Millennial poll: Strong majority want a third political party

[PatrickforO]

14. I recently heard Katty Kay, who is the BBC America lead anchor,

speak at an event about world trends. She was brilliant.

One of the things she brought up was that the progressive wing of the party is convinced that if the party gets more progressive, then it will become stronger, win more elections. However, Katty expressed some reserve with this position per se. She nuanced it by pointing out that the average age of leading Dems in Congress is 74, while the average age of leading Republicans is something like 48.

That said, our aging leadership is an issue, but this last election saw lots of new young people elected. Millennials.

And Bernie attracted the most Millennials. Why? Because for them, Socialism is NOT a dirty word. They want health care. They want public investment in education to make it cheaper. They want a good transportation infrastructure. They want affordable housing.

I spoke with a prominent local Republican a few days ago, and he said he's troubled that what he calls 'the circle of life' seems to have broken down - we boomers generally made it through school fairly cheaply (yes it was still hard!), and were able to hit the ground running with little if any student debt. We found an apartment, then met someone. We moved in together and maybe got married. We started careers and were able to amass wealth - we'd buy a starter home, get equity, cash that out and get a bigger home in time for children, etc. And yes, I know it didn't look that way for everyone, but it did for me.

Now, Millennials can hardly afford a car let alone housing. When it comes to the ol' American Dream, they get shit instead.

That's a problem DIRECTLY CAUSED by the Koch brothers and other billionaire freaks ripping off the treasury through government defense or energy contracts and/or ripping us all off with tax cuts which make it impossible for government to continue offering services that address public goods. Everywhere we see this. No one can afford to repair the fucking roads. Our water treatment system is antiquated and getting worse. Up to 7 in 10 people who work in affluent areas cannot afford to even rent a place in those areas, let alone buy a home. The average student loan payment is $340/mo, with the average debt balance >$31K.

So, for every dollar the billionaire parasites rip off through giant tax cuts, it's a dollar less to support that 'circle of life' my Republican mayor friend talks of.

Yes, we need to be paying attention to the needs of workers, since millennials now outnumber boomers in the workplace. We need to be paying attention to the infrastructure.

I'm meeting this morning with a millennial kid in the business community and he wants insight into setting up some kind of generational networking group of millennials to push back against this shit.