this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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[–] Stern@lemmy.world 110 points 2 years ago (6 children)

You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.

Most millennials retirement plan atm is die of heatstroke in 150 degree weather in a 8 person shared apartment in Alaska.

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 58 points 2 years ago

I have a house and a pretty sizable retirement account.

I will GLADLY take a lower home value, higher taxes on my retirement, higher taxes in general, so long as the ultra wealthy are also taxed accordingly.

[–] OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml 29 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Or you'll get more communist when you have people to protect, like children or friends who start getting sick now that they're not young anymore

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 44 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

I became a socialist because I was an "essential employee" during the height of the pandemic. I was treated like shit by my company, the customers, and the government while they sung my praise. I watched my grandpa get good cancer treatment with the VA (shocker, I know, but it happens) while my sister and grandma had to fight insurance for cancer treatment.

We can't make a perfect world, but we can make a better one. And it starts with a socialist economy.

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[–] GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.

In aggragate, that's the more reliable way to make a population more conservative, but remember that a reasonable portion of fascists in a society that is going in that direction are going to be people who either lost that or never had it and, in either case, blame some minority for that fact. (The majority are still people like you describe, though, the petite bourgeois, etc., who feel insecure in their holdings)

I agree if you mean neoliberal-conservative

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[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 65 points 2 years ago (13 children)

Whenever people say that you grow more conservative when you get older, they're working from the premise that you'll grow more affluent and comfortable later in life. For Americans, that just isn't true anymore. Wages are mostly stagnant, home ownership is much less attainable, and cost of living is at an all time high. Yet for some reason, pundits just can't figure out why millenials aren't getting more conservative as they age, or why zoomers appear to be following this trend.

[–] Commiunism@lemmy.wtf 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Yeah, though there's also the phenomena of older folks generally being more against change and clinging in the past more, the idea being that you have less future to look forward to (since you're closer to death than your birth) so instead you look towards the past and become nostalgic about it.

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[–] PolyLlamaRous@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (28 children)

All of that is the same here in Germany. Check out the stats on home ownership here... But oh man are the kids flipping to the AfD (far right nazi party) quick and in huge numbers. It's scary to see.

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[–] bountygiver@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago

yup it applies only to the privileged class, and of course only people in that class would think that is the general experience.

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[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 42 points 2 years ago

I’ve only gone further Left.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 29 points 2 years ago (6 children)

I am more conservative in the sense that I see things with more nuance. I understand societies are very complex systems in a fragile equilibrium and that my naive solutions to the world's problems are not feasible.

And yet, each day I'm more convinced we need to eat the rich.

[–] Confidant6198@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Eating the Rich is not enough

Edit: We need to create a whole new system to prevent people from getting that rich and to keep the power to the people

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[–] AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com 28 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't know what it's like to live under communism, but I do know what it's like to live under capitalism and it's grip tightens more and more with every passing year.

[–] Funkytom467@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (40 children)

I don't think anyone knows what it's like, was there any communist country which wasn't also both a dictatorship and poor?

Pretty hard seeing the good and bad of communism when it's always alongside the two worse things that can happen to a country.

P.S. Wait, actually not the two worse things... there's also war, and that applies to most of them too.

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[–] ericbomb@lemmy.world 27 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Straight up I was conservative as a young teen, because that's what EVERYONE was here in Utah when I was in the LDS church.

Now I just keep floating more and more left as time goes on.

[–] kofe@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago

I went from "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" in high school to liberal to communist to anarchist back to communist now I think I'm democratic socialist in my 30s? Just basic safety nets and unions, please.

[–] Crikeste@lemm.ee 9 points 2 years ago

Same homie. I can’t even imagine what it was like to be a leftist after 9/11. The whole fucking country was blood thirsty. Heard my friends say some of the most abhorrent shit, and just brushed it off as patriotism.

So fucking glad I found my way out.

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[–] beebarfbadger@lemmy.world 26 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Honestly, if your goals include conserving an inhabitable environment for the human race in the future, conserving a semblance of wealth for everyone but the top, like, dozen people on Earth, conserving the rights of workers and consumers against an overwhelming opposition, conserving democracy for future generations (and all that against the best efforts of a supposedly "conservative" party), your parents may have been right.

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[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years ago

“You will be more conservative as you grow older” is not a truth, but a threat. If you don't become a conservative under their regime, you won't become old.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 17 points 2 years ago

How'd you get a picture of me?

[–] Floon@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I have become aggressively more anti-capitalist as I've grown older. At 56, with a nice professional career mostly behind me, I am vigorously ANTIFA EAT THE RICH ACAB.

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[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The people who told me that were 100% boomers. There’s that idiotic saying “if you’re not liberal* when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re 40 you have no brains” ok boomer.

Note this is using the US meaning of liberal, not to mean “capitalist”.

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[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 11 points 2 years ago

Yup but I have seen it in my peers unfortunately. Honestly though not in the ones who were actually passionate. Like the guy who started the environmental club is as left as he ever was but like the one friend I had I think just parroted what most of his friends said atm.

[–] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

In the mid 20th-century, people reliably got more petty bourgeois as they got older.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379422000452

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yep, correlation, not causation. Getting older doesn't cause it.

There's a much better correlation between wealth and conservatism than age. Almost like those who begin to benefit from the system of oppression are incentivesed to keep it going.

[–] robocall@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago

Seize the means of production

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 years ago

my experience is the opposite

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

How is it that some of us get further left and some people go right? Even poors and immigrants go right and vote against their own interests. I really don't get it.

[–] WhimsicalWood@aussie.zone 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Broadly speaking, I'd say it's done out of fear. Voting conservative feels like staying the course and not challenging the status quo, even if it's not ideal. Voting change could be seen as a threat to "stability" even when it's a false narrative.

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[–] BilboBargains@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Maybe we become more extreme in our existing beliefs. My political compass position drifted right from bottom left as I hit my thirties. After the Iraq invasion of 2003 and recessions following 2008 it swung back towards Ghandi. I became convinced that conservative politics isn't working in my late forties and that has only been reinforced as I try to access the creaking UK healthcare system.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago (10 children)

To be fair, the political compass is astrology that makes no actual point.

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[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

On some social positions, I've grown more conservative.

On fiscal issues? Son, at this point I'm only slightly to the left of "Feed the 1% to the homeless and convert their left-over mansions into low income apartments."

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