitalism in three countries – Germany, Britain and America:
As you’ll see 45% of Germans view Socialism positively vs 26% who view Socialism negatively. Only 26% of Germans view Capitalism positively vs 47% who view Capitalism negatively. The British are 36% favourable to Socialism vs 32% who view Socialism negatively. In the USA, Capitalism is viewed more positively than Socialism.
Socialism – Millennials’ new love affair
The story possibly starts to get more interesting when we start to look at the differences between generations.
Despite Capitalism being viewed more positively in the USA than Socialism, when we look at the views of different age groups, we see that in a survey conducted in 2014 in the 18-24 age group just as many people view Capitalism (the dark green line) as favourably as Socialism (the lighter green line)
In a survey conducted two years later, the younger age group seems much more positive about Socialism than Capitalism:
(I’m sorry I don’t understand from this image whether the younger age group is 18-24 or 18-30)
But what we can say is that amongst young people in the UK and USA, Socialism is viewed much more positively than capitalism.
Australia – a land of rugged individualists?
That brings us to Australia. If there ever was a country with a reputation for being rugged, no-nonsense pioneers, it must be Australia. Or at least, it was. But when we look at the attitudes of young Australians vs the general Australian population to Socialism and Capitalism, we see that about 37% of 18-24s are favourable to Socialism vs just 20% who view it unfavourably:
Even in the general Australian population, slightly more people have a favourable view of Socialism than those who view it unfavourably.
As for Capitalism, only 25% of 18-24-year-old Australian view it positively vs 40% who view Capitalism negatively. And in the overall population, more people are negative to Capitalism than are positive.
Perhaps surprisingly, it’s not just dopey, woke, brainwashed Australian university students who are so positive towards Socialism:
The rise and rise of Socialism
Of course, these are just a few charts picked from surveys which may or not be truly representative of people’s views. But the overall message seems to be clear – many people, particularly the young, are becoming increasingly positive to the idea of a society where governments control all aspects of our lives.
Young people have always been more radical than those with a bit of life experience or those with family responsibilities. But what’s different now is that young people seem to be getting what they want.
Covid lockdowns; climate lockdowns; the woke authoritarian censorship of free speech; the cancelling, career ruination and societal excommunication of anyone deemed to have ‘wrong views’; ‘no jab no job’ and ‘no jab no travel’ vaccines mandates; the imposition of masks; people being forced to make humiliating public apologies for supposedly offending groups who spend their lives trying to find things to be offended by; banning gas boilers and petrol-driven cars; the imposition of net zero; the imposition of the ’15-minute city’ concept by which people will be fined for travelling outside their own zones by car what the bureaucrats consider is ‘too frequently’; the mainstream media becoming propagandists for the approved narrative on every issue instead of reporting the news and challenging our rulers’ decisions; more power being given to unelected internationalist bureaucracies like the UN, the WHO and our friends at the WEF; etc etc.
All these are aspects of an increasing totalitarian form of big-government Socialism, which our young people seem to support, in which people either willingly or else by coercion give up their freedoms handing ever more power over their lives to their rulers, bureaucrats, officials and the police.
Moreover, we’re also starting to see typical Socialist government responses to anyone objecting to official policies – brutal suppression of anti-lockdown protests using batons, tear gas and rubber bullets in the UK, the Netherlands and Australia; arrests of anti-lockdown protesters in many countries; closing the bank accounts of anyone in Canada donating to a truckers’ anti-lockdown demonstration; police in the Netherlands shooting live rounds at a 16-year-old driving a tractor in protest against government plans to confiscate his father’s farm to steal land to build accommodation for illegal migrants; a mother in Australia being dragged off in handcuffs by police in front of her children merely for tweeting that she might attend a demonstration; people being harassed by police and fined for supposedly breaking lockdown restrictions for sitting ‘too long’ on a park bench, going for a walk in the countryside, having just two friends in their garden for a drink or visiting elderly relatives.
Sky News Australia tells it like it is
Here’s Rowan Dean on Sky News Australia warning us about where our western societies are headed:
You’d never see anything like this on the (IMHO) utterly useless Sky News UK. Mark Steyn on GB News is about the only person in the British media who would dare express these types of opinions.
