Reply #34: Also, college kids have little interest in or understanding of labor issues... [View All]

unless they learned it from their families. Most full-time, live-away college students do not support themselves (I don't mean working 15 hours a week for spending money) and judge their lives based on what they dream they'll become (ie: I'm going to be a famous journalist, a criminal pathologist, an advertising executive) rather than what they'll likely be (a freelance writer/barrista, a paralegal/barrista, an underemployed graphic designer/barrista).

So what you have with college students are millions of people who respond to symbols and rhetoric (not to mention the millions of people who are so critical of symbols and rhetoric that they don't vote).

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I've taught college for 6 years now... I also know a lot of working class, non-college educated folks in their early to late 20s. Many don't vote because they have no faith in the system. They don't believe the Democrats are any better than the Republicans. They fall prey to right-wing economic rhetoric (even those who are quite socially liberal) because they simply don't have a way to measure who to trust.

The fact that the majority of young people have postponed entry into the labor market (as compared to the 70s) has weakened both the youth movements and the labor movement.

You finally realize that you're probably not going to be a movie director or a top magazine editor or an art collector in your 20s. Then you go to grad school to be a librarian or a social worker and after graduation and much debt, you realize it's still difficult to find a job. Then you start thinking about the economy. But by then you're no longer a child.