Do you think the shift will be as stark as currently predicted, or do you think younger generations will follow the trend (trope) of becoming more conservative with age?

Keep it civil please.

31 comments

  1. Hard to say, either things will be pretty chill, or we’ll balkanize.

  2. I think it will move left but not as left as you would think.

    People forget that Gen X exists. And in that group you have guys like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and MTG.

    On the whole they’re more left leaning than right leaning, but Gen X is forgotten about a lot. That said, they were never really political in the first place.

  3. Not sure about the political landscape, but restaurants like Cracker Barrel and Marie Calendars are going to be fucked

  4. 90% chance nothing will change or the political division will continue to grow

  5. You could have just asked how the political landscape will look in 30 years

  6. When people get older they realize that “fixing the world” is not as easy as they thought when they were young and that sometimes you have to accept a little bad to prevent a lot of bad, that very few things in life boil down to simple choices between absolute good and evil. The baby boomers were also the hippie generation, don’t forget.

  7. Humans have been progressing steadily for 6,000 years.

    About 100 150 years ago give or take the rate of societal equality began to accelerate.

    I believe that this particular transition will Mark another period of acceleration in the final goal of actually achieving societal equality.

  8. I’m not sure but I’m hoping there’s sharks with freaking lasers attached to their heads.

  10. It isn’t going to change as much as people think, and probably not in the way that people think either. People have been thinking “we just need these old people to die so the utopia can be created” since forever.

  11. I expect it to be very different. Their politicians seem to have decided their agenda 20 years ago and have not bothered to update it since. The country is beset by a horde of problems and they don’t seem to be planning on doing anything about any of it. They don’t seem to have any particular goals beyond protecting what is theirs.

  12. More effort will be put into dealing with the effects of climate change. It’s easy to ignore when it’s your grandkid’s problem, less so when it’s yours.

  13. It’s not that people become more conservative *per se*, but rather the positions they adopted when young that were forward-thinking at the time aged just as much as they did.

    Though I suppose people also learn caution with experience.

  14. A lot better, but hopefully it’s a long time away since my parents are boomers 🙂

  15. The medical and end of life care systems are designed to drain as much wealth as possible from a person before they die, so both will have a fairly significant windfall while the quality of life decline in the U.S. continues apace.

  16. I think younger people in America generally want to try and be more like Europe/Canada. I do think millennials will grow more conservative over time, but not as conservative as the boomers are.

    I think they’ll mostly be driven right because, I think between Trump and COVID and late stage capitalism, there’s a fair amount of our younger generation that have been radicalized and have become leftists even by European standards and if we got some of those European policies that divide would become more stark on the other remaining issues.

  17. Gen X and Millennials will become the new Boomers.

    And yes I think they will get more conservative.

    Boomers dying will be a *huge* wealth transfer to those two generations, and once there is real skin in the game, people tend to get more conservative. Kind of like how everyone turns into a NIMBY once they get a house lol

  18. I think socially things will be less divided…econically more so because despite what people think not all younger generations are struggling financially and dont neccesarily want all the leftist spending policies many young people have

  19. Hopefully things will get better , and people will stop being so fucking greedy. I’m hesitantly optimistic about this

  21. A big difference is that you won’t see that typical movement of getting more conservative as Millennials age. I think that is a phenomenon unique to baby boomers and the economy/society they grew up in.

    As an older millennial I have certainly move farther to the Left as I have gotten older, made more money, started a family bought a house and realized that life is not as fair, simple, and just as conservatives make it out or want to believe it is.

  22. I often think about the fact that modern boomers are statist (read conservative) is because the ones who wanted substantial systemic change died early.

    Who protests the system? Those who are disenfranchised by it. Who pushes back to maintain the system? Those who believe they are benefiting from it. The middle class, largely. The whole, “Invest in capitalism and buy a house to fight communism” campaign of the early in the 20th century worked wonders.

    Those disenfranchised by the system die a lot younger than those who benefit from it. Sometimes it’s medical neglect, like all those gay men of the 1980’s who organized protests for groups like Act Up! during the AIDS crisis. Sometimes, like countless civil rights leaders, they just get fucking shot for being too loud or popular.