Category: 
‘Twas ever thus, since Socialism and the Welfare State first emerged, appearing to offer peace of mind and relative financial security to the previously oppressed and poverty stricken. My maternal grandparents, for instance, both born into “respectable” families (i.e. hard-working lower middle class) towards the end of the 19th century, descended into extreme poverty, partly due to their own fecklessness, following WW1 and the Depression of the 1920s and lived thereafter in lifelong dread of “The Workhouse”. They naturally greeted the post-WW2 Labour Government, the NHS and a liveable Old Age Pension as manna from Heaven. I recall the bitter arguments between them and my own parents, lifelong, hard-working, salary-earning, natural Conservative voters, on the subject of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”. It has become ever more evident, dating from the late 1940’s concept under Clement Attlee, Aneurin Bevan et al of the true Welfare State, that Socialism, given its inevitable slide into Communism, just does not and can not work long term, since in a very short term its idealistic goals of offering humanitarian aid to those who are unable, for genuine reasons, to support themselves, become incentives for those who do not wish to support themselves to expect, then demand, that others do it for them. That demand has now, it seems, become a “Human Right”. Examples – millions of single mothers and children, with n’er a supporting, biological father in sight, dependent on State support. Farmers unable since we left the EU to find workers to harvest crops while we are paying benefits to millions of fit, unemployed UK-born layabouts. Of course the young love Socialism and will continue to do so. They are inexperienced and full of the milk of human kindness. In the 60s they were the cannabis-fuelled “flower” people; now they are the BLM-conditioned Woke. I recall when my own children, idealistic undergrads or soon to be at the time, harangued me over my support for Maggie Thatcher. Now, after 40 plus years of hard work in various professions and retired or soon to be so, their views are thoroughly Conservative. They and I witness with rather wry amusement their own youngsters, graduates starting out on their careers, propounding their Socialist views as they look on us seniors with benevolent but impatient tolerance of our conservative views. I’ve a feeling, though, that as these well-educated millennials see ever more of their hard-earned cash going to support the woke lefties, their views will, like those of their parents and grandparents, change quite markedly. The acknowledged left-wing bias of the young is, of course, why Labour governments and the SNP are in favour of reducing the voting age even further. I have always thought eighteen to be too young. Sixteen would be disastrous. As for Australia, I find it almost unbelievable as well as tragic that the open-minded, fundamentally classless (in British terms), hard-working and self-respecting population in whose country I passed a wonderful extended visit over two decades ago, has permitted itself, by giving in little by little to the demands of the Left, aided and abetted by covid-induced panic, to become the woke-infested, controlled antithesis of its previous self which it now is.
Australia is frankly full of shit as we all know. They talk the collective talk influenced by the high percentage of celtic and european immigrants that settled there. Whilst they chase the biggest property bubble outside of Peking.
The issue for the young is high costs. Due to mismanagement and corruption from the very socialism they claim to support their costs are astronomic. They cannot afford a car let alone a house to purchase. Little hope of a happy peaceful family life and the powers that be all blame capitalism – it wasn’t me guv its all those nasty capitalists.
The wef dream of owning nothing is their reality but they are far from happy. But have to ask where is their rebellion why are they not challenging the establishment where is the treason? They just seem like (vegan) sheep bleating the elite narrative.
I agree entirely with Stillreading. My maternal grandparents were born in 1880 and my mother in 1919 and I remember her talking about the fear of ending up in the Workhouse. The regime was hard in order to get people back into jobs. I wish I knew more about my grandparents views and why they supported the Labour Party. I would like to think my grandfather wanted a decent wage to support his family. I can’t imagine that he would have wanted to live from the efforts of others. That is basically living off slavery. It is time we recognised that is what the welfare state is about but it is sold a being caring and cooperating to create a better life.
If people want to share the income of others then let them set up their own groups and see how it goes. I saw a comment recently about the Pilgrim Fathers who were escaping religious control but they had to pool their wealth to buy the ship and they also had to share the fruits of their labour. They ended up close to starvation and eventually adopted private ownership. The true lessons of history are not the ones we are told about.
I think we have to be careful about definitions. Capitalism has become corporate capitalism and the ideas of competition and free trade are being ignored because businesses don’t like competition. When they get large and can influence politicians the consumers are the losers. I also think that capitalism is about investment by everybody, which means savings and this has been discouraged by low interest rates and inflation from the continual money printing has made saving more difficult and unattractive. The young see capitalism as the creation of billionaires. I can’t see anything wrong with this except the political influence it gives them. If people object to their wealth, then don’t buy their products. A good example of free trade is the creation of the Venetian trading empire and it collapsed when the Doges took a cut of the profit and controlled who was allowed to trade. The UK has done something even worse and transferred work to China and paid themselves higher salaries and now our trade is limited because our costs are too high, and a lot of the high costs are due to the ridiculous energy policies. I suspect Europe faces a difficult future because of geography. It does not have the materials or energy to match America and Asia.
When I look at history all I see is a life of struggle and hardship for most people. Even the life of the emperors and elites was not that good compared to what we have today. But it is a history of them and us, with elites in control as civilisations became more complex. Slavery was everywhere in some form or other. The European serfs were not in chains but were effectively slaves. Taxation is a form of slavery and much of this in history had been to fight wars. The industrial revolution brought increased wealth but also terrible employment conditions. Throughout history people have more from the countryside to towns in search of opportunities. Now we have the opposite and the rich want to live in peace on their country estates, but the trend is to get the masses into towns and cities. Why do we accept this?
Control of the masses by elites dominates the history of the human race but the most recent years have been ones of increasing freedom. This is being taken back through technology. It starts with increasing state welfare and apparent freedom but behind it is tyranny and a return to complete control.
The welfare state is now seen as an entitlement but the contribution to it is always somebody else. As Thatcher said, for somebody to have an entitlement, somebody else has first to meet an obligation. More than anything people do not see themselves as being responsible for providing their most important needs. This can only lead to failure.
Your final paragraph says it all Thorpe,Merry Christmas to you all.