The Economist has recently run a special report on the young, concluding that the roughly 1.8 billion people in the world between the ages of 15 to 30 are an "oppressed minority." The report identified a number of policies that harm the interests of the young. Most of them belong to the Left. Someone should tell them to stop voting for their oppressors.
Pensions and health care, the quintessential liberal policies, result in a massive transfer from the young to the relatively wealthier old; as I have pointed out before, Obamacare has added to the burden. These governmental transfers of wealth from the young to the old have become so large in some countries that they are greater than the traditional intra-familial transfers heading in the opposite direction. A recent study of 23 countries found this pattern in five of them (Germany, Austria, Japan, Slovenia and Hungary). This is unprecedented in the roughly 200,000 year history of homo sapiens and it can only get worse as populations age.
The next is restrictive job policies, another proud accomplishment of the Left. These favor those who are already employed and marginalize the new entrants to the workforce. They are a major factor behind a youth NEET percentage - "not in employment, education or training" - that is typically twice that of older generations. If the Democrats succeed in getting a big increase in the national minimum wage - the policy that Milton Friedman rightfully called "a tax on the young and unskilled" - then this will be another nail in the coffin of youth employment.
As I have discussed at length before, restrictive land use policies are very detrimental to those who don't already own a home. The young overwhelmingly fall into this category. Although the Left is not exclusively responsible for these policies, the fact that blue states (such as California, New York and Massachusetts) have some of the most restrictive policies, while red states (such as Texas and Utah) have some of the loosest, tells you which end of the political spectrum is the primary driver.
The poor quality and high cost of education is another factor. Most liberals would claim that the blame for this lies with the niggardly fiscal policies of conservatives. I beg to differ. The biggest impediment to improving K12 education in America is the lack of choice and meritocracy, which result from left-wing collusion with teachers' unions and the refusal of the politically correct to demand performance and appropriate behavior from students. As I have pointed out before, the financial support provided to higher education in the US has largely leaked into higher tuition costs and the indiscriminate nature of this support has produced cadres of graduates with no employable skills but large amounts of debt. The young can thank the Left for all of this.
Restrictions on movement are the last item identified by The Economist. The young are much more mobile and therefore better positioned to improve their lot through migration. The restrictions on their movement, both international and national (with the article citing a UN study that found 80% of countries have policies to reduce rural-to-urban migration, the most famous being China's hukou system), are an assault on the young unleased from all parts of the political spectrum.
And then there is the one The Economist left out. Sovereign debts. The burden of these debts, overwhelmingly taken on to support current consumption, will fall to the young. This has also been a bipartisan effort, with a high-spending welfare-warfare state that draws support from both liberals and conservatives. But at least the conservatives feel guilty about it, whereas liberals usually think that fiscal deficits deserve Keynesian applause.
With this litany of destruction, one really has to wonder why, around the world, the young flock to left-wing banners. Turkeys usually have the intelligence not to vote for Thanksgiving. But, in defence of the young, the birds haven't had left-wing teachers drilling a love of roast turkey and all the fixings into their head since a young age.