Young Adults Say Our System Has Completely Failed

[applegrove]

Young Adults Say Our System Has Completely Failed

December 4, 2025 at 10:13 am EST By Taegan Goddard 30 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2025/12/04/young-adults-say-our-system-has-completely-failed/

A new Harvard Institute of Politics survey finds that adults under age 30 believe that things in the country are generally on the wrong track, 57% to 13%.

Just 32% describe the US as a healthy democracy or one that’s “somewhat functioning,” while 64% call it system in trouble or one that has completely failed.

Said pollster John Della Volpe: “Young Americans are sending a clear message: the systems and institutions meant to support them no longer feel stable, fair, or responsive to this generation.”

[gab13by13]

1. Old Adults like me say the same thing.

[stage left]

25. Old adults like me

agree with you and them.

[KPN]

32. Ditto. And some of us have been saying this for quite some time. None of this started with Trump.

[Blues Heron]

2. Vote more. Less than half of people under thirty vote. Get the pukes out should be job #1

[angrychair]

18. There response would be

"vote for what?"
I have two 20-ish year old children and I can promise you that I exactly what they would say.
Don't get me wrong, I raised them right, they vote Democratic but only because the alternative is much worse.
For many young people the Democratic Party is little more than the lesser of two evils. From their perspective there is little incentive to vote but some vote out of necessity or obligation to a relative or something but few out of a honest sense that they genuinely want to vote for Democrats.
Younger candidates, that absolutely understand this dynamic, get a lot more votes because they often run on a platform that speaks to their concerns, like getting money out of politics, income inequality, affordability and civil rights.They also do it in a way that seems authentic and not just maneuvering to get their vote.

[W_HAMILTON]

36. That's not a valid excuse to me because what sort of dumbass would choose the GREATER of two evils?

It's not like they can abstain from voting and not be impacted by the election. Someone is going to get elected regardless, so why would you take actions that make it so the GREATER of two evils gets elected?

They should stop calling themselves progressive if they are just fine with Republicans winning since Democrats are just """the lesser of two evils.""" We see progress when Democrats win and we see that progress rolled back when Republicans win.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

37. Many are voting as often as they can and still feel this way.

[Blues Heron]

42. The other half of the cohort needs to step up and give us a government that can work for the people.

Voting should be mandatory. You can leave it blank but you must submit a ballot.

[Fiendish Thingy]

3. That's why, once they have the trifecta again, Dems must:

Kill the filibuster, expand the court, and govern progressively, without fear or hesitation.

The majority of Americans support progressive policies, despite identifying as moderate or conservative.

So, Dems should abandon timid, cautious “pragmatic incrementalism”, and once the filibuster is dead and the court is expanded, Ram through bill after bill of legislation restoring democracy and repairing the damage of the Trump era.

If Dems govern fearlessly, unhesitatingly, progressively, and most importantly, effectively , voters, especially young voters, will reward them with majorities for a generation.

But first the people must elect more courageous Dems willing to kill the filibuster and expand the court, without fear of what the republicans might do. If Dems govern effectively, voters won’t give republicans the trifecta again for decades (see: FDR’s New Deal)

[Captain Zero]

4. Dems should do our thing and say it's conservative

Which in the case of preserving the constitutional system, it definitely is.

[Duncan Grant]

15. Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer don't seem like the guys to do this.

I support your position, but I have no confidence that I’ll see anything progressive enacted during my lifetime.

I’ll wait for the multiple alerts pointing out that I’m not supporting democrats. The irony.

[Fiendish Thingy]

23. There's nothing wrong with pushing to elect fearless Democrats

Even Obama has called for the old guard to step aside and let the next generation take the reins

[leftstreet]

38. +1

[Renew Deal]

5. This drives a lot of what we have seen

With less people wanting to go to college and "Gen Z" riots outside of the US. I think we're one spark away from a major impact (drastic voting preference changes, political realignment, violence, revolutionary violence, etc.)

[Bettie]

14. College is now more of a driver of being in debt

forever than it is of higher earnings.

Our kids went to college...we paid for it, so that they didn't have to start their adulthood in debt. It wasn't easy, but we made it happen (cheaper state school, monthly payment plan). If we had not paid off our house, there is no way we could have managed.

[MichMan]

39. Do you feel like their college was a waste of money then?

[Bettie]

41. No, I don't think it was a waste of money

college is adulthood with training wheels if you have supportive parents. That helped them become more responsible without there being terrible consequences for mistakes they made.

My oldest son has a good job that he wouldn't have got an interview for if he didn't have a degree. He's enjoys the work and is very good at it.

Middle son is currently working as a pharmacy tech while his partner goes to grad school. He's also planning to take some pharmacy classes and hopes to move on to become a pharmacist once the partner has completed her program.

Third son is still in high school.

College isn't a waste, but it can set people up for failure if they have too much debt.

When DH and I went to college, tuition was reasonable (1984, my first year at UW Madison was $535 and change a semester) and, more importantly, student loan terms weren't punitive. We were able to pay ours off...simple interest makes a huge difference. Heck, Pell grants were still widely available.

By the time I graduated, tuition had almost tripled and grants were a lot less available; they had started moving toward a borrowing model for education.

It's a bad situation. To get ahead higher education is helpful, but to get that, you end up in debt and wages are not keeping pace with the cost of...existing.

[librechik]

6. They should start working now if they want Medicare for All by the time they retire

Republicans cheat, so it all takes so much longer. Re-design the whole system while you are at it. Congress doesn't legislate, Courts don't decide,, what a mess.

I always said Millennials and Zs will save us all. I sure hope it's true. but they need to get busy. Sorry Kids!