    I think a lot will change once boomers are gone. First, the communist boogeyman fear will be out of our collective psyche. Which…it makes having conversations about economic modes easier if you’re not terrified of all of them. Second, I think that how conservative our generation will be long run will depend on how many homeowners there are. Not every homeowner will be conservative, but I think increased attachment to the system creates a desire to maintain it. Though it will be interesting….most boomers I know didn’t even have a fully developed brain when they got their first house, most home-owning millennials I know got theirs in their 30’s, within the last year, after over a decade of struggling in adulthood. They understand how lucky they are and how not everyone had their opportunities, and I think that creates a much different long term dynamic where we are far less conservative as a generation. Just speculation though, I could be completely off base.

  23. I think it will be pretty close to the same dynamic. Remember when they were young Baby Boomers were radicals protesting the war, fighting for Civil Rights and shaking up the institution. They had a slogan “Don’t trust anyone over 30” but then they turned 30 and so the cycle of life goes on.

    I’ve seen the same process happen in myself. I was a young radical and now a moderate liberal and maybe in a few decades will be yelling at kids to get off my lawn.

  24. Depends on how many will be moving to “fly over” country. If a lot, then maybe Democrat, at best. If only a few, you’ll have a good chance of being Socialists, and ruled by the two coasts.

  25. It’s really difficult to predict. Paying taxes and raising kids tends to make people more realistic about life, so it’s entirely possible that younger generations will shift toward conservatism, at least in some areas. If The Powers That Be continue to bugger things up and fail to deliver the paradise that the progressives promise, then I can see there being a rapid move back toward the center or right-of-center. I’m not holding my breath for it, though.

  26. I think Millennials will be set in our ways that 20-30 years from now our takes will be very conservative. Not of the standard of our time, but the standard of the future. A lot of the GI generation was conservative by the cultural standards of the 60s and beyond, but not so much by the standards of when they were young. But they spent a chunk of their adult lives in the great depression and war years. They were frequently very much in support of things like unionization, affordable housing, affordable healthcare, and affordable education. All of those things were the norm in American society up until the GI generation were well into their 70s and 80s.

  27. I think it will look very similar to what it does now. Zoomers and Millennials don’t realize it, but the Boomers were just as liberal as the Zoomers and younger Millennials are now. Who do you think legalized pot in the legal countries and drove LGBT acceptance that ultimately lead to legalizing gay marriage? My boomer Uncle went through sex reassignment surgery back in the late 70s.

    Source: Gen Xer who’s watched the anti-Millenial/anti-Boomer angst with amusement.

  28. It will stay about the same what will change though is what I and many others call the great sorting. The red states are only going to get redder as conservatives from blue states flee to red states (see Florida) and the blue states will only get bluer for the same reason

  29. I think a large aspect of becoming more “conservative” as you grow older is wanting to retain what you’ve accumulated throughout your life. And I don’t mean the knick-knacks you’ve bought from tourist traps; I mean stuff like capital. Houses, businesses, etc.

    But what happens when you don’t have capital? What happens when the money that would have seeded that capital gets thrown into a bottomless pit of perpetual rent and student loan repayment?

    I think that the political landscape will be less conservative, but that doesn’t mean it will be more liberal. After all, “conservative” and “liberal” are both sides of the same coin of enlightenment-sown liberalism; more specifically, “conservative” refers to classical liberalism while “liberal” refers to progressive liberalism.

    Instead we will see a rise in the amount of socialist and fascist activity, as less people will be invested – literally and morally – in a capitalist system where they do not have capital.

    And frankly, that scares the hell out of me.

  31. Too far ahead to know. The political environment is shaped by events and ideological shifts we can’t forsee. For instance, 20 years ago, the college-educated were predominantly Republican and people were saying that minorities were going to give Democrats a persistent majority. Now though, the college educated are a core part of the Democratic base and Hispanics have been moving red very fast. Also, the white working class, long a core part of the Dem base is now a core part of the GOP base.

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