How Bernie Sanders Bridged a Generational Divide

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18949/bernie-sanders-the-anti-greedy-geezer-youth-vote

Sanders has tapped into the overwhelming sense of injury, frustration and anger at the toll that market fundamentalism has exacted on Americans, especially the young. And in defiance of the “greedy geezer” stereotype, Sanders personifies the fact that older people—the parents and grandparents of millennials—actually care deeply about the financial struggles of young people and know something about the ravages of market fundamentalism themselves. During the Great Depression and the post-WWII period, there was a general acceptance that the state has a responsibility to mitigate inequality, provide basic services and even out capitalism’s boom-bust cycle.

Older Americans saw the dismantling of that acceptance and the rise of free-market fundamentalism. What followed was an era of “trickle down” economics, efforts to limit or eliminate the government’s role in redistributing wealth, tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of corporations and of finance, and widespread privatization of things the government used to run, such as schools, prisons and hospitals.

To justify this, the mantra of market fundamentalism glorifies individual responsibility as if it were a sacrament. We allegedly create our own circumstances by the choices we make. There are no structural, institutional obstacles that might thwart such choices, and thus, no need for any notion of collective responsibility or the common good.

Millennials have been hit especially hard by this ideological shift. The massive defunding of public universities and federal grants and loans has led to the tripling of student loan debt since the 1990s. More than three-quarters of renters between the ages of 18 and 24 spend more than they earn every month, and they are racking up credit card debt at a faster rate than other age groups. One in five twentysomethings have more credit card debt than savings, and the usurious interest rates and late fees are more burdensome when you’re just starting out. At least 8 million didn’t have health insurance as of 2014.