[The Madcap]

7. Young people are not stupid.

They might be strange to us Olds, but they're a product of the crazy world they were born into. No wonder they have so little hope for the future.

[BaronChocula]

34. They're mixed just like any other group

Some of them step up and run for office as Democrats because they know the difference between a political party and a cult of white resentment. Others lack electoral sophistication and simply repeat things they hear other people say that they can blame for their own general dissatisfaction. I had a niece tell me in 2020 she would vote for "the lesser of two evils" (Biden/Harris). I didn't challenge her terms as long as she did her duty. I also have a Bernie or bust nephew, or at least he was in 2020. I don't think they're stupid, but they do clearly have a limited sense of reality.

[RockRaven]

8. And they are correct. Now what are we going to DO about it? And HOW?

[GreatGazoo]

11. Yes

On my scorecard, the last big push was Occupy Wallstreet.

I like Gene Sharp's list:

https://commonslibrary.org/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/

[mahina]

19. Great to see his work named here!

[Baitball Blogger]

9. They're right.

[GreatGazoo]

10. So of course they want to organize and fix it?

sign me up

[kimbutgar]

12. During Thanksgiving I was around some 27 year olds who blame both parties for their unhappiness.

[SunSeeker]

13. Duh. Any system where Donald Trump is elected president, twice, has failed. nt

[orangecrush]

22. THIS

[angrychair]

16. Girl, same.

“Young Americans are sending a clear message: the systems and institutions meant to support them no longer feel stable, fair, or responsive to this generation.”

I absolutely feel this way and I'm an old white man.

[Kid Berwyn]

17. Smart kids.

Let’s see…

Work for free as a career?
Afford college?
Buy a house?
Go to a doctor?
Retire to a life of poverty?

Life’s good! (TM)

[mcar]

20. Did they vote?

[orangecrush]

21. No shit

[Prairie_Seagull]

24. Shore up Social Security with a focus

their future. Who knows the screwball AI will throw at them.

[cstanleytech]

26. Young people are spot on in that regard as the government has fallen to much into the grip of the wealthy.

The same wealthy the majority of whom only care about themselves.

[littlemissmartypants]

27. And what did they say that they were going to do about it? ...

Because protestations only get one so far.

[LeftinOH]

28. Our own *electorate* has completely failed. We have had ample opportunities

to move society forward in the last 50-60 years, but too many of our own voting population have been easily distracted by nonsense and fear mongering. Our systems and institutions can accommodate change, but too many voters cannot.

[Johonny]

29. So listening to Joe Rogan didnt fix things

What a shock.

[tinrobot]

30. Hope they actually get out and vote

[betsuni]

31. "only about half of all young adults say they will probably or definitely vote next year"

I'll bet all the young Republicans will vote.

[Owens]

33. No kidding, look at all those greedy dinosaurs in Congress!

Out of touch with everyday people, not just the young people!

[moondust]

35. But record numbers becoming billionaires

through inheritance, UBS report finds

Thus, money is not necessarily a measure of competence or anything else no matter how desperately tRUMP and other silver spooners want you to believe it is.

[Warpy]

40. It has certainly failed most of them

This is end stage ccapitalism, wealth concentrated into as few hands as possible, predatory corporations pursuing monopolistic behavior to kill off competition, and young people realizing they're the third generation who will most likely do worse than their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents did.

If it all plays out like it usually does (and Marx had a great description of it), a few tiny cracks in the structure will start to appear and then the whole structure will collapse, seemingly without warning to people who aren't paying attention. Reforms will be enacted, GenZ will be poised to take advantage of them, and the whole cycle will begin again. The crash is toughest on those too old to start over.

The real problem is that nobody has come up with a more efficient system than boom-monopoly-bust capitalism. Perahps a go of putting Social Democrats in charge will give us a mixed system less prone to fast buck guys pushing as much brutality as they can into the system. Other than that, I'm like Marx, I got nothin'.

[mike_c]

43. I was making $25,000 per year when I was 40....

That was 1995. It wasn't much to live on, even then. It was the highest wage I was paid up to that time. The point I'm trying to make is that it was ever so, at least in this country during my lifetime. Most young people struggle to make ends meet, often for many years. I left home and entered the workforce at 16. It was many years before I could afford to live without roommates, not until I got married in my mid-twenties, and only because we had two incomes. We still lived from paycheck to paycheck until almost 50, often relying on credit at the end of the month, going ever deeper into debt.

I think "kids these days" have not been given appropriate expectations about what awaits them in the work world. It has always been difficult for young people unless they come from generous, well-to-do families. It takes years, sometimes decades to establish one's self in most trades and professions. Our capitalist economic system operates on the principle that businesses prosper by paying their employees as little a possible. A four year college degree helps in some cases, but entering professional fields usually requires postgraduate degrees AND entry level employment.

Parents need to prepare their children better for the rigors of modern life in a capitalist country-- that, or wake up to the real problems with scramble capitalism. "Load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt." This is likely what awaits you for the first ten or twenty working years.

[edhopper]

44. And yet they fail

To show up at the polls to change things.
The fault lies not in the Stars...

[Wounded Bear]

45. Has the "on the right track" survey ever came back saying that we were?

Seems to me it always says we're on the wrong track. I tend to ignore that one.

[beaglelover]

46. I would hate to be in my 20s at these times. It would all feel just so useless. Housing costs are so high

for them....I can't imagine having to have multiple roomates in order to afford an apartment. And forget saving for a house.

[BlueTsunami2018]

47. Young people are sick of capitalism.

Hell, a lot of people are. It is poisonous and untenable, it is the root of every problem we have from housing to healthcare to education to the environment. Any system that favors the very few over the very many is bound to collapse and it’s happening before our very eyes.